In High Places Read online

  Winter days were short. The sun scurried across the southern sky. Even so, Annette felt a couple of years went by before the guards finally shouted, "That's enough!" in all the languages the slave women used.

  As the women walked back toward the manor, Annette fell in beside Birigida. The blond woman had got swatted and spanked a couple of more times as the afternoon wore along. For her, that didn't make it too bad a day. She gave Annette a curious look—most of the time, Annette and Emishtar walked and talked together.

  Birigida said something in the musical language the other blond and redheaded women spoke. Something like Erse, something like Breton—Celtic, sure enough. That fit their looks. What she said sounded like a question, but Annette didn't understand a word of it. She looked around. None of the guards was close by, or paying much attention to Birigida. Maybe they wanted to forget about her once the day's work was over, too.

  Annette took a deep breath. "How you doing?" she asked— in English.

  "I'm tired. I'm sore. Those—" Birigida automatically started to answer in the same tongue. Then she broke off. Her blue eyes opened wide, wider, widest. What showed up in them surprised Annette—it couldn't be anything but fear. And fear sharpened Birigida's voice, too, when she asked, "Who are you? What are you? Are you a guard? Are you a spy?"

  "I wish!" Annette answered, which startled a laugh out of the older woman. Annette went on, "No, I'm a slave, just like you."

  "Oh." Birigida thought about it, then nodded. "Okay. They didn't tell me anybody else was doing this, too. Hi."

  "Hi." Annette tried to figure out what to ask next. Who didn't tell you? rose to the top of the list. But she couldn't ask that, either, because she already ought to know who they were. She tried a different question instead: "Why don't you let the guards know you're from the home timeline? They'd go easier on you then, I bet."

  "I can't," Birigida said. "Didn't they give you a hypnotic compulsion, too? If I thought you were a guard, I wouldn't be able to talk about it with you, either."

  "No, no compulsions," Annette said. There they were again.

  Birigida said several harsh things in low-voiced English, then several more that sounded harsh in that Celtic language. It didn't sound so musical when it was loud and angry. The blond woman dropped back into English—and started speaking softly again: "I might have known. They told me they gave it to everybody, but I halfway figured they wouldn't if you paid 'em enough not to."

  "I paid plenty," Annette said. That was true, even if it had nothing to do with benjamins. She still got headaches every so often. If that slave raider had hit her any harder, he might have caved in her skull. And she still didn't know whether her parents were all right. All right or not, they didn't know about her, either. She went on, "Can I ask you something?"

  "Sure. Go ahead. A dollar for your thoughts." Birigida seemed happy to be speaking English.

  "How come you get in so much trouble all the time? Don't you see they wouldn't treat you so bad if you did even a little more?"

  They might have been using the same words, but they weren't speaking the same language. Annette had also had that feeling when she talked with Jacques, and with Emishtar. Birigida looked at her the way a teacher would if she asked a really dumb question in school—as if she should have known better. "Isn't it boring if you're a good little slave all the time?" the older woman said. "Getting in trouble is part of the fun."

  "I guess," Annette said. That seemed unlikely to land her in trouble. She bent and tried to brush some of the mud off her skirt. She didn't want Birigida—or whatever the woman's real name was—to see her face.

  She'd run into all kinds of horrors since she got sold to the man who called himself Marwan al-Baghdadi. Seeing people from the home timeline, people from Crosstime Traffic, in the slave trade was bad enough. Even if she thought it was disgusting, though, she could at least understand why one person might want to lord it over another one. Crosstime Traffic made the rules against having anything to do with slavery as strong as it could because the people who ran the company understood that others might be tempted.

  But, while Annette could see how some people might want to be masters, she'd never dreamt others got the same sort of kick from being slaves. She supposed they talked about people like that in some of the psychology courses she wasn't taking at Ohio State. Talking about them in college was one thing. Meeting somebody like that was something else again.

