Opening Atlantis

by Harry Turtledove

  “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.

  “Should give the blacks and copperskins guns, help them kill off the Spaniards,” Blaise said. “They deserve it.”

  “We can’t do that,” Victor Radcliff replied. “The treaty we signed made us promise we wouldn’t.”

  Blaise only looked at him. “And so?” Blaise didn’t know much about treaties. He wouldn’t have cared if he did. He only knew what he wanted, and how to go about getting it. Next to that, nothing else mattered.

  “I can’t do anything about it. People know me too well. It would get noticed, and the Spaniards would scream bloody murder. And under the treaty, they’d have a right to.” Victor gave Blaise his most severe stare. “You can’t do anything about it, either. You’re my right-hand man, and people know it. You’d get blamed, and I’d get blamed, and England would get blamed. You can’t—you hear me?”

  “I hear you.” The Negro looked mutinous.

  “I’m sorry, Sergeant—by God, I am sorry—but that’s an order,” Victor said. “If you break it, I won’t be able to help you, and I won’t even try.”

  Blaise said something in his own language. Victor didn’t ask him to translate. He didn’t want to know. They didn’t see eye to eye about this. They never would. Coming up to the border was something of a relief—at least it gave Victor something else to think about. Two Spanish soldiers stepped out of the customs post. They glowered at seeing a white man and a black together.

  “What do you want?” one of them called in Spanish-flavored French.

  “Do you speak English?” Victor answered in his own language.

  “No, and I don’t want to, either, por Dios.” The soldier reverted to his native tongue. His comrade spat in the roadway. “What do you want?” the man asked again. He didn’t raise his musket, but he looked as if he wanted to.

  Victor wondered what would happen if he said who he was. His raid into Spanish Atlantis had touched off the slave rebellion that still sizzled. Would these Spaniards shoot at him to pay him back for what he’d done to their settlements? He decided he didn’t want to find out.

  “I am here following my king’s orders,” he said, which was at least indirectly true. “He wants to make sure that the border between his new realm and yours is quiet and safe and secure.”

  “Then he shouldn’t send out a white man with a mallate,” the Spaniard replied. “Nothing is quiet and safe and secure with mallates around.”

  Blaise said something incandescent in Spanish. Both soldiers at the border post started to raise their guns.

  “Don’t do that,” Victor said, also in Spanish. “You insulted him first. And if you shoot us, you will start a war. Not only that, you will lose it. If you lose it, you will see English law in Spanish Atlantis. Do you want that?”

  English law was much easier on slaves than Spanish law was. The border guards knew as much. They lowered the muskets with haste that would have been comical in a setting less grim. Victor Radcliff was lying through his teeth, and he knew it. If England kept slavery as it was in French Atlantis, she would do the same thing here.

  Blaise also knew he was lying through his teeth. What Victor told the Spaniards went dead against what he’d said in all the arguments he’d had with the Negro. Victor wondered if Blaise would throw that in his face. To his relief, Blaise didn’t. While the two of them disagreed, they showed a common front against the Spaniards.

  “You are not permitted to enter into Spanish Atlantis, not with…him along,” one of the Spanish soldiers said. He spoke to Victor alone, as if Blaise were nothing more than a beast of burden.

  “Why do you think I want to enter it? To eat lizards? To let mosquitoes eat me?” Victor said. “Keep it, and welcome. As long as you don’t cause trouble, I can report to the king that he doesn’t need to take it away from you.”

  “Yet,” Blaise added.

  The Spaniards spoke with each other in low voices. “You have seen what you came to see. Now you should go,” said the one who did the talking for them.

  “Gladly,” Victor said.

  “Their turn will come,” Blaise said as he and Victor rode north again.

  “Without a doubt,” Victor agreed. “One day soon, England will hold all of Atlantis.”

  “And then what?” Blaise asked.

  “I don’t know,” Victor said, taken aback. “It will be a better place than it is now—I’m sure of that.”

  “Better how?” Blaise persisted. “Freer?”

  Victor thought of freedom in terms of not needing to worry about foreign foes. Blaise looked at things rather differently. “I don’t know,” Victor said again.