A Different Flesh (34 page)

“They were here first, John,” Quick said stubbornly. “It's not their fault they're stupider than we are. Having them work fields and such is one thing; we can make better use of good land than they ever could. But let them keep the backwoods. Some of them ought to stay free.”

“Maybe you won't want to go trapping after all,” Cartwright observed. “You sound like you've got yourself a new mission in life.”

Quick hadn't thought of it in quite those terms. He rubbed his chin. He'd shaved his beard, but wasn't yet used to feeling smooth skin again. At last he said, “Maybe I do, at that. Sims aren't animals, after all.”

A hunter sitting at the next table turned round at his words. He grinned drunkenly. “You're right there, pal. They give better sport than any damned beasts.” He hooked a thumb under his necklace, drawing Quick's eye to it. The cord was strung with dried, rather hairy ears.

It took four men to pry Quick's hands from the fellow's throat.

1988

Freedom

There can be no doubt that the labor of sims contributed greatly to the growth of the Federated Commonwealths of America. As we have seen, this was true in agriculture. It was also the case in the huge factories of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: simple, repetitive tasks proved to be within the capacity of the native subhumans. Their treatment at the dormitories next to these factories was all too often worse than any suffered by human workers, who had both the wit and the political ability to combine to improve their conditions.

These workers' alliances were early supporters of the sims' justice movement. If factory owners could use sims instead of people, rewarding them with no more than what was frequently inadequate food and shelter, then wages for all workers were depressed. Only the fact that humans greatly outnumbered sims prevented this problem from being even worse than it was.

The steady growth of technology, however, did at least as much to change conditions for sims as did political agitation. Farming grew increasingly mechanized, and machines gradually began taking over many of the simple factory jobs sims had formerly performed. This transformation also affected humans, of course. But most succeeded in changing with the times, and in finding new positions in emerging high-technology industries. This option was not open to sims.

Even with improved technology, the sims' justice movement has continually faced a serious problem: sims, while more than beasts, manifestly are less than men and women. Defining a middle ground, and an appropriate role for sims in modern society, has never been easy; the movement itself has fragmented several times over attempts to do so. In recent years, though, the area of research has drawn attention from almost all factions of the sims' justice movement.

Because they are so like people in so many ways, sims have since their discovery been used for experiments where humans could not in good conscience be employed. Sometimes this has resulted in glorious successes: witness the sim Abel, who orbited the earth six months before the first man to do so. Sometimes, as in the case of certain nineteenth-century medical research conducted without benefit of anesthesia, words cannot convey the horror suffered by sims.

And yet, it cannot be denied that much good has accrued to humanity through the testing in sims of new surgical techniques and various methods of immunization. Whether this good outweighs the suffering that sims are intelligent enough to feel but not fully to understand must, in the end, be decided by each person for him- or herself. Society as a whole still feels that it does; research with sims, under properly controlled conditions, continues. There remains, though, a vocal minority that cannot in its conscience justify what it perceives as abuse of intelligent creatures.…

From
The Story of the Federated Commonwealths

Dr. Peter Howard stepped to the podium with the brisk strides of a man who did not believe in wasting any time, ever. Yes, I have something to say, his walk proclaimed—I'll say it and get out and get back to work, and once you've heard it you can do what you like with it.

Television lights glared overhead; flashbulbs from newspaper photographers made even the determined Dr. Howard blink repeatedly. As soon as he reached the rostrum, he tapped on the microphone for quiet. When he did not get it right away, a frown made his long, thin face longer.

He tapped again, louder this time, and said, “I'd like to begin with a short statement, if I could. I don't want to spend more time here in Philadelphia than I have to. I want to get down to Terminus and back to work.”

The reporters gradually quieted. They still were not fast enough to suit Howard, who began when the room in the Hall of the Popular Assembly was still buzzing with talk: “I have some progress to report in our efforts to find a cure for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, more commonly known as AIDS.”

