Liberating Atlantis

by Harry Turtledove

  Or Barford might be down with the yellow jack himself by now. The way things were going, nobody could guess anything he couldn’t see.

  “Do you want to stay slaves the rest of your days?” Frederick asked. “Wouldn’t you sooner be free?”

  They looked at him. They looked at Matthew’s body. Flies with metallic bodies—blue, green, brass—were already buzzing above it. “Don’t seem like we got much else we can do,” a Negro said slowly. “They gonna kill us any which way. Might as well kill some of them before we’s dead.”

  One by one, the other slaves nodded. It wasn’t the grand war cry Frederick had dreamt of, but when did reality ever measure up to dreams? He’d made them move. That much, anyhow, he’d foreseen.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “We got to get those guns.”

  Leaving the overseer’s corpse where it lay (though Frederick took the dead man’s knife), they marched on the big house.

  Frederick did remember to plunge the hoe blade into the dirt to clean it, and to rub more dirt on the handle to hide the blood-stains. He didn’t want to alarm the Atlantean soldiers till the slaves got in among them.

  He also didn’t want to alarm Henry Barford. He didn’t hate his owner. He hadn’t even particularly disliked Barford till he got shackled to the whipping post and then sent to the fields. But he saw no way to let the planter live, not in the middle of a slave rebellion. Too bad—but a lot of things that happened were too bad.

  “What do we say when they ask us how come we’re comin’ back in the middle of the day?” the copperskin called Lorenzo asked.

  “We’ll tell ’em a snake bit the overseer,” Frederick answered— he’d been wondering about that, too. “Tell ’em he’s mighty bad off.” He chuckled grimly. “An’ he damned well is.”

  The squat red-brown man grinned in admiration. “You think of everything.”

  “If I’m gonna run this . . . whatever it is, I’d better, don’t you reckon?” Frederick said. Lorenzo nodded. Nobody else challenged Frederick’s right to lead the uprising. Maybe that meant all the field hands thought they could have no one better at their head. Perhaps more likely, it meant they figured he was the one on whom all the blame would land. And it would all land on him. But it would land on them, too. Whites had never shown any mercy to slaves who rose up. In their place, Frederick didn’t suppose he would have, either.

  There was the big house. There were the wagons with the precious rifle muskets. Without them, the revolt would be stillborn. A couple of troopers dug in the burial plot. If that didn’t mean Lieutenant Torrance had died, Frederick would have been very surprised. Too bad, he thought, even though the slaves would have had to kill the officer had he pulled through. Torrance might personally disapprove of slavery, but Frederick had no doubt the Croydonite would have done his professional duty against any rising.

  A soldier puffed on a pipe in front of one of the wagons. Sure enough, he became curious if not exactly alert when he saw the slaves straggling in from the cotton fields. “What’re you doin’ here so God-damned early?” he asked—the very question Lorenzo had foretold.

  “You know anything about curin’ snakebite?” Frederick asked in return. “Coral snake done bit the overseer, an’ he’s in a bad way.”

  “Son of a bitch!” the trooper exclaimed. “I bet he’s in a bad way. Those bastards’ll kill you deader’n shit.”

  He might be foul-mouthed, but he wasn’t wrong. Coral snakes didn’t go out of their way to bite people, as some of the bigger poisonous snakes did. But, like a good many frogs in the south of Atlantis, they wore bright colors to warn enemies that trying to make a meal off them wasn’t a good idea. If a coral snake did bite you, you were much too likely to die.

  “Whiskey or rum’ll make his heart stronger,” the cavalryman said as the slaves came up to him. “That and praying’re about all I know that can help him.”

  No, he wasn’t suspicious—certainly not suspicious enough. He let the slaves surround him; he couldn’t believe they meant him any harm. But what you believed didn’t always match what was real. Frederick got behind the trooper and stabbed him in the back.

  The white man lurched. He groaned. He tried to draw his revolver, but another Negro clamped a hand on his wrist and didn’t let him. When he screamed, more blood than noise came out of his mouth. His knees buckled. A sudden foul stench said his bowels had let go. Down he went.

