A Different Flesh (9 page)

May 24
. To Gresham College this morning, to call on Lord Brouncker. He examined with great care the papers I had done up, his face revealing naught. Felt myself at recitation once more before a professor, a condition whose lack these last years I have not missed. Feared also he might not be able to take in the writing, it being done in such haste some short-hand characters may have replaced the common ones.

Then to my delight he declared he reckoned it deserving of a hearing at the Society's weekly meeting next. Having said so much, he made to dismiss me, himself being much occupied with devising a means whereby to calculate the relation of a circle's circumference to its diameter. I wish him joy of't. I do resolve one day soon, however, to learn the multiplication table, which meseems should be of value at the Admiralty. Repaired there from the college, to do the work I had set by yesterday.

May 26
. Watch these days Tom and Peg with new eyes. I note for instance them using between themselves our deaf-man's signs, as well as to me and my wife. As well they might, them conveying far more subtler meanings than the bestial howlings and gruntings that are theirs in nature. Thus, though they may not devise any such, they own the wit to see its utility.

I wonder would the shimpanse likewise?

A girl came today asking after the vacant maidservant's post, a pretty bit with red hair, white teeth, and fine strong haunches. Thought myself she would serve, but Elizabeth did send her away. Were her looks liker to Peg's, she had I think been hired on the spot. But a quarrel on it not worth the candle, the more so as I have seen fairer.

May 28
. This writ near cockcrow, in hot haste, lest any detail of the evening escape my recollection. Myself being a late addition, spoke last, having settled the title “A Proposed Explication of the Survival of Certain Beasts in America and Their Disappearance Hereabouts” on the essay.

The prior speakers addressed one the organs internal of bees and the other the appearance of Saturn in the optic glass, both topics which interest me but little. Then called to the podium by Lord Brouncker, all aquiver as a virgin bride. Much wished myself in the company of some old soakers over roast pigeons and dumplings and sack. But a brave front amends for much, and so plunged in straightaway.

Used the remains of the hairy elephant presented here a sennight past as example of a beast vanished from these shores yet across the sea much in evidence. Then on to the deficiencies of sims as hunters, when set beside even the most savagest of men.

Thus far well received, and even when noting the struggle to live and leave progeny that does go on among each and between the several kinds. But the storm broke, as I feared it should and more, on my drawing out the implications therefrom: that of each generation only so many may flourish and breed; and that each succeeding generation, being descended of these survivors alone, differs from that which went before.

My worst and fearfullest nightmare then came true, for up rose shouts of blasphemy. Gave them back what I had told Elizabeth on the use of reason, adding in some heat I had expected such squallings of my wife who is a woman and ignorant, but better from men styling themselves natural philosophers. Did they aim to prove me wrong, let them so by the reason they do profess to cherish. This drew further catcalling but also approbation, which at length prevailed.

Got up then a pompous little manikin, who asked how I dared set myself against God's word insofar as how beasts came to be. On my denying this, he did commence reciting at me from Genesis. When he paused for to draw breath, I asked most mildly of him on which day the Lord did create the sims. Thereupon he stood discomfited, his foolish mouth hanging open, at which I was quite heartened.

Would the next inquisitor had been so easily downed! A Puritan he was, by his somber cloak and somberer bearing. His questions took the same tack as the previous, but not so stupidly. After first enquiring if I believed in God, whereat I truthfully told him aye, he asked did I think Scripture to be the word of God. Again said aye, by now getting and dreading the drift of his argument. And as I feared, he bade me next point him out some place where Scripture was mistaken, ere supplanting it with fancies of mine own.

I knew not how to make answer, and should have in the next moment fled. But up spake to my great surprise Lord Brouncker, reciting from Second Chronicles, the second verse of the fourth chapter, wherein is said of Solomon and his Temple,
Also he made the molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and the height thereof was five cubits, and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about
.

