A Different Flesh by Harry Turtledove Page B

and ours.”
    â€œBut if they be men, it were wrong to slay them out of hand, as one would so many wild dogs: our souls should suffer for’t.”
    â€œWhat then?”
    â€œI cannot say,” Wingfield admitted. He had not thought it through; he was still exhausted from his adventures, and in any case he did not seek a quarrel with his wife. When he continued, he was musing aloud: “They are less than we; that no one may deny. Perhaps God has set them here as our natural servants. If that be so, ’twere a wicked waste to flout His will by expunging them from the earth.”
    To his relief, Anne let it go with a noncommittal “Hmm.” She had a strong will of her own, and was not usually shy about expressing it, but with Joanna safely home she did not really care what her husband believed.
    For his part, Wingfield was also willing to let the conversation flag. He kept returning to the image Caleb Lucas had summoned up, of demons settling on good English soil. Even if they purposed benevolence, how likely were their purposes to coincide with his countrymen’s?
    No more so, he answered himself, than that what Englishmen and sims intended would correspond. If they were human, the sims would struggle against their fate with every fiber of their being.
    Not, he thought, that it would do them much good.
    He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

1661
    And So to Bed
    Sims made people look at themselves and their place in nature differently from the way they had before. They showed the link between humans and animals far more clearly than any creatures with which Europeans had been familiar before.
    Had there been no sims—had the Americas been populated by native humans, say, or only by animals—the development of the transformational theory of life might have been long delayed. This would have slowed the growth of several sciences, biology being, of course, the most obvious of them. Speculating on might-have-beens, however, is not the proper domain of history. The transformational theory of life was first put forward in 1661. After that, humans’ view of their place in the world would never be the same.…
    From The Story of the Federated Commonwealths
    May 4, 1661 . A fine bright morning. Small beer and radishes for to break my fast, then into London for this day. The shambles on Newgate Street stinking unto heaven, as is usual, but close to it my destination, the sim marketplace. Our servant Jane with too much for one body to do, and whilst I may not afford the hire of another man or maid, two sims shall go far to ease her burden.
    Success also sure to gladden Elizabeth’s heart, my wife being ever one to follow the dame Fashion, and sims all the go of late, though monstrous ugly. Them formerly not much seen here, but since the success of our Virginia and Plymouth colonies are much more often fetched to these shores from the wildernesses the said colonies front upon. They are also commenced to be bred on English soil, but no hope there for me, as I do require workers full-grown, not cubs or babes in arms or whatsoever the proper term may be.
    The sim-seller a vicious lout, near unhandsome as his wares. No, the truth for the diary: such were a slander on any man, as I saw on his conveying me to the creatures.
    Have seen these sims before, surely, but briefly, and in their masters’ livery, the which by concealing their nakedness conceals as well much of their brutishness. The males are most of them well made, though lean as rakes from the ocean passage and, I warrant, poor victualing after. But all are so hairy as more to resemble rugs than men, and the same true for the females, their fur hiding such dubious charms as they may possess nigh as well as a smock of linen: nought here, God knows, for Elizabeth’s jealousy to light on.
    This so were the said females lovely of feature as so many Aphrodites. They are not, nor do the males recall to mind Adonis. In both sexes the