Servant or Slave

Is service a privilege or a chain?Two young men face this question. Both live in the Dozen Landsteads, where life centers on the nation's Bay. One young man lives at the beginning of the twentieth century, the other in the sixteenth century. Both youths possess masters. But do the masters have their best interests at heart?"Servant or Slave" presents twin tales of love, faithfulness, and responsibility. It can be read on its own or as a side story in Waterman, a speculative fiction series set in an alternative version of the Chesapeake Bay region. Waterman is part of Turn-of-the-Century Toughs, a cycle of alternate history series (Dark Light, Waterman, Life Prison, Commando, Michael's House, and The Eternal Dungeon) about disreputable men on the margins of society, and the men and women who care for them. Set between the 1880s and the 1910s, the novels and stories take place in an alternative version of America that was settled by inhabitants of the Old World in ancient times. One of the series in the cycle, Waterman, combines elements of the 1910s with retrofuturistic imagery from the 1960s.