Liberating Atlantis (47 page)

“I wish I could,” Stafford said bitterly.

“I’m sure you do. But it’s too late for that, isn’t it? The Senate wants to get this over with. By the way the wires sound, it doesn’t care how we do it. People south of the Stour—white people, I mean—will get used to the idea of freeing slaves faster if someone they respect tells them they don’t have much choice any more.”

“Some of them may. The rest will stand in line to shoot me. It’ll be a long line, too.” Stafford didn’t sound like a man who was joking.

“What will things be like if they go on the way they have? Better? Or worse?” Newton asked. If anything would keep Stafford thinking about what needed doing—whether he liked it or not—that was it.

By the way he screwed up his face, he might have been passing a kidney stone. “This is not the way I wanted things to turn out when we left New Hastings,” he said. “But you’re happy now, aren’t you?”

“ ‘ Happy’ probably goes too far,” Newton replied. “I’ve always thought the slaves deserve to be free. I hoped we wouldn’t need bloodshed to free them.”

“It may not be over yet, or even close to over,” Stafford said. “Do you remember what I told you before? No matter how happy”—he used the word again, with malice aforethought—“you are that niggers and mudfaces get to ape white men, plenty of people south of the Stour won’t be. A lot of them will be like the militia colonel you don’t care for—they’ll want to keep fighting no matter what.”

“I do remember. We’ve been over this ground before. What’s the most they can hope for? I can think of two things.” Newton held up two fingers. He touched one with the index finger of his other hand. “Maybe they’ll kill off all the blacks and copperskins down here. Then they won’t have any slaves left, whatever they were fighting for will be pointless, and their grandchildren will ask them, ‘How could you do such a horrible thing?’ ” He touched the other finger. “Or maybe they’ll win. I don’t think it’s likely, but you never can tell. But even if they do, will they trust slaves around anything sharp from then on out? I asked you that a couple of minutes ago, and you swore at me.”

“You deserved it, too,” Stafford said.

“Which still doesn’t answer my question, your Excellency.” What Stafford called him then made everything the other Consul had said before sound like an endearment. It would have made a hard-bitten regular sergeant, a twenty-year veteran, blush like a maiden aunt. Even on the receiving end, Newton admired it. When his colleague finally ran down, he inclined his head. “Your mother would be proud of you,” he said.

“If she knew what you had in mind, she’d call you worse than that,” Stafford said.

“The worst of it is, I believe you—which also doesn’t answer my question,” Newton said. “For God’s sake, Jeremiah, if you think that hero from the militia will get you what you want, turn him loose. But if you think he’s the biggest jackass this side of a stud farm, you ought to slow him down before he makes a bad spot worse.”

He wondered whether Stafford would ream him out yet again. The other Consul didn’t. He just gestured wearily, as if to say he wanted nothing more to do with Leland Newton and his impertinent questions. Knowing when not to push any more could be even more important than knowing when to keep pushing no matter what. Newton touched a finger to the brim of his tall beaver hat and left Stafford alone with his conscience—assuming he had one.

And the militiamen did not march off against Frederick Radcliff’s fighters on their own. Newton didn’t know whether Stafford had anything to do with that. Nor did he try to find out. What difference did it make, anyhow? In politics as in sausage-stuffing, the result often proved more appetizing than what went into producing it.

 

Frederick Radcliff had never dreamt his word would be as good as law in much of the state of New Marseille, as well as being heard in states east of the Green Ridge Mountains. People all over Atlantis had paid attention to his grandfather, but what did that have to do with anything? Victor Radcliff had enjoyed the enormous advantage of a white skin. For a man who had to do without one, Frederick had come further than he’d ever imagined he could.

“I hope to Jesus you have!” Helen exclaimed when he remarked on that. He could always count on his wife to keep him from getting a big head. With a sly smile, she went on, “Beats the daylights out of being Master Barford’s house nigger, don’t it?”

“Oh, you might say so,” Frederick answered—she didn’t know Humphrey had mocked him for his former post. “Yeah, you just might. And I was all puffed up about that when it was what I had. I sure was. Seems like a thousand years ago.”

