A Different Flesh

by Harry Turtledove

  Tonight, though, he drank the flask dry, and tossed and turned for hours al the same.

  Spring gave way to summer. The big sim Joe stepped on a thorn, and died three weeks later of lockjaw. The loss cast a pal of gloom over Charles Gillen, for Joe was worth a hundred denaires.

  Gillen's spirits lifted only when his son and daughter returned to the farm from the boarding schools they attended in Portsmouth, the commonwealth capital. Jeremiah was also glad to see them. Caleb was fourteen and Sally eleven; the slave sometimes felt he was almost as much a father to them as Charles Gillen himself.

  But Caleb, at least, came home changed this year. Before, he had always talked of what he would do when the Gil en farm was his.

  Jeremiah had spoken of buying his own freedom once, a couple of years before; Caleb had looked so hurt at the idea of his leaving that he never brought it up again, for fear of turning the boy against it for good. He thought Caleb had long since forgotten.

  One day, though, Caleb came up to him when the two of them were alone in the house. He spoke with the painful seriousness adolescence brings: "I owe you an apology, Jeremiah."

  "How's that, young master?" the slave asked in surprise "You haven't done nothing to me." And even if you had, he added silently, you would not be required to apologize for it.

  "Oh, but I have," Caleb said, "though I've taken too long to see it. Do you remember when you told me once you would like to be free and go away?"

  "Yes, young sir, I do remember that," Jeremiah said cautiously.

  Any time the issue of liberation came up, a slave walked the most perilous ground there was.

  "I was too little to understand then," the boy said. "Now I think I may, because I want to go away too."

  "You do? Why could that be?" Jeremiah was not pretending. This declaration of Caleb's was almost as startling as his recalling their conversation at all. To someone that young, two years was like an age.

  "Because I want to read the law and set up my own shingle one day.

  The law is the most important thing in the whole world, Jeremiah." His voice burned with conviction; at fourteen, one is passionately certain about everything.

  "I don't know about that, young master. Nobody can eat law."

  Caleb looked at him in exasperation. "Nobody could eat food either, or even grow it, if his neighbor could take it whenever he had a mind to.

  What keeps him from it, even if he has guns and men and sims enough to do it by force? Only the law."

  "Something to that," Jeremiah admitted. He agreed only partly from policy; Caleb's idea had not occurred to him. He thought of the law only as something to keep from descending on him. That it might be a positive good was a new notion, one easier to arrive at for a free man, he thought without much bitoerness.

  Enthusiasm carried Caleb along. "Of course there's something to it!

  People who make the law and apply the law rule the country. I don't mean just the censors or the Senate or the Popular Assembly, though one day I'll serve, I think, but judges and lawyers too."

  "That may be so, young master, but what will become of the farm when you've gone to Portsmouth to do your lawyering, or up to Philadelphia for the Assembly?" Jeremiah knew vaguely where Portsmouth was (somewhere southeast, a journey of a week or two); he knew Philadelphia was some long ways north, but had no idea how far. Half as far as the moon, maybe.

  "One day Sally will get married," Caleb shrugged. "It will stay in the family. And lawyers get rich, don't forget. Who knows? maybe one day I'll buy the Pickens place next door to retire on."

  Jeremiah's opinion was that old man Pickens would have to be dragged kicking and screaming into his grave before he turned loose of his farm.

  He knew, however, when to keep his mouth shut. He also noticed that any talk about his freedom had vanished from the conversation.

  Nevertheless, Caleb had not forgotten. One day he took Jeremiah aside and asked him, "Would you like me to teach you to read and cypher?"

  The slave thought about it. He answered cautiously "Your father, I don't know if he'd like that." Most masters discouraged literacy among their blacks (sims did not count; no sim had ever learned to read). In some commonwealths, though not Virginia, teaching a black his letters was against the law.

  "I've already talked with him about it," Caleb said. "I asked him if he didn't think it would be useful to have you able to keep accounts and such. He hates that kind of business himself."

  The lad already had a good deal of politician in him Jeremiah thought.

