Other Earths Read Online Free Page B

six yards away at the corner of the barracks. He was a black man in threadbare coveralls. He was sweating in the heat. For a while there was silence, the three of us blinking at each other.
    Then, “I didn’t mean to shoot him,” the black man said.
    “Then you shouldn’t have aimed a rifle at him and pulled the trigger,” I said back, recklessly.
    Our assailant made no immediate response. He seemed to be thinking this over. Grasshoppers lit on the cuffs of his ragged pants. His head was large, his hair cut crudely close to the skull. His eyes were narrow and suspicious. He was barefoot.
    “It was not my intention to hurt anyone,” he said again. “I was shooting from a distance, sir.”
    By this time Percy had managed to sit up. He seemed less afraid of the rifleman than he ought to have been. Less afraid, at any rate, than I was. “What did you intend?”
    He gave his attention to Percy. “To warn you away, is all.”
    “Away from what?”
    “This building.”
    “Why? What’s in this building?”
    “My son.”
     
    The “three million” in Percy’s title were the men, women and children of African descent held in bondage in the South in the year 1860. For obvious reasons, the number is approximate. Percy always tried to be conservative in his estimates, for he did not want to be vulnerable to accusations of sensationalizing history.
    Given that number to begin with, what Percy had done was to tally up census polls, where they existed, alongside the archived reports of various state and local governments, tax and business statements, Federal surveys, rail records, etc., over the years between then and now.
    What befell the three million?
    A great many—as many as one third—emigrated North, before changes in the law made that difficult. Some of those who migrated continued on up to Canada. Others made lives for themselves in the big cities, insofar as they were allowed to. A smaller number were taken up against their will and shipped to certain inhospitable “colonies” in Africa, until the excesses and horrors of repatriation became notorious and the whole enterprise was outlawed.
    Some found a place among the freemen of New Orleans or worked boats, largely unmolested, along the Gulf Coast. A great many went West, where they were received with varying degrees of hostility. Five thousand “irredeemably criminal” black prisoners were taken from Southern jails and deposited in a Utah desert, where they died not long after.
    Certain jobs remained open to black men and women—as servants, rail porters, and so forth—and many did well enough in these professions.
    But add the numbers, Percy said, even with a generous allowance for error, and it still comes up shy of the requisite three million.
    How many were delivered into the Liberty Lodges? No one can answer that question with any certainty, at least not until the evidence sealed by the Ritter Inquiry is opened to the public. Percy’s estimate was somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000. But as I said, he tended to be conservative in his figures.
    “We were warned there was a family of wild men up here,” I said.
    “I’m no wilder than I have to be,” the gunman said.
    “I didn’t ask you to come visit.”
    “You hurt Percy bad enough, whether you’re wild or not. Look at him. He needs a medic.”
    “I see him all right, sir.”
    “Then, unless you mean to shoot us both to death, will you help me get him back to our carriage?”
    There was another lengthy pause.
    “I don’t like to do that,” the black man said finally.
    “There won’t be any end to the trouble. But I don’t suppose I have a choice, except, as you say, sir, to kill you. And that I cannot bring myself to do.”
    He said these words calmly enough, but he had a way of forming his vowels, and pronouncing them deep in his throat, that defies transcription. It was like listening to a volcano rumble.
    “Take his right arm, then,” I said. “I’ll get on his left. The