Subjection (28 page)

Sascha raises an eyebrow at me, looking impressed.

“So I bought a
lot
of slaves, all sorts, but especially the ones who seemed bright. Those who did things like you did, when I found you at the brothel. The ones who were bold, defiant, willing to take risks. I hired some university students as well, and I subjected both groups to the same testing procedures, and do you know what I found?”

“They weren’t all that different,” Sascha hypothesizes.

I smile, pleased that he’s thinking along the same lines that I did. “Not only were they not that different, but in more cases than one, the Demoted people came out
higher
on practical tests. Following instructions. Attention to detail. Creative thinking. Despite many having lower Assessment scores and often lower IQ scores than their free counterparts, there was a certain subset who outperformed them on every task.”

Sascha sits there, looking utterly unsurprised. My involvement seems to surprise him, but not the research himself. Then again, he’s part of the group who I’m sure would have excelled on any of the measures I used to test my subjects. He looks a little angry, probably that I haven’t told him this before, but more than anything, he seems curious. I know he’s thinking about everything he’s seen, integrating it flawlessly with the way I’ve acted and what he knows. He puts things together so quickly that I don’t worry about dumping this much information on him. Even when he drops the tablet and looks away, I’m pretty sure it’s more a case of emotional overload.

“Come on, Sascha, you’ve had eight thousand questions for me since I bought you,” I point out, apologetic. I should have answered all of this so much sooner.

“I’ve done a bit of research on the Demoted myself,” Sascha mentions, casual. “I never noticed anything legitimate about the differences, just a lot of fringe stuff. Questionable methods; most of it is easily discredited.”

No, he wouldn’t have found my research. It was silenced, thanks to Kristine Miller. But I don’t tell him that.

I shrug. “It didn’t amount to much. Research like that surfaces every few years, abolitionist movements try to bring it to light and nobody cares. But that wasn’t the most important thing I found. I noticed that slaves from different re-education centers performed vastly differently from one another, enough that it stood out in the data without even having to run statistical analyses on it. That suggested a problem, and a far more interesting research question. The re-education centers run on a standardized curriculum of sorts, government mandated, but the implementation of the rules varies from place to place. And it’s in this variation that I noticed that some slaves were performing better, others worse, others… well, let’s just say that some were unable to perform at all.”

Sascha waits, staring at me intently, eager for more. I continue.

“The re-education centers with the most violations—that is, record of the most humane treatment—produced the brightest slaves. The ones who had been cited repeatedly for inadequate punishments, overfeeding, coddling—those were the ones who produced the brightest and most capable slaves.” I stop, bitter at the thought of all the research I wasted. But I have a chance to try again now, and I have someone to help. “I made it my mission to figure out how we can stop wasting potential, how we can fix the Demoted system. It’s been my obsession since I was a teenager.”

“Why aren’t you working for the State Department?” Sascha asks.

It’s a reasonable question; State Department jobs are lucrative and provide quite a bit of security for their employees. Unfortunately, my mother ensured that I would never have that opportunity. Without telling Sascha what transpired in the past, I can’t answer that honestly.

“The system is too broken to fix from the inside,” I say. “Besides, the money is to be made from privatization. The re-education centers are privately owned, just government contracted.”

Sascha nods. “The Miller System,” he recalls. “I bet the woman who invented that has more money than she knows what to do with.”

I nod. My mother never worried about money. It was her security and her weapon. It still is. Sascha hasn’t made the connection yet, and I’m pleased to see that I can still keep some secrets to myself.

“So, why did you stop?” he asks.

The court order played a big part in it, as had the fear of going to prison. But if I tell Sascha, he might back out, turn against me. I’ve given him enough reason to, and even if he wants to stay, the knowledge could still be used against him. “It wasn’t the right time,” I say instead.

Sascha gives me a doubtful look. It’s the same look I give him when he’s doing a poor job of lying to me.

