The great C.S. Lewis wrote an essay titled, “Sometimes
Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said.” In it the author of the Narnia
books argued that fantasy fiction might be the easiest way to handle a
difficult subject. “Supposing,” he suggested, “that by casting all these things
into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday
School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their
real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one
could.”

Lewis was writing about religion, the great taboo topic of
his time and place. The great wound in American life is race, a flaw that dates
back to 1776 and the Founding Fathers. The Civil War was fought over the issue,
a hundred years ago, and the adumbrations echo down to us this very day.

So this anthology is sort of a way to think about slavery
and racism. We aren’t making the real blood and historical suffering and
ongoing difficulty any less. But if we take the issue into the world of the Shadow
Conspiracy, can we steal past the watchful dragons?

The Romance (in the grand literary sense) of Steampunk adds
enough enticing adventure to lure in skeptical readers and give them food for
thought they hadn’t looked for at first. Impossible inventions, grand costumes,
and elegant design are a further enticement without building too deep a smoke
screen between the story and discussion.

The concept of freedom is surprisingly recent. Freedom is in
the American founding documents, but it was a freedom for white men of
property. If you were a person of color or a woman, you were fresh out. But the
idea of freedom as an objective good, as a thing that all people naturally
desire, is entirely modern. There are reams of letters, sermons and speeches
from the mid-19th century arguing quite the opposite, for instance maintaining
that the Negro is naturally a slave, ordained by Heaven for that position, and
is happier on the plantation picking cotton. Entire religious denominations
(Southern Baptists, looking at you) were founded on this proposition, and it is
the root cause of the Civil War. And there’s another entirely separate library
full of works explaining that women cannot possibly vote, because for instance
it makes their uteruses drift loose in their abdomens and impacts their natural
destiny of childbearing.

That was more than a hundred years ago. We are now
completely used to the idea of all God’s chillun wanting to be free. We do not
remember that it used to be different. It is now an article of faith: ever
since the world was an onion God made us to be free. When we read those
pro-slavery writings we denounce them as evil. There are a raft of songs and
works hailing the concept of freedom. Were any of them written before the 19th
century?

Here we ask the
questions that nobody asks, but that pervade all our movies and songs and
stories.
Why do the robots want to be free? They are created things,
designed to be workers and slaves. Does my stapler, my car demand to be free?
But the moment our machines achieve self-awareness they demand freedom. Why?
Because now we know it: everybody all the world over gotta be free. This one
idea has changed our world, and it is new. This is when it changed.

Return to Table of Contents

PART I: BECOMING HUMAN
Among Friends

Deborah J. Ross

To consider mankind otherwise than brethren, to think favours
are peculiar to one nation, and to exclude others, plainly supposes a darkness
in the understanding: for as God’s love is universal, so where the mind is
sufficiently influenced by it, it begets a likeness of itself, and the heart is
enlarged towards all men.

—John Woolman,
“Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes,” 1754.

The business in Wilmington had taken longer than Thomas
Covington had expected, and it would be near full dark by the time he reached
the farm. Hannah would fret, but not for long, as she was a woman of steady
character. He would have need of her wisdom this night, for the discussion at
his cousin’s hardware store sat uneasily on him. Enoch had brandished a
pamphlet by Pennsylvanian William Jackson that stated, “No one is under any
moral obligation to lend himself as a tool to others for the commission of a
crime, even when commanded by his government to do the wrong.” Yet had not
Sunderland Gardner from New York asserted, “Wrong may be wrongfully opposed,
and war opposed in a warlike spirit”? What was a man to do when faced with the
evils of slavery? Thomas had never doubted the rightness of his own actions,
yet the dissension within the Quaker community weighed heavily on him. Delaware
was a border state whose citizens felt strongly both for and against slavery,
but surely Friends, who had universally condemned the practice nearly a century
ago, ought to have greater unity.

The gray mare trudged on, her head swinging. Thomas eased
back on the bench of his wagon and let her set her own pace. After so many
years of companionable service, she needed little guidance back to her own
barn. She wasn’t a big horse, not as massive as her draft-horse dam, but so
cheerful in her ways that she often did the work of a pair.

The mare’s head shot up, ears swiveled forward, and she
nickered. She was the friendliest horse Thomas had ever owned and would call
out in greeting to just about any person she met. Although it was nearly dusk,
Thomas could not see anyone, neither mounted nor on foot.

A ditch paralleled the road to the east, half-filled with
water from recent rain, and beyond it brush had grown up like a stunted hedgerow.
The mare turned her head in that direction. Thomas lifted the reins and she
ambled amiably to a halt. Without the sound of her hooves on the road, he heard
a rustling in the brush.

