Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

A different Flesh

By Harry Turtledove

Synopsis:

How would we treat our cousin, Neanderthal man, if he were alive today?

In this alternate history, bands of Homo erectus had crossed the

Siberian land bridges to America, but no modern humans made the same

trip later. The world where sims (the European settlers' name for Homo

erectus) rather than Indians live is different from ours. North America

would have been easier for Europeans to settle than it was in our

history, where the Indians were strong enough to slow if not to stop the

expansion. The presence of sims--intelligent beings, but different from

and less than us-- shaped European thought.

Those Sims were enough like us to be very useful, different enough from

us to be exploited with minimal guilt, and too weak to resist

effectively for themselves.

The urge to treat them better would have to come from the ranks of

humanity, and to compete against the many reasons--some of them arguably

valid--for continuing exploitation.

This is the story of Europeans conquoring the New World, and the story

of the Sims as theyy move from slavery to true humanity.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in

this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or events is

purely coincidental.

Copyright O 1988 by Harry Turtledove

copyright 01988 by Nightfall, Inc.

portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Book Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY

10471

ISBN: 0-671-876224

Cover art by Kevin Murphy

First Baen printing, September 1994

Distributed by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas NewYork, NY

10020

WHEN TWO ORGANISMS overlap too closely in a single environmental niche,

they compete. It may not be purposeful--the organisms may not have the

kind of brains that will make anything at all purposeful--but they will

compete just the same. They will try to use the same habitats; live on

the same food; and it is very likely that one will prove a bit more

efficient than the other. The stronger will beat off, damage, or kill

the weaker; the better hunter or forager will leave the poorer to

starve.

It is one of the mechanisms of evolution, usually expressed by the

cliche "survival of the fittest" (except that you define the "fittest"

as the one who survives, so that you have a nice circular argument).

To get a bit closer to home . . . We don't know exactly what killed

off the australopithecines after their having lived in eastern and

southern Africa for two million years, but it may well be that genus

Homo, wittingly or unwittingly, helped.

And Homo erectus may have been done in, at least to some extent, by Homo

sapiens, while the Neanderthal variety of the latter was in turn done in

by the modern variety.

We can't put ourselves into the minds of Homo erectus or

Australopithecus africanus, let alone into what might pass as the mind

of 7f rannosaurus rex, but we know very well what our own minds are

like. We have minds that make it possible for us to know what we are

doing when we callously mistreat others who are very much like

ourselves, and do you know what we do? We rationalize our cruelty, and

justify ourselves, and even make ourselves sound moral and noble.

Here is the first example I know of. Immediately after the Flood

(according to the Bible) Noah planted a vineyard, made wine, drank it,

and was drunken. And his youngest son, Ham, the father of Canaan,

didn't show the old man the proper respect. (The Bible doesn't go into

detail.) Noah therefore said, "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants

shall he be unto his brethren." (Genesis 9:25.)

In the time of King David and King Solomon, the Israelites controlled

all o Canaan and enslaved the Canaanites and put them to forced

labor--it was not because the Israelites were a master race and did as

master races always do. Not at all. They did it (they said) because of

a Biblical curse on Canaan. (One that was undoubtedly inserted into the

Bible after the fact.)

Very well, then, that was ancient times, and people were primitive and

knew no better.

However, in modern times, it was suggested that Ham, the youngest son of

Noah, was a black and the ancestor of all the blacks that have existed

since. This, of course, is entirely wrong, Ear the Canaanites, if we go

by linguistic divisions, were as Semitic as the Israelites, the

Arameans, the Babylonians, and the Arabs. They were not blacks.

However, it suited the slavemasters of Europe and America to pretend

that Ham was black because that made black slavery a divine institution

and placed the blacks under that same curse the Israelites had made use

of three thousand years before. When preachers from the slave staoes

said that the Bible enjoined black slavery, Noah's curse was what they

referred to.

