A Different Flesh

by Harry Turtledove

  Nothing he decided now could be fit he would be rehashing it endlessly for weeks to come. He decided to put it aside as well as he could, and wait to see what the weeks would bring.

  That sadly indecisive and unoriginal conclusion was enough to grant him rest at last.

  Whenever the weather was clear enough and wa enough to let him, Quick kept exercising, working to bring strength back in his long-inactive legs.

  He got to the point where he could stump about on his crutches lending him strength and balance. Then, a good many days later, he managed to hobble along with but a single stick Most of the time, though, he spent as he had the begining of the winter, under cover.

  Martin stayed on good terms with the trapper. That partly because of the bows and arrows Quick kept turn out. By now the sims'

  products, especial y the arrow heads, were as good as anything he could make, but he had more leisure than they in which to make them. Moreover Martin must have realized that without Quick the band never would have known of bows and arrows in the first place.

  The sim kept drawing the trapper out, hoping to pick up more ideas the band could use. Quick racked his brains, came up with little. No matter how free-ranging a life lived in the wild, most of what he knew depended in some part on civilized techniques he could not match here, or domesticated plants and animals that were equelly unobtainable.

  He had never thought of things as basic as wheat and corn He tried to change a way of life without

  them. most of the other males let Quick alone. That was not so hostility as uncertainty over where he fit into the band, his status could hardly have been more confusing: he went from being a powerful outsider to a helpless cripple.

  As if that were not bad enough, as a helpless cripple come up with a notion none of them could have they been men, he knew he could have expected over Sol. He had already seen, though, that that sort exssiveness was much weaker among sims. The males, did not object when he took his share of the meat they brought in, and let it go at that.

  Among themselves, they jockeyed for position as they My had. Quick was just as glad not to be involved in the males' squabbles reminded him of nothing so much as small boys squaring off to fight. Even perfectly healthy, he would not have relished the prospect of getting t face-to-face screaming match with a wild male, not without his pistol handy, at any rate.

  But for al the shrieks and gestures, for al the fury and teeth, few tiffs actual y ended with the combatants punching and kicking and biting. Like a lot of small-boy fights, most were games of bluff and counterbluff, good for letting off steam but not Ping the status of either participant.

  Through the winter, Martin stayed atop the hierarchy.

  only was he in his physical prime, but he also enjoyed dded prestige the success of Quick's devices brought The band had fared well in what was usually a time ivation, and the sims recognized that and gave credit fist did, at any rate. Like humans, some were unwilling do anything for which they were not responsible. Three or four males, of middling to fairly high Shin the hunting party, began hanging around toer. They had been the last ones to start using the bow.

  If sims, that was plenty to settle things. Martin would tun uli his back and swagger away, satisfied he was still cock o' the walk.

  Henry Quick shared the big male's exuberance, but aS to a point. He could not help noticing that the members , the hunting party who backed Martin were nowhere near so closely knit as Caesar's followers.

  Caesar by himself was no match for Martin; Caesar and several comrades probaij were.

  Rain came more and more often. Black patches of dirt began to appear. The evergreens lost their white mantle while buds grew on branches bare for months. Quick the geese crying far overhead, and on clear days saw V's of black, specks flying north against the blue sky.

  He wondered, as he had once in a while through winter, if anyone missed him back in the Commonwealth Trapping was a risky business, and every year many tried it never came back. If he did return to civilization he would be a nine days' wonder. Was that reason enough make the trip? He doubted it. He also doubted whether he could finish his life among the sims, even loving one. For better or worse, he and they were different. Unable to decide what to do, he let day follow day, hoping events would solve his problem for him. He got strong with his stick, he was not much slower or more awkward than an old man. He could even hobble a couple of steps without it, though his left leg had to take almost al of the weight.

  With that success, he began thinking hard about what travel would mean.