His cheeks heated. For once, he was glad his skin was too dark to show much of a flush. Humphrey had known the difference between house slaves and field hands, all right. So far, Humphrey hadn’t tried to run off again. Or, if he had, the word hadn’t got to Frederick.

Those weren’t the same—not even close. One of the things Frederick had learned was that being a leader didn’t mean knowing everything that was going on. You could be pretty sure of what you saw with your own eyes. Past that, you had to rely on what other people told you.

That sounded better than it really was. As any slave knew, people lied whenever they thought it would do them some good—or sometimes whenever they felt like it. They kept quiet about things that made them look bad. If nobody found out about things like that, they won the game.

Or they thought so, anyhow. Trouble was, the things people lied about or swept under the rug were often the things a leader most needed to learn. Frederick didn’t like using side channels to find out about things his lieutenants should have told him. That didn’t mean he didn’t do it. Back on the plantation, Henry Barford had done the same kind of thing. In the end, it didn’t save him—the uprising was too sudden, too swift, to be sidetracked. But it had helped him run things for years. And it helped Frederick now.

“A thousand years ago,” his wife echoed. “It does, but it seems like day before yesterday, too. I reckoned I’d die a slave—I really did.”

“So did I,” Frederick said. Considering who his grandfather was, he thought that fate seemed even more bitter to him than it did to Helen. He’d never had the nerve to tell her that, though. His best guess was that she’d call him a stupid, uppity nigger if he dared do such a thing. Sometimes you didn’t want to find out how good your best guess was.

“Ain’t gonna happen now,” Helen said in wondering tones.

“No. It won’t. We’ll die free,” Frederick agreed, adding, “And it’s startin’ to look like that won’t happen in the next ten minutes, neither.”

“Wouldn’t have believed that when you clouted Matthew,” Helen said. “I reckoned you was dead. I reckoned I was, too. And not just the two of us—the whole work gang.”

“Things turn out right, fifty years from now old niggers’ll go on about how tough things were in the work gangs, and young niggers listenin’ to ’em won’t have any notion of what they’re talkin’ about. That’s what I’m aimin’ for,” Frederick said.

While he was a house slave, he hadn’t understood what a hard life field hands led. He’d known, but he hadn’t understood, not till he lived it himself for a little while. It was even harder for him, because they got used to it from childhood while he was dropped into it as a middle-aged man with soft hands and with welts from the lash on his back.

“Be somethin’ if we got it,” Helen said. His disaster had turned her out into the fields, too. She’d never blamed him for it, not out loud, which surely made her a princess among women. She asked, “Any news about what the white folks in New Marseille’re up to?”

Not altogether comfortably, Frederick shook his head. “Only thing I know for sure is, they haven’t come out against us. And some of the militiamen done gone home, on account of they can’t get their hands on any guns.”

“Aw, toooo bad.” Helen didn’t sound brokenhearted.

Frederick laughed. “Ain’t it just?”

“They ain’t comin’ out to fight. But they ain’t comin’ out to talk with us, neither,” his wife said.

“That’s about the size of it. You’d know if they were,” Frederick said.

“Well, I hope so,” Helen said, which reminded Frederick of his own thoughts about how hard it was to be sure of what was going on. Then she asked, “What if they don’t do either one?”

“If they don’t fight
or
talk?” Frederick said. Helen nodded. He scratched his head. The white folks had to do one or the other . . . didn’t they?

“Maybe they try an’ wait us out, see if our army falls apart,” Helen said. “They know how to hold things together better’n we do.”

Once more, that reminded Frederick of his unpleasant encounter with Humphrey. “You’re right,” he said in somber tones. “They do. They’ve had more practice doin’ it.”

“Think we ought to, like, push ’em, then?” Helen asked. “Be harder for them to make like they don’t want to talk with us if we try an’ talk with them right in front of all the newspapers an’ everybody.”

“It would,” Frederick murmured.
Damned if it wouldn’t
, he thought. Saying no or saying nothing was easy in private. Doing it where people who wanted you to say yes could listen in . . . That was another story.

“Dunno if you ought to go yourself. Talkin’ with ’em face-to-face when we had guns all around, that was fine. Stickin’ your head in the lion’s mouth in New Marseille . . . Maybe they listen to you. But maybe they shoot you instead. Even if the Consuls don’t tell ’em to, maybe they do it irregardless,” Helen said.