  Frederick grabbed his eight-shooter. “Get his knife, too,” he said. One way you got to give orders was by coming out and giving them. If people followed them, you could give more, and they’d be more likely to follow those. Lorenzo took possession of the dagger.

  “What do we do now?” someone else asked.

  “Let’s go get the ones who’re digging in the graveyard,” Frederick answered. “Doesn’t look like they noticed anything goin’ on here, and that’s good.” He stuffed the pistol into the waistband of his trousers and let his shirt droop down over it. “We’ll try and do with them like we did with this fellow. Shooting’s noisy—we don’t start till we have to. Lorenzo, reckon you can let the air out of one while I do the other?”

  “Turn me loose,” the copperskin said confidently.

  “All right.” Frederick grinned. “But listen, everybody. If they look like they’re gonna pull their guns, just jump on ’em any which way. If they start shootin’, they can hurt us bad. Got me?” He waited for nods. As soon as he had them, he nodded at the troopers, who weren’t digging much faster than slaves would have. “Soon as we bag them, Master Henry next.”

  That got everybody moving toward the Atlantean cavalrymen. Frederick might not especially dislike Henry Barford, but some of the field hands did.

  “Your poor lieutenant die?” Frederick called as he and the slaves with him neared the sweating troopers.

  They seemed willing enough to rest on their shovels for a while. “That’s right,” one of them said, mopping at his red face with a big cotton handkerchief—cotton that, for all Frederick knew, might have come from this plantation. “Once the fever got a grip on him, he went downhill quick. He was pissing blood and puking up black stuff. . . .” His face twisted in disgust. Maybe in fear as well, for he had to know that could happen to him, too.

  “It’s a shame,” Frederick said. “He was a good fellow.”

  “That he was,” the soldier agreed. “Won’t catch me saying it real often, not about officers, but it’s the truth with Lieutenant Torrance. Was the truth, I mean.”

  “Hey,” the other trooper said suddenly. “What’re you, uh, people doing here, anyway? How come you ain’t out there workin’ like you have been?”

  Frederick told the story about the snakebite again. This time, he didn’t stumble even a little. Had he heard the tale from his own lips, without question he would have believed it. Some lies—inspired lies—sounded better than truth.

  He thought so, anyhow. To his surprise and disappointment, the troopers didn’t seem to. “How come you didn’t send one fellow back while the rest of you stayed out there?” asked the one who’d wondered why they’d returned. He was the man Frederick was closer to, leaving the other soldier for Lorenzo.

  Frederick answered the question as if replying to an idiot: “On account of the snake’s still there.”

  “Huh,” the trooper said scornfully. He looked around in alarm. “Why are you people crowdin’ around us like this? Watch yourself, Stu! Somethin’ funny’s goin’ on.”

  Things happened very quickly after that. Lorenzo knifed Stu as neatly as Frederick had killed the sentry by the wagons of guns. Frederick stabbed the other trooper less than a heartbeat later. But the man screamed like a hurt shoat and went for his revolver. One of the slaves tried to stop him, but he shook off the Negro. The pistol cleared the holster. Another slave grabbed his arm and dragged it down, so he fired a shot into the dirt at his feet.

  The noise was horribly loud. And, if one shot had already rung out, two wouldn’t make any difference. Frederick held the
muzzle of his own pistol against the side of the struggling trooper’s head and pulled the trigger.

  He’d seen bullet wounds on animals. Henry Barford was proud of his skill as a hunter—and well he might have been, because he helped feed the plantation with it. But Frederick had never seen anything like this. If he was very lucky, he never would again, either. The trooper’s head might have been a rotten melon dropped off a roof. It blew apart. Brains and blood and bits of bone splat tered Frederick and all the other slaves close by. The Atlantean cavalryman had fought despite a nasty knife wound, but now he dropped like a felled redwood.

  Lorenzo already had the other man’s pistol. Another copperskin had got his knife. Now a Negro took this trooper’s eight-shooter. And Helen pulled the knife off his belt. Frederick smiled at that. It was good that his wife should have a proper weapon. They’d all have them as soon as they unloaded the wagons, but why shouldn’t Helen take the lead?