  The idea of depending on archery to feed himself was appal ing. His powderhorn was stil half full. He had done his best to keep rifle and pistol dry through the winter, greased them with animal fat, and used dirt and gravel to scour away the rust that did appear. He began substituting the rifle for his stick. The extra weight t tired him, but he managed. He hated to burn powder and waste bullets on test shots but he would sooner find out whether his guns worked in practise, where his life did not depend on the answer. When he loaded them, he pointed the pistol into the air. Big noise, he signed, warning the females Youngsters in the clearing.

  Noise-stick Sol amplified. The sims had learned the year that Quick carried noisy weapons that could slay at tance. Few except the hunting males, though, had hem. Of course, the trapper thought as he squeezed bigger they might not hear one now.

  He felt Pike cheering when the gun went off. The recoil was easier to take than he'd expected, easier even than he rembered; his arms had become very strong from bearing so much of his weight through his crutches.

  sims shrieked. Some clapped hands to ears. Young ran to their mothers. "Big noise" was easier to say than erience. Even Sol jumped, though she recovered y. Noise-stich good? she signed.

  Good, Quick answered. He fired the rifle. It also worked and almost knocked him over. The report was louder he pistol shot had been, but the sims did not make such a fuss over it, this time they knew what he was doing.

  After he reloaded both guns. If he did decide to leave, they would make al the difference in the world.

  The females and youngsters had a great deal to tell the when the hunting party returned. Hands fluttered, in their excitement the sims hooted and yelled to add asis to their gestures.

  After the commotion died down, Martin came over to Quick. He asked the same question Sol had: Noise good?

  The trapper agreed they were.

  Hunt with us? the sim asked.

  Too slow, not keep up Martin rubbed his jaw. He could not disagree with thank him at length he signed, Give me noise-stick.

  Quick had expected something of the sort. you not work -stick, he signed. To make sure he was not lying, he had surreptitiously removed the flints from his guns when the females were carrying on. He did not sign why.

  Martin took the pistol away from him. The sim knew what the trigger was for, but only a click rewarded him when he pul ed it. He tried the rifle, with the same result.

  Growling in frustration, he shoved them back at Quick and stalked away.

  The trapper made sure the sim was not looking before he restored the flints to their places;

  The next morning, most of the hunting party set of early, as they usually did. Martin hung back. He walked a and down examining the windbreak, plainly trying decide whether it was time to turn it into firewood. Of Caesar and two members of his clique also stayed behind. As far as Quick could see, they were not doit anything in particular. He practiced his walking, limping along leaning his right side on his rifle and carrying his pistol in his left. The morning was humid, so his leg hurt more than usual. When Martin turned away from the windbreak and spotted the other males still in the clearing, he shouting angrily at them. Go! Hunt!

  he signed, his gestures quick and peremptory. He was still wearing the makeshift belly Quick had made for him from a bootlace. He yanked free the dagger, waved it in the air. Quick expected Caesar and his Followers to go meekly at their way, as they always had before.
They did not. Maybe they had planned it among themselves, maybe they simply noticed they were three to Martin's one. They held their ground and yelled back. Instantly pandemonium fil ed the clearing Several males ran to Martin and added their yells to his. Almost as, many, though, backed Caesar and his two comrades. Quick stood off to one side and wished his hands were free so he could cover his ears. Sol, he thought, would have favored Martin, but she was already off in the woods.

  The two groups of sims, still shrieking, drew closer ton each other.

  Caesar, perhaps given courage by the males at his back, did not shrink as Martin approached. Instead he decided to confront Martin, windmil ing his arms and yelling as loudly as his opponent. The encounter was at a level too basic for either of them to bother with signs; their responses were what counted now.

  Just the same, the quarrel might have ended peaceably, or with no more than pushes and shoves. Most incidents among sims did. But when Martin reached out to push him away, he stil had the sharp steel dagger in his fisted a dripping line ran down the other sims chest.

  caesar shrieked again, a cry full of pain, surprise, and Martin might have finished him at that moment, but had stared for an instant, as much taken aback as his foe, at the blood running through Caesar's hair. An instant was all Marrtin got. Fast as a striking snake, Caesar bent down, grabbed a branch, and slammed it into the dominant male's side then he sprang for Martin. They fel together, biting gouging and kicking.

