Farnham's Freehold (36 page)

He considered, too, the wider aspects—a slave uprising. He visualized those tunnels being used not for escape but as a secret meeting place—classes in reading and writing, taught in whispers; oaths as mighty as a Mau Mau initiation binding the conspirators as blood brothers with each Chosen having marked against his name a series of dedicated assassins, servants patiently grinding scraps of metal into knives.

This “constructive” dream he enjoyed most—and believed in least. Would these docile sheep
ever
rebel? It seemed unlikely. He had been classed with them by accident of complexion but they were not truly of his breed. Centuries of selective breeding had made them as little like himself as a lap dog is like a timber wolf.

And yet, and yet,
how did he know?
He knew only the tempered males, and the few studs he had seen had all been dulled by a liberal ration of Happiness—to say nothing of what it might do to a man’s fighting spirit to lose his thumbs at an early age and be driven around with whips-that-were-more-than-whips.

This matter of racial differences—or the nonsense notion of “racial equality”—had never been examined scientifically; there was too much emotion on both sides. Nobody
wanted
honest data.

Hugh recalled an area of Pernambuco he had seen while in the Navy, a place where rich plantation owners, dignified, polished, educated in France, were black, while their servants and field hands—giggling, shuffling, shiftless knuckleheads “obviously” incapable of better things—were mostly white men. He had stopped telling this anecdote in the States; it was never really believed and it was almost always resented—even by whites who made a big thing of how anxious they were to “help the American Negro improve himself.” Hugh had formed the opinion that almost all of those bleeding hearts wanted the Negro’s lot improved until it was
almost
as high as their own—and no longer on their consciences—but the idea that the tables could ever be turned was one they rejected emotionally.

Hugh knew that the tables could indeed be turned. He had seen it once, now he was experiencing it.

But Hugh knew that the situation was still more confused. Many Roman citizens had been “black as the ace of spades” and many slaves of Romans had been as blond as Hitler wanted to be—so any “white man” of European ancestry was certain to have a dash of Negro blood. Sometimes more than a dash. That southern Senator, what was his name?—the one who had built his career on “white supremacy.” Hugh had come across two sardonic facts: This old boy had died from cancer and had had many transfusions—and his blood type was such that the chances were two hundred to one that its owner had not just a touch of the tarbrush but practically the whole tar barrel. A navy surgeon had gleefully pointed this out to Hugh and had proved both points in medical literature.

Nevertheless, this confused matter of races would
never
be straightened out—because almost nobody wanted the truth.

Take this matter of singing—It had seemed to Hugh that Negroes of his time averaged better singers than had whites; most people seemed to think so. Yet the very persons, white or black, who insisted most loudly that “all races were equal” always seemed happy to agree that Negroes were superior, on the average, in this one way. It reminded Hugh of Orwell’s
Animal Farm,
in which “All Animals Are Equal But Some Are More Equal Than Others.”

Well, he knew who wasn’t equal here—despite his statistically certain drop of black blood. Hugh Farnham, namely. He found that he agreed with Joe: When things were unequal, it was much nicer to be on top!

On the sixty-first day in this new place, if it was the sixty-first, they came for him, bathed him, cut his nails, rubbed him with deodorant cream, and paraded him before the Lord Protector.

Hugh learned that he still could be humiliated by not being given even a nightshirt as clothing, but he conceded that it was a reasonable precaution in handling a prisoner who killed with his bare hands. His escort was two young Chosen, in uniforms which Hugh assumed to be military, and the whips they carried were definitely not “lesser whips.”

The route they followed was very long; it was clearly a huge building. The room where he was delivered was very like in spirit to the informal lounge where Hugh had once played bridge. The big view window looked out over a wide tropical river.

Hugh hardly glanced at it; the Lord Protector was there. And so were Barbara and the twins!

The babies were crawling on the floor. But Barbara was breast deep in that invisible quicksand, a trap that claimed Hugh as soon as he was halted She smiled at him but did not speak. He looked her over carefully. She seemed unhurt and healthy, but was thin and had deep circles under her eyes.

