Liberating Atlantis (39 page)

Lorenzo nodded, but not with much sympathy. “They knew what they was gettin’ into. And they knew what was liable to get into them if somethin’ went wrong.”

“White folks don’t cornhole the ordinary fighters they catch,” Frederick said. “We don’t cornhole their fighters when we catch ’em. They shouldn’t ought to fuck the gals.”

“It’s different,” Lorenzo said, and Frederick found himself nodding. He couldn’t have said just how it was different, but he also felt it was. Maybe because most men didn’t enjoy cornholing other men, where any man who
was
a man would jump on a woman any chance he got.

“Still and all,” he said slowly, “it doesn’t seem right. We been fightin’ straight up. So have the white soldiers, pretty much. Whole bunch of fellas jumpin’ on a woman on account of she was carryin’ a gun—that ain’t straight up.”

Lorenzo’s eyes slid toward the cooking fires: the direction in which the younger copperskin with the flapjack turtle had gone. Slyly, he said, “You ought to go sing your song over there. You’d have all those pretty young gals crawlin’ under the sheets with you faster’n you could—” He snapped his fingers.

“
That’s
what I need, all right!” Frederick rolled his eyes. As any middle-aged man would have, he thought about an embarrassment of riches. Even were the spirit willing, the flesh was definitely weak. And his spirit wasn’t so willing. “Reckon Helen’d have herself a thing or three to say about ’em.”

“Give her one in the chops. That’ll make her shut her big yap, damned if it won’t.” Lorenzo found simple answers for all worries except military ones. He’d lived with a lot of different women while he was a field hand—with none for more than a couple of years. Now that he was a general, or as close to a general as any man in the Free Republic of Atlantis was, he cut as wide a swath through the women who’d joined the insurrection as a man his age could hope to do.

But Frederick didn’t want to live like that. “Helen and me, we done got along good for a hell of a long time. Why should I want to change now?”

“ ’ Cause fresh pussy’s more fun than the same old thing every God-damned time?” Yes, Lorenzo had an answer for everything.

One trouble: Frederick thought it was the wrong answer. If lying down with someone whose likes you knew and who knew what pleased you wasn’t better than sleeping with a stranger . . . then it wasn’t, that was all. Some men—and some women—preferred the one, some the other. Frederick saw no point to arguing about it. Would you argue about liking duck better than pork?

He did amble over toward the fires himself. Behind him, Lorenzo laughed a filthy laugh. In spite of himself, Frederick’s back stiffened. That only made Lorenzo laugh harder.

“It’s the Tribune!” one of the cooking women said.

“Stew won’t be ready for a while yet,” another one told him. Even as she spoke, chunks of turtle meat went into a big iron pot.

“It’s all right. I’m just seein’ how things are going, I guess you’d say,” Frederick answered.

“How about that?” Admiration filled the copperskinned woman’s voice. By the way she eyed him, Frederick didn’t think he’d have to work very hard to get her into his bed.

But, no matter what Lorenzo thought, that wasn’t what he had in mind. All the people doing the cooking were women. Both they and the men seemed to take that for granted. Frederick wondered why. It wasn’t as if men couldn’t cook. Most boss cooks all through the slaveholding states were men. Frederick sadly remembered Davey. He’d been someone to reckon with, somebody who’d had a lot of influence on the master and mistress. The way to the heart did—or could—go through the stomach.

That had been fancy cooking, though. Women handled the plain job. Men cooked for superiors, women for equals. Maybe that was what was going on here. You couldn’t get much plainer cooking, or cooking more intended for equals, than what went into feeding an army.

Frederick was ready to fight to the death to make Negroes and copperskins equal to whites in Atlantis. That women might be equal to men had hardly crossed his mind up till now. As it did, he shook his head. White men, black men, and copperskinned men were all the same under the skin. Anybody (well, anybody who wasn’t a white slaveholder) could see that. But men and women? Men and women were
different
. Anybody could see that, too. Hadn’t people of all colors been telling stories and making jokes about the differences since the beginning of time?

In the early days of the uprising, some of the men might have been hearing those old jokes inside their heads. They loudly doubted that women had any business picking up rifle muskets and taking potshots at white soldiers. And they plainly expected the women to break and run when soldiers fired at them.

