Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

What else would they be coming in from? As far as Stafford knew, Gernika had precious little territory that wasn't woods or swamps. He forced his wandering wits back to the matter at hand. "Well," he said, and then "Well" again. On the third try, he managed something better: "It's a great day for Atlantis."

"Yes, sir. I think so, too." Lieutenant Radcliffe looked confused. "Colonel Sinapis told me he thought you would say something like that. What with where you come from and all, I wasn't so sure he was right."

By the way the lieutenant talked, he'd been born north of the Stour. Some northerners thought anybody who favored slavery had been issued horns and pitchforks by Satan himself. (Some men from Stafford's part of the country felt the same about people who opposed slavery. Stafford had himself, not so long before. He declined to dwell on that now.)

Wearily, the Consul answered, "Even when you wish they would, things don't always last. When they wear out, you've got to patch 'em up or get rid of 'em and try something new. Doesn't look like we can patch slavery. Since we can't, we'd better figure out how to get along without it, don't you think?"

"Me? Uh, yes, sir." Lieutenant Radcliffe gulped and blushed like a girl. "That's my personal opinion, you understand, your Excellency. My opinion as a soldier… Well, soldiers aren't supposed to have opinions about stuff that has to do with politics."

"Of course," Stafford said dryly, and the junior-very junior-officer turned pinker yet. But it was a sound rule. Soldiers were supposed to do what the people who did concern themselves with politics told them to do. They weren't supposed to give their superiors any back talk about it, either.

If opinions got hot enough, the system would break down. If commanded to put down slaveholders, some soldiers from south of the Stour would refuse. As Stafford had seen for himself, fewer from north of the river would refuse to fight slaves. That had been true before the Slug Hollow agreement, anyhow. Maybe it wasn't any more. Northerners were liable to figure the south had had its chance for a tolerable peace, and to refuse to help it any further if it turned its back on that chance.

He hoped that wouldn't come up. If there was any justice in the world, it wouldn't. "Whether you have opinions about politics or not, Lieutenant, I do, and I will give you one of mine," Stafford said. "If I can't get the Slug Hollow agreement through the Senate after this, I will go home."

While Leland Newton was campaigning against the slave insurrectionists, the newspapers called him and Consul Stafford and Colonel Sinapis every kind of idiot under the sun. They called Frederick Radcliff worse than that. Now, conveniently forgetting what they'd said then, they sported headlines with words like peace and justice and dignity and statesmanship prominently displayed. They applied those words not only to Frederick but also to the two Consuls, who got credit for sending him south to St. Augustine.

Even Sinapis came in for praise. The papers said generous things about his common sense and restraint. Those same qualities had been conspicuously absent in his conduct of the campaign against the rebels west of the Green Ridge Mountains-again, if you believed the newspapers.

Newton didn't, which didn't stop him from reading them. If you added them all together-the ones that loved you and the ones that loathed you-you might come within spitting distance of the truth. Even if you didn't, you would find out what editors-and the men who paid them-thought to be the truth. And, in politics, what people thought to be true was at least as important as what was true.

The Consul from Croydon also found his colleague from Cosquer as eager as he was to get the Slug Hollow accord through the Senate. The only problem was, southern Senators kept using every delaying tactic they could find. Newton had known fools like Storm Whitson would go right on being foolish. He had expected canny politicos like Abel Marquard to see which way the wind was blowing.

"Didn't you make some kind of arrangement with Frederick Radcliff before he left for Gernika?" Newton asked. "Aren't you reneging on it now?"

Marquard's expressive nostrils flared. "I would never make an arrangement with a Negro-except the kind his grandfather made with his grandmother. How could I renege on an arrangement I did not make?"

"What if he claims you did?" asked Newton, who knew better than to take everything the slippery Senator said at face value.

"What if he does?" Senator Marquard answered easily. "People claim all kinds of things they can't prove."

"He may not need to prove it. He'll be a very popular man when he comes back from St. Augustine," Newton said. "If he tells the papers you said this, that, or the other thing, don't you think most people who read that will believe it?"

"People not of our profession may, but who worries about what people not of our profession believe? Only other people not of our profession." Marquard snapped his fingers to show what he thought of such people.

"They elect the burgesses who'll vote on whether to reelect you," Newton said. Senator Marquard snapped his fingers again. He seemed bound and determined to stay unimpressed.

And, on the Senate floor, he seemed bound and determined to keep the Slug Hollow agreement from ever reaching a vote. He had friends, too, friends Newton hadn't expected him to have. "Can't you do anything about those people?" Newton asked Jeremiah Stafford. "Most of them come from your state."

"I'm trying," Stafford said.

"So are they," Newton answered. "Exceedingly trying."

"Heh," the other Consul said. "Let me put that another way: I am doing everything I know how to do."

"Well, then, you'd better come up with something new, because what you know how to do isn't working," Newton said.

Stafford glared. "I don't see that I'm getting much help from you."

"From me? Any Senator from south of the Stour would just as soon cut me as look at me." Newton exaggerated, but not by much. "Maybe we really do need to wait and see if the Negro can bring them to their senses."

"Maybe we do." But Stafford didn't seem convinced, for he went on, "Have you any idea-any idea at all-how strange relying on a Negro for anything at all seems to me?"

"Perhaps not. In Croydon, though, Negroes-and copperskins-have been citizens for longer than I've been alive. They've been citizens longer than Atlantis has been free of England. We-whites, I mean-don't always love them, but we're used to treating them like men, not like children or farm animals," Newton said.

"And how often do they leave you sorry you've treated them that way?" the other Consul asked.

"Well, I don't have statistics at my fingertips, the way the Minister of the Fisc does with his accounts. My impression is that they're about as reliable as white men-not much worse, not much better," Newton replied.

"Fair enough," Stafford said. "Is it any wonder I'm worried, then?"

"When you put it that way… no." Consul Newton wished he could give a different answer, but any politico learned early in the game not to count on other people too much, regardless of their color. If he didn't learn that, he didn't stay in the game long enough to learn much else.

When Frederick Radcliff came back to New Hastings, he got a parade through the town's old, old streets. People cheered him-whites, blacks, and copperskins. He waved to the crowd. As a brass band thumped behind him, he took off his tall hat and waved it, too. Sitting beside him in the open carriage, Helen seemed ready to burst with pride.

The next day, Frederick called on Senator Marquard at Marquard's offices in the Senate House. Marquard's white secretary gravely told him the politico was indisposed and could not see him. Frederick said, "Oh, too bad," and went away. But when Abel Marquard was also "indisposed" the following day and the day after that, the Negro began to suspect a trend.