Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

But their failure left another question hanging in the muggy air. Newton asked it: "Well, gentlemen, what do we do now?"

Setting out from New Hastings, Jeremiah Stafford had thought everything was obvious. They would close with the insurrectionists. They would smash their gimcrack army and hang or shoot or burn Frederick Radcliff and as many other leaders as they could catch. They would return the copperskins and Negroes to the servitude for which they were fit by nature. And then they would go back to the capital in triumph.

Right now, getting back to New Hastings in one piece would have looked like triumph to Stafford. More things had gone wrong than he would have imagined possible before the army set out. And the uprising had proved much worse than he'd dreamt it could in his worst nightmares.

"What are we going to do?" he demanded of Colonel Sinapis. "If we don't put down the insurrectionists-" He held his head in both hands, as if the enormity of the idea made it want to explode. And that wasn't so far from true, either.

"We need more munitions. We need more soldiers," Sinapis said. "I do not believe any troops will be forthcoming from the national government for some time-if ever. The state militiamen you have mentioned are less desirable, but…" He shrugged.

"A drowning man doesn't care a cent what kind of spar he grabs," Stafford said. "Send out the call, Colonel, by all means. If we have twice as many men under arms here, we can do… more than we can now, anyway. Will you tell me I'm mistaken?" You'd better not, his voice warned.

And Sinapis didn't. "Yes, I think the time to do that is here, if we are serious about quelling the insurrection."

"What else would we be?" Stafford yelped.

Colonel Sinapis shrugged again. "I am not a political man, your Excellency. I am a soldier. You and your colleague decide the policies here. Once you have done that, I shall carry out to the best of my ability any part of them involving soldiers."

Stafford muttered darkly. Agreeing on anything with Consul Newton seemed to require a special miracle every time it happened. But Newton didn't try to dissuade Sinapis from summoning the New Marseille militia, though he did say, "I worry that they may prove oversavage when they encounter armed Negroes and copperskins."

"The enemy is not gentle himself," Stafford pointed out.

"No doubt he has his reasons for harshness," Newton said.

"No doubt the militiamen do, too," Stafford snapped. "Some of them were forced to flee their homes. Some had their wives ravished, or their sisters, or their daughters."

"Ravished, perhaps, by mulattos or halfbreed copperskins," Newton said.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Stafford asked coldly.

"What it says," the other Consul answered. "You are not a naive man, your Excellency. You know slaveholders have been going in unto their bondswomen for as long as Negroes and copperskins have been in Atlantis."

"That's different," Stafford said.

"I believe you believe it is," Newton said. "Whether the slaves believe the same thing may be open to doubt."

"Be damned to the slaves!"

"Are they not saying, 'Be damned to the masters!'? In their place, would you not say the same thing?"

"I am not in their place. They want to place me there, though," Stafford said. "If they win, we shall have colored masters whipping white slaves and forcing white women to go on ministering to their filthy lusts. Is that what you have in mind?"

"Of course not. And, if you listen to the insurrectionists, it is not what they have in mind," Newton replied. "They claim the Free Republic of Atlantis is to have equality for every man of every color."

"Likely tell!" Jeremiah Stafford rolled his eyes. "They will claim anything to keep on fighting. You believe them, do you? And I suppose you will also believe that mothers find babies under cabbage leaves."

He had the satisfaction of watching Newton turn red. "I know where babies come from," the other Consul said tightly. "I am merely trying to point out to you that the rebels have more reasons for rising than Satanic wickedness. In fact, that is how they judge the system that brought their ancestors here and turned them into property."

"As if I care how they judge it!" Stafford fleered. "Their cousins in squalid so-called freedom live worse, more benighted lives than they do. They have learned our language here. They have learned of our God here, the one true God. They are part of a… a great country."

Newton was very quick. He heard the small hesitation and knew it for what it was. "You started to say 'a free country,' didn't you? What does it profit a slave to be part of a free country? It profits only his master."

"Maybe one day the mudfaces and niggers may be advanced enough to deserve freedom," Stafford said. "But that day is not here."

"And you are doing your best to make sure it never comes," Newton said. "If you do not give a boiler a safety valve, it will explode when you keep the fire too hot for too long. We are watching one of those explosions now." He walked away before Stafford could answer.

The Consul from Cosquer was much happier when militiamen started coming into camp. He could have been happier yet, for they seemed less like soldiers and more like braggarts and blowhards and ruffians. Little by little, he realized the Atlantean regulars had spoiled him. They were hard-bitten men, too, but they had discipline. Anyone among them who got out of line promptly suffered for it.

By contrast, the militiamen did as they pleased… till regular sergeants and corporals started knocking sense into them. One underofficer died in the process. So did six or eight militiamen, most of them quite suddenly. That did not count the fellow who'd knifed the regular corporal. His company commander didn't want to turn him over for punishment, and his friends seemed ready to defend him.

They soon changed their minds. Staring into the muzzles of a dozen fieldpieces double-shotted with canister would have changed Jeremiah Stafford's mind, too. Stafford judged it would have changed anybody's mind. The militiaman got a drumhead court-martial. Then he was hanged from a stout bough sticking out from a pine. The drop wasn't enough to break his neck and kill him quickly. He writhed his life away over the next several minutes.

After he finally stilled forever, Colonel Sinapis looked out at the wide-eyed amateur soldiers who'd watched the execution. "Follow orders from your officers and from our officers and un derofficers, and nothing like this will happen to you," he said. "We all face the same enemies, after all. If you work with us, we can beat them together. And if you work against us, I promise you will discover we are more frightful than any Negro or copperskin ever born." He paused, then added one word more: "Dismissed."

The militiamen couldn't have disappeared any faster if he'd called down thunder and lightning on their heads. A couple of dozen of them disappeared for good during the night. Sinapis took that in stride. "We shall be better off without them than we would have been with them," he said.

"Technically, they're deserters. If you catch them, you can hang them, too," Consul Newton said.

"No, the colonel's right," Stafford said-words that didn't come out of his mouth every day. "If they can't stand the heat, they shouldn't go near the fire. Let them run. Not everyone is a hero, even if he can fool himself into thinking he is for a little while."

"Well, maybe." Newton was even less eager to agree with Stafford than Stafford was to agree with Sinapis.

With the army reinforced, the colonel was able to send a good-sized force down to New Marseille to protect the next wagon train. The wagons reached the army without much trouble. The insurrectionists must have known they were well protected, because they did no more than snipe at them from the woods.