Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

That wasn't fair. Riffraff wouldn't be able to sail a cog so far, or to afford passage in one. But just then, anyone he hadn't handpicked to come to New Hastings seemed like riffraff to him.

And Henry, damn him, was grinning. "Not just our riffraff, either," the younger Radcliffe said. "Somewhere between Atlantis and Le Croisic, Francois Kersauzon and his son are talking the same way-what do you want to bet? The land is there. More and more people know it's there. A land with no kings, a land with no soldiers…Why wouldn't half the folk in the world want to pack up and move to a place like that?"

When Edward looked at it that way, he could see no reason why lots of people wouldn't want to travel to Atlantis, either. But he said, "I'll tell you one thing, son. If Atlantis does start filling up, it will need soldiers soon enough, to keep some folk from taking what others have."

"No doubt," Henry said. "Then the soldiers will start taking on their own, because that's what soldiers do."

"I know," Edward said unhappily. He sighed. "And I suppose that's why we need kings-to keep soldiers from taking too much."

"Well, sometimes kings can do that," Henry said. "And sometimes…"

He didn't go on, or need to. The war in England they'd barely escaped did most of his talking for him. "God grant that civil war stay far from Atlantis' shores," Edward said.

"I'm sure He will-for a while," his son replied. "How many of the folk in New Hastings stand with the White Rose, how many with the Red?"

"I have no idea. I never tried to find out," Edward Radcliffe said.

"As long as you can say that, and say it truly, we're safe from civil strife," Henry said. "As soon as you know, as soon as you need to know…"

"Yes." Edward could gauge the political winds along with those of the world. "May that day stay far away, too." His son-both sons-had bumped heads with him a great many times growing up. But Henry, having at last attained manhood himself, only nodded now.

The War of the Roses did stay away from the western shores. Neither Yorkists nor Lancastrians cared who followed their emblem in the lands across the sea. Not enough people dwelt there to matter to either side.

Yes, the war stayed away. But flotsam and jetsam from it did mark Atlantis. As Henry had foretold, a good many Englishmen thought a land without soldiers and without kings sounded wonderful. They swarmed aboard anything that would float and sailed west.

Some of them, no doubt, starved before they got anywhere close to Atlantis. It was a long journey across rough seas. If the winds went against you, if you crammed too many people aboard for the food you carried, if you couldn't pull in enough fish to make up for your dwindling store of biscuit, if your water butts went dry or got too foul to drink before you sighted land-if any of those things happened, you were doomed.

The fishermen who sailed out of New Hastings didn't see the worst disasters. They saw the folk who planned better, but not quite well enough. Every so often, a shipload of living skeletons would come ashore. Caring for them strained what the settlers could do. The land was rich; hunting and fishing were good. But what would have been plenty for a small village proved a good deal less than that with more mouths to feed.

Edward Radcliffe was almost relieved when a well-equipped flotilla from Dover founded a new town eighty miles down the coast from New Hastings. They called the place Freetown, though some of the people who set it up seemed more interested in running things than he ever had.

But, as he said when he came back from a visit, "The more, the merrier. The land can hold them, and once they get in a couple of crops they'll be able to help us with the rest of the newcomers, the ones who have no notion of what they're doing."

"Will they help, or will they just turn them away?" Henry asked.

"They'd better not." Edward's hands folded into fists. "If they try to leave us with all those folk…Well, we won't have it, that's all. But if they're proper Christian men, they'll remember the parable of the Good Samaritan."

"And if they aren't, we'll remind them of it, by God," Henry said. Edward nodded.

Richard Radcliffe seemed discontented in a different way. He hadn't gone to Freetown. He hadn't gone back to England with his father and older brother, either. When he wasn't working his farm, he spent a lot of time staring west. "How far does Atlantis run?" he asked one winter's day. "What's on the other side of the mountains we can see?"

"Plenty close to the sea to keep us busy for a while," answered the relentlessly pragmatic Edward. "One of these days, I expect we'll find out what's over yonder, but where's the hurry?"

Richard might not have heard him. "I'd like to head up the Brede," he said: they'd named the closest stream for one that ran not far from the town where they were all born. "Who knows what lies in the forests? We could float trees down to New Hastings…"

"We?" Edward said.

"I'm not the only one," Richard replied. "So much land for the taking. I feel-fenced in here."

"How did you stand it aboard the St. George?" asked Edward, who knew his younger son hadn't always had an easy time on the fishing boat.

Richard shrugged. "What choice had I? I couldn't start a farm in England-the land was all taken. If I lived in town, I'd be cramped, too. So I tried to keep my mouth shut and do what needed doing. But here I have choices, and I aim to make the most of them."

"Well, I don't know how I can hold you back if you're bound and determined to go," Edward said. "Go on, then, and God bless you-and yes, we'll be able to use the timber, for houses and for boats."

Eight or ten families went up the Brede with Richard and his wife and children. Edward watched them lead their livestock along the riverbank with a curious mixture of pride and fear. He didn't know what could go wrong with them in the woods, but he worried all the same. If anything did, they would be too far away for the folk remaining in New Hastings to help them in a hurry.

And they hadn't been gone more than a couple of weeks when a boat came up from Freetown. The Dovermen were in high dudgeon. "Do you know what?" one of them said in portentous tones.

"Not yet," Edward answered, "but since I think you're about to tell me, I will pretty soon. What's your news?"

"There's a town full of God-cursed Frenchmen down the coast from us!" the Freetown man cried.

"Frenchmen, you say? Or is it Bretons?" Edward asked.

"By Our Lady, it only matters to them!" the man from Freetown said.

"Is that Francois Kersauzon's settlement?" Radcliffe persisted.

The fellow who'd been talking just shrugged. One of the other new settlers nodded. "That was their leader's name, yes," he said. "They all speak French with a funny accent, the ones who speak it at all, but I could follow that much."

"I have no quarrel with Kersauzon. No one here does," Edward said. "He was the one who showed us the way to this land. We owe him a debt, if anything." Several people standing close by him nodded.

That wasn't what the men from Freetown wanted to hear. "Atlantis should be English! Atlantis must be English!" howled the one who liked to hear himself talk. "We ought to chase those French scuts back across the sea with their tails between their legs!"

"Do you think they'd stay chased?" Edward inquired. "Would you?"

"I'd kill the French dog who tried to make me leave!" the Freetown man blustered. "And if I did go, I'd come back with a fighting tail and make the knaves sorry they ever troubled me to begin with."

Radcliffe sighed. Some men were impressively blind. "Why d'you think Kersauzon's one pin different? If you tell him to go, he'll spit in your eye. If you somehow make him leave, he'll come back with soldiers himself. Do you want to farm and fish here, or do you want to fight?"