Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

Lucy put down the trowel she had been using and started to follow everyone else in. Matt felt a smile spread over his Food, a female, maybe this was what Ken and Melody ment by freedom. He had had this much back in the tower, outside, at least, no one did hurtful things to him, save the injection each morning. He'd had that before too, with much else, none of it pleasant. Getting away from those prodings, pokings, and stickmgs made even long stretches of riding in a horseless seem not too bad.

But then he heard Saul say, "Lucy, why don't you stay outside and finish what you're doing? Rhoda will bring something soon, I'm sure."

Matt let out an indignant grunt and sent a look to Ken and Melody. He was surprised and dismayed when they agreed with Saul.

"Come on, Matt," Ken said. "Lunch first. We'l worry about everything else later."

Sulkily, Lucy went back to work. Before she did, thou she gave Matt a glance full of promise from beneath brow-ridges. He let himself be steered into the house, but all he noticed about lunch was that there was a lot of it ended up not being hungry anymore, but with no idea what he'd eaten.

After a while, Lucy did come in, to use the toilet. Before she could get into the same room as Matt, Rhoda found something for her to do out in the back yard. Again Ken and Melody failed to interfere.

Matt glowered at them. This did not strike him as anything like freedom.

Finally he had waited as long as he could. He got up and started toward the back of the house. "The toilet is through that door," Ken said sharply.

Matt snorted. Not want toilet, he signed. Want, H. forearm pumped graphically.

"No!" All the people in the room spoke together.

The flat refusal brought Matt up short, and also madehim angry.

Yes, he signed, nodding so vigorously that his long, chinless jaw thumped against his chest. Want couple. Not couple since leave tower. Want to. You couple, Yes? He pointed at Saul and Rhoda.

Rhoda was even rounder than her husband. She turned pink at the question, but answered, "Yes, of course we do. Saul nodded.

Matt turned to Ken and Melody. You, you couple, yes?

They both turned pink, and looked away from each othf for a moment.

"Yes, we do," Ken admitted at last. He still did not look at Melody until she reached out and took him hand in hers Matt signed. I couple too. He headed for the back door again.

"No!" everyone said again.

Now he stared at them in disbelief. Not free to couple? he signed.

Not free? That had worked just this morning; he was sure it would again.

But it failed. "No, Matt," Melody told him. "I'm sorry, but youre not free to couple."

Not free? Matt signed, wondering if he had heard carectly. Why not free?

When his hands had finished signing, they curled themselves into fists. He saw Melody, and everyone else, look alarmed at that. sims were stronger than people.

Their fear did not stop them from arguing with him, though. Ken said,

"You can't couple with Lucy because you have the AIDS virus in you. If you couple with her, you'll give her the same sickness you have."

Not sick, Matt protested. Feel fine. Feel fine long time now.

you give medicine, hurt arm, so l feel fine, yes?

"You feel fine, yes," Melody said, "but what makes you sick is stil in you, and can go out when you couple. And we’ve no medicine for Lucy.

I'm sorry, Matt." She spread her hands in a gesture sims and people shared.

Matt only shook his head in reply. What she said made no sense to him. If he felt well, how could he have anything inside him that made him sick? And when he mated, the onIy thing that came out of him was jism.

Jism was just jism. How could it make a female sick?

A Besides, In tower, he signed, couple with many females.

they not sick now. Why this female here get sick, if they not now? He grinned, pleased at his own cleverness it was bigger mental effort than he usually made.

The people seemed to understand that too. Ken rolled his eyes, something else that was not part of sign-talk but that ,matt understood, and said to no one in particular, "Just at we need, a sim who cites precedent on us."

that Matt did not follow. He did not waste time on it in any case, for Melody was saying to him, "The female sims the tower had the AIDS virus in them like you. They already il the same way you are."

They not ill. They feel fine, Matt signed. Feel good. His hips moved involuntarily as

he remembered how good the females back at the tower had felt. He wanted that feeling again. But as Melody still would not let him go.

"Matt," she persisted "those females in the tower were getting medicine too, just like you, weren't they." Yes, and they feel fine, Matt answered.

"This is getting us nowhere," Saul broke in. "If youre thinking of letting him couple with Lucy, you two, Rhoda and I will have to ask you to leave."

"We never would have come here if we'd known you had a female sim," Ken said. They glared at each other. Hoping he was forgotten, Matt started toward the back of the housed again.

"Wait!" Melody said. Resentful y, he turned back. He was tired of her trying to tell him things that obviously weren't so. What she said, though, did not look to have anything to do with his lust for Lucy: "You remember that I'm Henry Quick's great-great-granddaughter, don't you, Matt?" He nodded. That was one reason, and a big one, why Hal gone along when she and Ken and Dee came bursting into his room in the tower. No one connected with Henry Quick a could mean harm to a sim. He was sure of that.

"Then please believe me, in Henry Quick's name, when I tel you that you shouldn't couple with Lucy, or with other female sim out here," Melody said earnestly. "Please, Matt."

He looked away from her. He did not think She Was lying. He wished he did. Not understand, he signed.

She sighed. "I know, Matt. Will you do as I ask anyhow Yes, he signed, giving up with more than a twinged regret, this Lucy was quite a desirable female. Handjobs al right he asked.

"Is that sarcasm

Saul asked “Hush," Melody said. "Of course not." she turned back to Matt. "Yes, of course using your hand is all right.... You Wil go into another room first."

Matt went, thinking grumpily that people from outside the towers, even if they were related to Henry Quick, explained about every little thing. Then he thought of Lucy again, and the heat of that thought drove from his mind any worries about people.

That evening, Dixon sat up on the guest-room bed he shared with Melody. "Poor miserable bastard," he said as he peeled off the rubber he was wearing. "I wonder if I if should have offered him one of these."

"That never occurred to me." Melody sat languor afterward was not her style. She looked again. “Do you think he could have used one."

Dixon had been half joking, or more than half he gave it some serious thought, and regretfully shook his head. "I doubt it. I massacred a fair number of them learning how, and

I suspect he wouldn't care if he tore one putting it on. Sims aren't careful over details like that."

"No, they aren't," Melody admitted, adding, "A lot of people aren't, either."

"I suppose not, " Dixon said. "But if a man didn't like a rubber, he probably wouldn't take it off halfway through and go on without it.

I'm afraid Matt might. That's the other reason I didn't think I ought to try to give him one."

"I'II tell you why I like rubbers." Melody waited for Dixon to let out a questioning grunt. Then she said, "Because with them, you have to go clean up."

"Harumph" in almost high dudgeon, he did just that.

When he carne back to the bed, Melody was wearing a tshirt and a serious expression. "Ken, why did you get into the sim justice movement in the first place?" -"What brought that on?" he asked, blinking, as he sat down beside her.