Well, they knew better now. Some women had run when the shooting picked up—but so had some men. Women mostly weren’t as big or as strong as men, so they had trouble fighting hand to hand. But the two sides didn’t fight hand to hand all that often, which meant that mattered less than Frederick had feared it would. Wounded women shrieked on higher notes than wounded men. Still and all, though, no one who’d seen women in action would claim they couldn’t fight.

Since they could . . . Didn’t that argue that a lot of other differences were smaller than they seemed at first glance? Frederick rubbed his chin. Thanks to his famous grandfather, his beard was thicker than most Negroes’. He could have done without that part of Victor Radcliff’s legacy.

What would his fellow fighters say if he told them that, after they won the war for freedom against the Atlantean army, they would have to give women the same freedom: freedom to vote, to hold property, to divorce for all the same reasons? They wouldn’t like it, not even a little. Which argued that he should keep his big mouth shut.

And if you keep it shut, don’t you slam the door on freedom, same as the whites want to do?
That was an interesting question—no two ways about it. The way it looked to him, if he tried to win everything at once, he only increased his chances of winning nothing at all. Once he established the principle that Negroes and copperskins had the right to be something more than property throughout the USA, before too long someone should get around to establishing the principle that women had the right to be more than property.

Yes, that would be easy, wouldn’t it? Of course it would. Frederick was sure of it. And, because he was, he decided not to try to push his followers any further than they were likely to want to go on their own. Equal rights for women could wait a while.

 

“Nigger equality? Mudface equality?” As usual, Jeremiah Stafford freighted the phrases with as much obscenity as they would carry, and a little more besides. “No white man from south of the Stour will put up with that nonsense for a minute, and you know it perfectly well.”

Leland Newton only raised an eyebrow and rustled the latest batch of newspapers that had come into camp. “But there is more to the United States of Atlantis than white men from south of the Stour, and the rest of the people are getting damned sick of a war going nowhere,” the other Consul said. “If they get sick of spending money on it, the states south of the Stour can fight it by themselves—and good luck to them.”

After an outright triumph by the insurrectionists, that was what Stafford feared most. “If we don’t get help from the rest of the country, why should we bother staying attached to it?” he said.

“Don’t let the door hit you in the backside when you leave,” Newton said cheerfully, which was also nothing Stafford wanted to hear. And that cheery tone rasped worse than the words.

Could the southern half of Atlantis—the smaller half, the poorer half, the less populous half, the half racked by servile insurrection—make a go of things on its own? Consul Stafford had no idea. “If we leave, and if we win our fight, how many niggers and mudfaces do you suppose we’ll leave alive afterwards?” he said.

“I couldn’t begin to guess,” Consul Newton asked. “But if you murder them all, what happens to your precious social system then? I’ve asked you that before. Who brings in your crops? Who cuts your hair? Who cooks your supper? How soon before you’re bankrupt because your wonderful whites from south of the Stour won’t do nigger work to save their lives?”

Those were all . . . intriguing questions, much more intriguing than Stafford wished they were. Even so, he said, “We’d be taking care of things our own way. Nothing else matters.”

“Then what am I doing here? What are all the soldiers from north of the Stour doing here?” Newton asked. “If you don’t want our help, we’ll leave, believe me—and we’ll be glad to do it, too.”

“We want your help. We deserve it, by God,” Stafford said. “But if you don’t care to give it we’ll go on by ourselves.”

They scowled at each other. Stafford had the feeling they were talking past each other, as they had so often and for so long in New Hastings. He also had the feeling this was the worst possible time for them to be doing that. The trouble was, he didn’t know how to fix it. Newton would not take him seriously; he didn’t think Newton took himself seriously. And, doubting that, Stafford couldn’t take Newton seriously, either.

Since he could, he saw only one thing to do: win the fight against the insurrectionists while the Atlantean army remained opposed to them. But that meant getting Colonel Sinapis to do something with it. And Stafford was unhappily aware how much he hadn’t endeared himself to the colonel.

He tried to take a light tone when he asked Sinapis, “If you aren’t using the army, may I borrow it for a little while?”

