Page 39 of Anchored

He felt less fear this time, speaking up. “Do you know any free black people at all?”

The master was surprised by this turn of conversation, if his climbing eyebrows were any indication. “In America? No, not one. I’m not even sure there are any; who’d want to live in a place where everyone just assumes you’re a slave?”

Daniel nodded. “You know what NewWorld taught us in school about black people? That the entire race is inferior. That they all carry the slave gene. And that the chronic poverty, warfare, and disease on the African continent is the natural consequence of whole nations full of slaves without masters, which is why we should all be so grateful that we have NewWorld to look after us.”

“They taught us the same thing, to be honest.”

“But I’ve been to Africa. More than once. Nigeria, Sudan, the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Niger, Zimbabwe, Somalia, and on and on. And I’ve met plenty of good freemen there, bright freemen, hardworking freemen. Those people are suffering, and it has a lot more to do with their old imperial masters drawing random lines on the map and stripping the continent of its resources than it has to do with soullessness. America did it four hundred years ago when the Red Death killed off so many colonists and Europeans that shipping those ‘soulless savages’ from Africa started making economic sense. The first generations of African slaves in the US? The vast majority of them hadn’t done anything wrong. They weren’t criminals, they weren’t debtors, they weren’t children of slaves. They were freemen just like you, and they were stolen right out of their homes and put in chains and shipped to a lifetime of servitude because they looked different, because they worshipped different gods, and nowadays everyone just seems to conveniently forget how the ancestral origins of every last one of the thirty million black slaves in this country completely fail to align with every last one of the supporting causes for the institution. And not only do they forget, but they’re still doing it now. Abducting freemen out of Africa may be against the law these days, but nothing stops you from as good as enslaving them there in the local diamond or rare earth metal mines, or arming and riling up warring factions to serve your political needs.”

Daniel didn’t even notice what a lather he’d worked himself into until he realized he’d sat up and was looking down at the master’s open-mouthed, tight-eyed expression.

Shit. He’d gone too far. Done exactly what Mr. Foster had so recently and painfully warned him against: forgotten his fucking place. “I’m sor—”

The master held a hand up to silence him, and Daniel closed his mouth so hard his teeth clacked together. “They don’t teach us that in school,” the master said. Then the lines smoothed out of his forehead and his parted lips curved into a gentle smile. “Please, go on. I want to hear more. What else don’t they teach us?”

Huh. That . . . wasn’t the reply Daniel had been expecting. But he saw no trace of mockery or anger or derision on the master’s face, so what the hell. He was wary to speak again, knowing how easily he’d just forgotten himself, but that particular horse was already so far out the barn door it’d galloped clear across the country. If the master meant to trap him, he had more than enough ammo by now. So he replied, “That your justification for killing or enslaving every last Native American in existence is just as flimsy as your justification for black slavery.”

The master raised an eyebrow, but still he seemed only curious, not affronted. “Oh?”

Daniel nodded, leaned back against the headboard and stared at himself in the mirror on the opposite wall. Watched the blasphemous words falling out of his mouth. Watched the passion on his face, the confidence, the surety, and hardly recognized himself. “Sure, yes, they spread the Red Death to the colonists, and the colonists spread it to Europe, and it wiped out nearly half the empire. But it’s not like they did it on purpose, and if that’s a message from God, proof from on high that the natives were soulless savages and heartless killers, then what about us? We gave them smallpox, and we did do it on purpose. You know how hard it is to find a history book that’s willing to mention the fact that our disease killed over eighty percent of their empire? Yet we were the ones with the guns. Ergo, we had the moral high ground.”

That felt somehow like more of an overstep than the last thread of this discussion—no, not discussion, lecture—so Daniel forced himself quiet again, stole a glance at the master’s thoughtful face and waited for him to say something.

What he finally did say was almost . . . disappointing: “Hmm.”

That was it? Hmm?

After perhaps a minute of silence, the master followed that up with, “So what about now? There hasn’t been a free black or native in this country in centuries. Even if we magically decided we’ve been wrong all this time, there’s close to forty million slaves here between the two races. You can’t just release them; they don’t know how to be free. And what about everyone else? The white slaves? The Asians? The Hispanics? The ones whose ancestors were conscripted for valid reasons? And even assuming the blacks and natives were unfairly conscripted all those centuries ago . . . if nearly every other race and country in the world has a fifteen to twenty percent slave population, then surely at least fifteen to twenty percent of the blacks and natives were legitimately born slaves too?”