In fact, you don't have to refer to a particular Biblical verse to make

yourself sound moral and noble. After all, when you enslave a black,

you free him from his slavery to his vik superstitions, his false

religions, his primitive way of life, and you introduce him to the

benefits of Christianity and save his soul. Since his soul is warth

infinitely more than everything else he possesses or can possess, you

are doing the slave an enormous favor by enslaving him and you're

earning for yourself kudos in heaven and flights of angels will sing you

to your rest for being a noble slaveowner. (If you think that

slaveowners didn't use this argumeM to justify themselves, you are very

naive.)

In fact, to slaveowners, slaves were always responsible for their own

slavery. To Aristotle, that great Greek thinker, those people who

weren't Greeks were slaves by nature. These "barbarians" (so-called

because they didn't talk "people-talk" the way the Greeks did, but made

uncouth incomprehensible sounds like "bar-bar"), being natural slaves,

were naturally enslaved. You do them a favor, obviously, by letting

them be what they naturally are.

The very word "slave" comes, I believe, from "Slav" since to the Romans

and the Germans, Slavs were slaves by nature.

It's not even just slavery. The German Nazis killed hosts of Jews,

Poles, Russians, Gypsies, and others. Did they do it because they were

blood-thirsty, ravening beasts? Not to hear them tell it.

They were purifying the race and getting rid of disgusting sub-men for

the benefit of true humanity. I'm sure they thoroughly expected the

gratitude of all deceM people for their noble deeds.

And we Americans7 Well, there is a story that the Turkish sultan, Abdul

Hamid II, a bloody and villainous tyrant, visited the United States once

and was tackled over the matter of the Armenian massacres.

In response, he looked about him calmly and said, "Where are your

Indians7" Yes, indeed, we wiped them out. It was their land but we w

didn't enslave them; we killed them. We killed them in S defiance of

treaties, we killed them when they tried to assert their legal rights

under those treaties, and we killed them when they submitted and did not

defend themselves. And we had no qualms about it. They were "savages"

and we were doing God's work by ridding the Earth of them.

There is a (possibly apocryphal) story that after Custer's Last Stand

(the Massacre at Little Big Horn--it's only a ! massacre when white men

get killed) a Comanche chief was h introduced to Gelteral Sheridan (a

Northern hero of the Civil War). The Comanche said, "Me Tach-a-way. Me

good Indian.

" To this General Sheridan is reported to have replied, "The only good

Indians I ever saw were dead."--A very nice genocidal remark.

The history of human cruelty is revolting enough, but the history of

human justification thereof is infinitely more revolting.

Would it be any different in an alternate world, where Homo crcrtus

still existed alongside of us7 Would we treat our-evolutionary cousins

any better than we've ever treated our own kind? Harry Turtledove takes

a hard look at this question in A Different Flesh, and comes up with

some answers we'd probably just as soon t loar.

Preface

WHERE DO:YOU get your ideas?

I've never known a science fiction writer who hasn't been asked that

question a good many times. I'm no exception. And, as is true of most

of my colleagues, the answers I give often leave guestioners

unsatisfied. I've had ideas doing the dishes, taking a shower, driving

the freeway. I don't know why they show up at times like those. They

just seem to.

Sometimes ideas come because two things that by rights ought to be

wildly separate somehow merge in a writer's mind. I had just finished

watching the 1984 Winter Olympics when I happened to look at a Voyager

picture of Saturn's moon Mimas, the one with the enormous crater that

has a huge oentral peak. I wondered what skijumping down that enormous

mountain, under that tiny gravity, would be like. A story followed

shortly.

And sometimes ideas come because you look for them. Like most

scienoe-fiction writers, I read a lot. In late 1984, I was going

through Stephen JoE Ws azellent monthly column in NatuXl Histors That m

he was showing how all surviving raoes olD iman bzings are wally very ix

much alike, and idly wondering how we would treat our primitive ancestor

Australopithecus if he were alive today.

What I think of as my story-detector light went on. How would we treat

our poor, not-quite-so-bright relations if we met them today7 I soon

dismissed the very primitive Australopithecus. As far as anyone knows,

he lived only in Africa. But Homo crectus, modern man's immediate

ancestor, was widespread in the Old Wbrld. What if, I thought, bands of

Homo erectus had crossed the Siberian land bridges to America, and what

if no modern humans made the same trip later? That what-if was the

origin of the book you hold in your hands.

