Harry Turtledove: A Different Flesh

"Were they such base animals as you claim," he said, "the sims would long since have exterminated one another, and not been here for us to find on our landing."

Dale gave him a look filled with dislike. "For all we know, they Wel nigh did. 'Twas not on us they began their habits anthropophagous."

"If they were eating each other, Henry, and you style them

'anthropophagous,' does that not make men of them?" Wingfield asked mildly. His companion spluttered and turned even redder than usual.

A robin twittered among the leaves. So the colonists named the bird, at any rate, but it was not the redbreast of England. It was big and fat and stupid, its underparts the color of brick, not fire. It was, however, easy to kill, and quite tasty. There were other sounds in the woods, too.

Somewhere far off, Wingfield heard the deep-throated barking cries of the sims. So did Henry Dale. He spat, deliberately, between his feet.

"What men speak so?" he demanded. "Even captured and tamed, as much as one may tame the beasts, they do but point and gape and make dumb show as a horse will, seeking to be led to manger."

"Those calls have meaning to them," Wingfield said.

"Oh, aye, belike. A wolf in a trap will howl so piteously it frightens its fellows away. Has he then a language?"

Having no good answer to that, Wingfield prudently kept silent.

As the two men walked, they looked for signs to betray the presence of smal game. Dale, who was an able woodsman when amiable, spotted the fresh droppings that told of a woodchuck run. "A good place for a snare," he said.

But even as he was preparing to cut a noose, his comrade found a track in the soft ground to the side of the run: the mark of a large, bare foot. "Leave be, Henry," he advised. "The sims have been here before us."

"What's that you say?" Dale came over to look at the footprint.

One of the settlers might have made it, but they habitual y went shod.

With a disgusoed grunt, Dale stowed away the twine. "Rot the bleeding blackguards! I'd wish their louse-ridden souls to hell, did I think God granted them any."

"The Spaniards baptize them, 'tis said."

"Good on them" Dale said, which startled Wingfield until he continued,

"A papist baptism, by Jesus, is the most certain highroad to hell of any I know."

They walked on. Wingfield munched on late ripening wild strawberries, larger and sweeter than any that grew in England. He spotted a woodchuck ambling from tussock to tussock. This time he aimed with special care, and his shot knocked the beast over. Dale grunted again, now in approval. He had bagged nothing more than a couple of songbirds.

They did find places to set several new snares: simple drag nooses, hanging snares made from slip nooses fasened to the ends of saplings, and fixed snares set near bushes.

The latter were especially good for catching rabbits.

They also visited the snares already set. A horrible stench announced that one of those had taken a black-and-white New World polecat. Skinned and butchered to remove the scent glands, the beast made good eating.

Wingfield and Dale tossed a copper penny to see who would have to carry it home. Wingfield lost.

Two traps had been sprung but held no game. There were fresh sim footprints around both. Dale's remarkes were colorful and inventive.

The Englishmen headed back toward Jamestown not long after the sun began to wester. They took a route different from the one they had used on the way out: several traps remained to be checked.

A small, brown-and-white-striped ground squirrel scurried away from Wingfield's boot. It darted into a clump of cockleburs. A moment later, both hunters leaped back in surprise as the little animal was flung head-high, kicking in a noose, when a bent sapling suddenly sprang erect.

"Marry" Dale said. "I don't recall setting a snare there."

"Perhaps it was someone else. At al odds, good luck we happened along now." Wingfield walked over to retrieve the ground squirrel which now hung limp. He frowned as he undid the noose from around its neck. "Who uses sinew for his traps?"

"No one I know," Dale said. "Twine is far easier to work with."

"Hmm." Wingfield was examining the way the sinew was bound to the top of the sapling. It had not been tied at al , only wrapped around and around several twigs until finaly in place. "Have a look at this, will you, Henry?"

Dale looked, grunted, turned away. Wingfield's voice pursued him:

"What animals make traps, Henry?"

"Aye, well, this is the first we've seen, in all the time we've been this side of the Atlantic. I take that to mean the sims but ape us, as a jackdaw will human speech, without having the divine spark of wit to devise any such thing for themselves. Damn and blast, man, if a dog learns to walk upon his hinder feet, is he then deserving of a seat in Parliament?"

"More than some who have them now," Wingfield observed.

Both men laughed. Dale reached for the ground squirrel tossed it into the bag with the rest of the game he carried. His crooked teeth flashed in a rare grin. "It does my heart good to rob the vermin this once, instead of the other way round."

His good humor vanished when he and Wingfield returned to the settlement. They found not only Allan Cooper and the other three guards armed and armored, but also a double handful more men. That morning a sim had burst out of the woods, smashed in a goat's skull with a rock, flung the animal under an arm, and escaped before the startled Englishmen could do anything.

"I shot, but I missed," Cooper raid morosely.

"It's a poor trade for a ground squirrel, Henry," Wingfield remarked.

His hunting partner's scowl was midnight black. "The mangy pests grow too bold. Just the other night they slaughtered a hound outside the stockade, hacked it to pieces with their stones, and were eating the flesh raw when at last the sentry came round with his torch and spied them. He missed, too," Dale finished, with a sidelong look at Cooper.

"And would you care to draw a conclusion from that?" the guard asked.

His hand caressed the hilt of his rapier.

Henry Dale hesitated. As a gentleman, he was trained to the sword. But liverish temper or no, he was not a fool; Cooper had learned in a harsher school than his, and survived. At last Dale said, "I draw the same conclusion as would any man of sense: that our best course is to rid ourselves of these pestiferous sims forthwith, as wolves and other vicious creatures have long been hunted out of England."

"I hold to war, Henry, on being attacked, but not to murder," Cooper said. "Mind, we must seem as outlandish to them as they to us."

"Killing a sim is no more murder than butchering a pig," Dale retorted.

The endless debate started up again.

Having no desire to join in another round, Wingfield took his share of the game back to his cabin. Anne was changing Joanna's soiled linen.

She looked up with a wan smile. "There's no end to't."

The baby kicked her legs and smiled toothlessly at her father. He felt his own tight expression soften.

He plucked the songbirds, skinned the polecat, set the hide aside to be tanned. He gutted the birds and tossed their little naked bodies into the stewpot whole. He threw the offal outside for the pigs or dogs to find. The black and white polecat required more skil ful butchery, for it had to be cut into pieces before the scent glands were removed.

"Thank you, dear." Anne rocked Joanna in her arms. "She's getting hungry, aren't you, sweet one? What say I feed you now, so you let us eat in peace afterwards. Can you tend to the stew, Edward?"

"Of course." He stirred the bubbling contents of the pot with a wooden spoon. Now and again he tossed in a dash of dried, powdered herbs or a pinch of grayish sea-salt Joanna nursed lustily, then fel asleep. The stew began to smell savory. Anne was about to ladle it into bowls when the baby wet herself and started crying again. Her mother gave Wingfield a look of mingled amusement and despair.