Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

Preen Chand had been too busy studying the Iron Elephant to pay atoention to them. A quick glance showed his fellow driver to be right.

The livestock had reacted to their own train as they would have toward a couple of mules hauling a waggon past, which is to say they did not react at all.

The noisy, smoky, stinking steam engine was something else again.

Animals' ears went up in surprise, then back in alarm. Terrified flocks pounded across the fields, farmers trying without much luck to halt them and now and then pausing to shake their fists at the Iron Elephant.

"I never thought of that," Preen Chand exclaimed. "How can these machines ever accomplish anything, if sheep and cattle and horses will not go near them?"

"Trevithick has come this far," Paul Tilak pointed out, which made Preen Chand give him a dirty look.

The sun climbed the sky. One by one, the townsfolk who had ridden out to watch the race began turning back for Springfield. It was not the sort of event to be easily watched.

Neither contestant moved very fast, and they were drawing steadily farther apart. The only drama lay in who would finish first, but the answer to that was stil more than a day away.

This time Tilak was the one who looked back. What he saw raised even his unsanguine spirits. "They have broken down!" he shouted.

Preen Chand slapped the spyglass to his eye. Sure enough, the Iron Elephant was barely limping along. Less smoke poured from the stack, and what there was had changed color.

The brakemen raised a cheer. "Come on, Caesar!"

"Go, Hannibal, gal"

"Run that hunk of tin back to the blacksmith's shop where it belongs!" But Preen Chand kept watching. As he had been certain, Richard Trevithick was rot a man to yield tamely to misfortune. The engine handler worked furiously on his machine. Once he leaped away; Preen Chand saw one of his henchmen rush up to help him bandage his hand. Together they plunged back to their repairs. After a while, the Iron Elephant picked up speed again.

All the same, Caesar and Hannibal gained on the steam engine with every soep they took. They were pul ing magnificently now, their heads down, their double-curved tusks, bigger by far than those of the Indian elephants Preen Chand's grandfather had fondly remembered, almost dragging the ground.

A small stream ran not far from the tracks. "They should water themselves," Tilak said.

Preen Chand haoedto stop for any reason, but knew his friend was right.

He raised a signal flag to warn the brakemen to stop, cal ed, "Choro!"

to Caesar. Tilak echoed him. The brakes squealed as they halted. The two elephant drivers unharnessed their beasts and rode them over to the creek. "I'd like to see Trevithick do this when his boiler runs dry,"

Preen Chand said. Tilak nodded.

Caesar and Hannibal lowered their trunks into the water. They squiroed it down their throats, a good gal on and a half at a squirt.

Tilak had been right, they were thirsty. They drank close to thirty gallons each before they slowed down.

Their exertion had also made them hot. "DeTT-tol!" Preen Chand cal ed:

"Squirt water on your back." Caesar did. Preen Chand scrambled forward onto the hairy elephant's head to keep from getting soaked.

As the elephant drivers led their charges back to the train, Caesar and Hannibal used their trunks to uproot a couple of bushes and stuff them into their mouths. They had eaoen well before the race staroed and would be fed again come evening, but they were not the sort of animals to miss any chance for a snack.

"Mall-mal !" Preen Chand shouted, and the train headed west once more.

Behind them, the smoke that marked the Iron Elephant sank lower and lower in the east. Finally Preen Chand had to use the spyglass to see it. It never quite disappeared, though, any more than an aching tooth that has stopped hurting for the moment ceases to give little reminders of its prence.

The farms that ran west along the railway from Spring field began to peoer out. Not many ran east from Carthage; the tracks had reached it only a few years before. Between \ l the two towns was a broad stretch where the four bands of iron ran through still-virgin prairie.

A herd of big-horned buffalo grazed north of the tracks.

It was not one of the huge aggregations of spring or fall, ' when migrating throngs made the ground shake and could delay a train for hours or days as they crossed the rail line.

Preen Chand knew some of his brakemen were swearing becau the buffalo were out of rifle range. He did not care e l himself; he did not eat beef. l A pronghorn pranced daintily by, a good deal closer than i l the buffalo. A gun barked. Caesar jerked beneath Preen Chand; he heard Paul Tilak cursing and pounding Hanni- 0 hal back under control. S

a When Preen Chand could spare a moment, he saw the pronghorn lying in the grass, kicking. He raised an eye brow, impressed at the shooting.

The little antelope was at least as &r away as the sima whole volley had missed on the way to Springfield.

Several men swung down from the waggons to pick up the pronghorn.

All but one, presumably the felbw who had kil ed it, had rifles at the ready. The waist-high plains grass could hide almost anything: sims, wolves, a spear fanged cat.

The brakemen had to run hard to catch up to the train with their booty.

None of them cal ed to Preen Chand to slow down. They knew what the odds were for that.

The elephant driver had his cap pulled low to shield his eyes from the westering sun when the train went by anoNer creek. "What do you say we stop here?" Tilak called "Hannibal is tired."

Preen Chand did not want to stop for anything, but he could feel that Caesar was not pul ing as powerfully as he had earlier in the day.

The hairy elephants were so large making the same mental calculations he was. "We stay," he said at last. "We can catch them before noon, a few miles outside Carthage. And if we race them now we risk running the elephants into the ground. They worked hard yesoerday, and they need as much rest as they can get."

The brakemen accepted his decision without argument as he would have taken their word over anything concerning the waggons. Tilak, though, took him aside and said quietly, "I hope we can catch them.

Hannibal was flagging badly there at the end yRay."

"Caesar too." Preen Chand hated to make the admission as if saying it out loud somehow made it more real. He was, however, far from giving up hope. "The steam engine has its problems too, I thought it would. If it were running as well as Trevithick claimed it could, it would have been here hours ago."

"And if it had, we could have waved goodbye to the race."

"That is true. But it passed us now, not then. We, at least know how far we can hope to go on any given day. What will that smel y piece of ironwork do to schedules?"

"It has certainly played the very devil with mine." Tilak yawned.

"I am going back to bed."

"There, for once, my friend, I cannot argue with you," Preen Chand said.

His only consolation was reflecting that Trevithick probably needed sleep even more than he did.

Afoer eating enormously at sunrise, Caesar and Hannibal seemed eager to pull. The train rattled forward at a pace betoer than Preen Chand had expected. The Iron Elephant's plume of smoke, which had shrunk behind them the day before, now grew larger and blacker and stood tal er in the sky as they gained. Only a couple o "What do you say we stop here?"

Tilak called "Hannibal is tired."

Preen Chand did not want to stop for anything, but he could feel that Caesar was not pul ing as powerfully as he had earlier in the day.

The hairy elephants were so large making the same mental calculations he was. "We stay," he said at last. "We can catch them before noon, a few miles outside Carthage. And if we race them now we risk running the elephants into the ground. They worked hard yesoerday, and they need as much rest as they can get."