“I needed to have a stronger case,” I try again. It’s partially true. “I didn’t want to get dismissed like the rest of the research. I wanted to succeed; when I finally finished my research, I wanted it to be flawless. Besides, I’m not completely removed from that world. Even my position at Dean & Chanu is helping me gain legitimacy in the field. I started working there as a financial analyst, but I became their expert on the slave industry. Clearinghouses, matching organizations, research, re-education centers. Medical research, that’s how I found out that a good portion of the Demoted are used as medical test subjects. For every brilliant pathologist who is discovering the cure to new diseases, thousands of Demoted are killed testing the cure. I orchestrated my position carefully, and now I have relationships with all the major players. I know which ones will provide data, which ones won’t, which ones are in a poor enough financial position that their silence can be bought while I test their slaves.”

Sasha’s look is somewhere between hopeful and cautious. I can see him battling with himself and the new information. “What does that do for you?”

“It gives me connections,” I answer honestly. “I can start my research again… for real, this time, not just my test project.” It can protect me from my mother, but if I do it right, Sascha won’t need to know about this threat.

“And when your research is finished?” he asks.

“I can destroy the Demoted system as we know it.”

Chapter 25
Trust

I’m stunned. My master? An abolitionist? “So, then, your results could actually destroy the Demoted system? No more slaves?”

“What?” My master looks surprised. “No, I’m not against the Demoted system at all—I think it’s rather logical, especially the sterilization part; it’s been humanity’s only successful response to overpopulation. Unemployment is virtually non-existent, crime is down, parents work harder to prepare their kids, who are getting smarter with each generation—the benefits far outweigh the costs. I think that slavery is practical for now; it just needs to be reworked. And I think that the research I am doing has the potential to leave a mark on the world forever—imagine,
my
name on the list of top researchers, my brand on the re-education centers. I want to revolutionize the system, give brighter slaves the chance to prosper and take the whole Demoted system to a new level.”

“Oh.” I guess every slave kind of hopes his master is a closet abolitionist.

“Don’t look so crushed; I am not a fan of the current system. I strongly disagree that anybody needs to be treated worse than animals, which is how it usually works now. And still, plenty of people who are Demoted do well enough in life. I believe that they wouldn’t have done well elsewhere, although they certainly aren’t allowed to reach their full potential,” my master explains. “The brighter ones are usually Demoted in the first place because of some stupid
choice
that they made, not because of any real lack of intellect. I mean, what if the person who could have cured a terminal illness never had the opportunity to do it just because he or she decided to party too much before the Assessment?”

I feel myself crashing back down to the real world a little bit. I suppose it’s for the best, but for just a moment, I had allowed myself to hope that my master might be opposed to the system that hurt me so much. Instead, he wants a piece of the pie. “So, you don’t think slavery is wrong, or anything?”

“Not inherently,” my master dismisses the thought. “People are always subjugated in one form or another. At least this way, it’s regulated. It’s the treatment that appalls me, and more importantly, the destruction of potential and possibility. We live in a time when intellect is valued over all else, and yet we squander it so quickly?”

Right. Intellect
is
valued over human life, dignity, shame… “So it’s like… an intellectual pursuit?” I manage. “Like finding the next prime number?”

My master shrugs. “It’s that. It’s a desire to change the way things work. It’s prestige as well. I want my name to live on for recreating the Demoted system, particularly the re-education centers. I want a research institute in my name. If it’s successful, it will be extremely lucrative as well. The money that can be made from something like this is astonishing.”

I kind of think he makes enough damn money, but I don’t say that. I don’t say anything, and I certainly don’t ask him if he ever feels some sort of moral compunction. I doubt he does, from what he’s saying.

“I envision something more along the lines of job placement; apprenticeship, maybe,” my master explains, no doubt seeing my disheartened look. “Involuntary job placement, with a side of sterilization, but still. The current system attempts to work like that in a way, but too much emphasis is placed on attitude and personality destruction. Sascha, I know you’re smart, and I know where you ended up. You didn’t end up being a brothel whore because you were unintelligent, you ended up there because you have a shitty attitude and you act like a spoiled brat when you’re bored.”