The world where sims (the European settlers' name for Homo erectus)

rather than Indians inhabit the New World is differem from ours in

several ways. For one thing, the grand fauna of the

Pleistocene--mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, ground sloths, glyptodons,

what have you--might well have survived to the present day. Sims would

be less efficient hunters than Indians, and would not have helped hurry

the great beasts into extinction.

Human history starts looking different too. North America would have

been easier for Europeans to settle than it was in our history, where

the Indians were strong enough to slow if not to stop the expansion.

Central and South America, on the other hand, would have been more

difficult: Spanish colonial society was based on the ruins of the

American Indian empires. And Spain, without the loot it plundered from

the Indians, probably would not have dominated sixteenth-century Europe

to the extent it did in our history.

Also, the presence of sims--intelligent beings, but different from and

less than us--could not have failed to have a powerful effect on

European thought. Where did they come from? What was their

relationship to humans? Having these questions posed so forcefully

might well have led thinkers toward the idea of evolution long before

Darwin. Sims might also make us look rather more carefully at the

differences between various groups of ourselves.

To return to Gould's question: how would we treat sims7 I fear that the

short answer is, not very well. They are enough like us to be very

useful, different enough from us to be exploited with minimal guilt, and

too weak to resist effectively for themselves. The urge to treat them

better would have to come from the ranks of humanity, and to compete

against the many reasons--some of them arguably valid--for continuing

exploitation.

"The proper study of mankind is man." Iiue enough. Sims can, I hope,

help us look at ourselves by reflecting our view at an angle different

from any we can get in this world. Come to think of it, that's one of

the things science fiction in general can do. That's why it's fun. l

1_ Viled Bead Simia quam similis, turpissama hestia, nobis!

[The ape, vilest beast, how like us!] --Ennius, quoted in Cicero, De

Natura Deorum r, IrS5lnR found the rw lew World a very different land

from the one they had left. No people came down to the seashore to

greet their ships. Before the arrival of European settlers, there were

no people in North or South America. The most nearly human creatures

present in the Americas were sims.

In the Old WorW, sims have been extinct for hundreds of thousands of

years. Fossils of creatures very much like present-day sims have been

found in East Africa, on the island of Java, and in caves not far from

Pekin, China. Sims must have crossed a land bridge from Asia to North

America during an early glacial period of the Ice Age, when the sea

level was much lower than it is now.

At the time when humans discovered the New World, small hunting and

gathering bands of sims lived throughout North and South America.

Their lives were more primitive than those of any human beings, for they

knew how to make onty the most basic stone and wood tools, and were not

even able to make fire for

themselves (although they could use and maintain it if they found it).

Paradoxically, this very primitiveness makes them interesting to

anthropologists, who see in them an illustration of how humanity's

ancient ancestors must have lived.

Despite their lack of weapons more formidable than chipped stones and

sticks with fire-hardened points, sims often proved dangerous to

colonists in the early days of European settlement of the New World.

As they learned to cope with attacks from bands of sims the settlers

also izod to learn new farming techniques needed for soils and climates

different from those of their native lands. Hunger was their constant

companion in the early years of the colonies.

Another reason for this was the necessity of bringing all seed grain

across the Atlantic until surpluses

1 could be built up. The Americas offered no native equivalent of

wheat, rye, or barley for settlers to use.

Sims, of cQurse, knew nothing of agriculture.

Nevertheless, the Spaniards and Portuguese succeeded in establishing

colonies in Central and South ; America during the sixteen century.

The first English settlers in What is now the Federated Commonwealths

was at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607

: From The Story of the Federated Commonwealths, by Ernest Simpson.

Reproduced by permission.

A different Flesh

AFTER THIRTY MILD English summers, July in Virginia smote Edward

Wingfield like a blast from hell. Sweat poured off him as he tramped

through the forest a few miles from Jamestown in search of game. It

clung, greasily, in the humid heat.

