Harry Turtledove: In High Places

"Is everything all right?" Annette asked the technician. "Can I take him home?"

The man eyed a couple of monitors. "It all looks good," he answered. "If he has any kind of problem—anything at all—bring him back. We'll analyze his synapses. If we have to, we'll run the course again."

"Thanks," Annette said. "Come on, Jacques."

"Sure," he said. Synapses. He knew what the word meant: the way signals in his brain passed from one nerve cell to another. In his French, he hadn't even known there were cells in his brain. He had thoughts in his French. In English, he understood how he had them. He hadn't just learned a language. He'd learned a different way of looking at the world.

Cold bit his nose and stung his cheeks when he walked outside. An enormous flock of starlings flew by overhead. They reminded him of the Kingdom of Versailles. When he said so, Annette made a sour face. "The Kingdom of Versailles is welcome to them. They didn't used to live here. Two hundred years ago, a crazy Englishman brought 120 of them across the Atlantic and turned them loose. Millions and millions of them live here now. They're miserable pests, is what they are."

As if to prove the point, white droppings splashed her car. She said something in English he wouldn't have understood an hour earlier. It made him blush now. So did another thought. "I have been brought here, too, from a far country," he said. "I hope I will not be a pest."

Annette squeezed his hand. "I expect you'll fit in just fine, Jacques," she said, and winked at him. "Besides, there aren't millions and millions of you. It only seems that way sometimes."

"Thanks a lot," he said. Laughing, he got into the car. Laughing, Annette drove him home. And he did feel like someone who was at least starting to fit in pretty well.

Annette sat in a courtroom in Albuquerque. The man about to be sentenced was one of the masters at the manor. He'd also been a leading Crosstime Traffic security official. "Do you have any statement to make, Mr. Degrelle, before receiving your punishment?"

"Yes, your Honor." In a suit and tie, Degrelle looked like anybody else. What he'd done didn't stand out in letters of fire on his forehead. Annette thought it should have. He sounded like anyone else, too, as he went on, "I didn't mean any harm. I don't think any of us meant any harm. The people there"—he didn't call them slaves—"had better food and medicine than if they'd stayed in their own alternates."

His lawyer nodded. Degrelle's wife and children were in the courtroom. They nodded, too. They didn't want to see him going to jail for years. Annette didn't suppose she could blame them, though she didn't agree with them. From what she'd read, the officers at the German death camps in World War II had families that loved them, too, in spite of what they'd done. She'd thought that was a sickness out of the past. She seemed to be wrong.

The prosecutor got to her feet. She was a little gray-haired woman who looked like somebody's grandmother. She probably was. But fury crackled in her voice as she said, "May it please the court, but 'I didn't mean any harm' from Mr. Degrelle is like a plea for mercy from a man who killed his parents on the grounds that he is an orphan. Evidence at this trial shows he and his followers killed slaves who tried to rebel, to make themselves free. It shows they treated female slaves in a way that shows they forgot about the past 250 years of our history. And it shows they bought slaves and took slaves. And they betrayed the trust Crosstime Traffic had in them. They did it for no better reason than that they enjoyed the feeling of power they got by oppressing—by owning—other human beings. Mr. Degrelle deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law."

"We have one of the people most closely connected to this case here with us today," the judge said. He found Annette with his eyes. "Miss Klein, will you please come to the microphone?"

"Yes, your Honor." Annette walked up to the lectern. Cameras followed her. She didn't like standing there in front of the whole world and talking. Who would have? But she'd done so much testifying, it didn't terrify her the way it would have a few months before.

"I am obliged to hear you before I sentence Mr. Degrelle," the judge said. "I am not obliged to take what you say into account in the sentencing. I may, but I am not obliged to. Do you understand?"

"Yes, your Honor," Annette said again. "Mr. Degrelle and the people under him didn't give me food and medicine that were better than what I would have got in my own alternate. They didn't know I was from the home timeline, of course. They probably would have killed me to keep my mouth shut if they had."

Degrelle's lawyer stirred. The judge waved him to silence. Annette could say what she thought now, not just what she knew to be true. The judge nodded to her to go on.

"They treated us like things," she said. "Like things. They bought us—they bought me. We could have been so many used cars, for all they cared. And they used us like cars. No, it was worse than that, in fact. They could have done so much more with machines, if that was what they wanted. But it wasn't. They wanted to lord it over us, to have fun being in charge of other people. I don't know much about the law, your Honor, but I know that's wrong."

A few other people spoke. Jacques and Emishtar were testifying at other trials halfway around the world. Crosstime Traffic officials agreed with Annette. Even though they did, she couldn't help wondering if they were tainted, too. Lots of people would be wondering about Crosstime Traffic officials for years to come— one more thing the slave ring had done.

Character witnesses for Degrelle said he was a very nice man when he wasn't being a slavemaster. That wasn't how they said it, but that was what it amounted to.

The judge listened to everyone. Then he sentenced the master to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after twenty-five years. Degrelle's shoulders slumped. His family burst into tears.

Annette didn't know what she felt. Part of her wished they'd thrown away the key. But he was going away for a long, long time, and he'd never have the chance to do anything like that again. It could have been worse.

It could have been worse. That was one of those adult phrases, one that meant it was as good as it was going to get and you were stuck with it. The more of those phrases she understood, the more of her childhood she left behind. She walked out of the courtroom. She still had a lot of growing in front of her.