This much perplexed the Puritan and me as well, though I essayed not to show it. Lord Brouncker then proceeded to his explication, to wit that the true compass of a ten-cubit round vessel was not thirty cubits, but above one and thirty, I misremember the exact figure he gave. Those of the Royal Society learned in mathematics did agree he had reason, and urged the Puritan make the experiment for his self with cup, cord, and rule, which were enough for to demonstrate the truth.

I asked if he was answered. Like a gentleman he owned he was, and bowed, and sat, his face full of troubles. Felt with him no small sympathy, for once one error in Scripture be admitted, where shall it end?

The next query was of different sort, a man in periwigg enquiring if I did reckon humankind to have arisen by the means I described. Had to reply I did. Our forefathers might be excused for thinking otherwise, them being so widely separate from all other creatures they knew.

But we moderns in our travels round the globe have found the shimpanse, which standeth nigh the flame of reasoned thought; and more important still the sim, in whom the flame does burn, but more feebly than in ourselves. These bridging the gap twixt man and beast meseems do show mankind to be in sooth a part of nature, whose engenderment in some past distant age is to be explained through natural law.

Someone rose to doubt the variation in each sort of living thing being sufficient eventually to permit the rise of new kinds. Pointed out to him the mastiff, the terrier, and the bloodhound, all of the dog kind, but become distinct through man's choice of mates in each generation. Surely the same might occur in nature, said I. The fellow admitted it was conceivable, and sat.

Then up stood a certain Wilberforce, with whom I have some small acquaintance. He likes me not, nor I him. We know it on both sides, though for civility's sake feigning otherwise. Now he spoke with smirking air, as one sure of the mortal thrust. He did grant my willingness to have a sim as great-grandfather, said he, but was I so willing to claim one as great-grandmother? A deal of laughter rose, which was his purpose, and to make me out a fool.

Had I carried steel, I should have drawn on him. As was, rage sharpened my wit to serve for the smallsword I left at home. Told him it were no shame to have one's great-grandfather a sim, as that sim did use to best advantage the intellect he had. Better that, quoth I, than dissipating the mind on such digressive and misleading quibbles as he raised. If I be in error, then I am; let him shew it by logic and example, not as it were playing to the gallery.

Came clapping from all sides, to my delight and the round dejection of Wilberforce. On seeking further questions, found none. Took my own seat whilst the Fellows of the Society did congratulate me and cry up my essay louder, I thought, than either of the other two. Lord Brouncker acclaimed it as a unifying principle for the whole of the study of life, which made me as proud a man as any in the world, for all the world seemed to smile upon me.

And so to bed.

1691

Around the Salt Lick

Europeans soon settled the Atlantic seaboard of North America. Settlement was slower in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies further south, as the harsh tropical climate of much of Central and South America posed a serious challenge to immigrants. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, only New Granada and Argentina, the most northerly and southerly of the Hispanic settlements, truly flourished.

The British North American colonies, however, soon outdistanced even the most successful settlements farther south. Because the land was more like that to which the settlers had been accustomed, European farming techniques needed less adaptation than was the case in Central and South America. Moreover, the establishment of a divine-right monarchy on the French model in England made political and religious dissenters eager to leave the island—and the Crown happy to see them go. Thus a constant stream of settlers was assured.

As the seventeenth century drew toward a close, explorers were beginning to penetrate the mountain passes and push west into the North American heartland. Bands of wild sims made sure some would not find their way home, and others fell victim to spear-fangs and other wild beasts. But neither sims nor beasts could halt or even slow the steady westward push of people into North America.

Still, as has always been true, the first humans to go west of the mountains faced no small danger, and had to show extraordinary resourcefulness in unfamiliar and dangerous circumstances.…

From
The Story of the Federated Commonwealths

Thomas Kenton paused to look westward at land no man had seen before. The gap in the mountains revealed an endless sea of deep green rolling woods ahead. Virginia had been such a wilderness once, before the English landed eighty-odd years ago.

“But no more, eh, Charles?” he said to the sim at his side. “Virginia fills with farmers, and the time has come to find what this western country is like.”

