In High Places by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2011-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Annette lay on her bed in the women’s dormitory. She felt sick to her stomach, and it had nothing to do with the food slaves got here. She’d just broken about half the rules Crosstime Traffic set. And she hadn’t just broken the rules. She’d thrown down the pieces and danced on them.

No matter what she’d done, and no matter what she might do, nothing she did could come close to what the slavers were doing. Remembering that helped steady her. Yes, she’d given away most of the Crosstime Traffic secret to somebody from another alternate. Well, so what? Look what these people were doing!

As if to prove as much, one of the house slaves came in and lay down on her bed. She was young and good-looking, and she’d been summoned to the master’s residence. That was another thing a slaveowner could do—and a slave couldn’t stop him, not unless she wanted something even worse to happen to her. There was one more charge against these people, too.

House slaves didn’t have to work as hard as the ones who went out to the gardens. For a little while, Annette had hoped she would get called back to the manor. That was the kind of hope a slave had—not to do what she wanted, but to do something a little less nasty than something else. Now, though, Annette decided she didn’t mind going out to the vegetable gardens. She didn’t want anybody noticing her the way that pretty house slave had been noticed.

To help keep that from happening, Annette didn’t keep herself as clean as she might have. If she had a smudge of dirt on one cheek, if her hair was matted and greasy, if she didn’t smell very good, if onions filled her breath, who would pay attention to her like that? She wanted to wash. She wanted hardly anything more. One of the hardest things about going to the alternates was dealing with filth. Here, though, it made for protective coloration. Annette shook her head. No, protective discoloration was more like it.

In a bed not far away, Emishtar was snoring. The other woman had as much to worry about as Annette. In fact, since she was older and from a low-tech alternate, she probably wasn’t anywhere near as healthy, so she had more to worry about. But she didn’t seem to worry nearly so much. She just went on doing as little as she could get away with. The only thing that did seem to bother her was too much work.

I should be so lucky, Annette thought. In spite of her worries, she found herself yawning. All of them put together couldn’t keep her awake till midnight, not with the day she’d put in. She yawned again, and fell asleep.

Somebody banging on a gong woke her much too early the next morning. That was low-tech, which didn’t mean it didn’t work. She yawned and rolled out of bed. Every time she did that, she shook her head in disbelief.

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