  Caleb went on, "Once you learn, maybe you can hire yourself out to other farmers, and keep some of what you earn. That would help you buy yourself free sooner, and knowing how to read and figure can only help you afterwards."

  "You're right about that, young sir. I'd be pleased to start, so long as your father won't give me no grief on account of it."

  The hope of money first impelled Jeremiah to the lessons, but he quickly grew fascinated with them for their own sake. He found setting down his name in shaky letters awe-inspiring: there it was, recorded for al time. It gave him a feeling of immortality, almost as if he had had a child. And struggling through first Caleb's little reader and then, haltingly, the Bible was more of the same. He wished he could spend al his time over the books.

  He could not, of course. Chores around the house kept him busy al through the day. Most of his reading time was snatched from sleep. He yawned and did not complain.

  His stock of money slowly grew, five sesters here, ten there.

  Once he made a whole denaire for himself, when Mr. Pickens's cook fell sick just before a family gathering and Charles Gillen loaned Jeremiah to the neighbor for the day.

  From anyone else, he would have expected two or even three denaires; from Pickens he counted himself lucky to get one.

  He did not save every sester he earned: a man needs more than the distant hope of freedom to stay happy. One night he made his way to a dilapidated cabin that housed a widow inclined to be complaisant toward silver, no matter who brought it.

  Jeremiah was heading home, feeling pleased with the entire world (except for the mosquitoes), when the moon light showed a figure coming down the path toward him. It was Harry Stowe. Jeremiah's pleasure evaporated.

  He was afraid of the overseer, and tried to stay out of his way. Too late to step aside into the bushes, Stowe had seen him.

  "Evening, sir," Jeremiah said amiably as the overseer approached.

  Stowe set hands on hips, looked Jeremiah up and down.

  "Evening, sir," he echoed, voice mockingly high. There was whiskey on his breath. "I'm tired of your uppity airs-always sucking up to young Caleb. What do you need to read for? You're a stinking slave, and.

  don't you ever forget it."

  "I could never do that, sir, no indeed. But al the same, a man wants to make himself better if he can."

  He never saw the punch that knocked him down. Drunk or sober, Stowe was fast and dangerous. Jeremiah lay in the dirt. He did not try to fight back. Caleb's law descended swiftly and savagely on any slave who dared strike a white man. But fear of punishment was not what held him back now. He knew Stowe would have no trouble taking him, even in a fair fight.

  Man? I don't see any man there," the overseer said. "All I see's a nigger. " He laughed harshly, swung back his foot.

  Instead of delivering the kick, though, he turned away and went on toward the widow's.

  Jeremiah rubbed the bruise on the side of his jaw, felt around with his tongue to see if Stowe had loosened any of his teeth. No, he decided, but only by luck. He stayed down until the overseer disappeared round a bend in the path. Then he slowly rose, brushing the dust from his trousers.

  "Not a man, huh?" he muttered to himself. "Not a man? Wel , let that trash talk however he wants, but whose sloppy seconds is he getting tonight." Feeling a little better, he headed back to the Gillen house.

  Summer wore on. The wheat grew tall. The stalks bent heavy with the weight o
f grain. Caleb and Sal y returned to Portsmouth for school. The sims went into the fields to start cutting the hemp so it could dry on the ground.

  The sickness struck them then, abruptly and savagely. Stowe came rushing in from their huts at sunrise one morning to cry to Charles Gillen, "Half the stupid creatures are down and choking and moaning!"

  Gillen spil ed coffee as he sprang to his feet with an oath. Fear on his face, he followed the overseer out. Jeremiah silently stepped out of the way. He understood his master's alarm. Disease among the sims, especial y now when the harvest was just under way, would be a disaster from which the farm might never recover.

  Jane Gil en waited anxiously for her husband to return. When he did, his mouth was set in a tight, grim line. "Diphtheria," he said.

  "We may lose a good many." He strode over to the cupboard, uncorked a bottle of rum, took a long pul . He was not normally an intemperate man, but what he had seen left him shaken.