That got him silence, but only a moment's worth. Then the buzz became a roar. A whole new fusillade of flashbulbs went off. Howard held up his hand, as much to protect his eyes as to ask to be allowed to go on.

Finally, he could. “I do not yet
have
a cure,” he said firmly. Setting off hysteria was the last thing he wanted to do. The reporters who had leaped to their feet sat down again. Good, Howard thought: having ridden an emotional roller coaster in two sentences, maybe they would settle down now and listen.

He said, “As you know, the HIV virus that causes AIDS attacks the body's immune system, specifically the white blood cells called T-lymphocytes. Without these cells to fight off infection, the body becomes vulnerable to opportunistic diseases it would otherwise repel. Eventually, one of them proves fatal to the patient.

“At the Terminus Disease Research Center, we have developed a drug we are calling an HIV inhibitor, or HIVI for short. In the laboratory, HIVI seems to help prevent the virus from gaining a foothold in the body's T-cells, and strengthens the effectiveness of the antibodies the immune system produces to fight AIDS. Let me show you what we have achieved.”

He gestured in the direction from which he had come, his hands shaping words almost everyone in the chamber followed as easily as speech:
Out here. Now
. A sturdy male sim emerged to join him at the podium. “This is Matt,” Howard said.

More flashbulbs popped. Matt lowered his head so that his heavy brow-ridges protected his eyes from the bursts of intolerable light. “How do you feel, Matt?” Howard asked. He signed the words as he spoke them, to make sure the sim would understand.

Feel good
, Matt answered with his hands; like almost all sims, he found sign-talk much easier than true speech.

“Matt feels good now,” Howard said. “Sadly, six months ago he was much less well.” The doctor waved a hand. The lights dimmed; a large screen dropped into place behind him and Matt. Howard waved again. At the far end of the hall, a slide projector came on.

The hall grew truly quiet at last. Into that silence, Howard said, “This was Matt six months ago.” The sim on the slide was sadly different from the one who stood before the reporters in the flesh. The Federated Commonwealths—the world—had seen too many cases of AIDS for them to mistake this one. The image of the emaciated sim, his once-thick hair falling out in clumps all over his body, was a vivid—and dreadful—illustration of why in Africa AIDS was simply called “the slims.”

Howard went on, “Two days after that picture was taken, Matt began receiving HIVI. Today, his T-cells are nearly normal, as are his immune responses. He does not even know he still has AIDS.”

Feel good
, Matt signed again.

The reporters could not stand it anymore. “Why isn't this a cure, then?” one of them shouted.

“Because—as I was about to say,” Howard added pointedly, “the AIDS virus is still in Matt's bloodstream. He can still transmit it to others—other sims in his case, I suppose, but in theory to humans as well—through sexual relations. And if he stops receiving HIVI injections, the symptoms of AIDS will return. Now”—he emphasized the word—“I will respond to questions.”

The frantically waving hands reminded him of storm-lashed treetops. He chose one at random. “Yes, you in the third row, with the blue ruffled tunic.”

“How many sims have died of AIDS in the course of your experiments?” the man asked.

Howard pursed his lips. He had expected questions of that sort. With the demonstrators marching outside the Hall of the Popular Assembly, he would have been an idiot not to. But he had hoped not to have to deal with them so soon. He should have listened to his colleagues down in Terminus, and planted a few people to ask the questions he wanted asked. He had always been headstrong, though. He thought he could deal with anything. Now he'd have to.

“My program, to date, has seen the expiration of twenty-eight sims,” he answered steadily.

His luck was not all bad. The reporter simply followed up by asking, “Wouldn't it have been better to use shimpanses than sims in your research?”

“Other than sims and men, shimpanses are the only creatures in which the AIDS virus will grow,” Howard acknowledged. “But there are several objections to their use in AIDS research. Most obvious, of course, is the fact that most of them must be caught wild in Africa and then shipped to the FCA. That makes the supply uncertain and expensive, all the more so because of the growing instability in the African states as the AIDS epidemic debilitates them. Sims, being native to America, are easily available.

