Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

"Go on! You're tryin' to fool me," Quince said.

"No such thing. Honest to God, Quince, I mean it." Frederick raised his right hand, as if taking an oath. "But you got to do it pretty quick. If you don't, if the important white folks back in New Hastings decide I can't deliver the goods-"

"I got you." The copperskin stabbed a forefinger in his direction. "You want to be a big fella himself, and you want to get big on account of us."

"I'm already a big fella," Frederick said. "What I want is for slaves to get free. That's the size of it. You keep doing what you're doing, you could mess that up for niggers and mudfaces all over Atlantis."

"Says you."

"Yeah, says me," Frederick answered. "And the reason I say so is, it's true. You go on killing people and burning stuff, they'll send lots of soldiers after you, and I won't be able to do anything about it."

"So we'll lick 'em. You say you did." Quince seemed stubborn enough to make a proper leader for a rebel band. He might have got on well with Lorenzo.

"We did. And maybe you will. But even if you do, you'll still be hurting all the other slaves in Atlantis," Frederick said.

"Why should we care? When did them other fuckers ever care about us?"

Before Frederick could answer, Lieutenant Braun unexpectedly broke in: "One of your poets in English wrote, 'No man an island is.' He was wise, in spite of an Englishman being. Whatever you do, to other folk it makes a difference. Whatever they do, to you it matters. Believe me, I would not be in this strange land a stranger if this were not so."

"Huh," Quince said. "I can't decide here on my own. I got to go back and talk with some other people, know what I mean?"

"Sure," Frederick said. "Do that, then."

"Strange. Even insurrectionists find it needful to invent again the committee," Braun said. "This may God's judgment upon us be."

"Huh," Quince repeated, not knowing what to make of that. Frederick Radcliff didn't know, either. Still scratching his head, the copperskin eased away from the people who'd entered his territory and slipped off into the woods.

"It could be that you him convinced," Lieutenant Braun said.

"Could be, yeah," Frederick said. "Could be you helped, too. Hope so." He shrugged. "Now we wait and see what happens next, that's all." For Jeremiah Stafford, waiting and seeing what happened next was the hardest part of having Frederick Radcliff go off to Gernika. If the Negro persuaded his fellow slaves to abandon their revolt, he would be a hero. If the slaves kept fighting, whites in the Senate would decide Frederick couldn't keep his own side in line-which would doom the Slug Hollow agreement. And if some angry white man down by St. Augustine shot Frederick, Negroes and copperskins in the rest of the country would explode-which would also doom the Slug Hollow agreement.

Dooming the Slug Hollow agreement would also doom Consul Stafford-politically, anyhow. Frederick Radcliff was liable to be doomed in the far more literal sense of the word. He'd understood that when he set out for Gernika, but he'd gone anyhow. That was admirable or stupid, depending on one's point of view. Stafford wanted to think the black man was nothing but the usual dumb nigger. He wanted to, but he couldn't. Whatever Frederick was, usual he wasn't.

And the two of them were bound together now, like those occasional sets of twins that seldom lived long. If Frederick failed, he pulled Stafford down with him. That was part of what went with signing the accord at Slug Hollow. For the life of him, though, Stafford still didn't see what else he could have done.

Some of his Senatorial colleagues from states south of the Stour understood why he'd done what he'd done. Not all of them were willing to admit it where a reporter-or even a waiter-might overhear them and quote them, but they would when they talked with him in private.

Others understood nothing and didn't care to be enlightened. A Senator from Gernika with the euphonious name of Storm Whitson thundered against "that interfering nigger" with every breath he took. And Storm Whitson had taken a lot of breaths. He was up past ninety. As a youth, he'd carried a musket against King George's redcoats. Later, he'd moved south to Gernika and made his fortune in indigo and rice-and in clever slave-dealing. Stafford wished he could blame Whitson's intemperance on senile decay. But, while the old man wore thick glasses and cupped a hand behind his ear to get the drift of what other Senators were saying, his mind was clear. He'd been thundering about Negroes and copperskins for as long as anyone could remember.

He stood up on the Senate floor now-leaning on a stick, yes, but despite that straighter than many younger men-and shouted, "These inferior breeds must remain under our thumb! God has ordained it, and we would go against His will if we were to change the way we have done things for so long!"

Heads bobbed up and down. Not so long before, Stafford's would have been one of those nodding heads. He too had believed the slaveholders' course was ordained by God. But, if it was, why had God let the insurrectionists beat the stuffing out of the Atlantean army in the backwoods of New Marseille?

Before he could ask the question, his comrade on the dais found a different one. "I realize the honorable Conscript Father is a man of remarkable experience," Consul Newton said-loudly, to make sure Senator Whitson heard him. "But will he tell this house he was present at the Creation and heard from Jehovah's lips this onus laid upon the darker races?"

Senators from north of the Stour laughed. So did some from south of the river. Storm Whitson simply stood there, a living illustration of the third part of the riddle of the Sphinx. "Beware, your Excellency, lest God punish you for your iniquity," he said.

"If you are so sure He will, then He must speak to you, eh?" Newton said.

"God will speak to any man who opens his heart and listens," Senator Whitson replied.

"Any man who opens his mouth and talks can say God speaks to him," Newton observed. "But saying something doesn't make it so."

"As you have proved time and again," Whitson snapped. He might be getting frail, but his wits had indeed stayed sharp-sharp enough to make Newton wince.

Stafford used his gavel. "Discussions of God and His purposes do not belong in the Senate," he said. "As the Atlantean Assembly ordained even before we won our freedom from England, our people may follow any faith they choose. Or, if they choose, they may follow none."

"The Lord will punish them if they choose to follow none," Whitson declared.

"Maybe. As a matter of fact, I think so, too. But"-Stafford shrugged-"neither of us can prove it. It's between them and God, not between them and us."

"I always thought the Atlantean Assembly made a mistake," Whitson said. "A proper Christian country has no business putting up with Jews and freethinkers and other unrighteous folk."

"By law, the United States of Atlantis are not a proper Christian country," Stafford said. "Follow the Bible in your own life if you want to. No one will tell you you may not. But in the Senate, we will follow the law."

"Follow it even when it takes us straight to ruination," Whitson jeered.

"Change isn't ruin. We need to get used to that. We need to remember it," Consul Newton said. "I've had reason to think about that quite a bit lately. Change is only change. It can be good or bad. It doesn't have to be either one."

"When you've seen as much change as I have, young fellow, you'll know it's mostly bad," Senator Whitson said. "And this change you want to ram down our throats is the worst one yet. Nigger equality? Pah!" He made as if to spit.

"The way it looks to me, we have one choice besides liberating our slaves: we can kill them all, or try," Jeremiah Stafford said. "We can't trust them to go on serving us the way they did before. The Slug Hollow agreement may not be a wonderful bargain for Atlantis. It is the best bargain we could get, things being as they are."