  As Jeremiah washed and dried the breakfast dishes, he felt a certain amount of relief, at least as far as his own risk was concerned. Sims were enough like humans for illnesses to pass freely from them to the people around them. But he had had diphtheria as a boy, and did not have to worry about catching it again.

  A sadly shrunken work force trooped out to cut the hemp. Charles served soup, that being the easiest nourishment for the sick sims to get past the membranes clogging their throats. Then Gillen hurried back out to the sim quarters, to do what little doctoring he could.

  The first deaths came that evening. One was Rare, the powerful woodcutter who had replaced Joe. Not all his - strength sufficed against the illness that choked the life -. from him. The tired sims returning from the fields had to labor further to dig graves.

  "I always feel so futile, laying a sim to rest," Gillen told Jane as they ate a late supper that Jeremiah had made.

  "With a man, there's always the hope of heaven to give consolation.

  But no churchman I've ever heard of can say for certain whether sims have souls."

  Jeremiah doubted it. He thought of sims as nothing more than animals that happened to walk on two legs and have hands. That made them more useful than, say, horses, but not much smarter. He rejected any resemblance between their status and his own; he at least knew he was a slave and planned to do something about it one day. His hoard had reached nearly ninety denaires.

  The next day, even fewer of the sims could work. Charles Gillen rode over to the Pickens farm to see if he could borrow some, but the diphtheria was there ahead of him.

  Mr. Pickens was down with it too, and not doing well.

  Gillen bit his lip at the smal amount of hemp cut so far.

  Jeremiah had had just enough practice ciphering over the farm accounts to understand why: the cash Gillen raised from selling the hemp was what let him buy the goods his acres could not produoe.

  After supper that evening, Gil en took Jeremiah aside.

  "Don't bother with breakfast tomorrow, or with more soup for the sims,"

  he said. "Jane will take care of all that for a while."

  "Mrs. Gil en, sir?" Jeremiah stared at his master. He groped for the only explanation he could think of. "You don't care for what I've been making? You tel me what you want, and I'l see you get it." A gentleman to the core, Gil en replied quickly,

  "Jeremiah, it's nothing like that, I assure you. You've very well." Then he stopped cold, his cheeks reds plainly embarrassed to continue.

  "You've gone and sold me." Jeremiah blurted first, and worst, fear that came to his mind. Ever dreaded the announcement that would turn his life down. And Charles Gillen was on the whole an easy master; any number of tales Jeremiah had heard convinced him of that.

  "I have not sold you, Jeremiah. Your place is here. Again Gil en's reply was swift and firm; again I trouble going on.

  "Wel , what is it, then?" Jeremiah demanded. His master's hesitations set them in oddly reversed roles, thef probing and seeking, Gil en trying to evade the Jeremiah did when caught at something he knew wrong. Having the moral high ground was a new heady feeling.

  He did not enjoy it long. Brought up short, Gillen I choice but to answer, "I'm sending you out to the fields tomorrow, Jeremiah, to help cut hemp."

  With sick misery, the slave realized he would rather have been sold.

  "But that's sim work, Mr. Gillen," he protested.

  "I know it is, and I feel badly for it. But so many sims are down with the sickness, and you are strong and healthy. The hemp must be cut.

  It does not care who swings the sickle. And I will not think less of you working in the fields, rather the contrary, because you have helped me at a time of great need. When the day that you approach me to ask to buy your freedom, be shall not forget."

  Had he promised Jeremiah manumission as soon hemp-cutting was done, he would have gained a worker. As it was, though, the slave again protested, ' Don’t send me out to do sim work, sir."

  Why not?" Gillen's voice had acquired a dangerous

  " Jeremiah knew he was faltering and cursed it, but could not do anything about it. Charles a decent man, as decent as a slave owner could be was also a white man. He knew himself the equal , of farmers and townsmen; his son dreamed of leading the Federated Commonwealths one day.

  He was assuradly far above both blacks and sims.

  also felt the gulf between himself and his course. Even gaining his freedom would not it, certainly not in Gil en's eyes. But Jeremiah nother gulf, one with him at the top looking at sims below.