“Uh-huh. Same goes for Lorenzo.” Frederick could easily imagine a militiaman pulling out an eight-shooter and blazing away. The white men from south of the Stour loved rebellious slaves no more than the Negroes and copperskins loved them. The militiamen were having trouble getting firearms in New Marseille. That might count for very little. A length of rope might suit them better, in fact. Yes, watching a leader of the insurrection kick away his life might make them laugh like hyenas.

Frederick had never heard a hyena, or seen one. Atlanteans often said things, or thought them, for no better reason than that they were embedded in the English language. He supposed his African ancestors and cousins knew all about hyenas.

“Lorenzo.” Helen’s nostrils flared. “Don’t know if you oughta trust that copperskin. He’s liable to want to be the top fella, not the second one.”

It wasn’t as if that thought hadn’t also occurred to Frederick. But he said, “If he aimed to kill me, he could’ve done it a hundred times by now. White folks are the ones we got to worry about, not our own kind.”

“You hope,” Helen said.

So Frederick did. If he remembered that Lorenzo
was
a copperskin,
wasn’t
exactly his own kind . . . If he remembered that, the insurrection would eat itself up. Quite deliberately, he made himself forget it.

XXI

Jeremiah Stafford might have been happier to see the arrival of the Antichrist at New Marseille than he was when Frederick Radcliff’s emissary rode into town. On the other hand, he might not have. On the other other hand—assuming people came with three—he wasn’t sure there was much difference between the Antichrist and a spokesman for the Free Republic of Atlantis.

Had he had any choice, he would have ignored the Negro named Samuel. But Samuel made sure Stafford and Newton and Colonel Sinapis had no choice. Carrying a flag of truce, he rode into town with a guard of half a dozen insurrectionists. Two of them had captured Atlantean cavalry carbines, three had eight-shooters, while the last bore the Free Republic’s flag.

Up till then, Consul Stafford hadn’t known the Free Republic had a flag. It hadn’t shown one in any of its fights with Sinapis’ soldiers. But it did now—one in stark contrast to the USA’s crimson red-crested eagle’s head on blue. The Free Republic’s flag showed three vertical stripes: red, black, and white.

Samuel was only too happy to explain its meaning to New Marseille’s newspapermen (and parading through town with it made sure the newspapermen noticed him). “It shows the three folks of the Free Republic,” the Negro told anyone who would listen. “Copperskins, Negroes, and whites can all live together there in equality.”

Not a single reporter asked him what had happened to the whites in the Free Republic, or why so many militiamen hailed from land it held. That the reporters didn’t ask such questions infuriated Stafford. “The black bastard might as well have cast a spell on them!” he complained.

“He’s clever,” Leland Newton said, which only irked Stafford more. The other Consul went on, “And that flag is a master stroke. It makes the Free Republic look to be the same kind of thing the United States are.”

“One more lie!” Stafford said. “He’s trying to force us to treat with him.”

“He’s doing a good job, too, wouldn’t you say?” Newton answered. “If we don’t treat with him—or treat with his principals, which is what he’s come to arrange—we have to start fighting again.”

Although Stafford was ready for that, he and the militiamen seemed to be the only people in New Marseille—maybe the only people in the USA—who were. “He’s arranged things so we have no choice,” he said sourly.

That didn’t get the response he wanted, either. “Well, your Excellency, if you think so, too, let’s meet him and get it over with,” Newton said.

Stafford didn’t want to, which was putting it mildly. But he’d done all kinds of things he didn’t want to do since leaving New Hastings. The more of them he did, the easier the next one seemed to become. Meet with a nigger fronting for a slave insurrection? Before leaving the capital, he would have laughed at the idea—if he didn’t punch whoever was mad enough to suggest it. Now . . . Now he let out a wintry sigh and said, “All right. Maybe it will make those jackasses with pens shut up, anyhow. That would be worth a little something.”

It didn’t. Samuel made sure it wouldn’t. He wanted to meet while New Marseille’s reporters listened in. “Why not?” he said. “The Free Republic’s got nothing to hide.” That only made the scribes like him better.