  The gunshots brought house slaves running out to see what was going on. To Frederick’s heartfelt relief, they didn’t bring out any more Atlantean cavalrymen. The rest of the troopers must have been either dead or too sick to care. The house slaves . . . Their eyes went wide with shock. Looking down at himself, Frederick saw why. The cavalryman’s blood and brains splashed his shirt and trousers. He looked as if he’d just come from a hard day’s work at a slaughterhouse.

  “What . . . What happened?” a housemaid quavered, as if she couldn’t see for herself.

  In case she really couldn’t, Frederick answered, “We’re free now. We’re really free now, and we’re gonna stay that way.”

  “The hell you say!” That furious roar came from Henry Barford. His wife might be dying of yellow fever. For all Frederick knew, Mistress Clotilde might be as dead as Lieutenant Torrance. But the idea of a slave uprising brought the master out onto the back porch, a shotgun cradled in his arms, his over-and-under pistol stuck in his belt. “And hell is where I’ll blast the lot of you, too!”

  He started to raise the shotgun to his shoulder. Housemaids scattered, squealing. Frederick aimed his pistol, too. He knew he would have to be lucky to hit Master Henry at this range, while the master, with that shotgun, wouldn’t have to be lucky at all to hit him.

  Thunk! Speaking of slaughterhouses, that noise came straight out of one. Davey stood behind the master. The chief cook had buried a cleaver in the back of Henry Barford’s head. Barford stood there a long moment, looking absurdly surprised. The shotgun slipped out of his hands. Then his knees buckled and he fell over. His feet drummed on the planking. That wouldn’t last long. No one could hope to live with such a terrible wound.

  Slowly, Frederick lowered his eight-shooter. “Obliged,” he said, wishing his voice weren’t so shaky.

  Davey sketched a salute. “Any time.” He stooped and picked up the shotgun. “Now I got me a piece, too. I know some folks who could use two barrels’ worth of double-aught buck, I expect.”

  “Take Master Henry’s pistol if you want, but don’t worry about the shotgun,” Frederick said. Davey frowned, not following. Frederick pointed to the wagons. “Those’re full of guns that’ll hit from four or five times as far away as any shotgun ever born, remember? Fancy government muskets, bound for New Marseille.”

  “That’s right.” The cook’s heavy-featured face cleared. “Reckon we’ll need ’em, too.”

  “Reckon we will,” Frederick agreed. “But for now, this here plantation is ours.”

  What did generals call it when victory had been won but the fighting wasn’t quite over? Mopping up—that was what they said. The slaves still had to mop up. Knocking the cavalrymen down with yellow fever over the head was quick and easy. A couple of them were near death anyway. Frederick told himself his people were doing the whites a favor by ending their suffering. He didn’t have much trouble making himself believe it.

  Clotilde Barford also still clung to life in the upstairs bedroom. Three housemaids got into a catfight about who would have the privilege of holding a pillow over her face till she quit breathing for good. It was a real brawl—their nails drew blood.

  “Lord Jesus!” Frederick exclaimed after some of the men separated them—and got clawed in the process. “Let’s settle this fair and square.”

  “How you gonna manage that?” one of the women asked, dabbing at her bleeding cheek with her apron.

  Frederick dug out Henry Barford’s deck of cards. “Here’s how,” he said. “You all draw one. High card does the job.”

  The housemaid who’d asked him won the draw. The other two swore at her as she proudly climbed the stairs to finish the last white person on the plantation. When she came down, she was grinning from ear to ear. “That bitch ain’t gonna give nobody grief no more!” she declared.

  Everyone cheered. Frederick held up his hands. “Listen to me!” he said. “You got to listen to me!” He wasn’t sure they would. Some of them had already got into the master’s—the dead master’s—barrel-tree rum and whiskey.

  “Listen to him, damn it!” That was Lorenzo. He seemed to be the one the copperskins on the plantation heeded most. And he had a fierce bass voice that made people pay attention to him.

