Harry Turtledove - United States of Atlantis

The Atlantean dignitaries bore down on the table where Victor and Blaise sat. Without so much as a good-morning, Fenner said, "You have the terms with you?"

"I crave your pardon," Victor said. "I must have left them up in the room. After I break my fast, you may rest assured I shall let you examine them at your leisure."

That produced the desired effect: it incensed Fenner. "Devil fry you black as a griddle cake forgotten over the fire!" he shouted, loud enough to make everyone in the common room stare at him. "Why did you not have the consideration, the common courtesy, the-the plain wit, to bring them down with you? Think on how much time you might have saved, man! Just think!"

"Easy, Isaac, easy. You might do some thinking yourself, instead of bellowing like a branded calf." Custis Cawthorne set a hand on Fenner's arm. "Unless I find myself much mistaken, General Radcliff would end up holding your leg in his hand if he pulled it any harder."

"What?" Fenner gaped, goggle-eyed.

"I do have the treaty here, Isaac," Victor said. The serving girl chose that moment to come up and ask him what he wanted. He got to prolong Fenner's agony by hashing over the virtues and vices of ham, sausages, and bacon. Having finally picked sausages and sent the girl back to the kitchen, Victor produced the draft. "Here is what the Englishmen and I have arrived at. Why don't you and Custis sit down and look it over and order something to put ballast in your bellies?"

"A capital notion," Cawthorne said. "Capital." He proceeded to follow Victor's suggestion. Isaac Fenner stood there till the older man tugged at his sleeve. "You wanted to see this. Now that you can, aren't you going to?"

"Errr-" Fenner had to take a deep breath to stop making the noise. He sat down most abruptly. Almost as if against his will, he started reading over Cawthorne's shoulder. Then he tugged the paper away from the other man, so that it lay on the table between them.

The serving girl came back with Victor's breakfast. She smiled at Fenner and Cawthorne. "What would you gents care for?"

"I don't care for this fifth article-not even slightly," Fenner said.

"She means for breakfast, Isaac," Custis Cawthorne said. "As for me, I'll take the ham and potatoes, and a mug of ale to wash'em down."

"Breakfast." By the way Fenner said it, the possibility had slipped his mind." Hmm… What Custis chose will suit me well enough, too."

Victor wouldn't have given better than three to two that Fenner had even heard what Custis Cawthorne chose for breakfast. The answer was enough to make the serving girl go away, though, which was what the Bredestown Assemblyman had in mind. Fenner's forefinger descended on the treaty. "This fifth article-" he began again.

"England wanted us to compel the states to undo their measures against the loyalists," Victor said.

"Good luck!" Cawthorne exclaimed. "We'd be fighting half a dozen wars at once if we tried."

"Just what I told 'em," Victor said. "They do have something of a point, after all-loyalists who did not bear arms against the Atlantean Assembly may become good citizens in the circumstances now prevailing. No certainty of it, but they may. And so- what's the phrase Hartley used?-'earnestly recommending' that the states go easy struck me as a reasonable compromise."

"Why should we compromise?" Fenner said. "We won!"

Patiently, Victor answered, "The firmer the peace we make with England now, the smaller the chance we'll have to fight another war in ten years' time, or twenty. God has not sent me word from On High that we are bound to win then. Has He been more generous with you?"

"When I was a boy, Croydon folk would have thrown you in the stocks for a jape like that," Cawthorne said. "They might do it yet, were the fellow so exercising his wit some abandoned vagabond rather than the hero of Atlantis' liberation."

"People here are touchy about God," Blaise agreed. "Even touchier than they are most places, I mean."

"They are certain they are right. Being thus certain, they are equally sure they have the right-nay, more: the duty-to impose their views on everyone they can," Cawthorne said.

A crack like that might have won him time in the stocks were he less prominent and less notorious. His breakfast, and Isaac Fenner's, interrupted perusal of the treaty. After a while, Fenner said, "This is good." Again, he sounded surprised.

"A full belly strengthens the spirit." Custis Cawthorne seemed to listen to himself. "Not bad. Not bad at all. I must remember that one."

Fenner was still eyeing the draft of the treaty. "It will be some time before we can pay our debts at par with sterling," he said sadly.

Victor also knew the parlous state of the Atlantean Assembly's paper-who didn't? But he answered, "Would you rather I had told the English commissioners we intend to repudiate those debts? They lodge down the street. I will introduce them to you later this morning. If you intend to convey that message, you may do so yourself."

"No, no," Fenner said. "Now that we are a nation, we must be able to hold up our heads amongst our fellow nations. Even so, putting our house in order will prove more difficult than many of us would wish."

"Never fear. We can always find some cozening trick or another to befool our creditors," Cawthorne said. "France has proved that year after year."

"How was France?" Victor asked him. "Most enjoyable, at the level where I traveled," Cawthorne said. "If you have the means to live well-or have friends with the means to let you live well-you can live better in and around Paris than anywhere else on earth. But the peasantry? Dear God in heaven! Upon my oath, the grievances the French peasants have against their king and nobles make ours against England seem light as a feather drifting on the breeze by comparison."

"Then let them rise, too," Fenner said. "Freedom is no less contagious than smallpox, and no inoculation wards against it."

"Would you say the same, Mr. Fenner, to a Negro slave picking indigo or growing rice in the south of Atlantis?" Blaise asked.

Custis Cawthorne chuckled softly to himself. Fenner sent him an irritated look. "Speaking for myself, I have no great use for slavery," he replied. "I hope one day to see it vanish from the United States of Atlantis, as it has already vanished or grown weak in so much of the north here. For the time being, however, it-"

"Makes the slaveholders piles of filthy lucre," Cawthorne broke in.

"Not how I should have phrased it," Fenner said.

Why not? Victor wondered. His son could be sold at any time, for no better reason than to line Marcel Freycinet's pockets. That made him look at holding Negroes and copperskins in perpetual servitude in a whole new light.

But Fenner hadn't finished: "One day before too many years have passed, I expect property in slaves to grow hopelessly uneconomic when measured against property in, say, machinery. And when that day comes, slave holding in Atlantis will be at an end."

"How many years?" Blaise pressed, as if wondering how patient he should-or could-be.

"I should be surprised if it came to pass in fewer than twenty years," Isaac Fenner answered. "I should also be surprised if slavery still persisted a lifetime from now."

Blaise made a noise down deep in his throat. That did not please him. No-it did not satisfy him. Isaac minks my son Nicholas will grow to manhood a slave, Victor thought. He minks my son may live out his whole life as a chattel. Put in those terms, Fenner's reasoned and reasonable estimate didn't satisfy him, either. But what could he do about it? Freeing slaves was far more explosive than compensating loyalists.

"Can I bring you anything else, gents?" the serving girl asked.

Custis Cawthorne shoved his mug across the table toward her. "If you fill this up again, I shall thank you sweetly for it"