Free A Different Flesh by Harry Turtledove Page A

themselves reveal a stairway ascending the chasm, and climbers on the stairs, some higher, some lower. A pretty image, but why it should be so there and not here does I confess escape me.
    May 16. A savage row with Jane today, her having forgotten a change of clothes for my bed. Her defense that I had not so instructed her, the lying minx, for I did plainly make my wishes known the evening previous, the which I recollect most distinctly. Yet she did deny it again and again, finally raising my temper to such a pitch that I cursed her right roundly, slapping her face and pulling her nose smartly.
    Whereupon did the ungrateful trull lay down her service on the spot. She decamped in a fury of her own, crying that I treated the sims, those very sims which I had bought for to ease her labors, with more kindlier consideration than I had for her own self.
    So now we are without a serving-maid, and her a dab hand in the kitchen, her swan pie especially being toothsome. Dined tonight at the Bell, and expect to tomorrow at the Swan on the Hoop, in Fish Street. For Elizabeth no artist over the hearth, nor am I myself. And as for the sims, I should sooner open my veins than indulge of their cuisine, the good Lord only knowing what manner of creatures they in their ignorance should add to a pot.
    Now as my blood has somewhat cooled, I must admit a germ of truth in Jane’s scolds. I do not beat Tom and Peg as a man would servitors of more ordinary stripe. They, being but new come from the wilds, are not inured to’t as are our servants, and might well turn on me, their master. And being in part of brute kind, their strength does exceed mine, Tom’s most assuredly and that of Peg perhaps. And so, say I, better safe. No satisfaction to me the sims on Shooter’s Hill gallows, were I not there to see’t.
    May 20. Today to my lord Sandwich’s for supper. This doubly pleasant, in enjoying his fine companionship and saving the cost of a meal, the house being still without maid. The food and drink in excellent style, as to suit my lord. The broiled lobsters very sweet, and the lamprey pie (which for its rarity I but seldom eat of) the best ever I had. Many other fine victuals as well (the tanzy in especial), and the wine all sugared.
    Afterwards backgammon, at which I won £5 ere my luck turned. Ended 15s. in my lord’s debt, which he did graciously excuse me afterwards, a generosity not looked for but which I did not refuse. Then to crambo, wherein by tagging and rich to Sandwich I was adjudged winner, the more so for playing on his earlier munificence.
    Thereafter nigh a surfeit of good talk, as is custom at my lord’s. He mentioning sims, I did relate my own dealings with Peg and Tom, to which he listened with much interest. He thinks on buying some for his own household, and unaware I had done so.
    Perhaps it was the wine let loose my tongue, for I broached somewhat my disjoint musings on the sims and their place in nature, on the strangeness of the American fauna and much else besides. Lord Sandwich did acquaintance me with a New World beast found in their southerly holdings by the Spaniards, of strange outlandish sort: big as an ox, or nearly, and all covered over with armor of bone like a man wearing chain. I should pay out a shilling or even more for to see’t, were one conveyed to London.
    Then coffee, and it not watered as so often at an inn, but full and strong. As I and Elizabeth making our departures, Lord Sandwich did bid me join him tomorrow night to hear speak a savant of the Royal Society. It bore, said he, on my prior ramblings, and would say no more, but looked uncommon sly. Even did it not, I should have leaped at the chance.
    This written at one of the clock, for so the watchman just now cried out. Too wound up for bed, what with coffee and the morrow’s prospect. Elizabeth aslumber, but the sims also awake, and at frolic, meseems, from the noises up the stairway.
    If they be of human