  Eventually, most of the field hands and house slaves looked in Frederick’s direction. “We’re free now,” he said. Then he couldn’t go on, because everybody started cheering again. He held up his hands once more, this time hoping for quiet. After a while, he got something close to it. He continued: “We’re free—till the first white man—drummer or preacher or neighbor: doesn’t matter which one—decides to pay a call on Master Henry. Then they’ll find out what happened here, and they’ll try and kill us all.”

  “Well, fuck ’em!” shouted a housemaid with a whiskey bottle in her hand. “Fuck ’em in the heart, the stinking shitsacks!” She got a cheer, too.

  “Easy to say,” Frederick said when he could get a word in edgewise. “Not so easy to do. Way it looks to me is, we got two choices. We can slip away by ones and twos, going every which way. Some of us’ll get free if we try that, odds are—some of us, but not everybody.”

  “We could go off to the woods and the swamps,” a copperskin said. Runaway slaves of all colors scratched out livings in places where whites judged pursuit more trouble than it was worth.

  “Well, we could try,” Frederick said. “When they find out we killed the whites here, though, they’ll come after us a lot harder’n they’d chase ordinary runaways. Or does anybody reckon I’m wrong?”

  No one said anything. If slaves killed white people, other whites would hunt them down no matter what. Every slave understood that. It was one of the pillars on which slavery rested.

  “So slipping away doesn’t look so good,” Frederick said. “Only other chance I see is, we gotta fight, and we gotta win.”

  “We got the guns, by God!” Davey’s voice was as deep as Lorenzo’s.

  “Anybody figure there ain’t some white folks around these parts who still need killing?” Lorenzo himself added.

  No one left alive on the plantation believed that. “And when we liberate a plantation, what happens to the mudfaces and niggers who were slaves on it?” Frederick answered his own question before anyone else could: “I’ll tell you what happens to ’em. They join our army—the Liberating Army, that’s what we’ll call it. And then we go on and we free up the next plantation down the road.”

  “And the slaves there, they turn into soldiers, too!” That was one of the housemaids who’d lost the draw to kill Mistress Clotilde. By the excited way she said it, the possibility hadn’t occurred to her till that very moment. It probably hadn’t. Frederick had never thought she was long on brains.

  Excitement surged through the assembled slaves—no, through the newborn Liberating Army. They had rifle muskets and ammunition for several plantations’ worth of slaves. After that . . . Well, Frederick couldn’t imagine any plantation without firearms, both for hunting and for keeping two-legged property in line. Those weapons would arm more Negro
es and copperskins.

  And what happens when the Liberating Army goes up against the army of the United States of Atlantis? Frederick wondered. What do we do for cannon? What do we do for grapeshot?

  Well, he didn’t have to worry about that, not yet. And, as long as he didn’t have to, he didn’t intend to. Borrowing trouble never did anybody any good. And, if you were a slave—even more, if you were a slave trying to rise up against white masters—you already had plenty of troubles, and didn’t need to borrow any more.

  “Where do we go first?” That was Davey: trust the cook to come up with a good, practical question.

  Frederick had been chewing that over, too. “Way it looks to me is, first place we ought to set free is Benjamin Barker’s,” he answered. “It’s close, and he doesn’t treat his slaves real well, so they’ll be ready to swing our way, and—”

  “And his wife, that Veronique, she’s an even nastier cunt than Mistress Clotilde, an’ that’s really sayin’ somethin’,” interrupted the handmaid who’d just snuffed out Clotilde Barford’s life.

  From everything Frederick had seen and heard, she was right. He made himself nod. “She sure is,” he said. “And that’s one more reason the slaves on the Barker plantation will see things our way.” They’d better, or this will be one of the shortest uprisings in a history that’s seen a lot of short ones. He looked around. “Anybody got a better idea?”

  The people who really counted were Lorenzo and Davey. If either of them thought the Liberating Army should pick a different direction, Frederick would have to listen carefully. He might have to change his mind.

  They both paused thoughtfully, considering. At last, almost in unison, their heads went up and down. “Benjamin Barker deserves whatever happens to him,” Davey said in the tones of a judge passing sentence.