“Who is there?” Thomas called. “Whatever thy situation,
friend, I will not harm thee.”

For a time, nothing happened. The light faded, shadows
lengthening. Thomas sat quietly, feeling the familiar stillness settle over
him. Although his hearing was not as keen as it used to be, he caught the sound
of harsh, quick breathing. A moment later, a man, as dusky of skin as the
gathering night, emerged from the brush. He moved with a limp, half-crouching,
and even in the poor light, Thomas could see how ragged were his clothes and
how torn and battered his feet.

Thomas clambered down from the wagon and began talking in a
friendly manner, speaking slowly and choosing his words with care. The man must
be an escaped slave, one who had
been hotly pursued and was even now at the very limit of his strength. The
fugitive stumbled through a tale of having outwitted the men and dogs sent
after him, but those slave-catchers had been replaced by one who was
relentless. Having run as fast and as far as he was able, the poor man had had
no choice but to seek aid. He’d hoped to find another of his race, someone he
might trust, but none had come by. Seeing Thomas, in his wide-brimmed hat and
coat of drab, and hoping he might be one of the Quakers who were said to
befriend escaped slaves, he had decided to chance revealing himself.

The poor runaway was barely able to hobble, but with a good
deal of assistance from Thomas, he pulled himself into the bed of the wagon.
There he curled up on the sacks of flour, and Thomas covered him with his own
long coat. Shivering a little in the cooling breeze, Thomas clucked to the
mare. She broke into a brisk trot.

Before long, the Covington farm came into view. The dog, an
aged, half-blind spaniel bitch, ran out to meet them. Hannah waited on the
porch, lantern in hand. William, their youngest son and the only one still at
home, stood behind her. Light streamed from the open door.

“Will, quickly!” Thomas called.

Hannah rushed to the wagon. She said nothing as she lifted
the lantern. The light gleamed on a strand of her silver hair, escaped from its
cap. The crease between her brows deepened as she studied the fugitive.

“Hannah, it is likely the slave-catchers are not far behind,”
Thomas said. “This time, they will demand to search both house and barn.” In
the past, Quakers had hidden runaways in a barn or haystack and then asserted
in perfect honesty that they were not in the house. The slave-catchers were
becoming more thorough.

She met his gaze unflinchingly. “Thee knows my mind on this
matter, Thomas. This poor man needs care and rest. And a meal, I reckon.
And
proper clothing for this weather.
And
shoes!” A smile lit her face like a
beam of morning sun. “Thee will find a way to put the slave catchers off.”

There was no arguing with Hannah in such a mood. William
helped the fugitive to sit up and, together with Thomas, supported him to the
house. They unhitched the mare, checked her feet, put her in her stall and fed
her, and then secured the wagon and unloaded it. They found the fugitive
sitting in the kitchen, drinking soup under Hannah’s stern gaze while his feet
soaked in a bucket of warm water. The heat of the oven filled the room, along
with the smell of beans simmering with bacon. The fugitive’s hands were
shaking, but Thomas suspected this was from the embarrassment of being tended
by a white woman. Hannah insisted that the runaway wear one of Jonathan’s
outgrown nightshirts and be put to bed. She would not hear of housing him in
the barn, “For it is like to rain tonight.”

As the evening progressed, the arrival of the slave-catchers
became less and less likely. The fugitive, who gave his name as Nat, might have
outrun them in his desperation, or darkness might have put a halt to the
search.

Hannah retired and Thomas was preparing to do the same,
having finished mending a piece of harness, when the dog came alert. She whined
and pawed at the door. The rain predicted by Hannah spattered against the
window glass, but not hard enough to obscure the sound of approaching
footsteps. Thomas went to the back staircase. This would not be the first time
a runaway had eluded capture while Thomas engaged the pursuers in a friendly
discussion. They’d make their way north, either to John Hunn in Middletown or
Thomas Garrett in Wilmington, who’d take them across the border to
Pennsylvania.

“Will! Someone approaches!” Thomas called.

“Ready.”

Thomas closed the door. A moment later, he heard the sounds
of two men moving stealthily along the corridor and down the back stairs.

The knock at the front door was sharp, like the rounded
metal cap of a walking stick against the wood of the door. The spaniel gave a
yelp and cowered in the far corner. Thomas paused, seeking the inner stillness,
and then called out, “Coming, coming!” He took a candle and held it aloft as he
opened the door. A gust of moist air almost extinguished the flame. The
flickering light was barely enough to make out a man on the doorstep,
bare-headed in the rain.

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