Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

He might as well have saved his breath. "You've changed!" the Senator repeated, as if it were forbidden in the sterner books of the Bible. "We haven't, and we aren't about to."

"Fools never do," Stafford said.

That, of course, only poured oil on the fire. Several Senators screamed abuse at him in English, French, and Spanish.

Bang! Bang! Consul Newton plied the gavel with might and main. "The honorable gentlemen are out of order," he said-you could sound all the more insulting when you were exquisitely polite. "They would do well to remember to look toward the future, not the past."

Take your heads out of the sand, Stafford translated to himself. Did ostriches really stick their heads in the sand? He had no idea. He'd never seen an ostrich. They were supposed to be pretty stupid, just like honkers. He'd never seen a honker, either, even though they were Atlantean birds. As far as he knew, nobody'd seen any honkers since Audubon found some to paint… which probably meant backwoodsmen had shot and eaten the last few survivors.

Back around the time when the United States of Atlantis freed themselves from England, there'd been proposals to set land aside as a preserve for Atlantis' native creatures. Nothing ever came of those proposals-no state cared to give up land from which it might one day draw taxes. It was probably too late for honkers now, anyhow. It might not be for some other creatures…

But even if it wasn't, Consul Stafford had more urgent things to worry about at the moment. "My colleague is right," he said-a sentence that hadn't crossed his lips very often before the failed campaign to put down the slave insurrection. "We may not like going forward, but we have no other choice-not unless you would rather spend the rest of your lives fighting a war we are unlikely to win, and one that will not bring us the benefits we seek even if we should win."

"If you hadn't buggered up the fight against the niggers, you'd sing a different tune now," a Senator from Nouveau Redon said.

"You wouldn't go along with everything the Croydon man says," another southern Senator added.

"We did the best we could," Stafford answered. "We faced danger together, and we made the agreement with Frederick Radcliff together, too."

"And you get the blame together!" shouted the Senator from Nouveau Redon.

"The credit, you mean," Leland Newton said. "History will justify us. It always justifies people who believe in progress."

Did it? Stafford had his doubts. But the way his former friends howled made him have doubts about his doubts, too.

The clerk of the Senate eyed Frederick Radcliff with as much warmth as he would have given a cucumber slug in his salad. "Do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" he droned.

"I do," Frederick said.

"Are you aware that perjury is a felony punishable by fine or imprisonment or both?"

"I wasn't, but I am now," Frederick answered. A couple of Senators chuckled. A few more smiled. All of them were northern men. The dignitaries from south of the Stour seemed affronted that a Negro should testify before them at all. Well, too damned bad, Frederick thought.

As for the clerk, he was impervious. All he said was, "State your name for the record."

"I am Frederick Radcliff," Frederick said. That probably affronted the southern Senators all over again. A Negro with any surname would have been bad enough. A Negro with the most prominent surname in Atlantis was more than twice as bad. A Negro grandson of the famous First Consul was much more than twice as bad.

Even the clerk's eyes said as much. If he wasn't from a slaveholding state himself, Frederick would have been mightily surprised. But all that came out of his mouth was, "You may be seated."

Frederick sat in the witness' chair. The angle at which it was turned let him see the two Consuls on their dais as well as the Senators on the floor of the chamber. Consul Newton said, "For the record, you are the man who was styled Tribune of the Free Republic of Atlantis, are you not?"

"That's right," Frederick replied.

"Treason!" three Senators shouted at the same time.

"No such thing," Frederick said, though that wasn't a question. "Was it treason when my grandfather rose up against England?" My grandfather. If they didn't care for that, too damned bad again.

"It would have been treason, if Victor Radcliff and the Atlantean army had lost," Newton said.

"And it would have been treason if you and your army had lost, too." By the way Consul Stafford sounded, he was still sorry it hadn't been.

"But we didn't, and so it ain't-isn't." Frederick corrected himself. Quite a few Senators would think of him as a dumb nigger no matter what he did, but he didn't want to give them extra ammunition.

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason." Newton seemed to be quoting something. By the ring of it, it was old-fashioned. Shakespeare? Frederick had read some, but didn't remember seeing it there.

"If you say that about my grandfather, you can say it about me. If you don't, saying it about me isn't fair," he said.

"I'm not saying it about anyone, because, by the terms of the agreement we signed, there is no such thing as the Free Republic of Atlantis any more. The slave insurrection is over and done with-isn't that right?" Newton said.

"Yes, sir, long as the rest of the agreement gets carried out," Frederick answered. "Long as the slaves get freed, and we get the same rights in law as any other Atlanteans."

Several southern Senators started yelling abuse at him. Several northern Senators applauded him, trying to drown out the southerners. Newton and Stafford both used their gavels. No one seemed to want to pay any attention to them. "The Sergeant at Arms will restore order by any means necessary," Stafford warned.

That worthy looked at him as if he'd taken leave of his senses. Frederick sympathized with the functionary. Quite a few Senators carried stout sticks, more often as weapons than as aids to keeping them on their pins. And how many more hid a dirk or a pistol under their waistcoats? Frederick didn't know. He wouldn't have wanted to find out the hard way, either.

Finally, something like order did return. "Why do you suppose Consul Stafford and I agreed to terms like those?" Newton asked. "Was it out of the goodness of our hearts, say?"

"Not likely… sir," Frederick said, which startled laughter out of Senators from both sides of the Stour. He went on, "Probably because we had you in a place where we could've slaughtered you, but we didn't do it."

"Yes, you did have us in a place like that," the Consul agreed. "Why did you let us go, then?"

"So we could get terms instead of fighting forever," Frederick said.

"And now you have those terms," Newton said.

Frederick nodded. "We sure do."

"What do you think of them?"

"They're fair. We can live with them."

"They're an outrage! They don't punish you for what you did in the insurrection!" a southern Senator shouted.

Newton and Stafford used their gavels again. Frederick talked through the sharp thuds: "They don't punish the slaveholders for everything they did before the insurrection, either."

That set the Senator to spluttering without words. "Both sides agreed that recriminations were pointless," Consul Newton said. Frederick nodded once more, though he'd learned the word recriminations after the talks with the white men started.

"We did," Consul Stafford agreed. "I don't believe that made anyone happy. I know it didn't make me happy. But I also know doing anything else would have made everyone even more unhappy."

"I want all the Conscript Fathers to think about that," Newton said. "I understand that you may not wish to ratify the agreement we made in Slug Hollow. Believe me, though-the consequences of rejecting it are far worse than the consequences of accepting it."