Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

Stephen turned off the street, lead them into an apartrnent block and up three flights of stairs. By the time they got to the fourth floor, Dixon was sweating for reasons that had nothing to do with Terminus's climate. "My arms'll be as long as a shimpanse's if I have to carry these bags one more flight," he complained.

"You don't. We're here." Stephen had his key out and opened the door to his cube. "Here, this will help." He turned on the cooler.

Nodding gratefully, Dixon set down his bags and shut the door behind him and Melody.

The cube was not big; the luggage Dixon had dropped nd the two bedrolls on the floor effectively swallowed the living room. A table covered with what looked like floor Plans was shoved into one corner.

Melody made a beeline for that. Dixon was content just to stand and rest for a minute.

Stephen handed him a glass of iced coffee. He gulped it down fast enough to make his sinuses hurt. "Thanks," he said, squeezing his eyes shut to try to make the pain go away.

"No problem." Stephens eyes traveled to the bedrolls. He lowered his voice a little. "I don't know what kind of arangement the two of you have, but I'm not here all the time. " Dixon looked at Melody, who was engrossed in architectural drawings. "I don't quite know either,"

he said, also quietly. "I was sort of hoping this trip would let me find out.

"Like that, eh Al right. Like I said, I'll be gone a lot. I expect you'll have the chance to learn."

"Chance to learn what?" Melody looked up from the floor plans, beckoned.

"Come over here, the two of you. Stephen, just how much support can we count on from your people here? If we can put folks in a couple of places at the same time, we may actually bring this off. If I read this right, we can get in and out here pretty fast."

They bent over the plans together.

The night guard's footsteps echoed down the quiet hal way.

Except for him, it was empty. He was sleepy and bored. He turned a corner. Gray light from the bank of monitors lit the corridor ahead.

The night technician was leaning back in his swivel chair, reading a paperback. He looked bored he too.

"Hello, Edward," the guard said. "Slow here tonight."

"Isn't it, though, Lloyd?" The technician put the bookdown on his thigh, open, so he could keep his place. "Place is like a morgue when the computers go haywire everybody packs it in and goes home early."

Lloyd nodded, not quite happily. "Getting so no one can think anymore without the damn gadgets to help 'em." He glanced at the screens.

"That's something sims don't have to worry about."

"Just swive and sleep and eat," Edward agreed. "It could be worse."

Then, because he was a fair-minded man, he added, "A lot of times it is, especially when the new drugs go thumbs-down."

"AIDS." Like everyone else at the DRC, the guard made it a swear word.

"How's he doing?"

Having been-free of symptoms for eight months now on HIVI, Matt was a being to conjure with in these halls.

Everyone worried over him. The technician perfectly understood Lloyd's concern. "He's fine, just worn out from the females again."

"Good." Lloyd yawned til the hinge of his jaw cracked like a knuckle.

His eyes shifted from the monitors to a coffeepot on a hot plate. "I need another cup of that."

"I'l join you." Edward got up and poured for both of them.

"Thanks." The guard sipped. He made a face. "Give me some sugar, will you? It's bitter tonight tastes like it's been sitting in the pot for a week." "It is viler than usual, isn't it." The technician added cream and sugar to his own brew.

Lloyd finished, tossed his cup at a trash can under the coffeepot.

He missed, muttered to himself, and bent to pick up the cup. Then he ambled down the hal .

He yawned again, even wider than before. He glared back ward the technician's station. The coffee hadn't done him uch good, had its He put a hand on the wall of the corridor. For some reason, he did not feel very steady on his feet. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself sliding to the tile floor. He opened his mouth to call for help. Only a snore came out.

In front of the monitors, the technician lol ed in his chair, his head thrown back bonelessly. The paperback lay under the swivel chair's wheels, where it had fallen. Its cover was bent.

Terminus night was as hot as Terminus day, with the added pleasure of mosquitoes. Crouched on the wide lawn outside the DRC complex, Dixon was trying to keep his swearing to whispers as he slapped at bugs.

"When do we go?" he asked the fourth time, like a smal child impatient to set out One of the lighted windows in the big building went dark for a moment, then lit again. "Now," Melody said at last "Good luck to all of us." people rose and ran forward, their feet scuffling softly on the grass. Automatic doors hissed open, leading into a passage that bent sharply. Out of sight from outside was a guard station. A guard slept in the chair; a cup of coffee d spil ed on the desk in front of him.

The fluorescent lights overhead made Stephen's teeth gleam whitely as he grinned. "Food services," he said. Also grinning, Dixon nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.

"We split here," Melody declared, refusing to be distracted even for a moment. "Stephen, your group goes that way, toward elevator B.

Bring back as much HIVI and syringes and needles as you can get your hands on."

Right." He and two other young men dashed away."

"Out of here in fifteen minutes, or you get left behind," Melody called after them. Then she turned to Dixon and the young woman with him, whom they knew only as Deli "Now we head up ourselves and get Matt."

The elevators right across from the guard station went to the sim ward. Dixon thumbed the UP button. A door whooshed open. The three raiders, no, liberators, Dixon thought, crowded in.

He hit 4 a moment before Melody got it on the of panel. The door closed. Acceleration pressed against the soles of his shoes.

The door opened again. "How convenient," Melody said as they tumbled out; the bank of monitor screens was in the same position on floor as the guard station on ground floor. The man in the chair in front of them was solidly out as the guard down below.

"Good, the screens have room numbers on them. The the one thing I wasn't sure of," Dixon said. "Is that Matt "Let's see," Melody said, coming up beside him following his pointing finger. "Yes, that's him.

Room I42 is it? Let's go."

NO ENTRY WITHOUT AUTHORIZED ACCOMPANIST : read a large sign above closed double doors. Dixon tried them. They were locked. "Figured as much,"

he said.

He stepped aside. "Al yours, Dee."

She didn't speak; she never said much, as far as Dixon could tell.

she was a locksmith by trade, though, and carried a set of picks on her belt. Her motions were quick and sure. In less than a minute, she had the doors open "Come on," she said.

They went quietly, not wanting to disturb any of the sleeping sims but Matt. "I42.B," Melody said, stoped Dee took a step toward the door, but Melody was therer trying it. Melody raised a hand in triumph, like a cricket player after a century.

Matt woke to the sound of the opening door. His mouth fell open in surprise when he saw three strange humans coming in. Who? he signed.

What?

"Henry Quick was my great-great-grandfather," said a voice hardly above a whisper. Her fingers echoed the words. depressed or interested.

Dixon shook his head in wonder; he had lost track of how many times he had seen that reaction when Melody said

who she was. Somehow all sims everywhere knew that Henry Quick had been the first man to worked to give them justice.

That? Matt signed again. Why you here? , "To make you free," Dixon said. As Melody had, as the did who communicated with sims, he repeated his in words with sign-talk. "Come with us. Do you want to spend the rest of your life cooped up in here?"