Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

You'd end up as Leland Newton, that was where. You'd end up with nigger equality. They had it up in Croydon, or something close to it. They even let niggers and mudfaces vote up there! Stafford shook his head. He did not care to let such a tragedy befall his own state.

Out in the woods, crickets and katydids chirped. Nighthawks and bats swooped low over the fires to seize the bugs the flames had lured. Soldiers' shadows lurched here and there as the men walked in front of their tents. Other soldiers, out farther from the campfires, watched to make sure the insurrectionists didn't sneak in and kick up trouble.

Those sentries, these days, were every one of them experienced woodsmen. Ordinary Atlantean troopers on night sentry had shown a lamentable tendency to get their throats slit or otherwise to perish silently. That made night attacks all the easier. Dead men seldom gave timely alarms. There, at least, Colonel Sinapis did seem to have solved a problem.

"A little one," Stafford muttered discontentedly. "A tiny one." The real problem wasn't keeping insurrectionists from sneaking into camp and raising Cain. The real problem was that there still were insurrectionists.

He spat in disgust. The wind sprang up. It was heavy with rain, as it often was in these parts. It was also heavy with the stink of the encampment's latrine trenches. Stafford wrinkled his nose, though the stench was anything but unfamiliar. Anyone who lived in a city got to know it well-indeed, often got to the point where he took it for granted.

Right now, it made Stafford think of all the trouble the insurrectionists were causing. Did Atlantis have to take that for granted, too? Even if this uprising was crushed, would another as bad or worse break out in a few years' time? How could the country hope to hold together if slave revolts tore into it the way cyclones did?

Stafford spat again. He saw only two ways to keep that from happening. Either you had to cede equality to the slaves or you had to make them too afraid even to think of rising. Maybe you'd have to kill a lot of them to make sure the rest got the message.

He shrugged. If that was what it took, that was what it took. Who except for the whites who'd lose money when their niggers and mudfaces died would waste grief on them? And the owners could be compensated. Things might work out. They just might.

A supply column that came northeast from New Marseille brought fairly recent papers from the West Coast city and older ones from New Hastings. Leland Newton wasn't delighted at the headlines, but he also wasn't much surprised. No one anywhere seemed happy with the army's progress-or rather, lack of progress-against the insurrectionists.

New Marseille reporters and editors found a simple explanation for the failure: as far as they were concerned, the army was a bunch of bunglers led by idiots. The New Hastings Chronicle-the one daily in the capital that took a pro-slavery line-had a similar opinion. The other papers from the capital took a different tack, one Consul Newton enjoyed more.

"Here. Listen to this," he said to Jeremiah Stafford, holding a month-old New Hastings Daily War Whoop out at arm's length so he could read it without his spectacles. " ' The way the blacks and copperskins in southern Atlantis have succeeded in resisting government forces for so long proves the point Atlanteans from the north have been making for many years: men are men regardless of color. Courage is not the exclusive property of whites. The sooner this is recognized by all, of every hue, the sooner peace will return to our republic.' "

"I'm glad they sent it," Stafford said. Before Newton could show his surprise at such a sentiment, his colleague explained, "It will wipe my backside better than a handful of old leaves."

Patiently, Newton said, "You can use the paper however you please. That doesn't make what's printed on it any less true."

"Lies! All lies! Every single word!" Stafford's voice was too loud, and sounded like a cracked bell. Little drops of spittle flew from his lips as he spoke. One of them landed on Newton's sleeve.

Newton eyed it with distaste, distaste leavened by alarm. "Jeremiah, I mean no offense, but you are talking like a fool, or maybe like a madman. You may not care for everything the papers say, but much of it is true whether you care for it or not. This rebellion is more difficult and intractable than you dreamt it would be when the campaign against it began. And the rebels are different from what you thought they would be. Can you blame the papers for noticing what you must have seen, too?"

"Yes!" Stafford said, which was not what Newton hoped to hear. "If things are the way they say they are-if they are the way you say they are-then dickering with the insurrectionists becomes the only practicable course. I tell you frankly, sir, I should rather die a thousand deaths."

Leland Newton believed that, believed it beyond a fragment of a doubt. His own voice gentled as he replied, "Would you rather Atlantis died a thousand deaths? What else lies ahead on the track you have chosen for the country?"

"I want the insurrectionists to die a thousand deaths," Stafford said savagely. "That might begin to repay them for their atrocities. It might."

"It might also be beyond our power to arrange," Newton said. "If that is not the lesson of the past few weeks, they have none."

"We have not done what we wish we would have. It does not follow that we cannot do it," Stafford said.

"How?" Newton asked.

For the first time since seeing the newspapers, some of the other Consul's dreadful certainty leached out of him. He no longer looked as if he were going to give the Preacher a run for his money. His mouth sagged unhappily. So did his shoulders. His answer came in a much smaller voice: "I don't know."

"Well, we are on the same trail there, anyway, because I don't know how to do that, either," Newton said.

"But we must!" Pain filled Stafford's words.

"What do we name someone who insists we must do something that cannot be done?" Newton answered his own question: "If he is lucky enough to be young, we name him a child. Otherwise, we call him a fool. If he keeps on insisting… we have asy lums for such people."

Stafford turned the color of a sunset. But before he could come out with whatever he'd been about to say, musketry started up off to the north. The encampment boiled like coffee in a tin pot. Soldiers ran this way and that. Before long, quite a few of them purposefully trotted north.

"We have another chance now to do what we came here for," Stafford did say at last.

"What do you think the chances are that this next battle will settle the insurrection once for all?" Newton asked.

"I don't know," the other Consul said, "but I do know they're better if we win than if we lose."

"Are they what a man might call betting odds?" Newton persisted.

"I don't know that, either." Stafford sounded as if he wanted to change the subject, or else drop the whole conversation. Which he did, for he went on, "I am going up to the front, to see what our brave soldiers and militiamen can do. You are welcome to accompany me, if you care to."

If you aren't yellow, he meant. Stung, Newton said, "There is not a place on this campaign where you have gone and I have not." If the other Consul tried to quarrel with that, Newton was ready to box his ears.

But Stafford said only, "Come on, then," and hurried off toward the sound of the firing. He drew his eight-shooter as he went.

Sighing, so did Newton. The idea of shooting insurrectionists did not delight him, as it did his colleague. All the same, he could not believe the copperskins and Negroes would spare him for the sake of his belief in individual liberty. So many bullets flew almost at random; no one could do anything about those. If someone at close quarters aimed at him in particular, he intended to fire first. He might favor individual liberty, yes, but not at the price of his own survival.