“There are also other reasons for preferring them to shimpanses. Biologically, sims are much closer to humans than shimpanses are: as we all know, mixed births between sims and humans are perfectly possible.”

The reporters muttered in distaste. Everyone knew that, but it was something seldom mentioned outside of dirty jokes. Howard suspected there would be shocked gasps in living rooms all across the Federated Commonwealths: talking about sex between people and sims was not standard television fare.

“Also, of course,” the doctor finished, “sims have the advantage of being able to report symptoms to us, something of which shimpanses are incapable.” He pointed to another reporter. “Yes?”

“Isn't that part of the problem, Dr. Howard?” the fellow asked. “How do you feel about deliberately subjecting twenty-eight intelligent creatures to the grim, lingering death AIDS brings?”

“I had hoped some of you might perhaps be interested in the success—or at least the partial success—of HIVI, rather than in the failures that preceded it,” Howard said sharply.

“I am, Dr. Howard,” the reporter said, “but that's not the question I asked.”

Howard scowled out at the audience, but saw everyone nodding along with the reporter. If some of these people had their way, he thought with sudden hot anger that he did his best to conceal, he'd be lucky to be able to work with shimpanses, let alone sims.

He chose his words with care; he had not come up to Philadelphia to antagonize the press. “I always regret sacrificing any, ah, creatures in the laboratory but, particularly in the case of what is, as you say, a grim disease such as AIDS, I feel justified in doing whatever I must to save people's lives.”

“But sims—” the reporter persisted.

Howard cut him off. “—are not people. The law has never regarded them as such. They are different from animals, true, but they are also very different from us. The sims in my research project were purchased with an appropriation from the Senate for that express purpose. Everything I have done has been in accordance with all applicable regulations. And that is all I have to say on
that
topic.” He looked toward another reporter. “Yes?”

“What makes HIVI more effective against AIDS than earlier drugs?”

Howard nodded to her and smiled his thanks. At last, a sensible question. “We're still not entirely sure, Mistress, ah—”

“Reynolds.”

“Mistress Reynolds, but we believe that the chief improvement has to do with the way HIVI interacts with the T-cells' outer membranes and strengthens them, making them more resistant to penetration by the AIDS virus. HIVI was developed from—”

Round and round, round and round—Ken Dixon was getting sick of carrying his picket sign. He also did not like the way the greencoats were gathering in front of the Hall of the Popular Assembly. He could not read their faces, not with the mirrored visors on their helmets. But their body language said they were going to break up the demonstration soon.

“Killing sims is murder!” he chanted. He'd been calling that for a couple of hours now, since before Dr. Howard's news conference convened. His throat felt sore and scratchy.

A man walking on the part of the sidewalk the demonstration wasn't using caught his eye. “Not under the law, it's not,” he said. He looked prosperous and well-fed, nothing like a sim who'd been given AIDS on purpose.

Likely a lawyer himself, Dixon thought scornfully; Philadelphia was lousy with them. While the chant went on around the young man, he broke it to say, “The law is wrong.”

The probable lawyer fell into step beside him. “Why?” he asked. “Sims aren't people. If using them will help us rid ourselves of this terrible disease, why shouldn't we?”

Dixon frowned. At the planning meeting for this protest, he'd worried out loud that people would say just what this plump fellow was saying, that the threat of AIDS would let people justify the horror of the Terminus labs. He'd been argued down then, and now gave back the reasoning the rest of the steering committee had used against him: “Howard's AIDS research is just a fragment of what we're talking about here. If you allow it, you set a precedent for allowing all the other cruelty that sims have suffered since people first came to America: everything from working them to death on farms and in mines to hunting them and killing them for sport.” He screwed up his face to show what he thought of that kind of sport.