  From Gillen's lofty perch, that one was invisible, but immensely important to Jeremiah. Even a slave superior to the subhuman natives of America, himself on things he could do that they would pable of.

  Learning his letters was something of reminder that, even if his body was owned, his mind could still roam free.

  Gillen, without understanding at al what he was shoving him down with the sims, as if there difference between him and them. Harry Stowe no difference either, indeed would relish getting on Jeremiah.

  He had made that quite clear.

  It’[s bad enough, but the white men already looked at Jeremiah. He had some status, though, among the neighborhood. It would disappear the instant t to the fields. Even the stupid sims would laugh open-mouthed, empty-headed laughs at him, and no better than themselves. He would never be st his authority over them again.

  passed through his mind in a matter of seconds, the realization that none of it would make sense certainly not when measured against the denaires was losinsr every day. "It just wouldn't be right, sir," was the weak best Jeremiah could do.

  He knew it was not good enough even before he saw Gillen's face cloud with anger. "How would it not be right? It pains me to have to remind you, Jeremiah, but you are my slave, my personal chattel. How I employ you, especial y in this emergency, is my affair and mine alone.

  Now I tell you that you shall report to the field gang tomorrow at sunrise or your back will be striped and then you will report anyway.

  Do you fol ow me?"

  "Yes, sir," Jeremiah said. He did not dare look at Gillen, for fear his expression would earn him the whipping on the spot.

  "Wel , good." Having got his way, Gil en was prepared to be magnanimous.

  He patted Jeremiah on the shoulder. "It will be only for a few days, a couple of weeks at most. Then everything will be back the way it was."

  "Yes, sir," Jeremiah said again, but he knew better. Nothing would ever be the same, not between him and other blacks, not between him and the sims, and not between him and Gil en either. One reason Gillen was a bearable master was that he treated Jeremiah like a person. Now the thin veil of politeness was ripped aside. At need, Gillen could use Jeremiah like any other beast of burden and at need he would. It was as simple as that.

  When Jeremiah lifted the loose board in his room, he found his little flask of spirits was empty. "I might have known," he muttered under his breath. "It's been that kind of day." He blew out his candle. />
  He was already awake when Stowe blasted away on the horn to summon the sims, and him, to labor. He had been awake most of the night; he was too full of mortification and swallowed rage to sleep. His stomach had tied itself into a tight, painful knot.

  His eyes felt as though someone had thrown sand in them. He rubbed at them as he pul ed on breeches, shoes and shirt and went out to the waiting overseer.

  Stowe was doling out hardtack and bacon to the sims still well enough to work. "Well, well," he said, smiling broadly as Jeremiah came up.

  "What a pleasure to see our new field hand, and just in time for breakfast, too. Get in line and wait your turn."

  The overseer watched for any sign of resistance, but Jeremiah silently took his place. The hardtack was a jawbreaker, and the bacon, heavily salted so it would keep almost forever, brought tears to his eyes. If his belly had churned before, it snarled now. He gulped down two dippers of water.

  They did not help.

  The sims' big yellow teeth effortlessly disposed of the hardtack biscuits. The salt in the bacon did not faze them either. Jeremiah's presence seemed to bother them a good deal more. They kept staring at him, then quickly looking away whenever his eyes met theirs. The low-voiced calls and hoots they gave each other held a questioning note.

  Those cal s, though, could convey only emotion, not real meaning.

  For that, the sims had to use the hand signs men had given them. Their fingers flashed, most often in the gesture equivalent to a question mark. Finally, one worked up the nerve to approach Jeremiah and sign, Why you here

  "To work," he said shortly. He spoke instead of signing, to emphasize to the sim that, despite his present humiliation, he was still a man.

  Harry Stowe, who missed very little, noted the exchange.

  Grinning, he sabotaged Jeremiah's effort to keep his plaoe by signing, He work with you he work like you, he one of i you til job done. No different. "Isn't that right." he added aloud, for Jeremiah's benefit.

  The slave felt his face grow hot. He bit his lip, but did not Stowe's message disturbed even the sims. One directed hesitant signs at the overseer: "He man, not sim. Why work like sim!"