  Quick had not thought the din could get louder and he was wrong.

  The sims gathered in a tight knot about the two battling males.

  They were all screaming at the top of their lungs, and beginning to struggle with one of Caesar's supporting males also had a knife. He had a female aside, almost pitching her into the fire, anded over the two main combatants. He slashed at one of them, presumably Martin. An anguished bellow arose, loud enough to be heard through the chaos all around.

  Qulick limped forward. That Martin had to fight for his rank was one thing, that he should be beset by two at once thing else again. The male was raising an arm to bring down the dagger again. The trapper shifted his weight to his left foot; that leg would have to bear most of fire a moment.

  He used the stock of his rifle to knock the knife out of the sims hand, then hit him in the temple with that second blow might have fel ed a man, but sims had thicker skulls and thicker muscles over them. The male, shook his head, spat blood. He grabbed Quick by the shoulders and threw him to the ground. A lumberjack might have matched it, but the sim was half foot shorter than Quick.

  The trapper landed heavily; the rifle came out of his hand and bounced away. Pain flared in his ribs and in his bad leg. That's what you get for sticking your nose in, he thought blurrily. But the male was not done with him. the sim seized his rifle, lifted it high, and stamped toward him plainly intending to beat him to death.

  Quick still held on to his pistol. He cocked it with desperate haste and fired. He aimed for the sims chest. The bal took the male in the bel y instead.

  The noise of the shot shocked the sims into moment, silence.

  Nothing else, perhaps, could have distracted the so effectively from their own quarrels. Leaning up on his elbow, Quick saw one of the two males around whom l bigger squabble had revolved also sitting up, pushing at the inert body of his foe. Martin had won the fight; blood was still flowing from a score of Caesar's wounds. Yet by the way he moved, the victor was also badly hurt.

  Quick spared him hardly a glance, though. The traps horrified attention, and that of all the sims in the clearing, was drawn to the male he had shot. Quick had heard tales of the agony of gutshot men.

  Now he saw it first hand The sim rolled and thrashed, hands clutched to the h above and to one side of its navel. Blood trickled between fingers.

  Soon more came from its anus. When it emptied bladder a moment later, that discharge too was red. The sim shrieked and wailed.

  Several females came running from the woods; the gunshot drew those who had not heard the sound of fight. Sol was the last of them; her bulging belly made her move slowly. Quick was glad to see her, and even glad she had not been in the clearing before.

  He struggled to his feet. His right leg groaned but he did not scream; he had not rebroken it. He picked up his rifle a hobbled over toward Martin. When Sol came up to help him as she had so many times before, he grateful y let her take some of his weight. The other sims, their eyes Stil on the awful spectacle of the male he had shot, stepped out of the way. None of them signed to him. None of them seemed to want to have anything to do with him.

  Pain twisted Martin's face. His hairy hide was scraped in a dozen places to show raw, bleeding flesh. Caesar had bitten half of one ear away. Martin was holding his ribs with one hand, and had the other at the back of his left heel. When the trapper saw that, and saw how the sims left calf bunched but his foot was limp, he had a sinking feeling that made him forget his bruises.

  Against all odds, he had recovered from his own crippling injury, at least enough to walk about. Martin never would, not when he was hamstrung.

  Martin took his hands from his wounds, signed Fix leg? eyes were ful of desperate appeal. They held Quick's seeing how Martin's thoughts paralleled his own only Henry Quick feel worse. Behind the trapper, the male he had shot screamed on, unceasing and dreadful. Not fix, he had to sign.

  Sol stared at him in amazement. Fix, she signed firmly. sticks.

  Sticks fix your leg, sticks fix his leg.

