Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

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!"

"He's a slave. He does what he's told, just like you'd better.

If the master tells him to work like a sim, he works like a sim, and that's all there is to it. Enough dawdling, now, let's get on with it."

The overseer distributed seythes and sickles to his charges, careful y counting them so the sims could not hold any back to use against their owners, or against each other, in fights over food or females. Jeremiah wished he had a pair of gloves; his hands were too soft for the work he was about to do.

He knew better than to ask for any.

As he started down a row of hemp plants, he saw the sims to either side quickly move past him. It was not just that they were stronger, though few men could match the subhumans for strength. They were also more skil ed which was really galling. Bend, slash, stoop, spread, rise step, bend . . . they had a rhythm the black man lacked.

"Hurry it up, Jeremiah," Stowe said. "They're getting way ahead there."

"They know what they're doing," the slave grunted stung by the taunt.

"Turn one loose in my kitchen and see what kind of mess you'd get." To his surprise, Stowe laughed.

Jeremiah soon grew sore, stiff, and winded. He did not think he could have gone on without the half-grown sim that carried a bucket of water from one worker to the next.

At first it would not stop for him, passing him by for members of its own kind. A growl from Stowe, though fixed that in a hurry.

Reluctantly, Jeremiah came to see that the overseer did not use his charges with undue harshness. To have done so would have wrung less work from them, and work was what Stowe was after. He treated the sims, and Jeremiah-like so many other beasts of burden, with impersonal efficiency. The slave even wished for the malice Stowe had shown on the path that summer night. That, at least, would have been an acknowledgment of his humanity.

Before long, he found out what it meant to have such wishes granted.

"Spread the hemp out better once you cut it, Stowe snapped.

Jeremiah jumped; he had not heard the l overseer come up behind him.

"Spread it out," Stowe repeated. "It won't dry as well if you don't."

"I'm doing as well as the sims are," Jeremiah said, nodding toward the long, sharp, dark-green leaves lying to his right and left.