Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

On and on the book went, checking the government for the benefit of the free man. Jeremiah finished it with a strange mixture of admiration and anger. So much talk of freedom, and not a word against slavery! It was as though the Conscript Fathers had not noticed it existed.

Conscious of his own daring, Jeremiah remarked on that to Douglas.

The lawyer nodded. "Slavery has been with us since Greek and Roman times, and you can search the Bible from one end to the other without finding a word against it.

And, of course, when Englishmen came to America, they found the sims. No one would say the sims should not serve us."

Jeremiah almost blurted, "But I'm no sim" Then he remembered Douglas thought him free. He did say, "Sims is different than men."

"There you are right," Douglas said, sounding uncommanly serious. "The difference makes me wonder about our laws at times, it truly does."

Jeremiah hoped he would go on, but when he did, it was not in the vein the black had expected: "Of course, one could argue as well that the sims manifest inequality only points up subtler differences among various groups of men."

Disgusted, Jeremiah found an excuse to knock off early. One thing he had learned about lawyers was that they delighted in argument for its own sake, without much caring about right and wrong.

He had thought Douglas different, but right now he seemed the same as the rest.

A gang of sims came by, moving slowly under the weigh t of the heavy timbers on their shoulders. He glowered at their hairy backs.

Too many white men were like Zachary J Hayes, lumping sims and blacks together because most blacks were slaves.

As it had back on Charles Gil en's estate, that rankled. He was no subhuman . . . and if Hayes doubted what blacks really were, let him get a sim instead of the fancy cook he owned! Soon enough he'd be skeletal, not just lean. Jeremiah grinned, liking the notion.

Another party of sims emerged from a side street. This group was carrying sacks of beans. Neither gang made any effort to get out of the other's way. In an instant, they were hopelessly tangled. Traffic snarled. Because al the sims had their hands full, they could not use their signs to straighten out the mess. Their native hoots and cal s were not adequate for the job. Indeed, they made matters worse.

The sims glared at each other, peeling back their lips to bare their big yellow teeth and grimacing horribly.

"Call the guards!" a nervous man shouted, and several others took up the cry. Jeremiah ducked down an alleyway.

He had seen enough of sims' brute strength on the farm to be sure he wanted to be far away if they started fighting.

The town did not erupt behind him, so he guessed the overseers had managed to put things to rights. A few words at the outset would have done it: "Coming through!" or "Go ahead; we'll wait." The sims did not have the words to use.

"Poor stupid bastards," Jeremiah said, and headed home.

"Mr. Douglas, you have some of the strangest books in the I world, and that is a fact," Jeremiah said.

Douglas ran his hands through his oily hair. "If you keep excavating among those boxes, God only knows what you'll come up with.

What is it this time?"

"A Proposed Explication of the Survival of Certain Beasts in America and Their Disappearance Hereabouts, by Samuel Pepys." Jeremiah pronounced it pep-eeze.

"Peeps," Douglas corrected, then remarked, "You know, Jeremiah, you read much better now than you did when you started working for me last summer. That's the first time you've slipped in a couple of weeks, and no one could blame you for stumbling over that tongue twister."

"Practice,"Jeremiah said. He held up the book. "What is this, anyhow?"

"It just might interest you, come to think of it. It's the book that sets forth the transformational theory of life: that the kinds of living things change over time."

"That's not what the Bible says."

"I know. Churchmen hate Pepys's theories. As a lawyer, though, I find them attractive, because he presents the evidence for them.

Genesis is so much hearsay by comparison."

"You never were no churchgoing man, sir," Jeremiah said reproachfully.

He started to read al the same; working with Douglas had given him a good bit of the lawyer's attitude. And he respected his boss's brains.

If Douglas thought there was something to this, what had he called it?, transformational theory, there probably was.

The book was almost I50 years old, and written in the ornate style of the seventeenth century. Jeremiah had to ask Douglas to help him with several words and complex phrases. He soon saw what the lawyer meant.

Pepys firmly based his argument on facts, with no pleading to unverifiable

"authorities." Despite himself, Jeremiah was impressed Someone squelched up the walk toward Douglas's door. No, a couple of people, by the sound. It was that transitional time between winter and spring. The rain was Still cold, but Jeremiah knew only relief that he did not have to shovel snow anymore.

Douglas had heard the footsteps too. He rammed quil into inkpot and started writing furiously. "Put Pepys down and get busy for a while, Jeremiah," he said. "It's probably Jasper Carruthers and his son, here for that will I should've finished three days ago. Since it's not done, we ought at least to look busy."

Grinning, Jeremiah got up and started reshelving some, of the books that got pulled down every day. He had his back to the door when it swung open, but heard Douglas's relieved chuckle.

"Good to see you, Zachary," the lawyer said. "Saves me the embarrassment of pleading guilty to nonfeasance."

Hayes let out a dry laugh. "A problem we all face from time to time, Alfred; I'm glad you escaped it here. Do you own an English version of Justinian's Digest? I'm afraid the Latin of my young friend here isn't up to his reading it in the original."

The volume happened to be in front of Jeremiah's face. He pul ed it from the shelf before Douglas had to ask him for it, turned with a smug smile to offer it to Hayes's student.

The smile congealed on his face like fat getting cold in a pan.

The youngster with Hayes was Caleb Gillen.

The tableau held for several frozen seconds, the two of them staring at each other while the lawyers, not understanding what was going on, stared at them both.

"Jeremiah!" Caleb exclaimed. "It's my father's runaway nigger!"

he shouted to Hayes at the same moment Jeremiah bolted for the door.

Pepys's book proved his undoing. It went flying out from under his foot and sent him sprawling. Caleb Gillen landed on his back.

Before he could shake free of the youngster Hayes also grabbed him.

The lawyer was stronger than he looked. Between them, he and Caleb held Jeremiah pinned to the floor.

Panting, his gray hair awry, Hayes said, "You told me he was a free nigger, Alfred."

"He said he was. I had no reason to doubt him," Douglas answered calmly. He had made no move to rise from his desk and help seize Jeremiah, or indeed even to put down - his quil . Now he went on, "For that matter, I still have no reason to do so."

"What? I recognize him!" Caleb Gillen shouted, his voice breaking from excitement. "And what if I didn't? He and That proves it!"

"If I were a free nigger and someone said I was a slave, I'd run too," Douglas said. "Wouldn't you, young sir? (I'm sorry, I don't know your name.) Wouldn't you, Zachary, regardless of the truth or falsehood of the claim?"

"Now you just wait one minute here, Alfred," Hayes snapped.

"Young master Caleb Gillen here told me last year of the absconding from his father's farm of their nigger, Jeremiah. My only regret is not associating the name with this wretch here so he could have been recaptured sooner."