by Eric Flint
We might have to buy slaves.
May 18, 320 BCE
Lars Floden listened to Eleanor’s proposal and turned to Marie Easley. First, because this really wasn’t his thing. And second, because it wasn’t really a proposal so much as a plea for him to tell her it was all a bad dream and she didn’t actually have to consider paying the bastards who kept slaves so that they could profit even more from their barbarity. He couldn’t tell her that, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to say, “Yes, pay the bastards.”
Marie looked at Eleanor. “I think that we may have to do so, but first we need to talk to Roxane. And, for that matter, Eumenes. And if she is available, Cleopatra. They, especially Cleopatra, will be more conversant with the local laws and customs.”
Queen of the Sea, en route to Amphipolis
May 17, 320 BCE
Roxane looked around the private conference room where Cleopatra, Marie Easley, Lars Floden, Eleanor Kinney, and Dag Jakobsen sat. There was wine on the table and Cleopatra was sipping hers, clearly to buy time. Of course she was confused. She didn’t have Roxane’s time with the ship people. She didn’t understand how anyone could be as rabidly antislavery as they were.
Cleopatra put down her wineglass and said, “Well, certainly you can buy slaves. I had understood that you forbade slavery on the Queen and in New America.”
“They do,” Roxane said. “They will be freeing the slaves once they buy them.”
“Then why buy them?” Cleopatra asked. “Wait. Do you imagine that slaves will be so grateful that they will work for you after being freed? Slaves are the most ungrateful people in the world. It’s well known.”
“Gee.” Eleanor’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Why wouldn’t they work for free just because they didn’t have to?”
Cleopatra looked at Eleanor, and Roxane decided she should interrupt before things got heated.
“I told you, my friend”—she waved at the ship people—“on this they are fanatics beyond reason.”
“And apparently beyond courtesy as well,” Cleopatra agreed, but her tone was more observant than harsh. She turned back to Eleanor and continued. “However good you feel their reasons are, once freed they will run off to their own endeavors. Buying a slave to ship to New America to work in one of your shops will get you no work if you free the slave. In fact, if you free the slave the moment it boards your ship, it will turn around and walk right back off.”
“What about contracts?” Dag asked. “I know I may be being corrupted by the locals, but crew on the Queen of the Sea signed on for at least a full voyage. They couldn’t get to Port-au-Prince and quit their job without being in breach of their contract.”
“A contract made under duress is invalid. And anyone signing a contract while a slave is, by definition, under duress. But you do bring up an interesting point, Dag. There were contracts of indenture. They were outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, at least as the Supreme Court has interpreted it. And the UN also had rules against it. But there are still binding employment contracts. It could be done. A person could, as part of the deal to gain their freedom, sign an employment contract, with some part of their wages garnished to pay off the debt they incurred in borrowing the money to buy their freedom. But I guarantee it’s going to end up in front of New America’s Supreme Court, all three of the judges. And I can’t guarantee that it will pass their muster.”
“I doubt it will pass mine,” Lars Floden said.
“I hate to say it,” Eleanor Kinney said, “but you may have to reconsider if you want Fort Plymouth to survive, and even more if you want us to have any real role in the emancipation of slaves. Absent at least some acceptance”—she paused, clearly trying to find words that didn’t make her feel like Nathan Bedford Forrest—“of a right to recompense, there is no motive for the people in New America to buy the freedom of slaves. It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. But is it as wrong as just leaving them in slavery?”
* * *
Over the next few weeks, the radio was full of back-and-forth discussions, some public and some private, between the Queen of the Sea, the Reliance, and Fort Plymouth. It also included the personnel at the newly placed radio stations that the Queen was installing from Carthage to Babylon. And so, indirectly, involved the governments of the lands around the Med.
Fort Plymouth, New America
June 20, 320 BCE
Another bad batch. Stella Matthews was getting closer, though. The broken glass shards she had added to the mix lowered the heat needed and got her something that was almost glass. It was gray and cloudy, but almost translucent. It was even smooth on one surface. But it was also full of bubbles. Just knowing the theory wasn’t cutting it. She needed a professional, and so far as she knew the only real glassmaking professionals in the world were in Europe and North Africa. She put her stuff away and dressed in her clothes from the cruise that were by now approaching the status of rags, and headed for the community center.
* * *
Stella plugged in her computer and logged on to the email server. She had responses to her ad, but they weren’t applicants. They were slaves—slave owners, rather—offering to sell her qualified craftsman for Queen of the Sea dollars. For now, Queen of the Sea dollars and New American dollars were effectively the same thing. They were worth exactly the same amount of silver. There were several offers. Two Carthaginians, three Egyptians, and a Phoenician from Tyre. For just a moment she wanted to get ready to stage a march on Al Wiley’s office, and not a Martin Luther King Junior–style peaceful protest. No. She was going to start the revolution.
