Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

A raised eyebrow said Newton guessed most of what was going on in Stafford's mind. The other Consul made a small production out of lighting a cigar. He said, "We both must be getting old. Seems too early in the day to quarrel, doesn't it?"

"Now that you mention it, yes," Stafford answered. "I will if you really want to, though. I don't want to disappoint you."

"I'll pass, thanks," Newton said. "The papers are quarrelsome enough, and whatever New Hastings has to say is bound to be worse. When do you suppose we'll hear from the Conscript Fathers?"

After someone flings water in their faces, because they're bound to faint when they get the news, Stafford thought morosely. "Are you really so eager?" he asked aloud.

"Eager? Well, as a matter of fact, no," the other Consul replied. "Say rather curious, in a clinical way, as if I'm wondering whether the dentist will tell me whether he has to pull one tooth or two."

Stafford winced. He'd had some agonizing encounters with tooth-pullers before they found out about ether. No one went to one of those quacks unless he was already in pain, and what they did to you only made you hurt worse-for a while, anyhow. Afterwards, you won relief. But that was afterwards. During was another story altogether.

And what sort of relief could the United States of Atlantis win from the abscess of insurrection? They'd tried to lance it, tried and failed. Now the poison was spreading through the country's system. Stafford had no idea how to stop it. He would have been amazed if the Senators on the far coast did.

He hadn't finished his ham and eggs and fried yams when a messenger who hadn't started shaving yet handed him one telegram and Consul Newton another. "Oh, joy," Stafford said as he unfolded his.

"Looking forward to it, are you?" Newton said.

"Well… no," Stafford answered. The other Consul managed a chuckle of sorts, but one with a distinct graveyard quality to it.

Senate expresses its disappointment at failure to suppress slave insurrection, the wire read. It wasn't quite You clumsy idiot!, but it might as well have been. The telegram continued, Use any-repeat, any-measures necessary to end uprising. Manumission not mandatory but not-repeat, not-ruled out.

That was all. That was quite enough. That was, as far as Jeremiah Stafford was concerned, much too much. "What does yours say?" he asked Newton.

"They want us to patch up a peace. That's what it amounts to, anyhow," his colleague answered. "How about yours?"

"The same, more or less," Stafford said heavily. "By God, it frosts my pumpkin. If we fight a proper war, we can win it."

"Maybe we can, but how much more money will it cost?" Newton said. "How many more lives will we lose? How much longer will the Senate put up with that? How long will the Atlantean people put up with it?"

"Even Colonel Sinapis thinks we can win it." Stafford was clutching at straws, and he knew as much.

In case he hadn't, Consul Newton rubbed his nose in it: "Right now, how far will anyone follow Colonel Sinapis?"

Stafford didn't answer. No answer seemed necessary-or possible. Anyone who didn't blame the two Consuls for surrendering to Frederick Radcliff and the insurrectionists blamed Colonel Sinapis instead. Quite a few Atlanteans were sure there was plenty of blame to go around. That seemed to be the sense of the Senate's telegram.

Gently, Leland Newton said, "It won't be so bad. Truly, it won't. We've had free Negroes and copperskins in Croydon for more than a hundred years now. Our republic hasn't fallen apart. Your states won't, either."

"Easy for you to say," Stafford replied. "You may have freed them, but you never had very many for you to free. Things are different down here."

"They certainly are," Newton said. "The copperskins and blacks in Croydon are peaceful citizens, just like anyone else. They're up in arms here. Don't you see the connection? It's time to admit that what you've been doing here isn't working, even if it has made white people money."

That made Stafford scratch his head. As far as he was concerned, making money and working meant the same thing. At last, he saw, or thought he saw, some of what Newton had in mind: "You mean a few of the slaves don't fancy it."

"More than a few, don't you think? And 'don't fancy it' is like saying 'The ocean isn't small,' " Newton answered. "They 'don't fancy it' enough to pick up guns and risk their lives to try to do something about it. Shouldn't that tell you something?"

"You want me to say slavery is wicked and horrid, and everyone who has anything to do with it ought to be ashamed of himself, don't you?" Stafford said. "I'm very sorry, your Excellency, but I honestly don't believe that."

"I know. But whether you believe it isn't the point any more," Newton said.

That puzzled Stafford again. "How do you mean?"

"The point is, the slaves-the people who were slaves, I should say-do believe it. They would rather die than go on being slaves," Newton said. "A lot of them have died. They've made a lot of us die, too. Shouldn't that tell you something?"

"You're playing the schoolmaster here. Suppose you give me the lesson." Consul Stafford admired his own patience. Whether anyone else would admire it-or call it patience and not mulish intransigence-never crossed his mind.

And Newton seemed willing-maybe even eager-to do just what he'd asked. "The lesson is simple. If Negroes and copperskins go on being them and whites go on being us, Atlantis is ruined. We have to find a way for all of us to be Atlanteans together, or else we'll spend the next hundred years fighting."

"We had a way to live together," Stafford insisted.

"Yes, but too many people couldn't stand it. That's why we've got the insurrection now."

"Whites in the south won't like the way you have in mind. If blacks and Negroes can grab guns and fight, what makes you think white men can't?" Stafford said.

"That's simple enough." Newton aimed a forefinger at him as if it were a rifle musket. "You have to persuade them not to."

"We ought to try and grab New Marseille now," Lorenzo said. "We've got the white soldiers' guns. Besides, their hearts have to be down in their shoes. We should hit hard and fast, before they get reinforcements and fresh supplies."

Frederick Radcliff drummed his fingers on the outside of his thigh. A few weeks ago, he might have agreed with his marshal. Now… everything had changed. Or, if things hadn't changed, the insurrection still had no hope. "Ask you a couple of questions?" he said.

One of Lorenzo's eyebrows rose. "How am I supposed to tell you no? You're the Tribune. What you say goes."

That wasn't how Frederick thought of his power-which didn't mean it wasn't useful here. "What happens if the white folks get riled enough to throw everything they've got into the fight against us?"

"Well…" The copperskin pursed his lips. As with the raised eyebrow, it wasn't a showy gesture; it was, in fact, hardly noticeable. That he'd made it at all counted for a good deal. So did his hesitation before he said, "Wouldn't be easy. They send everything, we'd have to be mighty careful fighting pitched battles. Raids, ambushes-we could keep on with that kind of stuff for a long time."

"Would we win in the end if we did?" Frederick persisted.

"Damned if I know." Lorenzo's answering grin was crooked. "Tell you the truth, when this whole thing started I figured we'd both be dead by now-dead or wishing we were."

"You ain't the only one," Frederick replied with feeling, and Lorenzo laughed out loud. "But the way it looks to me is, there's a time to push and a time to go easy. We showed 'em we could beat 'em, and we showed 'em we didn't aim to kill all the white men we could. Seems to me we got to let 'em chew on that for a while, see what they do next. If we push 'em now, we only tick 'em off-know what I mean?"