Daniel shrugged; it felt a lot safer and easier to argue his position when the master wasn’t arguing back. “I guess,” he said.

The master scowled. Did he dislike Daniel’s answer or the return of Daniel’s timidity? “Okay. So, maybe Dave should never have been a slave. But rightly or wrongly, he still is one. The law says they have to be owned by someone. Best someone who’s good to them, right?”

“Right,” Daniel agreed, because that much was definitely true. It didn’t explain the master leasing him, though. “I already have an owner, and yet you paid for me.”

Another shrug. “I was weak.” The master rolled his head to meet Daniel’s eyes. “Still am. Besides, your owner isn’t good to you.”

Not that the master could’ve known that before he’d leased Daniel. Not that Daniel had known that before the master had leased him. But looking at how the master treated Dave and Jane, he had to admit he saw some truth to it now. “Things are what they are,” he said, because even now, with this new trust between them, with all he’d said about the problematic history of slavery in this country, he’d be foolish to speak a single bad word about NewWorld.

The master nodded, covered one of Daniel’s hands with his own. “Yeah. But maybe they never should’ve been, and maybe they don’t always have to be. Maybe things can change.”

Daniel’s fingers clenched around the master’s, and for a too-long moment, despite all the remarkable things they’d just said to each other, he simply couldn’t breathe.

But he forced his lungs to start again. He didn’t want to think too closely about what the master had just said. It was bad enough he was really starting to like the man—they weren’t friends, couldn’t ever be friends, and forgetting that was even more dangerous than everything else he’d said tonight. Adding some ridiculous hope for a free future to the mix would only screw up the present. So when the master’s fingers gave his own a gentle squeeze, and the master’s open, patient expression quietly asked, What do you think? Daniel said simply, “I’m tired, Master.” Which in itself was a test of hope: Would the master care? Be angry? Let Daniel’s needs matter again like he’d seemed to let Daniel’s thoughts and opinions matter so much this evening?

The master’s expression wilted—a moment’s disappointment, maybe even a flicker of anger—but then he smiled a soft gentle smile and touched Daniel’s cheek with his fingertips and said, “Yeah, okay. Get some rest, Daniel. We’ll talk again later.”

Strange, but Daniel found himself looking forward to it.

The master called him out of work for the next two days. He didn’t need it, not really, but he was grateful for it. The awkwardness between them had evaporated sometime between the master destroying his living room and discussing manumission like a possibility worth fighting for. Daniel wasn’t even worried about NewWorld—a sub for a couple days cost an awful lot less than the master’s six mil they were worried about keeping, and the master keeping him home was as good a sign as any that Daniel had made things right between them.

As the bruises and the nightmares faded, as their talks grew broader and deeper and more comfortable, Daniel found himself growing quite fond of the master. Coming to appreciate not just the things he did for and gave to Daniel, but also the man himself: his intelligence, his sharp wit, his unbridled generosity, and his willingness to question and reconsider every thought and value in his head. Daniel even came to appreciate the master’s large hands, his hair, his smiling eyes, his deceptively gruff exterior and the squishy bits inside it that Daniel suspected he let very few people see. Looking back, he realized he’d been seeing them all along with the way the master treated Jane and Dave, the way he’d tried to include Daniel at his table and his rec room from day one. He’d simply been too afraid to appreciate it then.

When he returned to work, life settled back to normal there, too. He didn’t have to see Mr. Foster again, and Tim kept telling him how pleased the master was, how pleased management was, how they all hoped to keep doing business together for many years to come. Daniel hoped so too; if he had to be leased to someone, best to a good man who wanted him for more than his body. He tried not to let himself worry about how the expense of keeping him would add up over the years. Tried to remind himself that Carl Whitman’s last contract was five years and sixty million dollars, and his star was only growing.

Wrapped in the glow of this newfound peace, this strange quasi friendship and growing trust with the master, Daniel found himself wanting to show his gratitude, to offer at least part of what the master so obviously desired—and, if he were honest, to make sure the master would find him worth the money for years to come. And so it was with only small trepidation that Daniel asked, in bed together exactly two weeks after their first real talk, if they might touch each other.

In hindsight, it was a pretty silly question.