  She couldn't show any of what she was thinking. If anybody was the key to getting her back to the home timeline, Birigida was. As casually as Annette could, she asked, "When does your compulsion wear off?"

  Her heart pounded while she waited for the answer. The compulsion would have to wear off, wouldn't it? Maybe some people from the home timeline wanted to be slaves all the time. But the people who ran this outfit wouldn't go for that. If men and women from the home timeline disappeared for good, others would wonder why. That could be dangerous.

  "Two weeks," Birigida said. "How about you? You were here when I came."

  "I've got another month to go," Annette answered.

  "Wow." Birigida eyed her. "No compulsion, and you're staying a long time. You're so lucky." She might have been saying, You're so rich. Sure enough, she went on, "That must have cost you an arm and a leg."

  Annette shrugged. "Getting away for so long was the hard part," she said, and Birigida nodded wisely. Annette asked, "So how do you like . . . your time here?" That was the safest way she could think of to put it.

  "It's wonderful!" Birigida's eyes glowed. Did she understand what could have happened to her? Did she understand it nearly had happened to her? Maybe she did, for she continued, "Back in the home timeline, I'm a bigwig. I tell people what to do all the time. They do it, too, or they get in trouble. Here"—she laughed—"well, that's one thing I don't have to worry about, anyhow."

  "No, not hardly," Annette said, and then she shut up, because a guard was getting close. The next thing Birigida said was in the Celtic language Annette didn't understand. Maybe she couldn't speak English around a guard till the hypnotic compulsion went away.

  But the compulsion didn't seem to apply to other slaves. Maybe the people who'd given it to her hadn't thought any other slaves from the home timeline would be here. If their man in that other Madrid hadn't bought her by mistake, none would have been.

  Emishtar walked over to Annette after Birigida went off on her own. "What was that about?" Emishtar asked. "You found a language you both know?"

  "So we did," Annette said.

  Emishtar wasn't very tall—she was shorter than Annette, and twelve to fifteen centimeters shorter than Birigida. She managed to look down her nose at the blond woman even so. "Does she make any sense when you do talk to her?" she asked.

  "Not much," Annette said. One of Emishtar's eyebrows rose, as if to say, Why am I not surprised?

  After Annette gave the answer, she thought about it. Why anybody would pay for the privilege of being a slave was beyond her. It seemed to make sense to Birigida, though. She wanted to get as far away from what she normally was as she could.

  Before the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette and her court ladies had played at being milkmaids. Annette supposed that was part of the same impulse that made Birigida do what she was doing. But a queen's notion of what being a milkmaid was like would be different from the real thing. Birigida really was a slave.

  Birigida really was a slave ... for a while. When the hypnotic compulsion set her free, she would go back to the home timeline and pick up her real life where she'd left off. She wouldn't have to worry about beatings any more. She wouldn't have to worry about hard physical work. She wouldn't have to worry about being made into someone else's toy.

  She wouldn't, no. For her, slavery was a thrill, a vacation. Annette's stomach twisted. For the rest of the slaves on the manor, this was no vacation. This was their life. If I hadn't heard Birigidajust then, it would have been my life, probably for as long as I lived, Annette though
t.

  And it still might be. She understood that. Now she had a chance. But a chance was all she had. If she didn't make the most of it, she'd still be stuck here.

  She found herself eyeing all the other slaves who worked in the garden plots. When she got back to the manor and ate supper, she knew she would look over the house slaves and the men from the roadbuilding gang the same way. Were any of them from the home timeline? Were they just pretending to come from a low-tech alternate? Were they getting their jollies by being ordered around? Would they go home with happy memories of being abused—and then fit right back into the ordinary world of the late twenty-first century?

  What did you do on your summer vacation, George? someone would ask. And George would answer, Oh, I went off to be a slave for a while. It was great!

