Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

The sims, he told himself, would not mind.

Nor did they. He happened on a party of hunting males not long after he set out. Several saw him, and nodded his l way as they might have to one of their own band. But he had I not reckoned on the bear.

For all his woodscraft, the first he knew of it was when it loomed up on its hind legs like some ancient, brooding god, not fifty feet from him. In that moment he had a good shot at its chest and belly, but he held his fire. Bears, even silvered bears like this one, rarely attacked without being provoked.

But it did not do to count on a bear, either. This one peered his way.

He was close enough to see its nostrils flare as it took his scent. It gave an oddly pig like grunt, dropped to al fours, and barreled toward him.

He threw his rifle to his shoulder, fired, and ran. The bear screamed. He heard its thunderous stride falter. But it stil came on, roaring its pain to the world and crashing through bushes and firs like a runaway railroad engine.

And in a sprint a bear, even a wounded bear, is faster than a man.

He had heard before he set out on this trapping run, they had most of the kinks out of a repeating rifle. He would have given five years' worth of furs to have one now. He threw away the gun he did have so he could run faster. If he lived, he'd come back for it.

He never remembered feeling the blow that shattered his right leg. Al he knew at the time was that, instead of sprinting in one direction, he was suddenly spinning and Sling through the undergrowth in a very different one.

That saved his life. The bear had to change directions too, and it was also hurt.

In the second or two its hobbling charge gave him, he jerked out his pistol, cocked it, and squeezed the trigger. He seemed to have forever to shoot. His hand was steady, with he eerie steadiness the shock of a bad injury can bring. The bear's mouth gaped in a horrible snarl; the pistol bal shattered a fang before burying itself in the beast's brain. The bear sighed and fell over, dead.

"God, that was close," the trapper said in a calm, conversational voice.

He started to pull himself to his feet and the instant he tried to put any weight on his leg, all the pain his nervous system had denied till then flooded over m. He fainted before he could shriek.

The sun had moved a fair distance across the sky when he came back to himself. The moment he did, he wished he but escape to unconsciousness again. He tasted blood, and realized he had bitten his lip. He had not noticed. That pain was a trickle, set against the all-consuming torrent in his leg.

Tears were streaming down his face by the time he managed to sit up; the world had threatened to gray out several times in the process. His trouser leg was wet too, not only from where he'd pissed himself while unconscious but also farther down, where the bear had struck him. Blood was soaking through the suede.

He held himself steady with one hand in a thorn bush while he walked the other down his leg to the injury.

Something hard and sharp was pressing against the inside of his trousers. He groaned, this time not just from the pain. With a compound fracture, and heaven only knew how much other damage in there, he would soon be as dead as if the bear had killed him cleanly.

He wished it had. This way hurt worse.

His hands shook so badly that he took a quarter of an hour to reload his pistol. A lead ball would end his misery no less than the bear's. But after the weapon was ready, he did not raise it to his head. If he had been able to charge it with powder and wadding and bullet, how could pain's grip on him be absolute?

He began to drag himself toward the bear. That took no longer than loading the gun had, though the body was only a handful of paces from him: he passed out several times on the way. At last he reached the carcass. If he was going to try to live, he would need to eat.

The bear was food, for as long as it stayed fresh.

The pistol ball left no visible wound, now that the bear's mouth was closed in death. Quick's first shot, with the rifle, had torn along the left side of the beast's neck and lodged in its shoulder. It might have been a mortal wound, but not quickly enough to do the trapper any good He tried to push the point of his broken shinbone back into his flesh, and failed repeatedly: the pain was too much to stand. He did drag himself to a sapling close by the bear's carcass and cut it down with his knife. Then, using the lace from his left boot, he tied the sapling to his leg. It was not much of a splint, but it was a little better than nothing. With it on, the broken pieces did not grind together quite so agonizingly.

He set out to make a fire, against the coming chill of night and the chill of his damaged body and for cooking a bloody gobbet he had worried off the bear's shoulder. He was still crumbling dry leaves for tinder when the hunting party of male sims came upon him.

He did not realize they were there until they were almost on top of him.

Along with their crude weapons, they carried squirrels and rabbits, a snake, and a couple of birds: . Not a great day's bag by any means. They looked in wonder from Henry Quick to the bear and back again. You kills one asked. After a little while, he recognized it as the male that had brought him the marten fur.

Understanding its hand-talk and responding took all the concentration and strength the trapper had. I kill bear, he answered.

Bear hurt me, break leg bone.

The sims grimaced. One gave an involuntary hiss of pain. Another pointed at the rude splint. Why stick!

Hold bone pieces stil . Hurt less. Quick changed the subject; his leg did not hurt much less. He waved at the dead bear, cut up meat, take to your fire. He could not hope to eat a twentieth part of it before it spoiled.

The sims could have done what they wanted with the bear no matter what he said, but his free giving of it seemed to take them aback.

Come with us, eat with us again! signed the male he knew.

He had prayed it would ask that. The band of sims, he knew, was his only hope of living through the winter, though he had scorned the thought not long before. It was his only hope of living longer than a few days, come to that.

Even if his leg healed well, he would not be able to travel for months. And with the injury he had, he had a bad feeling it would not heal well.

A male with a broken front tooth was signing at the one he knew best: Kil , it urged. More meat.

Kil , another male agreed. No hunt, no walk. Lie by fire, eat.

Cold soon. No food to give. No good to us. kil .

In other circumstances, Quick might have agreed with those sims.

He would be a burden for the band, and one more mouth to feed when they wein hungry themselves. Unless he could find a way to make himself valuable to them, he was done for. Take me to fire, then take all tools in pack, he offered.

One of the sims, unfortunately, was smart enough to see the flaw in that. Kil , then take tools, it signed.

He almost gave up then. Like a bul et, a spear going into his chest or a club breaking his head would put him out of his pain.

But he had not shot himself, and he did not want to end as a feast for subhumans. He forced his battered wits to work. Take me to fire, make more tools. That was the best he could do. If it did not appeal to the sims, he was dead. The male that had brought him the marten pelt hooted.

Make noise-sticks? it asked. He could see the eagerness on its broad features.

No, he signed, hating to have to do it. But even had he had metal to hand, he did not know how to make a gun.

Use noise-stick to kill game near fire.

He happened to think of bows and arrows. They were rare in the Commonwealths, but some rich men back east liked to hunt with them, claiming they were more sporting than guns. Quick cared nothing for sport. He was interested in surviving. Make thing like noise-stick, but quiet, he signed.