He started to speak; she gestured warningly with eyes and head. Hugh then looked at the Lord Protector—and noticed only then that Joe was lounging near him and that Grace and Duke were playing some card game over in a corner, both of them chewing gum and ostentatiously not seeing that Hugh was there. He looked back at Their Charity.

Hugh decided that Ponse had been ill. Despite the fact that Hugh felt comfortably warm in skin, Ponse was wearing a full robe with a shawl over his lap and he looked, for once, almost his reputed age.

But when he spoke, his voice was still resonant. “You may go, Captain. We excuse you.”

The escort withdrew. Their Charity looked Hugh over soberly. At last he said, “Well, boy, you certainly made a mess of things, didn’t you?” He looked down and played with something in his lap, caught it and pulled it back to the middle of the shawl. Hugh saw that it was a white mouse. He felt sudden sympathy for the mouse. It didn’t seem to like where it was, but if it did manage to escape, the cats would get it. Maggie was watching with deep interest.

Hugh did not answer, the remark seemed rhetorical. But it had startled him very much. Ponse covered the mouse with his hand, looked up. “Well? Say something!”

“You speak English!”

“Don’t look so silly. I’m a scholar, Hugh. Do you think I would let myself be surrounded by people who speak a language I don’t understand? I speak it, and I read it, silly as the spelling is. I’ve been tutored daily by skilled scholars—plus conversation practice with a living dictionary.” He jerked his head toward Grace. “Couldn’t you guess that I would want to
read
those books of mine? Not be dependent on your hit-or-miss translations? I’ve read the
Just So Stories
twice—charming!—and I’ve started on the
Odyssey
.”

He shifted back to Language. “But we are not here to discuss literature.” Their Charity barely gestured. Four slut servants came running in with a table, placed it in front of the big man, placed things on it. Hugh recognized them—a homemade knife, a wig, two pots for deodorant cream, a bundle, an empty Happiness bottle, a little white sphere now dull, a pair of sandals, two robes, one long, one short, mussed and dirty, and a surprisingly high stack of paper, creased and much written on.

Ponse put the white mouse on the table, stirred the display, said broodingly, “I’m no fool, Hugh. I’ve owned servants all my life. I had you figured out before you had yourself figured out. Doesn’t do to let a man like you mingle with loyal servants, he corrupts them. Gives them ideas they are better off without. I had planned to let you escape as soon as I was through with you, you could have afforded to wait.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“Doesn’t matter whether you do or don’t. I could not afford to keep you very long—one bad apple rots the rest, as my uncle was fond of saying. Nor could I put you up for adoption and let some unwitting buyer pay good money for a servant who would then corrupt others elsewhere in my realm. No, you had to escape.”

“Even if that is so, I would never have escaped without Barbara and my boys.”

“I said I am not a fool. Kindly remember it. Of course you would not. I was going to use Barba—and these darling brats—to force you to escape. At my selected time. Now you’ve ruined it. I must make an example of you. For the benefit of the other servants.” He frowned and picked up the crude knife. “Poor balance. Hugh, did you really expect to make it with this pitiful tackle? Not even shoes for that child by you. If only you had waited, you would have been given opportunity to steal what you needed.”

“Ponse, you are playing with me the way you’ve been playing with that mouse. You weren’t planning to let us escape. Not really escape at least. I would have wound up on your table.”

“Please!” The old man made a grimace of distaste. “Hugh, I’m not well, someone has again been trying to poison me—my nephew, I suppose—and this time almost succeeded. So don’t talk nasty, it upsets my stomach.” He looked Hugh up and down. “Tough. Inedible. An old stud savage is merely garbage. Much too gamy. Besides that, a gentleman doesn’t eat members of his own family, no matter what. So let’s not talk in bad taste. There’s no cause for you to bristle so. I’m not angry with you, just very, very provoked.” He glanced at the twins, said, “Hughie, stop pulling Maggie’s tail.” His voice was neither loud nor sharp; the baby stopped at once. “Admittedly those two would make tasty appetizers were they not of my household. But even had they not been, I would have planned better things for them; they are so cute and so much alike. Did plan better things at first. Until it became clear that they were necessary to forcing you to run.”