  Annette giggled. Put that way, it sounded stupid. But that was probably how word about this place spread. You couldn't talk about it in chat rooms or by e-mail or even by telephone. Your chances of getting hacked were much too good. She wondered if temporary slaves from the home timeline got more compulsions than they knew about. Maybe they couldn't give it away in e-mail or chat rooms even if they wanted to. That made sense to Annette. It would be a good insurance policy for the folks who ran this outfit.

  There was the manor. Were other people not what they seemed? Don't act too curious, Annette told herself. You'll get in trouble. That made sense, too. But she was so curious, she wondered how she could stand it.

  Before, Jacques had seen Khadija excited enough to burst. He thought she was even more excited now than she had been then. Now, though, she'd pushed it down so it didn't show as much. Her being able to do that impressed him. She could use the excitement for fuel without wearing it on her sleeve. People who were able to do things like that often made big names for themselves.

  The guards only smiled when Jacques and Khadija went walking in the courtyard. The two of them had been doing it for a while. The guards—and the other slaves, too—took it for granted. In the ordinary way of things, it might have led to a wedding—if the masters here let slaves marry.

  Jacques wouldn't have minded if things happened in the ordinary way, not even a little. But when he went walking with Khadija now, he got something even more exciting than love. He got hope.

  "Well, what did you find out?" he asked her. He didn't name Birigida. He didn't want to make things easy for anyone who might be spying on them.

  "She really is from the place I come from," Khadija answered. "There's no doubt."

  "What was she doing with Dumnorix and his people, then?" Jacques said. "Was she pretending to belong to them, the way you pretend to be a trader's daughter? Is that how she got caught?"

  "That's what I thought at first, too." Like Jacques, Khadija spoke French. It might help keep people from snooping on them—or it might not. She went on, "But no, it isn't true. She came here because she wanted to be a slave. It's a game for her." Khadija's nostrils flared, as if at a bad smell.

  "A game?" Even though her French was as good as his, Jacques wondered if he'd heard right. "Why would anyone play at being a slave if he didn't have to? Henri on the wheel, why would anyone play at being a slave if she didn't have to? That's—mad." He found the politest name for it he could.

  Khadija nodded. "Well, my friend, I think so, too." Even then, amazed at what she'd said about Birigida, Jacques smiled to hear her call him a friend. She went on, "But Birigida has more money than sense. I can see that. At home, she's rich and important. That doesn't make her happy."

  "It would make me happy!" Jacques exclaimed.

  "That's because you have more sense than money," Khadija said.

  "Of course I do. Slaves here haven't got any money," Jacques said.

  She sent him a severe look. "Before you were a slave, too," she said, and looked ready to flip him over her shoulder if he argued any more. She could do it, too. She thought for a little while. "It's not just that she hasn't got much sense. Part of her needs to do this, too."

  "Needs to?" Now Jacques frowned. "What do you mean?"

  She thought again. Looking for an example, he realized. And she found one: "Did you ever know, or know about, somebody who couldn't keep from, uh, bothering little girls?"

  "Bothering? Oh—like that," Jacques said, and Khadija nodded. A moment later, so did he. "Yes, one of those beasts plagued Paris a few years ago. The father of a girl he outraged finally tracked him down and killed him, and that was the end of it. Nobody misses him a bit—he's bound to be roasting in hell."

  "Maybe. Where I come from, we think something like that is a sickness, and we cure it if we can," Khadija said.

  "What can a doctor do if a man is an animal inside?" Jacques asked.

  "More than you'd imagine, sometimes. We have drugs and medicines that work better than the ones you know," Khadija answered. "But they don't always work, and sometimes we have to lock up people like that to keep them from hurting others."

  To Jacques, locking them up wasn't punishment enough. That was beside the point now, though. "You think Birigida is one of those people who can't help it?" he said. Khadija nodded. He asked, "Why not give her these fancy medicines, then? Why not lock her up?"