It wasn’t news exactly. The New America Congress had passed a law saying that for the next twenty years contracts of employment made with the express purpose of buying a slave out of bondage would be enforceable. And the three Justices of the New America Supreme Court had approved the law by a two-to-one majority, and one of the guys voting yes was black, Justice Keith Robertson. The practice of buying and freeing slaves with “Advance on Wages Contracts” was legal.
The advance on wages weren’t paid to the slave, but the slave owner. The Advance on Wages contracts were way too close to a contract of indenture to survive any American court back in the world. That type of deal was all over the news last week, including the fact that the slave had to agree for the sale to take place. Surprisingly, not all of them did. The thing she hadn’t known about—or at least hadn’t realized—was that the radio stations being installed all around the Mediterranean were used by the locals to buy and sell in advance. Everything from linen to slaves, back and forth between city-states and nations, whether the trades involved ship people or not.
There were also Advance on Wages contracts where the “contract employee” was just getting the transport cost to Trinidad paid.
Transportees could become citizens just like any other immigrant, if the person lived here for the two years needed and could recite the Bill of Rights in English and showed a basic knowledge of how the government worked through a standardized test.
What Stella didn’t understand was why anyone would want to come live in a town that was mostly a housing project, where the plumbing was nonexistent and the only roads that were paved even with just tar sand were 7th Street and Garnet Avenue. And that had been done only after two people died because the ambulance carts got stuck in the mud.
She went back to the ads. One of the Carthaginians had agreed to a contract for a ten-year period. The cost was high: five thousand New American dollars, plus transport costs. The only way she would be able to afford it was to sell her laptop. She had already sold her cell phone to the Queen of the Sea. Donald Carnegie’s book reader was now owned by the community center and Stella’s mortgage on both townhouses was paid for the next year, along with the community dues that paid for her meals and the use of the center.
* * *
Stella was a decisive woman when she had to be, and now she had to be. The truth was that the chickens hadn’t
come home to roost yet, but they would if she didn’t do something. She checked the prices being offered by the Queen of the Sea, the government, and individuals for laptops, and pulled up the specs on her laptop to compare. She should be able to get around eleven thousand three hundred dollars for her computer.
She unplugged her computer and headed up to the counter. Here in the computer center was a lock room, constantly manned, where items from back in the world and very expensive local items were stored for resale after being examined. Among the items was a two-foot-tall solid-gold wall hanging in the shape of the sun. It weighed twenty-two pounds. And was worth rather less than any of the hundred fifty plus computers stored there.
It took them two hours to check out her laptop and do the paperwork, but by the end of the day her account in the Bank of New America had an available balance of ten thousand two hundred dollars and ninety-eight cents. That would change once the computer was put up for auction and actually sold.
Then, using one of the publicly available computers, she bought the contract of indenture for Carthalo, a man owned by the Barca clan. The Reliance would pick him up on their way back. Carthalo was the cheapest on offer.
Radio room, Carthage
June 20, 320 BCE
Tina Johnson read the notice off the computer screen and shook her head in disgust. Part of the deal was that she had to transmit and receive messages.
Even messages that involved human trafficking. It was disgusting enough when the locals did it, but ship people ought to know better. Even as she thought it, she knew that she wasn’t being completely fair, but she didn’t care. Sure, she walked the streets of Carthage every day among slaves and slave owners. She had dinner prepared by slaves at least three days a week, but that didn’t matter. She didn’t own slaves.
Put whatever face you wanted on Stella’s Advance on Wages contract; it was buying a slave. And as agent for the station, Tina was going to have to go pay the present owner and pick up the slave.
* * *
Carthalo woke up when the bucket of water was thrown onto him. No, not water. It was piss. He came up ready to fight and the overseer laughed. It wasn’t like he could reach the man. He was chained to the wall. The iron chain went from a bolt in the wall to a manacle around his ankle. He couldn’t go after the bastard anyway, because his ankle was rubbed raw and infected, and none of it was his fault.
What happened was an accident, pure and simple. Carthalo didn’t push his owner’s nephew into the furnace. The nephew bumped him. Carthalo was just trying to keep his balance.
“You are a lucky bastard, Carthalo. You’ve been sold.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, sluiced down, but still wet and limping, Carthalo was led into one of the master’s rooms. Not any slave quarters this. And a woman was seated on a chair at a table. There was another chair, and Carthalo was motioned to it. He sat cautiously, and the woman began to talk. She would say a few words, then the little box she carried would speak. It was not like anything he had ever heard of. He was to get his freedom, but not until he had worked for ten years. There was a provision for him to buy himself free early by paying back the money she was paying for him.
Carthalo figured he could do that. Before Padus Boca fell into the furnace mouth, Carthalo had several drachmas stashed away for work he did on the side.
Maybe he was lucky. Besides, the woman who was buying him was attractive. He might be able to seduce her. Then he learned that he wasn’t being bought by this woman. She was just acting as agent.