Ponse sighed. “You still do not believe a word I’m saying. Hugh, you don’t understand the system. Well, servants never do. Did you ever grow apples?”

“No.”

“A good eating apple, firm and sweetly tart, is never a product of nature; it is the result of long development from something small and sour and hard and hardly fit for animal fodder. Then it has to be scientifically propagated and protected. On the other hand, too highly developed plants—or animals—can go bad, lose their firmness, their flavor, get mushy and soft and worthless. It’s a two-horned problem. We have it constantly with servants. You must weed out the troublemakers, not let them breed. On the other hand these very troublemakers, the worst of them, are invaluable breeding stock that must not be lost. So we do both. The run-of-the-crop bad ones we temper and keep. The very worst ones—such as you—we encourage to run. If you live—and some of you do—we can rescue you, or your strong get, at a later time and add you in, judiciously, to a breeding line that has become so soft and docile and stupid that it is no longer worth its keep. Our poor friend Memtok was a result of such pepping up of the breed. One quarter savage he was—he never knew it of course—and a good stud that added strength to a line. But far too dangerous and ambitious to be kept too long at stud; he had to be made to see the advantages of being tempered. Most of my upper servants have a recent strain of savage in them; some of them are Memtok’s sons. My engineer, for example. No, Hugh, you would not have wound up on anybody’s table. Nor tempered. I would like to have kept you as a pet, you’re diverting—and a fair bridge hand in the bargain. But I could not let you stay in contact with loyal servants, even as insulated as you were by your fancy title. Presently you would have been put in touch with the underground.”

Hugh opened his mouth and closed it.

“Surprised, eh? But there is always an underground wherever there is a ruling class and a serving class. Which is to say, always. If there were not one, it would be necessary to invent one. However, since there is one, we keep track of it, subsidize it—and use it. In the upper servants’ mess its contact is the veterinary—trusted by everyone and quite shamelessly free of sentiment; I don’t like him. If you had confided in him, you would have been guided, advised, and helped. I would have used you to cover about a hundred sluts, then sent you on your way. Don’t look startled, even Their Mercy uses studs who have to stoop a bit to get through the studs’ door when a freshening of the line is indicated—and there was always the danger that you might get yourself, and those dear boys, killed, and thereby have wasted a fine potential.”

Their Charity picked up the pile of Kitten-delivered mail. “These things—All my Chief Domestic was expected to do was to thwart you from doing something silly; he never knew the veterinary’s second function. Why, I even had to crack down on Memtok a bit to turn his copies of these over to me—when anyone could have guessed that a stud like you would find a way to get in touch with his slut. I deduced that it would happen that time that you stood up to me about her, our first bridge game. Remember? Perhaps you don’t. But I sent for Memtok, and sure enough, you had already started. Although he was reluctant to admit it, since he had not reported it.”

Hugh was hardly listening. He was turning over in his mind the glaring fact that he was hearing things told only to dead men. None of the four was going to leave this room alive. No, perhaps the twins would. Yes, Ponse wanted the breeding line. But he—and Barbara—would never have a chance to talk.

But Ponse was saying, “You still have a chance to correct your mistakes. And you made lots of them. One note you wrote my scholars assured me was gibberish, not English at all. So I knew it was a secret message whether we could read it or not. Thereafter all your notes were subjected to careful analysis. So of course we found the key—rather naïve to be considered a code, rather clever considering the handicaps. And useful to me. But confound it, Hugh, it cost me! Memtok was naïve about savages, he did not realize that they fight when cornered.”

Ponse scowled. “Damn you, Hugh, your recklessness cost me a valuable property. I wouldn’t have taken ten thousand bullocks for Memtok’s adoption—no, not twenty. And now your life is forfeit. The charge of attempting to run we could overlook, a tingling in front of the other servants would cover that. Destroying your master’s property we could cover up if it had been done secretly. Did you know that that bedwarmer I lent you knew most of what you were up to? Saw much of it? Sluts gossip.”

“She told you?”

“No, damn it, it didn’t tell the half; we had to tingle it out of it. Then it turned out it knew so much that we could not afford to have it talking and the other servants putting one and one together. So it had to go.”