Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"Oh, but, Senor, things were different then," said the teniente in charge of the frontier post. "We had orders to prevent you from entering Spanish Atlantis, and we were honor-bound to obey them."

"No matter how idiotic they were," Roland said acidly.

"Yes. I mean, no." The young teniente frowned. "You are doing your best to confuse things, Senor." He sent Kersauzon a reproachful stare. He had a long, thin Spanish face, a drooping mouth, dark eyes, and heavy black eyebrows: a face God might have made expressly for reproachful stares, in other words.

Roland gave back a bland, polite smile. "I always do my best," he said, which left the Spaniard scratching his head.

But neither the teniente nor his tiny garrison did anything to hinder the French settlers who followed Roland into Spanish Atlantis. That was the point. Given the inefficiency with which the Spaniards ran their settlements, Kersauzon had feared that the frontier guards wouldn't know their governor had begged him for help. Spaniards were indeed the kind of people who would open fire for the sake of honor, regardless of whether honor and sense lay within screaming distance of each other.

The first copperskin the French settlers saw in Spanish Atlantis took one look at them, then spun around and ran like a rabbit. (In the early days of settling Atlantis, there had been no rabbits, any more than there'd been sheep or cattle or horses. There were plenty of them now: maybe more than in France, for they had fewer natural enemies here. Of course, like a lot of Frenchmen, Kersauzon was fond of lapin aux pruneaux-or lapin prepared any number of other ways, too.)

"Should we shoot him, Monsieur?" asked a practical-but not quite practical enough-sergeant.

"I daresay we should have shot him," Roland replied. He hadn't been practical enough, either. "Too late now." Too late it was, without a doubt. The Terranovan had vanished into the undergrowth. He knew where he was going. Pursuers wouldn't. Roland could hope he would tread on a viper in his headlong flight; there were enough, or rather too many, of them down here in the south. But, that unlikelihood aside, the copperskin had got away.

Which meant-what? The fellow was bound to be a slave. He was also obviously a slave not tending to his master's affairs. Was he a slave who was part of a band of rebels? That was less obvious, but it matched the way he acted.

Would his band of rebels want to tangle with Roland's French settlers? Unless that band was a lot bigger than Kersauzon thought likely, they would have to be crazy to try it. Then again, plenty of white men were crazy. Why not copperskins and Negroes as well?

"Where do we go now, Monsieur?" the sergeant asked.

Roland realized he should have inquired of the snooty Spanish teniente. He was damned if he would turn around again, even if it was only half a mile or so this time. He hadn't seen any white men-let alone white women-on the road since entering Spanish Atlantis. That had to mean the uprising was a serious business…or that the whites thought it was, anyhow, which might not be the same thing.

The sergeant deserved-needed-an answer. Kersauzon scanned the southern horizon. He knew just what he was looking for: the thickest smoke. When he found it in the southwest, he pointed. "We go there."

It turned out to be farther away than he'd expected, which meant the fires down there were bigger than he'd thought. No one seemed to be fleeing toward his army. Several Negroes and copperskins fled from it. The French settlers caught a Negro. The man tried to deny everything.

"If you are as innocent as our Lord, why did you run from us?" Roland asked.

In reasonable-almost French-tones, the black replied, "If you saw lots of men with guns, Senor, wouldn't you run, too?"

"Not if I thought they were friends," Kersauzon said.

"I thought you were ingleses," the Negro replied. "Los ingleses are the friends of no one but themselves."

"You're right about that, by God," Roland said. "They will use you against the Spaniards, and the Spaniards against you. They will try to get the Spaniards to fight you instead of them. They don't care what happens to you, as long as it helps them."

"No doubt you are right, Senor," the Negro said. "But how much does it matter? If you are a drowning man, you grab for whatever you can get your hands on. If it turns out to be a log-bueno. You are saved. If it turns out to be a crocodile-at least you don't drown."

Crocodiles and the other toothy horrors usually called by the Spanish name for lizards-lagartos-were even more common in streams down here than they were in French Atlantis. There were hardly any near the English settlements; those lay too far north for the big reptiles to stay comfortable through the winter. All things considered, Roland would rather have drowned if a crocodile or lagarto was his other choice.

He also needed to ask, "Why did you have to run from los ingleses? After all, they gain if you rise up against the Spaniards."

"You said it yourself, Senor," the Negro replied with dignity. "I am a man. I am not a tool to be taken down from a shelf, used, and then put back. Slaves are nothing but tools to los ingleses. If these English"-he pronounced the name properly, and about as badly as Kersauzon would have-"said, 'Rise up, and we will help you become free men'…if they said that, I would be their man forever. But they do not. They care nothing for freeing us. All they say is, 'Rise up, and make los espanoles some trouble.' This does not inspire me, for some reason."

Roland Kersauzon swept off his hat and bowed to the black man, who stared at him in astonishment. "It would not inspire me, either, Monsieur," Roland said. "I assure you of that." He gestured. "You may go. You are free-of me, anyhow."

"But you and your men are still fighting for the damned Spaniards and against the slaves," the Negro said.

"It is our duty," Roland said simply.

"If you turn me loose, it is my duty to kill you if you get in my way and if I have the chance," the Negro said. "I need to go after the Spaniards first, but you are their ally."

"Tell the other slaves to wait until los ingleses are gone from this land. If they do, we will not raise a finger against them," Roland said. "My quarrel is with the English, not with you."

"This is a good bad bargain, but it is still a bad bargain," the black man said. "If los ingleses are not here, the Spaniards will have nothing to distract them from us. They will put us down, and they will make us pay for rising against them. But if we fight them now, while they also have to worry about the English, we have a chance to beat them. Maybe not a good chance, but a chance."

He wasn't even wrong, not as long as he was talking about Spaniards. If the slaves did beat their Spanish masters, the French would invade and try to suppress them. Even the English would probably do the same thing. They might not have many slaves in their own settlements, but they didn't mind making money from other people's bondsmen.

And Roland was sure the English aimed to seize French and Spanish Atlantis for themselves if they won this war. They wouldn't want Negroes and copperskins running around burning things and killing people. No, not when those same Negroes and copperskins could be harvesting crops and putting black ink, not red, in the ledgers.

Kersauzon made as if to push the slave away. "You had better leave now, before I come to my senses and decide to hold you instead."

The Negro bowed politely. "You may try, Senor. I don't think you will have much luck." Then he disappeared, so quickly and so effectively that he might have been part of a conjurer's trick. A leafy fern stirred for a moment. Deeper in the undergrowth, a bird let out a startled chirp.

"He's a nuisance," a sergeant said. "You should have got rid of him while you had the chance."