Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

"And no man yet has taught a turtle to waltz," Zachary Hayes broke in.

"What of it? The issue here is niggers, not sims. Perhaps my distinguished opponent needs reminding of it."

"Yes, Mr. Douglas, we have been patient for some time aw," Judge Kemble said. "We shall not be pleased if this course of yours leads nowhere."

"It leads to the very heart of the issue, your excellency,"

Douglas assured him. "For consider: in the slavery of ancients, what was their chiefest concern? Why, just as the learned Mr. Hayes has demonstrated, to define who might rightfully be a slave, and who was properly free. The great Aristotle developed the concept my opponent discussed so well, that of the slave by nature. Here, in the person of Rob and in his kind, we see exactly what the Greek sage intended: a being with a body strong enough for the tasks we set, yet without wit enough to set against our will.

"Aristotle admitted that in his day, the most difficult thing to determine was the quality of mind that defined the natural slave.

And no wonder, for he was trying to distinguish among groups of men, and al men far more resemble each other than they differ from sims.

In these modern times, we have a true standard of comparison.

"Mr. Hayes put forth the proposition that the physical appearance of niggers brands them as slaves. That is the same as saying painted plaster will satisfy the stomach because it looks so good. In this court, should we not examine essence rather than exterior? To do so, I should like to summon my client Jeremiah to the witness-box."

While Douglas was signing to Rob that it could go, Hayes sprang up, exclaiming, "I protest this, this charades"

"On what grounds, sir?" Judge Kemble said.

"On the grounds that it is obviously a trick, rehearsed s well in advance, intended to make this nigger out to be Aristotle, Charlemagne, and the Twelve Apostles al rolled into one! "

"Aye, there's a stink of collusion in the air," Judge Scott rumbled.

"How say you, Mr. Douglas?" Kemble asked.

Douglas's smile was beatific, the smile of a man whose enemy has delivered himself into his hands. "your excellency, I say that even if I were to admit that charge, and I do not; I deny it, it would only help my own case. How , could I conspire with Jeremiah unless he had the brains to plot along with me?"

Hayes opened his mouth, closed it again. His eyes were wide and staring. Judge Hardesty let out a most unjudicial snort, then tried to pretend he hadn't. Judge Scott looked grim, which meant his expression changed not at all. Stifled whoops and cheers came from the blacks at the back of the courtroom. Judge Kemble gaveled them down.

"You may proceed, sir," was all he said to Douglas. The lawyer dipped his head, waved Jeremiah forward to take the oath. As Jeremiah raised his hand, he thought Douglas might remind the judges that he, unlike a sim, was able to do so.

But Douglas knew when to be subtle. The fact itself spoke louder than anything he could say about it. Facing the courtroom was harder than Jeremiah had expected.

Except for those of the few blacks, he was hard pressed to find a friendly face. The whites in the audience regarded him with looks ranging from stony disapproval to out and out hatred. Harry Stowe was part of the latter group.

Next to him sat the two people Jeremiah knew best here, Charles and Caleb Gillen. The habits of years died hard; it hurt Jeremiah to see the contempt on the face of the man ho had owned him, and to see his master's son scowling at him as at Iscariot. He started to smile, then let his face freeze. They would re-enslave him without a qualm if the judges said they could. That made them no friends of his.

Douglas produced a small, thick book and presented it to Eli Zachary Hayes, "Would you care to open the Bible at random, sir, so Jeremiah may read the passage you select?" The older lawyer drew back from the book as if it had come from the devil, "You'll not make me part of your trickery, sin Like as not, you've had him memorize Scriptiture for the sake of looking good here."

"Again you prove what you'd sooner oppose," Douglas said. "If Jeremiah were stupid as a sim, he wouldn't be able to memorize the Good Book. You'll make a man of him in spite of yourself."

He turned to the bench. "Would one of you care to make the selection, your excellencies? I don't want any possibility Is of deceit in this, for such as Mr. Hayes to tax me with."

To Jeremiah's surprise, Judge Scott took the Bible from tin Douglas.

The lawyer's face fell when he saw that Scott did not open the book just anywhere, as he had suggested, but began hunting for a specific passage. "Here," the judge said.

Let him read this." He stabbed at the section he wanted with his thumb, adding for the record, "This is the seventh chapter of First Chronicles."

Jeremiah certainly had not memorized it; he had no idea what was in the passage. But when Douglas handed him the Bible, he understood why the lawyer had gone expressionless. The chapter was one of those col ections of begats that crop up every now and then, and ful of names more obscure than most.

Having no choice, he gulped and plunged in, " 'And of the sons of Issachar, Tola, and Puah, Jashub, and Shimron, four. And the sons of Tola: Uzzi, and Rephaiah, and Jeriel, and Jahmai, and Ibsam, and Shemuel...."

" He read slowly and carefully, often pausing to sound out an unfamiliar name. He knew he sometimes stumbled, and hated himself for it, but Judge Scott had set too wicked a trap for him to escape unscathed.

He fought his way through the sons of Bilhan (Jeush, Benjamin, Ehud, Chenanah, Zethan, Tarshish, and Ahishahar), the sons of Shemida (Ahian, Shechem, Likhi, and Aniam), and the sons of Asher (Imnah, Ishvah, Ishvi, and Beriah, to say nothing of their sister, Serah). He almost broke down on Pasach, Bimhal, and Asvath (the sons of Japhlet).

But his voice rose in triumph as he came at last to the sons of Ul a, Arab, and Hanniel, and Rizia.

" 'Al these,' " he finished, " 'were the children of Asher, heads of the fathers' houses, choice and mighty men of valour, chiefs of princes. And the number of them reckoned by genealogy for service in war was twenty and six thousand men."

He closed the Bible. The courtroom was very quiet.; Douglas walked up and took the book from him. Judge Scott looked down at his hands, up to the plaster of the ceiling, anywhere but at Jeremiah.

"I think you can go back to our table now, Jeremiah,"

Douglas murmured.

Jeremiah's feet hardly seemed to touch the ground as he returned to his place. He heard Caleb Gil en whisper to his father, "I'm so sorry, sir. It's my fault he can read at al . I went and put ideas in his head, and see the thanks we get."

There was enough truth in that to sting, a little. Yes, Caleb had taught Jeremiah to read, but he was forgetting, the way that was so easy for someone used to thinking of people as belongings, that Jeremiah had wanted to be free long before he could pick out the word "liberty" on the printed page. Caleb had been willing enough to help last wmmer, when Jeremiah's goal seemed indefinitely far away. Now that it was here, Caleb was finding he did not like it so well.

"Mr. Hayes." Judge Kemble said, and then again, more crisply, "Mr.

Hayes?"

Jeremiah had thought Hayes would have to give in despite having worked so long for Douglas, he was still naive about lawyers. Hayes slowly rose, long and angular.

He made a production out of stretching.

"Begging your excellency's pardon," he said, perfectly leif-possessed. "I was woolgathering there. In considering this case, you must remember that it bears on not a single individual but, by the census of '98, close to a mil ion persons of African descent. What of their masters' property lights. Further, assuming that by some mischance they could become free, how are they to provide for themselves?