  Not fix, the trapper repeated miserably. His leg not hurt way. How could he explain that the splints only held pieces of his shattered leg together while the bone mended, but that you could splint a cut tendon from now till doomsday and it would never mend? He could not, not with limited hand-talk Sol knew.

  And if he could, she would not have believed him. Sticks, Sol signed, and stepped away from him to get a couple.

  At least she was doing something constructive. The rest of the sims in the clearing wandered about dazed, like men and women who had been through a train wreck. Quick could see why. In the space of a few minutes, the band had meet disaster. Two prime males were dead (even if one would go on making horrid noises for hours). The dominant male was at best crippled; at worst, if his wounds went , he would join Caesar and his fol ower.

  The hunting party, never more than a dozen strong to begin with, would take years to recover.

  Worse, Quick knew the catastrophe would not have happened in the same way had he not become part of band. The fight between Martin and Caesar without the sharp steel knife, the tool he'd got from the trapper would have remained one of the shove-and-bluff contests typical with sims. Maybe Caesar would have backed down, maybe Martin. No one would have been much hurt either while The subhumans lacked a good part of the trappers reasoning ability. They seemed to have reached the same conclusions he had, though, whatever the means they used to get there. All through the winter, they had treated Quick like one of them. Now they drew apart from him. He saw at once he was no longer one of the band.

  Being rejected by mere sims should not have hurt Quick, but it did.

  The trapper's fate had been too intimately tied with theirs for too long for him to be indifferent to their feeling about him.

  That was especial y true in one case. Quick's gaze went to Sol, who was still busy putting a splint on Martin's leg. Better? she signed when she was through.

  Martin's breath hissed through clenched teeth.

  He shrugged, as if he did not want to say no but hurt too much to say yes. Quick knew he was not going to get better, with or without the splint.

  Sol got to her feet awkwardly. She patted her swollen belly in annoyance, almost in reproach. Most of her attention, though, remained on Martin. At last she looked a CaesarI? Her eyes met the trappers She looked at him, at the sim he had shot (who was stil ululating piteously), at Martin and Caesar (whose skin was pierced in so many places it would have been worthless as a pelt). When she glanced Quick’s w
ay again, it was with no more warmth than if she been looking at a stone. That told him the last thing he needed to know.

  If the sims had decided to tear him to pieces; he could not have stopped them.

  They ignored him instead. Perhaps they thought ostracism a worse punishment.

  In their small band with each member knowing all the others so intimately that made some sense. Quick was never sure. Living like a sim, he found at last, could not make him think like a sim.

  He loaded his pistol, put his powderhorn, ammunition (which also held flint and steel), a knife, and a cup on his belt. Leaning on his rifle, he took a couple of steps toward the edge of the clearing, then turned to Caesar. It did not matter what the band did to him, he could not save the wounded sim or have it’s shrieks pursuing him into the woods. He aimed careful y, shot the male in head, reloaded again, limped away. The sims still did not stop him. He looked back at Sol a last time, and at the child he would never see now, the child that would live its life with its mother's band.

  Maybe that, at least, was for the best, he told himself, and it because of the social strictures in the Commonwealths against such babies.

  In the world of humans, a half sim would always be at a disadvantage, slower than its fellows. But in the world of sims, a man child might prove something of a prodigy, and gain a place in the band higher than any it could look for the mountains.

  Quick not know that was so. He could only hope. The trees closed in behind him, hiding the clearing from view.

  Henry Quick knocked back wiskey with reverent pleasure. He was wearing clothes left behind before he set out on his last trapping run. He’d been in civilization a month, and regained some of the weight he'd dropped in his slow, painful journey east. All the same, his tunic and the breeches that l have been tight flopped on him as though meant for a lager man.

  "Have another," James Cartwright urged. The fur dealer had been generous with Quick, giving him a room in his own house and a place at his table. Quick knew he had an ulterior motive. He did not mind.