Find
, Charles signed. Like most of the New World's native subhumans, he understood speech well enough, but had trouble reproducing it. Signals based on those used by the deaf and dumb came easier for him.

The sim was close to Kenton's own rangy six feet one. His eyes, in fact, were on a level with the scout's, but where Kenton's forehead rose, his sloped smoothly back from beetling brow ridges. His nose was low, broad, and flat; his mouth wide; his teeth large, heavy, and yellow; his jaw long and chinless. As an Englishman, he would have been hideous. Kenton did not think of him so; by the standards of his own kind, he was on the handsome side.

On
, Charles signed, adding the finger-twist that turned it into a question. At the scout's nod, he strode ahead, his deerskin buskins silent on the mossy ground. His only other clothing was a leather belt that held water bottle, hatchet, knife, and pouches for this and that. His thick brown hair served him as well as did Kenton's leather tunic and trousers.

A turkey called from a stand of elms off to one side. Kenton felt his stomach rumble hungrily, and an instant later heard Charles's. They grinned at each other.
Hunt
, the scout signed, not wanting to make any noise to alert the bird.

The sim nodded and trotted toward the far side of the trees. Kenton gauged distances. If all went well, the shot would be only about fifty yards—a half-charge of powder should serve. He poured it into the little charge-cup that hung from the bottom of his powderhorn, then down his musket barrel it went.

Working with practiced speed, he set a greased linen patch on the gun's muzzle, laid the round ball on it, and rammed it home till it just touched the powder. Then he squeezed down on the first of the musket's two triggers, setting the second so it would go off at the lightest touch. The whole procedure took about fifteen seconds.

And it was all needless. Kenton waited, expecting the frightened turkey to burst from cover at any moment. What emerged, however, was Charles, carrying the bird by the feet in one hand and his bloody hatchet in the other. He was laughing.

“Good hunting,” Kenton said. He carefully reset the first trigger, making sure he heard it click back into place. He did not begrudge the sim the kill; he welcomed anything that saved powder and bullets.

Stupid bird
, Charles signed.
I get close, throw
. He pantomimed casting the hatchet. It had a weighted knob at the end of the handle to give it proper balance for the task. Even wild sims were dangerous, flinging the sharp-chipped stones they made.

The sun was going down over the vast forest ahead. “We may as well camp,” Kenton decided when they came to a small, cool, quick-flowing stream. He and Charles washed their heads and soaked their feet in it. They drank till they sloshed, preferring the stream's water to the warm, stale stuff in their canteens.

Then they scoured the neighborhood for dry twigs and brush for the evening's fire. Kenton was careful to make sure trees and bushes screened the site from the west. When he took out flint and steel to set off the tinder at the end of the fire, Charles touched his arm.
Me, please
, the sim signed.

Kenton passed him the metal and stone. Charles briskly clashed them together, blew on the sparks that fell to the tinder. Soon he had a small smokeless blaze going.

When he started to pass the flint and steel back to Kenton, the scout said, “You may as well keep them; you use them more than I do, anyway.”

The flickering firelight revealed the awe on Charles's face. That awe was there even though he was of the third generation of sims to grow up as part of Virginia. In the wild, sims used fire if they came across it, and kept it alive as best they could, but they could not start one. To Charles, Kenton's simple tools conveyed a power that must have felt godlike.

The scout burned his hands and his mouth on hot roasted turkey, but did not care. Blowing on his fingers, he chuckled, “Better than going hungry, eh, Charles?”

The sim grunted around a mouthful. He did not bother with any more formal reply; he took his eating seriously.

They tossed the offal into the stream. Charles had taken the first watch the night before, so tonight it belonged to Kenton. The sim stripped off his shoes and belt, curled up by the fire—with his hair, he needed no blanket—and fell asleep with the ease and speed Kenton always envied. Charles and his breed never brought the day's troubles into the evening with them. Were they too simple or too wise? The scout often wondered.