Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"It would serve you right, too," Blaise added.

"And who are you?" the settler inquired-cautiously. Most of the time, French settlers didn't want to hear anything from Negroes or copperskins. Most of the time, they didn't have to. Owning a man meant you didn't have to listen to him. (Owning a woman meant you didn't have to listen to her, either. That could be-and often was-even more convenient.) Having made one mistake, though, this fellow didn't want to make two. (A surprising-to Victor, a dismaying-number of people didn't care how many they made.)

"I am Sergeant Blaise Black, of the militia of the English settlements," Blaise answered, pride ringing in his voice. He must have taken the surname on the spur of the moment; it certainly suited him. He went on, "I also have the honor to be the man who shot Roland Kersauzon."

Nobody asked him any more questions after that. The French settlers couldn't disappear fast enough. "Now look what you did," Victor said.

Blaise shrugged in a way that showed he'd lived among Frenchmen. "I told them the truth. What's wrong with that?" In English, he sounded ordinary. In French, he could be eloquent. Maybe he still knew more French than English. Maybe the difference lay in the genius of the two languages.

As for his question…"Nothing's wrong with it," Victor Radcliff answered. "That doesn't mean it's a pleasant thing to do."

With another shrug, Blaise said, "They were throwing filth at us. You gave them something to think about. So did I."

"All right," Victor said mildly.

He did warn the captain in charge of the engineers that the locals were less friendly than they seemed. The grizzled officer said, "Well, I can't tell you I'm amazed. The brothel we went to tried to give us a freshly poxed girl so we'd have something to remember her by."

"And what did you do about that?" Victor inquired.

The captain made a fist. "Tore the place apart. Now we don't pay for it any more. We have fun anyhow. These French women-" His opinion of them was at least as low as the jeering French settlers' opinion of him and his men.

That wasn't surprising, even if it was a little sad. As long as it didn't start a riot, it also wasn't Victor's worry. He said, "I'm just glad you're making sure they won't use this place as a strongpoint against us again."

"You never can tell," the captain said. "They're liable to start rebuilding as soon as we get done and leave. We'll need to keep an eye on them to make sure they don't."

"I think we can do that," Victor said. "And the problem will solve itself before too long, I suspect."

"How's that, sir?" the graying English officer asked.

"When there are as many English settlers as French here, no one will want to use this place as a fortress."

"I hope not." The captain didn't sound convinced. Victor wondered why not. And then, all of a sudden, he stopped wondering-he knew. To this Englishman, settlers were settlers, and what blood they sprang from hardly mattered. They were all potential rebels, potential enemies.

Radcliff tried not to bristle in any obvious way. That would only have proved the captain's point for him. I'm as good a subject of King George as you are! Victor wanted to scream it. Screaming it wouldn't have done him any good, though. The captain would have thought he was protesting too much.

Of course, if this fellow and others like him despised settlers simply because they were settlers, wouldn't he make them despise him, too? The odds seemed good.

Blaise was thinking the same thing. "What can you do with such people?" he murmured…in French.

"I don't know," Victor replied in the same language.

"What is that jibber-jabber you're going back and forth in?" The English engineer aimed the question at Victor. "Did you learn this nigger's language so you could talk it without anybody knowing what you're saying?"

"No, you fool!" Victor exclaimed. "It's French! Don't you know French when you hear it?"

"I should hope not." The redcoat sounded proud of his own ignorance. "If it's not English, it's not worth learning."

"Didn't they ram Latin and Greek down your throat?" Victor asked, now taken by surprise.

"Not me." Again, the captain sounded proud. "I came up through the ranks, I did. I'm not one of those rich buggers who got to go to Oxbridge or Camford or one of those fancy places. I'm an officer on account of I'm bloody good at what I do. Don't need any damned foreign languages to know how to build a wall-or how to take one down, either."

"Good God!" Victor said. Some merchants in New Hastings and Hanover were as proud of what they didn't know as this fellow. Victor had always pitied them. The captain, on the other hand, frightened him. "How much do you know about Atlantis?"

"Not bloody much, and I don't care to find out more," the Englishman responded. "Damned place is full of Frenchies and niggers and copperskins. That's all I need to know, isn't it? King George has got to step on it with both feet, and I'm bloody proud to be the toe on one boot."

"I think we better get out of here, Monsieur, before I kill him," Blaise said through clenched teeth-still in French.

Also in French, Victor replied, "You would have to wait in line. I outrank you."

They walked away in a hurry. "That man…That man, he is more dangerous to Atlantis than Roland Kersauzon," Blaise spluttered. "To him, everyone here is a slave. Everyone! Not just me. I don't like when people think I am still slave, but I know why. I am black. In a white man's world, it happens. I understand, even if I don't like. But that man…" He paused again. "To him, you are slave, too. Everybody from Atlantis is slave, as far as he is concerned. Why?" He stopped, breathing hard.

"It's not England," Victor Radcliff said. "How can it be any good if it's not England?" He was joking, and then again he wasn't. If he didn't laugh, he'd burst into tears-or maybe grab the pistol on his belt.

"But you are from England, too," Blaise pointed out.

"Yes, I'm from England. But I'm not of England. My people haven't been of England for three hundred years," Victor said. "Our friend back there-"

"What friend?" the Negro broke in.

"That's what I mean," Victor said. "Our friend back there is of England. Anybody who's not of England is below the salt to him."

He had to explain below the salt to Blaise. Once the Negro understood, he asked, "What about King George? He is of England. Does he think Atlantis is below the salt, too?"

Telling Blaise that George was a third-generation German, and the first sovereign of his dynasty to be fluent in English, struck Victor as a waste of time. It also struck him as sure to confuse the black man. Besides, even though it was all true, Blaise had a perfectly good point. "He's my king, too. I have to hope he remembers that Atlantis and English Terranova and India and the rest of his realm matter as much as England does," Victor said.

"And if he forgets?" Blaise inquired.

Victor did the only thing he could do: he shrugged. He was hardly in a position to tell the King of England what to do, nor did he ever expect to be. "If he forgets…I'll just have to worry about it then."

The closer to Spanish Atlantis Blaise got, the more he muttered under his breath. At last, when Victor came right out and asked him what was on his mind, he explained why: "The French, they have slaves, but only a few really like to have slaves. The Spaniards, most of them like to have slaves."

"They have slaves because they enjoy owning other people, not just to get work out of them-is that what you mean?" Victor asked.

"Yes, sir. That's what I mean." Blaise nodded emphatically. "I still don't talk English so good, so I don't know how to say it right. But that is just exactly what I mean."

"Probably goes a long way towards explaining why the slave rising in Spanish Atlantis was-is-so bad," Victor said.