Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

He went to the house Marquard rented in New Hastings, only a couple of blocks from the Senate House. The Senator's Negro butler received him there. "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Radcliff," said the other black man, whose name was Clarence. "Everybody's proud of you-you'd best believe that."

"Thank you kindly," Frederick said. By everybody, Clarence doubtless meant everybody our color. He had to be a highly trusted man, or the Senator wouldn't have brought him to a state where he could run off if he chose. Frederick went on, "Can I see himself?" He hadn't had such a prominent master, but he'd done Clarence's job for Henry Barford.

"He's here. I'm sure he'd be glad to see you. Wait just a minute," the butler answered.

"Obliged." Frederick wasn't so sure of that, but he didn't say so.

Clarence came back almost as fast as he'd promised. His smile had disappeared, though. "Well, he will see you," he said, and took it no further than that.

Senator Marquard's study would have made Master Barford jealous. The Senator did shake hands with Frederick, but didn't look happy doing it. "I kept my half of the bargain, sir," Frederick said without preamble. "Now it's time for you to keep yours."

"Bargain? What bargain?" By the way Marquard said the word, it might have come from Russian or Chinese. "We made no bargain that I recollect."

Frederick stared at him. He'd known some pretty fancy liars in his time, but for straight-faced gall the Senator from Cosquer took the prize. "You know damned well what bargain… sir," Frederick said, and proceeded to spell it out in words of one syllable.

By Abel Marquard's manner, he might have been hearing of it for the very first time. "My dear fellow!" he exclaimed when Frederick finished. "When you were down in Gernika, you must have eaten some of the mystic mushrooms that grow there-you know, the ones that can make men think they see God or the Devil sitting in front of them till they get better. You are imagining things."

"Oh, I am, am I?" Frederick said grimly. "If I think I see the Devil sitting in front of me now, it's on account of I'm looking right at you." He stormed out of the Senator's study.

"Something wrong?" Clarence asked him.

"Oh, you might say so. Yeah, you just might." The story poured out of Frederick.

"Is that what happened?" Clarence said when he finished.

"That's just what happened. So help me God, it is." Frederick raised his right hand, as if to swear it.

"I believe you. He's an old serpent, the master is-a sly old serpent, but a serpent even so." Senator Marquard's butler spoke with a certain somber pride. After shaking his head, Clarence went on, "He ain't gonna get away with it, though, not this time. Slug Hollow's too important to let him."

"Well, I think so, too," Frederick Radcliff said. "But what can you do about it?" He paused, grinning. "That kind of stuff?"

Clarence laid a finger by the side of his broad, flat nose and winked. "Yeah, that kind of stuff. You leave it to me, friend."

Frederick nodded and left Senator Marquard's residence. He'd warned the Senator that Marquard's own slaves wouldn't let him get away with such double-dealing. Now he had to hope he was right. He intended to give Clarence a week before going to the newspapers himself. He feared that would put the Senator's back up instead of bringing him around, but it was the only weapon he had.

He turned out not to need it. Four days after Abel Marquard had denied making any agreement to back the Slug Hollow accord if Frederick quelled the uprising in Gernika, the Senator publicly announced his support for the accord. "It may not be a perfect bargain," Marquard declared in ringing tones on the Senate floor, "but it is the best one we are likely to get."

Marquard was an influential man. When he lined up behind Slug Hollow, he brought a good many other Senators with him. Frederick had hoped he would do exactly that. The Negro almost sought out the Senator to ask him why he'd changed his mind. But Frederick didn't need long to decide not to do that. He sought out Clarence instead.

They didn't meet at Marquard's house. That might have proved embarrassing to all concerned. A tavern and eatery that catered to Negroes, copperskins, and poor whites served better than well enough. Over fried fish and mugs of beer, Frederick asked, "What did you do?"

"Who, me?" Clarence might have borrowed that blank look from his master. "I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything at all, even the things I was supposed to do. You ever listen to a white man who has to find his own cravat and black his own shoes?"

A slow grin spread across Frederick Radcliff's face. "I like that!"

"Oh, it gets better, too," Clarence said. "It sure does. He had to give his own washing to the laundry gal, too. An' she made a mess of it-just by accident, of course."

"Of course," Frederick agreed. They both chuckled.

"Socks and drawers got starched. Shirts an' trousers didn't. A jacket got washed in hot water, so it shrank like you wouldn't believe. Such a shame!" Clarence rolled his eyes. "And I ain't even started on what the cook's been up to."

"No?" Frederick asked eagerly.

"No, sir." Clarence shook his head. "The bread was scorched one day. The next day, it didn't rise. The shrimp in the stew were a little off-just a little, but enough." He held his nose. "The master's were, anyhow. What we got was first-rate. Something in the salad gave the Senator the runs. After that, he got word things weren't goin' real well down on his plantation, neither. Soon as he heard that, he started wondering if something funny was goin' on."

"Now why would he think anything like that?" Butter wouldn't have melted in Frederick's mouth.

"Beats me. I haven't got the slightest idea." Anybody listening to Clarence would have been convinced he too was one of God's natural-born innocents. "But then he had a little talk with me. You hear him talk, he figures niggers and mudfaces, they never heard of Slug Hollow or what led up to it."

"Likely tell!" Frederick burst out.

"Uh-huh." Clarence nodded. "You can't believe how surprised he acted when I turned out to know as much about it as he did. 'Clarence,' he says, 'Clarence, you really want to be free and have all that trouble taking care of your own self?' And he looks surprised all over again when I go, 'I sure do, Master Marquard. An' I don't know me one single slave who don't. There may be some, but I don't know none.' "

"What did he say then?" Frederick asked eagerly.

"He says, 'If I want to live long enough to go home again once I'm done in the Senate, reckon I better go along with Slug Hollow, huh?' An' I say, 'Senator Marquard, sir, I hope you live a real long time. But if you want black folks an' copper folks to stay happy with you, you got to know we is all for Slug Hollow.' We had to get his attention, like, but we finally went an' done it."

"Good for you," Frederick said. "When he made out like I was a liar, looked to me like the only way to… to wake him up, like, was to hope his own people could getting him thinkin' 'bout things."

"We did that, all right. Don't reckon a white man would've thought of it, but you ain't no white man, even if your granddaddy was," Clarence said. "Takes a fella who was a slave hisself to know how things really work with a planter and his niggers. He votes for Slug Hollow, he gets his friends to do the same, we gonna be free for true?"

"For true," Frederick said firmly. "Don't know what happens after that. Don't know if there's any happy endings."

"You know what? Me, I don't care," Clarence said. "Long as there's a happy beginning, long as I got a chance, I'll make it some kind of way."

"You ain't the first fella who told me that kind of thing," Frederick said. "Lots of us're figurin' we can make it some kind of way."