He held his crossbow cocked and ready. He also carried a loaded pistol

in each boot, but the crossbow was silent and accurate at longer range,

and it wasted no precious powder. The guns were only for emergencies.

Wingfield studied the dappled shadows. A little past noon, he guessed.

Before long he would have to turn round and head home for the colony. He

had had a fairly good day: two rabbits, several small birds, and a fat

gray squirrel hung from his belt.

He looked forward to fall and the harvest. If all wentwell this year,

the colony would finally have enough wheat for bread and porridge and

ale. How he wished--how all the Europeans wished--that this godforsaken

new world offered wheat or barley or even oats of its own.

But it did not, so all seed grain had to cross the Atlantic. Jamestown

had lived mostly on game and roots for three years now. Lean and

leathery, Wingfield had forgotten what a hot, fresh loaf tasted like.

He remembered only that it was wonderful.

Something stirred in the undergrowth ahead. He froze. The motion came

again. He spied a fine plump rabbit, its beady black eyes alert, its

ears cocked for danger.

Moving slowly and steadily, hardly breathing, he raised the crossbow to

his shoulder, aimed down the bolt. Once the rabbit looked toward him.

He stopped moving again until it turned its head away.

He pressed the trigger. The bolt darted and slammed into a treetrunk a

finger's breadth above the rabbit's ear. The beast bounded away.

"Hellfire!" Wingfield dashed after it, yanking out one of his pistols.

He almost tripped over the outflung branch of a grapevine. The vine's

main stock was as big around as his calf. Virginia grapes, and the

rough wine the colonists made from them, were among the few things that

helped keep Jamestown bearable.

The panic-stricken rabbit, instead of diving into the bushes for cover

and losing itself there, burst past a screen dr brush into a clearing.

"Your last mistake, beastly" Wingfield cried in triumph. He crashed

through the brush himself, swinging up the gun as he did so.

then the rabbit was almost to the other side of the clearing.

He saw it thrashing in the grass there. Wu4Sield paused, puzzled: had a

ferret torn out itt throat as it scampered along, oblivious to

everything but its pursuer?

; Then his grip tightened on the trigger, for a sim emerged from a

thicket and ran toward the rabbit.

! It had not seen him. It bent down by the writhing beast if smashed

in the rabbit's head with a rock. Undoubtedly it 2 had used another to

bring the animal down; sims were 2 deadly accurate throwing sharpened

stones.

Wingfield stepped into the clearing. The colony was too hungry to kt

aby food go.

The sim heard him. It rose, clutching the bloody rock in a large,

knobby-knuclcled hand. It was about as tall as the Englishman, and

naked but for its own abundant hair. Its long, chinless jaw opened to

let out a hoot of dismay Wingfield gestured with the pistol. Sims had

no fore heads to speak of above their bone-ridged brows, but they had

learned the colonists' weapons slew at a distance greater than they

could cast their rocks. Usually, these days they retreated instead of

proving the lesson over again.

This one, though, stood its ground, baring broad, yellow teeth in a

threatening grimace. Wingfield gestured again, more sharply, and hoped

he seemed more confident than he felt. If his first shot missed, or

even wounded but failed to kill, he would have to grab for his other gun

while the sim charged--and pistol-range was not that much more than a

stone's throw.

Then the bushes quivered on the far side of the clearing, and a second

sim came out to stand behind its fellow. This one carried a large,

sharp-edged rock ready to hurl. It shook its other fist at Wingfield,

and shouted angrily.

It was the Englishmanss turn to grind his teeth. If both sims rushed

him, he would never have the chance to reload either a pistol or his

crossbow. The odds of stopping them with Just two shots were not worth

betting his life on, not for a rabbit. And if they did kill him, they

would not content themselves with the game he carried. They would eat

him too. -] i Raising the pistol in a final warning, he drew back into

the woods. The sims' mocking cries followed him. He

hated the filthy animals . . . if they were animals. Close to a

century had passed since the Spaniards brought the first pair back to

Cadiz from their coastal fortress of Veracruz. Churchmen and scholars

were still arguing furiously over whether sims were mere brute beasts or

human beings.

At the moment, Wingfield was ready to hate them no matter what they

were.

