Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

Matt shrugged. Food good. Females here. Feel good now.

Not sick.

Nixon scowled. That wasn't the answer he was looking Melody asked quietly, "Do you want to be sick again?

you probably will, if you stay here. Do you remember what is like when you were sick?" the question was not quite theoretical; like very young children, sims often let the past recede quickly. But Dixon thought that what Matt had undergone was not something he would easily forget. The sims nostrils flared in alarm his brow-ridges, his eyes went wide. No! he signed vermhemently shook his head. He climbed off the bed. i with you.

Good," Dee said. she turned and started down the hal . Ly and Matt followed. Dixon came with them later, after leaving a souvenir on the bed to give Dr. Howard something to think about .

They hurried out through the double doors. Dee locked it again. This time, riding the elevator made Dixon feel light.

It!" Matt said again when they were in the lobby. He lot the unconscious guard there, signed, Not to be at's what he thought," Dixon said. Matt looked at I confusion. "Never mind. Come on." dadled out of the DRC and ran toward one of the horselesses parked on the roadway close to the edge. It was not, strictly speaking, a legal place to park, but traffic regulations were not likely to be enforced in the wee small hours. One of the horselesses sped off. As it passed under a street lamp, Dixon saw it was crowded with people.

Triumph-flared in him. "They must have got the HIVI! And Welt got Matt!" The driver of the remaining horseless threw open the door across from him. In, Melody signed to Matt. She, Dixon, and Dee came piling after the sim. No sooner had Dee slammed the door than the driver roared away from the Dixon started to say something to the sim, but before he could, Melody leaned over and kissed him for a long time.

When she finally let Dixon go, by some miracle he remembered what he had been about to tell Matt: "free! You're free at last!" , That got him kissed again, which was, he though dizzily, a long way from bad. I "

'Free,' " Dr. Peter Howard read. It was the last word of the pamphlet on Matt's bed, printed twice as big and black as any of the others. In Howard's mouth, it sounded obscene Normal y among the most self-controlled of men, he savagely crumpled the pamphlet and flung it to the floor. The security officer who picked it up gave him a reproachful look.

"There might have been useful evidence there, doctor."

"Oh, shut up," Howard snarled. "Where the hell were you people when this sim was stolen? Asleep on the job, that's where "The guards were drugged, Dr. Howard," the securitying man corrected stiffly.

"Our investigation into that part the affair is just beginning."

"Wonderful." Howard turned away. Slowly, clumsily, he made his way down the hal . Getting out of the way of other people seemed more trouble than it was worth. It's as if I were one of the walking wounded, he thought then realized, a moment later, I am.

He used the flat broad expanse of walnut as a fortress wall to hold the outside world outside. In a bigger sense, he had used the whole DRC the same way. Well, the outside world had Unfaded with a vengeance.

And with such stupidity, he thought, filled with rage that was al the more consuming for having no outlet. He had only skimmed the pamphlet the thieves left behind to explain their handiwork, but he had seen and heard the phrases there often enough over the years.

His fists clenched till nails bit into flesh. At the pain, he opened them again; no matter how furious he was, he stayed careful about his hands. But it was not, was not, was not his fault that sims were as they were. In earlier days, he knew, people had thought other races of people to be inferior breeds. Sims did that much, at least, to stop man's inhumanity to man, by showing what an inferior breed was like. A security man stuck his head into the office, breaking Howard's chain of thought. "Outside greencoats are here to l see you, sir," he said.

"Send them in," Howard sighed. Normal y, Terminus's regular constabulary stayed away from the DRC. Normally, Howard thought, he would not get to use that word again any time soon.

No sooner had the greencoat, actually, the fellow was in ordinary clothes, blue breeches and a yellow tunic, come in than the phone chimed.

"Excuse me," Howard said, thinking, everything happens at once. The greencoat nodded.

Howard picked up the phone. An excited voice said in his ear, "This is Butler, at the Terminus Constitution.

I’ve had a report that a sim with AIDS has been taken out of the Disease Research Center, Hello? Is that you, Dr. Howard? Are you there?"

“l'm here," Howard said. No point in breaking the conection. Like the greencoat in his office, this Butler was only the first of many.

Matt was confused. Dealing with people often left him feeling that way, but he had lived in his old home in the tower for a long time, and mostly knew what to expect.

With these new people, he had no idea what was coming next.

Shaking his head, he got out of bed, the third new, strange, not quite comfortable bed he'd had in as many nights, and used the toilet.

He had to strain to make the urine go through his penis, which was stiff with a morning erection. Stiffer than usual, even; he missed the females with whom he'd been living.

He flushed the toilet, sat down on it to comb his red brown hair.

That was another reason he missed the females: there was a big patch on his back that he could not reach. In the towers, sims by twos and threes would speed a lot of time combing each other all over. It was something to do.

He sniffed, and felt his broad nostrils expand with pleasure.

Breakfast was cooking, sausages today, from the smell. He liked sausages.

He went out to the kitchen. The man and woman who had taken him from the tower were there, along with the strange man and woman whose house this was. They we al drinking coffee. They looked up as he came in.

Good morning, he signed.

"Good morning," the people replied, with mouths a hands. "Help yourself," added the woman who lived here. Emily was her name, Matt remembered.

He nodded his thanks. Along with the sausages were sweet rolls and slices of apple. He fil ed his plate, took a glass of water (he did not care for coffee).

Behind him, Emily's mate Isaac whistled and said,' "Certainly nothing wrong with his appetite now."

"We've noticed that," replied Ken, one of the ones who had taken him away. "Hope it won't put you to too much trouble. "

"Don't worry," Isaac said.

Matt sat down at the table and started to eat. Were proud to help keep him out of the DRC, folks, and taking him was a grand gesture. But do you know what you'll do with him in the end?"

"We were thinking of getting him to one of the preserves and setting him loose there," Ken said, "but, " His voice wailed away.

"With the AIDS virus still in him, we can't do that, " Melody finished for him. "Not without spreading AIDS among the wild sims."

People often talked around sims as if they could not understand spoken words because they could not say them. Watt put down his fork so he could sign, Feel good.

"We know you do, Matt," Melody said gently, touching his hand for a moment with her small hairless one. "But no matter how good you feel, you aren't well. The sickness is inside you."

She and Ken had said that before. It made no sense to Matt. If he did not feel sick, how could he be sick? Feel good, he repeated.

He watched the humans roll their eyes and shrug. He shrugged too.

"There's another problem," Ken added. "He'll feel well only as long as we have HIVI for him." He looked down at his hands. "Maybe we should have thought a little longer about that, for his sake."