Harry Turtledove: A Different Flesh

"And how is Joanna?" Wingfield asked as his wife skinned and disjointed his two rabbits and tossed the meat into the stewpot. The rabbits shared it with a small piece of stale venison from a couple of days before and a mess of wild onions, beechnuts, mushrooms, and roots.

The smell was heavenly.

"Asleep now, " Anne said, nodding toward the cradle, "but very well. She smiled at me again this morning."

"Maybe next time she will do it in the night, so I may see it too."

"I hope she will."

While they waited for the rabbits to cook, they dealt with the rest of Wingfield's catch, cutting the meat into thin strips and setting them on racks over the fire to dry and smoke. After what seemed an eternity, Anne ladled the stew into wooden bowls. Wingfield licked his clean.

Though matters were not so grim as they had been the first couple of dreadful winters, he was always hungry.

"I would have had another cony, but for the sims," he said, and told Anne of the confrontation.

Her hand jumped to her mouth. "Those horrid beasts.

They should al be hunted down and slain, ere they harm any more of our good Englishmen. What would I have done here, alone save only for Joanna, had they hurt you?"

"No need to fret over might-have-beens; I'm here and hale," he reassured her, and got up and embraced her for good measure. "As for the sims, if they be men, slaying them out of hand so would burden us with a great weight of sin when we are cal ed to the Almighty."

"They are no creatures of His," Anne returned, "but rather of the Devil, the best he could do toward making true humankind."

"I've heard that argument before. To me it smacks of the Manichean heresy. Only God has the power to create, not Satan."

"Then why did He shape such vile parodies of ourselves, His finest creatures? The sims know nothing of farming or weaving or any useful art. They cannot even set fires to cook the beasts they run down like dogs."

"But they know fire, though I grant they cannot make it. Yet whenever lightning sets a blaze, some sim will play Prometheus and seize a burning brand. They keep the flames alive as long as they may, till they lose them from rain or sheer recklessness."

Anne set hands on hips, gave Wingfield a dangerous look. "When last we hashed this over, as I recol ect, 'twas you who reckoned the sims animals and I the contrary. Why this reversal?"

"Why yours, save your concern for me?" he came back. "I thank you for't, but the topic's fit to take from either side. I tell you frankly, I cannot riddle it out in certain, but am changeable as a weathervane, ever thinking now one thing, now the other."

"And I, and everyone," Anne sighed. "But if they put you in danger, my heart cannot believe them true men, no mater what my head might say."

He reached out to set his fingers gently on her arm. The tender gesture was spoiled when a mosquito spiraled down land on the back of his hand.

The swamps round al Jamestown bred them in throngs worse than any he had known in England. He swatted at the bug, but it flew off before the deathblow landed.

Outside, someone struck up a tune on the mandolin, and someone else joined in with a drum. Voices soared in song. The settlers had only the amusements they could make for themselves. Wingfield looked out, saw a torchlit circle dance forming. He bobbed his head toward his wife. "Would it please you to join them?"

"Another time," she said. "Joanna will be waking soon, and hungry. We could step outside and watch, though."

Wingfield agreed at once. Any excuse to get out of the hot, smelly cabin was a good one.

Suitors were buzzing as avidly as the mosquitoes round the few young women who had not yet chosen husbands.

Some of those maids owned distinctly fragile reputations.

With no others to choose from this side of the sea, they were courted nonetheless.

"Oh, my dear, what would you have me do?" cried a roguish lad, as she turned herback on him.

"Go off to the woods and marry a sim?" Laughter rose, hearty from the men who heard him, half-horrified squeals from the women.

"Al an Cooper says the Spaniards do that, or anyway - cohabit,"

Wingfield told Anne. Spain held a string of outposts down to Magel an's Strait and then up the western coast of South America, to serve her galleons plying the rich trade with the Indies.

"Have they not read Deuteronomy?" Anne exclaimed, her lip curling in disgust. Then curiosity got the better of her and she whispered, "Can there be issue from such unions?"

"In truth, I don't know. As Al an says, who's to tell the difference betwixt the get of a Spanish sire and that of a sim?"

Anne blinked, then burst into giggles at the bawdy slander against England's longtime foe.

Before long, both she and her husband were yawning.

The unnremitting labor of building the colony left scant energy for leisure or anything else. Still, Wingfield hesitated before he blew out the last lamp in the cabin. He glanced toward Anne, and saw an answering flush rise from her throat to her cheeks. She was recovered now from the ordeal of childbirth. Perhaps tonight they might start a son He was about to take Anne in his arms when Joanna let out a yowl. He stopped short. His wife started to laugh. She bared a breast. "Let me feed her quickly, and put her back to sleep. Then, why, we shall see what we shall see."

"Indeed we shall." Wingfield lay down on the lumpy straw-stuffed bed to wait. He knew at once he had made a mistake, but fell asleep before he could do anything about it.

Anne stuck out her tongue at him when the sun woke him the next morning.

She skipped back when he reached for her. "This even," she promised.

"We have too much to do of the day to waste it lying abed."

He grimaced. "You have a hateful way of being right."

He scrambled into trousers and boots, set a plumed hat on his head to shield him from the sun. The plume was a bright pheasant's feather from England, now sadly battered.

Soon he would have to replace it with a dul er turkey tail feather.

He was finishing a bowl of last night's stew, strong but stil eatable, when someone knocked on the cabin door.

"There, you see?" Anne said.

"Hush."

He opened the door. Henry Dale came in. He was a short, fussy man whose ruddy complexion and tightly held jaw gave clues to his temper.

After dipping his head to Anne, he said, "Edward, what say we set a few snares today, mayhap, if fortune favors us, in spots where no knavish sims will come on them to go a-poaching"

"Good enough. Allan Cooper told me how you were robbed yesterday."

Anne's presence plainly was the only thing keeping Dale from exploding with fury. He limited himself to a single strangled, "Aye." After a few moments, he went on, "Shall we be about it, then?"

Wingfield checked his pistols, tucked a bundle of cross bow bolts into his beltpouch, nodded. After a too brief embrace with his wife, he followed Dale out into the bright morning.

Colonists were already weeding, hoeing, waoering in the fields.

Caleb Lucas shooed a goat away from the fresh, green stalks of wheat, speeding it on with a kick that brought an indignant bleat from the beast. "And the very same to you," Lucas cal ed after it. "Damned impudent beast, you can find victuals anywhere, so why thieve your betters' meals?"

"Belike the foolish creature thinks itself a sim," Dale grunted, watching the goat scurry for the edge of the woods, where it began browsing on shoots. "It lacks the accursed losels' effrontery, though, for it will not turn on its natural masters. The sims, now, those whoreson, beetle headed, flap-ear'd stinkards, "

Without pausing but to draw breath, he continued in that vein until he and Wingfield were surrounded by forest. As had Anne's remarks the night before, his diatribe roused Wingfield's contentious nature.