Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

The youngster felt the trapper's bare skin, jerked its hand away with a grimace. Hair better, it signed.

Startled, Quick burst out laughing. The sims laughed too, loud and long. The male that had been holding a stone threw it on the ground, came over to Quick, and hugged him hard enough to make his ribs creak.

He wished he could have taken more credit for winning acceptance, but was glad to get it no matter how it came.

The male that had brought him tugged him toward the fire. Eat, it signed, and the trapper needed no further invitation.

One leg stil remained from the carcass of a buck, likely, Quick thought, the one he had heard the males chasing. The rest was bones, the big ones split to get out the marrow and the skull crushed for the sake of the brains.

A grizzled male had charge of the meat. As Henry Quick came over, the sim picked up a chipped stone and began to carve off a chunk for him. He started to offer his own steel knife instead, but stopped when he saw the stone tool gliding through the leg of venison. A steel knife lasted almost forever, was easy to hone again and again, and did not chip. None of that, however, meant stone could not be sharp. Quick's eyes widened slightly at the size of the piece the old sim gave him. Too much, he signed. Not eat al .

The sim shrugged and grunted. Someone, will if you don't, Quick thought it meant. Even the single gesture had been hesitant.

The trapper wondered on hand-talk had reached this band. Maybe it was so recently that the old sim had already been grown and only knew it imperfectly, as a man will have trouble speaking a foreign language he acquires after his youth.

Catching the meat bubble and brown as he held it on a stick over the fire drove such speculation from his mind. Beside him, the sim that had brought him here was roasting a larger piece. Less patient with cooking than he, it led its gobbet away from the flames, tossed it from hand to hand until it was cool enough to eat, then tore off one bite after another.

The venison disappeared with finishing haste.

quick sat beside the sim and tried valiantly to match its, but its bigger teeth and bigger appetite meant he was classed. Since they starved so much of the time, sims ate the most of good days like this one. The trapper was amazingly full by the time half his piece was gone, yet by then the male had almost finished and showed no signs of sing down.

He was thinking of offering it what was left of his venison when another sim touched him on the knee. He turned round to see the female he had met the day before. The female held out its left hand in a begging gesture, Meat? with the right.

He cut off a piece and gave it to the sim. Two youngsters begging from the male next to him, which gave them some scraps. A little one that could hardly toddle came up one of the children with its hand out, and in turn recieived a few tiny fragments of meat. It stared at the trapper as it ate.

The male turned to Quick. More, it signed, getting up walking over to pluck a handful of whortleberries off a branch heavy with the large, purple-blue fruit. The trapper ate a few himself; their tart sweetness cut through the greasy film coating the inside of his mouth.

Both males and females freely took the berries; no begging was involved. Only dearly won meat required that. Though they usually shared their prey, the males who hunted had some prior claim on it.

With a burst of pride that made him feel foolish a moment later, Quick realized the female sim had treated him as if he were a hunter himself, a dominant member of the band.

Despite that acceptance, he remained an object of curiosity.

That, he knew, was natural enough, he was probably the first live creature ever to share the band's campsite. If they changed their minds about him, he might not stay that way, either. Sims sometimes ate sims from other bands and, when they could catch them, people too.

A good many such grisly episodes punctuated man's westward expansion across America.

But this group found him only interesting. The grizzled elder that tended the meat ran its hands over his clothes, as fascinated by the soft suede as the youngster had been. Make, it signed, and then, after obvious painful groping for the sign, How?

Skins cut to arms, legs, chest. Not stink, rub tree bark-not any tree, right tree. As a trapper, he knew how to tan hides; what he could not do was put it in terms the sim understood. Show one day, he promised. If a sim saw something done, it could copy as well as a human. But sims would not improve on a process, as humans might.

Show, the old sim agreed. It pointed to Quick's fancy silver belt buckle. Show?

Regretfully, he shook his head. He knew nothing of metalworking, save that it was too complex for the subhumans to fathom.

His person fascinated the sims as much as his gear. They pointed at his gray eyes, then at their own, which were uniformly dark. He had to rol up his sleeve several times, and take off his boots to show that under them his feet were like theirs, if less battered and cal used. His forehead, though, intrigued the sims most. They kept patting at it to compare it to their own heads, which sloped sharply.

He shuddered even when he thought of doing so through the winters bouts.

On the face of it, it seemed impossible. The sim to whom he had given the fox carcass was close by.

He signed, How live, when snow come?

the sim signed, repeating for emphasis. Hard. Cold. Hungry. Many die in cold.

A shiver il ustrated the idea. Far more fluent with her signs than the elder had been, the female went on, Dens like bears', brush, branches. Stil . Make fire.

Still cold.

Cold. Cold. Cold. The sims eyes tried with dread. Winter was a worse enemy than spearfang or bear. With their bel ies full, though, the sims, never renective the first place, did not care to look ahead.

The youngsters through the clearing, wrestled with one another, and bred their elders, for al the world like so many unruly hen back in Cairo or Portsmouth or Philadelphia.

Many of the adults made beds of branches and leaves, curled and went to sleep, ignoring the youngsters' squawks shouts. A mother nursed a baby.

The old sim and a young adult male squatted by the fire, chipping stones. The young adult absently swatted at a youngster that disturbed him.

When it came back to watch what they were doing, the male let it stay.

Other adults had a different idea for passing the time.

Three or four couples paired off and mated. The rest of the sims paid them no particular attention, nor did they seem to feel the lack of privacy.

When a running youngster was about to crash into one pair, the male reached out from its , position on its knees behind the female to fend off the little one.

Henry Quick found the rutting sims no more interesting than did the rest of the band. He had been away from men a long time, but not long enough to think of a sim as a partner.

He would as soon have coupled with a pack of dogs! Some trappers, he knew, did that. Some mated with sims, too. He knew what he thought of them: the same as most a people thought. "You son of a sim" would start a fights anywhere in the Commonwealths.

He was taken by surprise when the female sim he had given the fox meat touched him on the leg again, this time much higher up than before. Want, ? the female signed. The last gesture it used was not a standard part of hand-talk, but not easy to get wrong, either.

To remove any possible misunderstanding, the female was on hands and knees, looking back over its shoulder at him. Neither that nor the sight of its cleft between hairy and rather boyish buttocks did anything to rouse his ardor.

No, he signed; hand-talk was not made for tact. He I softened his refusal as much as he could: You, I not same. The sim, luckily, seemed more curious than angry. Not fit? it asked, eyeing his crotch as if to gauge what his trousers concealed. He left that unanswered. He had seen enough sims to know their masculinity was hardly so if rampant as jokes and stories made it out to be, but he was no I more than average that way himself.