He found the tree where he had shot at the rabbit the sims were now

doubtless gulping down raw. He managed to cut himself while he was

digging out the crossbow bolt with his knife. That did nothing to

improve his temper. Had he shot straight in the first place, he would

not have put himself in the humiliating position of backing down from

sims.

Thinking such dark thoughts, Wingfield turned back toward Jamestown. He

scratched at his nose as he walked along, and felt skin peel under his

nails. One more annoyance--he was too fair not to burn in this climate,

but found wearing a hat equally intolerable.

On his way home, he knocked over a couple of quail and one of the native

beasts that looked like giant, whioe-faced rats but tasted much better.

That improved his mood, a little. He was still grumbling when Allan

Cooper hailed him from the edge of the cleared ground.

Thinking of the guard's misery made him ashamed of his own bad temper.

Cooper wore a gleaming back-andbreast with thick padding beneath; a

heavy, plumed morion sat on his head. In that armor, he had to be

steaming like a lobsoer boiled in its own shell. Yet he managed a

cheery brave for Wingfield. "Good bag you have there," he called.

"It should be better, by one hare," Wingfield replied, pique flaring

again. He explained how he had lost the beast to the sims.

"Aye, well, no help for such things sometimes, not two on one," Cooper

sighed, and Wingfield felt relief at having his judgment sustained by a

professional soldier. The Fxard went on, "The thieving devils are

robbing uaps again, too. Henry Dale came in empty-handed this after

narry W urlleaove noon, swearing foul enough to damn himself on the

spot."

"If swearing damns a man, Henry was smelling brimstone long years ere

this," Wingfield observed.

if Cooper laughed. "You speak naught but the truth there, though I

don't blame him for his fury this time. Sims are worse than foxes ever

were--foxes have no hands." He hefted his matchlock musket. "Without

guns, we'd never keep them from our own animals. And how often have

they raided the henhouse?"

"Too many times." Wingfield turned to a less g}oomy subject.

"How is Cecil?"

"Doing splendidly," Cooper said, his voioe full of pride. "The lad will

be three months tomorrow." Cecil Cooper was Jamestown's oldest child;

the first ship carrying women had reached Virginia only a year before.

Wingfield had a daughter, Joanna, only a few weeks younger than the

guard's son.

He kft Cooper and walked down the muddy path through the fields.

Several rows of thatch-roded cabins stood by the log stockade that

mounted cannon. On the other side of the fortress were longer rows, d

graves. More than half ad the orXinal three shiploads of colonists had

died from starvation or disease. A couple of the newest burials were

pathetically small: even back in England, so many infants did not live

to grow up--and life was far harsher here.

But the marker that grieved Wingfield most was one of the oldest, the

one showing where Captain John Smith lay. Always eager to explore, he

had set about learning the countryside from the day the English

landed--until the sims killed him, three months later. Without him, the

settlement seemed to have a lesser sense of drive, of purpo.

Still, it went on, as people and their works do. Several colonists

swung the gates of the fortress open, so others could drive in the pigs,

goats, and oxen for the night to protect them from the sims and other

predators. The pigs and goats, which ate anything they came across,

throve in this new land. The oxen had the same gaunt look as most of

the colonists.

Wingfield's cabin was in the outer row, closest to the forest.

Smoke rose from the chimney as he approached. The door stood open, to

let in what air would come.

Hearing her husband's step, Anne Wingfield came out to greet him.

He hugged her close, so glad she had chosen to spend her life with him.

She had had her pick of suitors, as was true of all the women in

Virginia; men outnumbered them four to one.

She exclaimed in pleasure at how much game he had brought home.

Back in London, she would have been nothing special to look at: a rather

husky, dark-haired girl in her early twenties, with strong features--if

anything, handsome rather than pretty. On this side of the Atlantic,

though, she was by definition a beauty.

"And how is Joanna?" Wingfield asked as his wife skinned and disjointed

his two rabbits and tossed the meat into the soewpot. The rabbits

shared it with a small piece of stale venison from a couple of days

before and a mess of wild onions, beechnuts, mushrooms, and roots.