He was going to sail on the Reliance. To New America.
214–216 12th Street, Fort Plymouth, Trinidad
June 30, 320 BCE
Stella woke to a siren that lasted for almost a minute before it was shut off. Then the public address system reported native attacks on the outlying farmsteads. It also warned everyone to stay inside the walls, and included a request for emergency housing.
Stella got up, got dressed, and headed to the community center. She had extra room. In the community center, she was introduced to a farm family, Mrs. Banner, and two kids, and four natives were assigned to her. They were especially worried about Brad Banner, who had stayed at the farm to try to protect their super turkeys.
For the next two days the town of Fort Plymouth was cut off from its outlying territories and invested by a force of locals from the river Orinoco.
July 2, 320 BCE
They couldn’t see the Indians, not even from the second-floor balcony. But they could see the arrows that the Indians were shooting and they could see the troops on the parapet with their crossbows and occasional guns. Fort Plymouth was crowded now, not only with all the passengers, but with the allied tribes. That was most of the tribes that lived on Trinidad. All of them who were close enough to get here before the Tupky and their allies invested the fort.
Stella was watching the battle as best she could when the public address system announced that the Reliance was in the Gulf of Paria.
Reliance, Gulf of Paria
July 3, 320 BCE
Carthalo limped over to the side of the barge portion of the Reliance and helped hand bullets up to the steam cannon crews. He wasn’t the only one. The Reliance had twenty passengers. About half of them were transportees like Carthalo. The others were immigrants who wanted to go to New America, but couldn’t afford passage on the Queen, often people who signed employment contracts to raise the fare.
Still, Carthalo was worried what would happen to him if the ship person who owned his contract died in the battle. They said he was a free man now, just one with an employment contract. But Carthalo didn’t really believe that.
Trinidad Docks
July 4, 320 BCE
Carthalo walked across the gangplank to the long wooden dock that the Reliance was tied up to and was met by a ship person. He thought he could tell ship people by now. This one was a man who said his name was George Grosskopf. For the rest of the day, the transportees were herded from here to there, dropped off at various locations, until a local dressed in a loincloth and body paint led him to a house.
* * *
Stella looked up from an argument between the two Banner kids to see a man limping along with one of the Indians. He looks like a Tupky but apparently one of the Tupky on our side. In very broken English, the Tupky said, “Your slave.”
“He’s not a slave,” Stella insisted, and the Tupky shrugged and turned away, leaving a man with short-cropped hair and a beard that was just starting to grow out standing there.
Stella introduced herself, and best she could tell, the only words he understood were her name. She called Mrs. Banner to take care of her kids, and using gestures, she led Carthalo through her townhouse to the kiln in back. It was better than walking around the block to get there. By now her house had some furnishing, mostly local work. A table, some camp chairs. A chest with gourd mugs and wooden plates. Even some wall hangings. All locally made. Stella wasn’t spending her dwindling cash supply on things like glass cups or plastic trays.
She noticed that Carthalo was looking around curiously, and once they got out the back to the kiln and he was sure she didn’t object, he examined it carefully.
214–216 12th Street, Fort Plymouth, Trinidad
July 23, 320 BCE
Carthalo turned the knob that increased the amount of heated oil that was fed to the burner. This was the third day of the melt. One of the big things that Stella didn’t know was how you could tell that you were melting the glass long enough and hot enough. You got them both by looking and seeing what it looked like. The trick Carthalo used for heat was one he had learned back in Carthage. You took a wooden plank with a small hole in it, then as the light of the melt shone through it onto another piece of whitewashed wood, you looked at the color. You needed to do that at night or you needed your kiln in a room, because daylight washed it out so you couldn’t tell the color well. For time, you stuck a rod into the glass and pulled out a blob. If there were unmelted bits
or too many bubbles, you needed to keep it melting longer. He needed the glass to glow a yellow closer to white at this part of the melt, so that the bubbles would be able to escape.
Another day at the increased heat should do it, he thought. The idea of using oil to control the flame struck him as brilliant. At least it did now. His first reaction was that they should be using wood like they did in Carthage.
He put the iron plate back over the opening in the kiln using tongs, then left the kiln and went back into the house. He had a room at the back of the house next to the back door. The whole place stank of tar.
He thought of running away. He had thought of running away almost every day since he was sold into slavery at age six. But usually only a passing thought. There was nowhere to run. Now, well, there was still nowhere to run. No one spoke his language except a few other transportees and, as was amply demonstrated by the battle being fought as he arrived, the Indians were dangerous.
Besides, he had his own space, even if it stank of tar. He had meals and access to the community center. He could move on his own. He wore no chains or any mark that he was a slave. And he got paid. Most of his pay went to the debt he owed Stella for buying him, but he got some money every week. Not a lot, but enough to buy an extra glass of wine when he wanted one, or new clothing if he saved up.