  "If I can get back to where I belong, they probably will," Khadija said. "Till now. . . Well, think about it. The man who goes after little girls hurts other people. He makes other people notice him. When Birigida plays these games, the only one she hurts is herself. That makes her harder to spot."

  "You have the answer for everything!" Jacques said.

  She laughed a bitter laugh. "If I'm so smart, what am I doing here? I don't get a thrill out of it, even if Birigida does. Sometimes a clout in the head is worth more than a whole pile of fancy answers—and that's what I'm doing here."

  "But the answers give you a chance to get away," Jacques said.

  "Maybe." No, Khadija didn't want to show how hopeful she was. "Just maybe."

  Two weeks—the slowest two weeks of Annette's life. She watched Birigida like a hawk all that time. The last thing she wanted—absolutely the last thing—was for the blond woman to do something so stupid, it would get her killed. Maybe Birigida was ready to go back to her real life, too. She didn't act quite so lazy or quite so foolish as she had before.

  The guards gave her a bad time anyway. They'd got used to it by then. They punished her for things they would have ignored from other women. When she yelped, they laughed at her. But she does stuff like that so they will come down on her, Annette thought.

  If she'd read about people like Birigida in an abnormal-psychology text, she would have figured she would never meet one for real. She would also have figured running into one for real would make her sick. And, in a way, it did. The idea that anyone would want to be a slave, even if not forever, still bewildered her. She didn't pretend to understand it.

  But she didn't despise Birigida the way she despised the people who ran the manor. If the blond woman craved being a slave, craved being shouted at and punished, whom did that hurt? Only herself.

  It was a different story for the masters and guards. They took men and women who just wanted to go on about their own business and turned them into slaves. If those men and women got out of line, the people who ran the manor hurt them or killed them. Even if those men and women didn't get out of line, the masters and guards still kept them enslaved and used and abused them for their own pleasure. That was a different wrong from Birigida's, and a worse one.

  And it didn't even start to talk about what the masters and guards were doing to the people who lived in this alternate. The manor looked to be the seed of a much larger conquest. Crosstime Traffic wasn't supposed to work like this. It was supposed to be about quiet trade, about interfering in other alternates as little as it could.

  A lot of history in the home timeline said that was a good idea. Colonial conquests in the Americas and Africa hadn't been pretty. Plainly, the people with the assault rifles here didn't care.

  Did Crosstime Traffi
c proper even know about this alternate? Annette doubted it. Word of what was going on here in Spain would spread across the world. It would get distorted by the time it reached somebody a couple of thousand kilometers away, but it would go that far. If anyone from the home timeline heard it and got curious . ..

  But if no one from the home timeline was here to get curious, the masters and guards had it made. Exploring and exploiting alternates on your own was as illegal as illegal could be. This whole setup showed why, too.

  "Tomorrow," Birigida murmured to Annette as they came back from the garden plots one chilly evening. "I can feel things getting ready inside me." She sighed. "Most of me doesn't want to go back, but I guess I have to."

  "I'm afraid so." Annette was really afraid her face would give her away. It must not have, which only proved she was a better actress than she thought.

  She stepped out at sick call the next morning, complaining of a sore shoulder. If she were someone like Birigida, she wouldn't have got away with it. But nobody thought she was faking, because she had a reputation as a hard worker. She stayed behind when the other women went to work.

  Birigida stayed behind, too. Annette saw and heard exactly how she managed that. The blond woman went up to a guard and spoke in English: "My stretch is up." She might have been talking about getting out of jail, except she'd volunteered for this. She went on, "Time for me to go back to the home timeline."

  The guard looked at her. "Oh. You're one of those. I might have known." He looked and sounded disgusted. Annette wondered if he would keep her here even if she was one of those. The joke would be on her if he did. Annette almost thought she deserved it. But keeping someone from the home timeline here might make people back there ask questions they shouldn't. Still scowling, the guard went on, "Go over there and wait while we call up the transposition chamber." He pointed to the door from which new slaves came up into the manor.