Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

"I don't know anything about that. I never got to meet him. He never came to see my grandma again, or my pa." Frederick didn't try to hide his bitterness. "All I know is, you want me to do this, and I want something from you. If I play your game, will you play mine?"

Another silence followed the question. Abel Marquard made a steeple of his fingertips. Over his hands, he stared across his desk at Frederick. "Had you been born white, you would assuredly have been chosen Consul by now-more than once, unless I miss my guess."

"Who can say?" That thought had also occurred to Frederick. "But I never had the chance, on account of I'm black instead. Maybe some other Negro or copperskin will get it one of these days-if you go along with what I worked out with the Consuls Atlantis has got now."

By Marquard's expression, he wasn't convinced that would be good for the country. His chuckle wasn't enthusiastic, either. But he said, "All right. If you go and pour oil on the troubled waters of Gernika, I will do what I can to have the Senate ratify the Slug Hollow agreement. Does that suit you?"

Frederick thought about asking him to put it in writing. Before he did, he realized Marquard would refuse. Frederick tried a different question: "Your word as a gentleman, sir?"

He knew the southern planter's code. Other than a southern planter, who knew it better than a house slave? If Marquard gave his word as a gentleman, even to a Negro, he would keep it. A man who broke his word showed he was no gentleman, and a southern planter who showed he was no gentleman had no reason to go on living.

Those same thoughts had to be passing through Abel Marquard's mind. If they were, his much-lived-in face gave no sign of it. His answering nod held no trace of hesitation. "My word as a gentleman," he said, and held out his right hand. Frederick took it again. One man risked his life; the other, his influence. Each probably would have said he chanced too much.

Jeremiah Stafford had been on the point of demanding an army to put down the new spark of insurrection in Gernika when Frederick Radcliff said he would go down there and try to do the job himself. That took the Consul by surprise. He wondered if the rebellious slaves in Gernika had even heard of Frederick Radcliff. They'd heard there was trouble, and they'd decided to start some more. That was how things looked to him, anyhow.

Part of him wanted the Negro to go down there, fail miserably, and prove to the world that the Slug Hollow agreement wasn't worth the paper it was written on. What surprised him was that part of him didn't. The world had changed, and Stafford had changed with it. Frederick Radcliff's slave army could have carried out a massacre worse than any in Atlantean history. It could have, but it hadn't. Stafford remained among the living because of the Negro leader's restraint. And so…

A life for a life, Stafford thought when he summoned Frederick to his office. Things weren't so simple, of course. Atlantis owed the black man far more than one life. But Stafford was doing what he could.

Dressed in white shirt, black trousers and jacket, and black cravat-dressed like a prominent white man, in other words-Frederick Radcliff cut an imposing figure. Amazing what wearing a jacket with black buttons rather than a butler's brass ones could do: the Negro no longer seemed the least bit servile.

The figure he cut made it easier for Stafford to treat with him as an equal. "If you go down to Gernika, you lay your life on the line," the Consul warned.

He hadn't expected Frederick to look amused. "You aren't the first one to say so," the Negro answered dryly. "Even if I couldn't cipher it out for myself, my wife made it real clear." He paused, chuckled, and repeated himself: "Real clear."

"Why are you going, then?" Stafford asked.

"On account of it needs doing," Frederick said. "If you send in soldiers, you're liable to stir up everything south of the Stour. But if I can calm things down, like, that goes a long way toward showing things can work out the way we hoped when we talked in Slug Hollow."

Stafford hadn't hoped things would work out when they talked in Slug Hollow-just the opposite, in fact. But, having signed the agreement, he had to support it. All the abuse heaped on him because of it only put his back up. He was a stubborn man himself… and he had Radcliff blood of his own, on his mother's side.

"If you don't calm things down-" he began.

"Chance I take," Frederick Radcliff broke in. "If I deliver, the Senate's liable to look at the Slug Hollow agreement a whole different way."

If I deliver, I'm the man of the hour. Stafford understood what the black man meant but didn't say. If Frederick delivered, he would be more powerful than any Senator: arguably more powerful than either Consul. And who would have chosen him to hold such power? Not the people. Only himself.

Yes, the kind of power the Negro would have lay altogether outside the Charter. Somehow, that worried Consul Stafford less than it might have were Frederick a different man. Back around the turn of the century, the slaves on one of the islands south of Atlantis had risen up and overthrown their French overlords. They hadn't just overthrown them, either-they'd slaughtered them. Since then, they'd had a dizzying series of generals and kings and untitled strongmen, all grabbing for power for its own sake. Stafford didn't think that was what Frederick Radcliff had in mind.

Of course, if he was wrong…

"It'll work out, your Excellency," Frederick said. "Or I hope it will. My biggest worry isn't the Negroes and copperskins. My biggest worry is some angry white man with a rifle musket. But he's the kind of fella I've got to worry about here in New Hastings, too."

"You're well protected here," Stafford said. "Staying safe in Gernika will be harder, I'm afraid."

"Chance I take," the Negro repeated. "It should be all right… unless some Senator is hiring those fellas with the rifle muskets."

What am I supposed to say to that? Consul Stafford wondered. "Do you want me to tell you they'd never do anything like that?" he asked aloud. "Do you want me to tell you they're too honorable to get those ideas?"

"Nah." Frederick shook his head. "You'd be lying, and we'd both know it. Hell and breakfast, your Excellency, some of 'em'd shoot a white man who said anything about slavery. Most of 'em'd shoot an uppity nigger, or fix it up so somebody else did the shooting for 'em."

Stafford didn't argue the point. How could he? He did say, "Don't you think that's a good argument for staying right where you are?"

"I won't lie-I'd like to," Frederick Radcliff answered. "But if I do, what do you think the chances are the Slug Hollow agreement'll go through?"

"It would still have some chance, I think," Stafford said judiciously.

"Uh-huh. That's about what I think. It'd have some-not too much," Frederick said. "If I do go, if I can calm things down, odds get a lot better. You white folks have already had plenty of chances to kill me. What's one more?" His laughter was not filled with mirth.

Neither was the chuckle Stafford returned. "It's not as if copperskins and Negroes never took a shot at me."

"No, huh?" This time, Frederick Radcliff did sound amused. "If you didn't sign that paper, there'd be plenty of 'em who'd still want to let the air out of you."

"You mean there aren't any now?" Stafford asked.

"Oh, maybe some," Frederick allowed. "But there would be more." He cocked his head to one side. "Nobody here but us chickens right now, your Excellency. How come you didn't back away from Slug Hollow soon as you had the chance? I would've bet my shirt you would-an' I would've lost it, too."

"I thought about it," Stafford said-that wouldn't surprise the black man. The Consul went on, "But what good would it have done me if I had? The fighting would just have started up again. Maybe we would have won it. I think we would, once you provoked us enough to make us push back hard. What would winning mean, though? It wouldn't turn the clock back to where it was before the insurrection started. I think we would have had to kill most of the blacks and copperskins in the country to make the rest quit. The new rising in Gernika says the same thing."