By the way the colonel’s eyebrows came down and together, by the way his mouth tightened to a bloodless line, Stafford knew the approach had failed. “I
am
using it, your Excellency, in case you had not noticed,” Sinapis answered in a voice like winter.

“You aren’t using it enough,” Stafford told him.

“There, sir, we differ,” Colonel Sinapis said.

“Yes. We do,” Stafford agreed grimly. Levity hadn’t reached the somber officer. Maybe bluntness would. “See here, Colonel: do you want the United States of Atlantis to fall to pieces before your eyes?”

He was appalled when Sinapis obviously gave the question serious consideration. And he was even more appalled when the army commander shrugged his rather narrow shoulders. “Meaning no disrespect, your Excellency,” Sinapis said, “but you will please believe me when I tell you I have seen far worse things.”

Stafford almost asked him what could be worse than a republic—a republic often called the hope of both Europe and Terranova—dissolving into chaos. Only one thing made him hesitate. He feared Balthasar Sinapis would tell him. Instead, then, he tried a different road: “Let me put that another way, Colonel. Do you want to take the blame when the United States of Atlantis fall to pieces before your eyes?”

“And why should I?” Sinapis rumbled. “When these things happen, there is usually plenty of blame to go around.”

He was a cool customer, all right. Well, Stafford had already discovered that, to his own discomfiture. “Why? I’ll tell you why, Colonel. Because if this army does not put down the insurrection in a hurry, it’s liable to be recalled. If it is, the southern states will go on fighting the war on their own, even if that means leaving the USA. That is what it
will
mean, too. Plenty of blame to go around, yes. But a lot of it will stick to you.”

He waited. He’d told the truth as he saw it. How much that meant to Colonel Sinapis, or whether it meant anything at all to him . . . he’d just have to see. He’d got Sinapis’ attention, anyhow. The officer stroked his mustache. He’d done something that made Europe too warm for him. Stafford still didn’t know what it was, but it must have been something juicy. If Sinapis got another big blot on his escutcheon, who would hire him after he left Atlantis? The Chinese, maybe? Maybe. Stafford didn’t think even the most raggedy principality in southern Terranova would take the chance.

After a long, long pause, Sinapis said, “You have an unpleasant way of making your points.”

“I tried a pleasant way, Colonel. You took no notice of it,” Stafford answered.

Sinapis muttered to himself. Stafford didn’t think it was in English. That might have been—probably was—just as well. What Stafford didn’t understand, he didn’t have to respond to. Another pause followed. Then the colonel returned to a language the Consul could follow: “What do you want me to do?”

Now we’re getting somewhere
. Stafford didn’t say it out loud. If he had, he would have lost his man. Sinapis’ pride was even touchier than that of a grandee from the state of Gernika. All the Consul said was, “This is what I’ve got in mind. . . .”

 

Rifle muskets cracked. Cannon thundered. Lorenzo’s mouth twisted into a frown. “Damned white devils are getting pushy,” he said.

“They are,” Frederick Radcliff agreed. “How do we make them sorry for it?”

Now the copperskin smiled, and broadly. “You
do
know the questions to ask.”

“I’m counting on you to know the answers I need,” Frederick said. “If you don’t, we’ve got trouble.”

“I’ll talk to people who know the ground, see what we can do,” Lorenzo said. “Depends on what they tell me. And it depends on
how
pushy the soldiers are getting. If it’s only some, chances are they’ll give us more to worry about than they have been. But if they’ve decided they don’t have to worry about us any more—”

“If that’s what they’ve decided, it’s up to us to show ’em how big a mistake they’ve made,” Frederick said.

“
There
you go.” Lorenzo smiled again. His lips were as thin as a white man’s, which made this expression seem uncommonly cruel to Frederick. Lorenzo went on, “I reckon they’re jumpy, all right. They think they’ve got to squash us today, this minute. The longer the war goes on, the more they figure they’re losing.”

He didn’t say that the whites really were losing. That wasn’t obvious. But if they thought they were losing, they might as well have been. Persuading them that they couldn’t put down the insurrection was a big part, maybe the biggest part, of what Frederick wanted to do. It had worked for his grandfather against the English. How sweet if it worked for him now against the Atlanteans—against his grandfather’s white relations.