Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

He was exercising, his mind, he would have sworn, Where far away, when the reason Sol was putting on Fat dawned on him. He sat down heavily. No matter often his body had joined with hers, he had never thought issue might spring from it. In hindsight, that was stupid. In hindsight, of course, a lot of things were stupid.

He stayed on his haunches, lost in his own thoughts.

When Sol came back from a foraging trip, she gave him a bachful look. Not wash she asked.

No. Henry Quick pointed at her. Baby in you?

She glanced down at herself. The bulge was obvious, so obvious that Quick again kicked himself for not figuring what it meant before.

She signed, Baby in me.

She did not say anything about him being the father, but since that first time she had rarely coupled with anyone but him. After a moment, he realized he had never seen any sim in the band use the sign for father.

They viewed mating for its own sake, not for the sake of children, and had never made the connection between the two.

He wondered what to do, and wished he were callous enough for her pregnancy to make no difference to him. He had intended to head back toward the Commonwealths soon as the snow melted. Now . . . it would not be so easy You want me stay here? he signed.

Where go? Sol asked.

To men like me.

Sol frowned. One of him was strange enough; visual ing many of his kind took more imagination than she h At last she signed, winter not gone.

"Only too right it's not," Quick said aloud. Even or mild day like this one, the breeze made his teeth chatter. first he thought Sol had changed the subject, but arte moment he realized such subtlety was beyond her. Sh simply pointed out that, whatever he decided to do wasn't going to do it tomorrow, or the day after either.

He thought about what staying with the sims and the going back to the Commonwealths would be like. He ca for Sol as he had for no woman on the other side of Rockies, and she was carrying his child. That counted something, but he was not sure in which direction it swt the balance.

Son of a sim was a bad enough thing to call a man, but father of a sim . .

. ? Still, he could be like a god if he chose to stay. There was so much the sims did know. He laughed at himself. Like a god, was it? A god who huddled naked, cold, and stinking in fir branches, who ate whatever was alive (or had been lately) and was glad to get it, who could not even use his own speech but had to content himself with a clumsy, limited makeshifts Anyone who bought godhood on those terms deserved to think he had it.

That the trapper lived hardly better than the sims while in the field did not enter into the equation. He deliberatly chose those hardships to escape from his fellow men for time, and to earn the money to live high when he got back to civilization. Until now, he had never imagined staying west of the mountains. Without Sol, he would have had no doubts.

Without Sol, he would have been dead months before, and would not be in this quandary.

Male sims were not normally quiet and reflective. Sol had accepted that Henry Quick sometimes was, but had also come to know him well enough to tell when his thoughts troubled him. you good? She asked.

Even after trading signs with him for so long, she could not come closer than that to probing his feelings. He spread his palms, a gesture that meant neither yes nor no. She rummaged about, offered him some half-frozen roots she had found.

Eat, she signed, as if food could cure mental as well as physical distress.

He sighed and ate. Sol made another gesture. He acted on that one, afterward, no matter how sated his body was, his mind did not rest.

could it be love, he wondered, when he could not express the idea to Sol? But what else was it? He had no idea, not even for himself. He turned to Sol. You want me he asked.

It was her turn to hesitate. Finally she signed, you good. He tugged at his beard, frowning; sometimes sims' statements were oracular in their obscurity. At last he decided she was telling him that the most important thing was his own happiness, a curious mirroring of his own feelings toward her. And if that wasn't love, what else was at even if it was, was it worth abandoning the Commonwealths for good? He knew a fair number of men who had given up the lives they had known to stay with one whom they had fal en in love. Once the first lust faded, most came to regret it.

something else occurred to the trapper. He was the first to enter this part of the wilderness, but he would not be last. He did not have to wonder what the newcomers would think of him: just what he would have thought before the bear wrecked his leg. Tales of Quick the sim-lover would get him remembered forever, but not in a way he wanted. What else he, thought he did not even think of taking Sol back to the Commonwealths with him. He knew the ostracism that would bring, the more so as she carried his child. She did not deserve to face that.

Apart from it, too, he doubted she could adapt to life east of the Rockies. She was a creature of wilds, no less than the marten or the spearfang. If he had to live with her, it would have to be here.

He bit down on his lip till he tasted blood, then slowly made himself relax. As Sol had reminded him, winter was long way from over.

Nothing he decided now could be fit he would be rehashing it endlessly for weeks to come. He decided to put it aside as well as he could, and wait to see what the weeks would bring.

That sadly indecisive and unoriginal conclusion was enough to grant him rest at last.

Whenever the weather was clear enough and wa enough to let him, Quick kept exercising, working to bring strength back in his long-inactive legs.

He got to the point where he could stump about on his crutches lending him strength and balance. Then, a good many days later, he managed to hobble along with but a single stick Most of the time, though, he spent as he had the begining of the winter, under cover.

Martin stayed on good terms with the trapper. That partly because of the bows and arrows Quick kept turn out. By now the sims'

products, especial y the arrow heads, were as good as anything he could make, but he had more leisure than they in which to make them. Moreover Martin must have realized that without Quick the band never would have known of bows and arrows in the first place.

The sim kept drawing the trapper out, hoping to pick up more ideas the band could use. Quick racked his brains, came up with little. No matter how free-ranging a life lived in the wild, most of what he knew depended in some part on civilized techniques he could not match here, or domesticated plants and animals that were equelly unobtainable.

He had never thought of things as basic as wheat and corn He tried to change a way of life without

them. most of the other males let Quick alone. That was not so hostility as uncertainty over where he fit into the band, his status could hardly have been more confusing: he went from being a powerful outsider to a helpless cripple.

As if that were not bad enough, as a helpless cripple come up with a notion none of them could have they been men, he knew he could have expected over Sol. He had already seen, though, that that sort exssiveness was much weaker among sims. The males, did not object when he took his share of the meat they brought in, and let it go at that.

Among themselves, they jockeyed for position as they My had. Quick was just as glad not to be involved in the males' squabbles reminded him of nothing so much as small boys squaring off to fight. Even perfectly healthy, he would not have relished the prospect of getting t face-to-face screaming match with a wild male, not without his pistol handy, at any rate.

But for al the shrieks and gestures, for al the fury and teeth, few tiffs actual y ended with the combatants punching and kicking and biting. Like a lot of small-boy fights, most were games of bluff and counterbluff, good for letting off steam but not Ping the status of either participant.