The smell was heavenly.

"Asleep now, " Anne said, nodding toward the cradle, "but very well. She

smiled at me again this morning."

"Maybe next time she will do it in the night, so I may see it too."

"I hope she will."

While they waioed for the rabbits to cook, they dealt with the rest of

Wingfield's catch, cutting the meat into thin strips and setting them on

racks over the fire to dry and smoke. After what seemed an eternity,

Anne ladled the stew into wooden bowls. Wingfield licked his clean.

Though matters were not so grim as they had been the first couple of

dteadful winters, he was always hungry.

"I would have had another cony, but for the sims," he said, and told

Anne of the confrontation.

Her hand jumped to her mouth. "Those horrid beasts! 8 Harry

Turtledove They should all be hunted down and slain, ere they harm any

more of our good Englishmen. What would I have done here, alone save

only for Joanna, had they hurt you?"

"No need to fret over might-have-beens; I'm here and hale," he reassured

her, and got up and embraced her for good measure. "As for the sims, if

they be men, slaying them out of hand so would burden us with a great

weight of sin when we are called to the Almighty."

"They are no creatures of His," Anne returned, "but rather of the Devil,

the best he could do toward making true humankind."

"I've heard that argument before. To me it smacks of the Manichean

heresy. Only God has the power to create, not Satan."

"Then why did He shape such vile parodies of ourselves, His finest

creatures? The sims know nothing of &rming or weaving or any useful

art. They cannot even set fires to cook the beasts they run down like

dogs."

"But they know fire, though I grant they cannot make it. Yet whenever

lightning sets a bla, some sim will play Prometheus and seize a burning

brand. They keep the flames alive as long as they may, till they lose

them from rain or sheer recklessness."

Anne set hands on hips, gave Wingfield a dangerous look. "When last we

hashed this over, as I recollect, 'twos you who reckoned the sims

animals and I the contrary. Why this reversal?"

"Why yours, save your concern for me?" he came back. "I thank you

for't, but the topic's fit to take from either side. I tell you

frankly, I cannot riddk it out in certain, but am changeable as a

weathervane, ever thinking now one thing, now the other."

"And 1, and everyone," Anne sighed. "But if they put you in danger, my

heart cannot believe them true men, no matoer what my head might say."

He reached out to set his fingers gently on her arm. The tender gesture

was spoiled when a mosquito spiraled down land on the back of his hand.

The swamps round A umerem rn::all Jamestown bred them in throngs worse

than any he had known in England. He swatted at the bug, but it flew

off before the deathblow landed.

Outside, someone struck up a tune on the mandolin, and someone else

joined in with a drum. Voices soared in song. The settlers had only

the amusements they could make for themselves. Wingfield looked out,

saw a torchlit circle dance forming. He bobbed his head toward his

wife. "Would it please you to join them?"

"Another time," she said. "Joanna will be waking soon, \ and hungry. We

could step outside and watch, though."

Wingfield agreed at once. Any excuse to get out of the hot, smelly

cabin was a good one.

Suitors were buzzing as avidly as the mosquitoes round the few young

women who had not yet chosen husbands.

Some of those maids owned distinctly fragile reputations.

With no others to choose from this side of the sea, they were courted

nonetheless.

"Oh, my dear, what would you have me do?" cried a roguish ad turned her

back on him. "Go off to the woods and marry a sim?" Laughter rose,

hearty from the men who heard him, half-horrified squeals from the

women.

"Allan Cooper says the Spaniards do that, or anyway - cohabit,"

Wingfield told Anne. Spain held a string of outposts down to Magellan's

Strait and then up the western coast of South America, to serve her

galleons plying the rich trade with the Indies.

"Have they not read Deuteronomy?" Anne exclaimed, u her lip curling in

disgust. Then curiosity got the better of - her and she whispered, "Can

there be issue from such u mons?"

0- "In truth, I don't know. As Allan says, who's to tell the ;

difference betwixt the get of a Spanish sire and that of a K- sim?"

Anne blinked, then burst into giggles at the bawdy $D: slnder against

England's longtime Eoe.

Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

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