The man in the shackles said, “Uprisings.”
“Yes,” Socrates said. “They lived in a permanent state of fear. Quite rightly, I might add. They deserved to. They were always listening out for plots against them. Which were few and far between actually, but they happened.”
The man in the shackles didn’t speak. Socrates was walking slow circles around the gasoline pool, clockwise, declaiming, enjoying himself, like he imagined his ancient namesake had in the marketplaces of old Athens. He said, “What do you suppose they did when they discovered a planned move against them?”
The man in the shackles said, “Examples.”
“Exactly,” Socrates said. “They made examples of the ringleaders. They had two favorite methods. Do you know what they were?”
“No.”
“The first was breaking on the wheel. Do you know what that was?”
The man in the shackles did know, but he wanted to keep the conversation going, obviously, so he said, “No.”
Socrates said, “A man would be stood upright and tied by his wrists and his ankles to a large wagon wheel. Then a fellow slave would be made to break all his bones with a heavy iron bar. All of them, but slowly and in sequence. Possibly an arm first, and then the opposite leg, and so on. The victim would be reduced to a bag of jelly, just hanging there with no effective skeletal support. The agony must have been terrible.”
The man in the shackles said, “Yes.”
Socrates said, “The second method was to burn them alive. They would be tied to a stake, and a bonfire would be built around them.”
The man in the shackles said nothing.
“The power of example,” Socrates said. “Very effective. There was trouble, but surprisingly little of it, given that for a long time an overwhelming majority was suffering hideous torment.”
The man in the shackles said, “Bad.”
Socrates smiled. “But there were enormous profits to safeguard. Then as now. White powder and insatiable demand. Incalculable wealth, something that had never been seen before. Should I burn you alive?”
The man in the shackles said, “No.”
“But you stole from me.”
“No.”
“Half a million dollars is missing.”
“Mistake.”
“Sloppy bookkeeping?”
“Yes.”
“Crystallizing the sugar was an art. The cane was crushed in the mills, and the juice was drained and boiled, and the molasses was skimmed off, and the resulting pure liquid was dried in the sun, and lime was added, and the powder just appeared. That is, if everything was done right. If it wasn’t, then money was lost, and the skilled man was beaten severely, often flogged, even though he was a skilled worker and even though the process was difficult and his mistake might have been entirely innocent. Sometimes the victim had a limb cut off, usually a leg. Sometimes he was castrated.”
The man in the shackles said nothing.
Socrates said, “It was about the power of example.”
The man in the shackles shifted his weight and said, “Pocket change.”
“Whose?” Socrates asked, interested. “The plantation owners’ or mine?”
“Either one.”
“True,” Socrates said. “One hogshead of sugar didn’t amount to much. A tiny percentage really. Almost invisible, just like a bag of cash is to me.”
“Well, then.”