Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

after a while he accepted that as just another nuisance.

his whoop made sims all over the clearing jump. If it not dissolve the resin, neither would water. Now his feathers would stay where he put them.

He had a couple of dozen shafts finished by the time they came into the clearing, staggering under the weight of a fawn in his arms. Quick was no archer, and was hampered by having to shoot sitting down. Nevertheless, he sent several arrows close to a treetrunk that stood further away than anyone could throw a stone.

Hiss wrist raw and red from being lashed by the sinew string, he handed the bow to Martin. The sim had used it a couple of times before, but already showed signs of being a better marksman than Quick. Martin grunted the first two arrows went where he aimed them, then 'Hoo!"

as a third followed.

He shot again, as if to reassure himself it was no fluke, thrust the bow back at the trapper. Make more, he signed. Quick had won over the skeptic.

with Sol's help, Quick went from cobbler to bowyer and Per. He had finished a handful of crude bows and close to a hundred arrows before he paused to wonder about what he was doing. Men had always pushed forward across Pica as they pleased, not least because sims lacked the brains to fight back. A bow was nowhere near as potent as a gun, but it was vastly better than anything the subhumans had before. Not only that, it was simple enough for them to make and care for themselves, which was not true of firearms.

After some thought, he decided it did not matter. For one thing, ideas did not move quickly from one band of sims to the next: how recently this band had acquired sign showed that. For another, even with bows the sims could hardly become more than a nuisance. And final y, staying.

alive now counted far more than any hypothetical trouble in the future.

In such matters, the trapper was a practical man.

He grinned from ear to ear when the hunting party began coming back with more game than they ever before. Not need close, one signed, holding a rabbit, blood on its white fur in front of Quick's face.

He kissed the trapper's cheek, then patted his own belly.

from far, eat good.

Save for a single infant, not a sim had died this winter though it was the desperate time of year for the wild sim’s Quick was amazed at the difference the extra fuel and the extra food made.

But winter was also the desperate time of year for other predators that roamed the woods. One morning a female started to push aside a chunk of the windbreak, She shoved back the piled branches with a shriek of fright as a wolf bayed in anger and frustration and hunger. Around[ the windbreak, the rest of the pack took up the chorus.

The sims were besieged.

Sol shivered, next to Quick. Cold had nothing to do with it.

Wolves stay, she signed. Stay, stay, stay. We him hungry. We go out, they eat. They eat enough, then go - The rest of the sims seemed sunk in the same fit of depression. None showed any sign of trying to drive wolves away, nor did they reach for the bows that lay by fire.

Their wits were slower than humans' after al , Quick saw: they had trouble grasping that what served so well on the hunt would also defend them.

He was sure they would eventually have worked through for themselves, but lacked the patience to wait.

He shouted till he had Martin's attention. His voice also roused the devil's choir outside the windbreak, but he did not care about that. Take bows, arrows, he signed. Shoot wolves. He red that by pantomiming drawing a bow back to his shoulder to shoot wolves, those you not shoot run away. The big male rubbed his long, chinless jaw as he led with the idea. He sprang to his feet with a wordless run for the weapons. He dashed to the windbreak, I through. Quick heard a snarl from the far side. The was not afraid of a sim, especially not with a barrier between them.

Martin aimed the bow through a gap in the branches. The wolf's fierce growls turned to a yowl of agony that went on and on. The howls from the rest of the pack stopped abruptly.

Quick feared and hated wolves: after sims, they were the most dangerous creatures in the woods. A bear or a spearfang, of course, was more than a match for a wolf, but pack of wolves would run even a spearfang off its prey.

Had the trapper been able to stand, he would have gone to windbreak to fire his rifle and pistol at the beasts.

The sims proved able to deal with things on their own.

Martin dashed to another hole in the windbreak. He shot . A wounded wolf ki-yied in pain. That was enough more males rushing up to grab the rest of the bows and arrows. In minutes, several more wolves had been hit, the rest of the pack was in full retreat. The male sims with clubs and spears went outside the windbreak to finish off the animals they had wounded.

Roast wolf tasted much better than Quick had thought it would. Afew days later, the weather turned clear and unseasonly warm. The trapper, with the aid of Sol and of the crutches he had fashioned weeks before, stood up for the first time since the sims had brought him into the clearing.

The effort of even a couple of steps required left him weak. His left leg was, from lack of use, almost as feeble as the right.

The feeling walking brought was intoxicating. He leaned over and kissed Sol the lips. He had never done that before. The motion almost made him fall. Sol steadied him. They both laughed he kissed her again.

This time they did slide to the ground carefully, still laughing, and ended up coupling.

Afterward Sol got up to gather wood, leaving Quick to himself; she took pleasure in the act, but knew nothing like lazing in the afterglow. A smile still on his lips, Quick watched her retreating form.

There, he thought, goes a hell of a woman. Hearing word in his own mind brought him up short. It had be I while since he took a real look at how he felt about Sol . That her body pleased him had been a surprise, but l no longer. Now he noticed her hairiness, her feet, hardly more than had she been black or had very blue eyes He was used to her, as one person grows used to another. What did surprise him was how much he liked her. He knew that had grown from her caring for him, but there was more to it now. Her happiness mattered to him why else had he given her his boots, and worried so much whether Martin would take them away. And if he desired her, and at the same time wanted to gladden her in other ways, He startled himself by speaking out loud. "If that's not love, I don't know what the devil is. The summer before, using that word in connection I a sim would have seemed as ridiculous as thinking a female sim as a woman. He shrugged, not so disturbed as he expected to be. Living as part of the band had this perspective.

Sims weren't human, he thought, but they were people. He nodded slowly, pleased with the distinction. The sim had been living in these woods for who knew how many years. For the first time, Quick felt guilty over the people who were supplanting wild sims all across the continent.

Even tame sims depended on their masters' whim’s for security. The trapper had trouble finding that right, be the same time did not know what else could have happened.

more the sims hunted with bows, the deadlier of the males brought in such an unending stream of food that the clearing constantly smelled of cooking meat. The whole band began to lose the gauntness that went with most of them, though, was fat, to Quick, a fat wild sim contradiction in terms. So he thought, at any rate, he noticed Sol's belly beginning to protrude. Yet she d no extra flesh on her limbs or in her face. The trapper scratched his head and kept on trying to get about on his crutches.

His right leg was never going to be the same. There was famous knot of bone where the leg had been broken ad not healed straight, which made it a little shorter its mate. Quick stumped patiently back and forth, as much weight on it as he could. Day by day it bore but he knew he had made his last trapping run. He would need a stick for the rest of his life.