“Pretty much,” I admit. It’s true, even though it stings to hear it spelled out so clearly.

“Don’t you think you would have been better off being treated with some respect, given work that interested you?” he suggests. “It would have been easier on you, and I think it honestly would have been easier on the trainers as well. If you need to transport something across a river, you don’t stop the river from flowing; you use a ship
in
the river. I know you’re not the only one who suffered needlessly, inside the re-education centers or outside of them. It’s waste, all over, waste of time, waste of resources, waste of people.”

I nod, allowing myself to consider the possibility. “If I had been placed with you immediately, I would have been a lot happier,” I admit. “I would never have fought against the chance to work with you; I would have seen it as a perfect opportunity to learn more and have a secure life.

“Of course you would have,” he nods. “Don’t think you’d be the only one who would have been happier—I would have loved to take you on before anyone got a chance to torture you in the name of ‘re-education,’ much less what happened at the brothel. Part of what’s always frustrated me about you is that I
know
you’re smarter than you act, I can see it just yearning to get out. You wouldn’t have had to hide that, and I wouldn’t have tried to treat you like a dumb beast.”

I fume, thinking back to the early days, the days when he treated me like some sort of non-entity. I think of all the time he wasted, all the fear he caused. “You didn’t talk to me or explain anything or do anything but order me around! You say you knew I was smart, why didn’t you treat me like I was? You treated me like shit.”

“I know,” my master says. “And I shouldn’t have. I wasted a lot of time ignoring you, but it was the only thing I knew to do. I didn’t think you would have believed me if I had told you about the project earlier, and I wasn’t sure I wanted you involved, anyway. I’m still not sure about that, but I can’t continue to keep you in the dark. I didn’t ever want a slave, Sascha. That much was true, and I certainly didn’t want one like you.”

I keep glaring at him.

“I felt like I had to have a slave so I could keep up appearances,” he explains. “I resented that. I resented having to change my lifestyle to fit the image of the good slaveholder, to avoid the wrong kind of attention, and I resented that I had gotten caught up in some bullheaded slave from some cheap brothel that wouldn’t be exactly what I wanted, because you weren’t and you aren’t. You don’t look the part, except when a premiere makeup artist coats you in latex paint. And for a while, I thought you actually might be as stupid as you pretended to be, because you didn’t make any moves to prove otherwise, and I thought… well, like I said, I never wanted slaves.”

“You never gave me a chance to prove otherwise,” I mutter. “Not for a long time.”

“I know,” my master says, nodding. “I should have. I should have done a lot of things differently with you.”

I’m silent for a moment, letting the words wash over me. “You bought me for show,” I realize, trying not to sound hurt. I fail. It’s not like I think he fell in love with me at first sight, or that I was so clearly brilliant that he couldn’t imagine life without me, but the cold fact that he needed a slave for his method acting hurts.

My master shrugs. “In part.”

I try not to
look
upset, either, but I’m pretty sure I fail at that as well.

“I knew I needed a slave,” my master explains. “I wasn’t expecting to buy one when I did, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to buy one from a place like that,” my master explains. “But I’m glad I did.”

“So, what, you just needed someone for the Peace Day Celebration? You really just picked up the first pretty whore that wasn’t already claimed?” It hurts to know he thought that little of me.

“That was part of it. Although, you weren’t so pretty back then. You looked sickly, beaten. I didn’t know if you’d ever stop cowering away. But if you really want to know, it was that little stunt you pulled with the cards. I could have found a far more suitable slave practically anywhere else, but Bobby insisted on dragging me there. When you did that, I couldn’t
not
be interested.”

So my plan had worked back then.

“It wasn’t just that it was a useful trick to bring out at the party, it was the fact that you could do it, and you thought to do it, and you risked yourself to make that offer to me, someone you didn’t even know. You knew you would be severely beaten by that woman, but you calculated the risk and you did it anyway. It reminded me of the brighter subset of the Demoted that I tested years ago. The thought of leaving someone like you in a filthy brothel in the slums horrified me.”