Liberating Atlantis

by Harry Turtledove

  With a sigh, Newton answered, “Right now, friend, I believe I’m going to wait and see what happens next. A lot of the time, you only make things worse when you move too fast.”

  “How could things get any worse than they are?” the man inquired.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out by experiment, either,” Newton said. “One thing I’m sure of: the distance between bad and worse is a lot bigger than the difference between good and better.”

  “Huh,” said the man in the plug hat. “How about the difference between bad and good? Isn’t that what we’re talking about here?”

  “I don’t know. Is it?” the Consul answered. “What is good, and how would you make what you don’t think good better?”

  “You’re trying to confuse things.” The man strode off in disgust. Asking questions like that hadn’t done Socrates much good, either.

  If Leland Newton’s foes got sick enough of him, they wouldn’t trump up charges against him and make him drink hemlock. They were much more likely to ignore him, to do what they wanted despite justice and Atlantean legality. The Consul opened the paper to see what was on the inside pages. One of the first things that caught his eye was a gunsmith’s advertisement. That made him pause for a moment. Back in Socrates’ day, no one had carried an eight-shooter. Assassination was easier now than it had been then.

  Newton shook his head, annoyed at himself. If you let the hobgoblins of modern life get to you, what could you do but spend your time hiding under the bed and quivering? The hobgoblins were there. They weren’t going to go away. You just had to keep on as if they weren’t.

  And sometimes they even worked for you. When Newton went to his office in the Senate House, his secretary handed him a sheaf of telegrams and letters. “What are these, Isaac?” he asked.

  Isaac Ricardo paused a moment, organizing his thoughts. He was at least as clever and capable as his principal. Newton often though he might make at least as good a Consul, too, if not for the impediment of his religion. Consul’s secretary was as high as a Jew was likely to rise in Atlantis.

  “Some of them are from the southern states, calling you a hound and a swine and a snake in the ferns,” Ricardo said. “More come from the north, telling you what a stout fellow you are. After you get through those lots, the rest are the usual sort that want something from you.”

  “Nothing much out of the ordinary, then,” Newton said. His mail had divided into those three categories even before this slave insurrection broke out. From what Jeremiah Stafford said, so had the other Consul’s. The only difference was that people from north of the Stour swore at Stafford, while those from his own side of the river praised him to the skies. Newton presumed the people who wanted something from Stafford could come from anywhere.

  “Not too much out of the ordinary.” Ricardo was also relentlessly precise. “The tone of the political letters—not the begging ones and the scheming ones—seems much more impassioned than it did since the latest unpleasantness commenced.”

  “Can’t say I’m surprised. Well, I’ll have a look at them.” Consul Newton shook his head ever so slightly as he went into his inner office. On second thought, his secretary, no matter how clever, no matter how capable, probably didn’t have what it took to try to lead the United States of Atlantis. The latest unpleasantness? Isaac Ricardo would have to become more impassioned himself if he aspired to be a political man.

  Newton snorted. So far as he knew, Ricardo harbored no such aspirations. Odds were his secretary was too sensible for it. There were times—more and more of them lately, too—when Leland Newton wished he’d been sensible enough to stay away from politics himself.

  He went through the stack of correspondence from the slaveholding states first. He already knew what the people who agreed with him thought: the same as he did. The people who disagreed did so in different ways.

  Some of them quoted Scripture to prove he was an idiot. Others simply loaded up their pens with grapeshot and scrap metal and commenced firing. No printer would have dared put several of the day’s letters into type, not unless he wanted to spend time behind bars for obscenity. A few of the missives seemed drooled onto the page. Ricardo’s impassioned didn’t begin to cover it, either.

  One of the less incandescent letters read, White men are superior. Black men and copperskinned men are inferior. This being so, white men have the natural right to rule over the other races. Any lover of truth can see as much. The author, one Zebulon James, appended A true Christian gentleman to his signature.

  “Well, Mr. James, any lover of truth can see you’re assuming what you wish to prove,” Newton murmured. But if he wrote that back to the true Christian gentleman, would said gentleman understand it? The odds seemed depressingly slim.

  A wicked grin spread across the Consul’s face. He inked a pen. Dear Mr. James, he wrote, I am in receipt of yours of the seventeenth ultimo , for which I thank you. Before I can act on it, I find that I require more information. Would you be good enough to tell me whether you yourself are a white man, a black man, or a copperskinned man? In any of those cases, I fear your opinion may be imperfectly objective. If perhaps you are a yellow man or a green man, you may have a more dispassionate view of the situation. Do let me know. Kind regards, Leland Newton, Consul, United States of Atlantis.

  If that didn’t infuriate Zebulon James, the man was even denser than Newton gave him credit for. The Consul supposed Mr. James could be, but it wouldn’t be easy.

  Newton also supposed his secretary would disapprove of sending out a letter like that. Well, too bad. If you couldn’t have a little fun with your work every now and again, what point to doing it?

  “Here is the latest outrage perpetrated by the colored insurrectionists,” Jeremiah Stafford growled in the Senate chamber. “They derailed a train bringing volunteers from Nouveau Redon to the state of New Marseille, then set the overturned cars on fire. Many white men were killed, many others badly burnt or otherwise injured. How much longer must this vileness persist before the national government is permitted to take arms against it?” He aimed the question at his fellow Consul.

  Senators from the south cheered him. Senators from the north for the most part sat impassive, though several of them looked troubled. Plenty of men who disapproved of slavery remained convinced that white men were better than their copperskinned and black brethren.

  If Consul Newton was one of those men, however, he concealed it very well. “May I ask my distinguished colleague a question?” he said mildly.

  “How can I refuse you, when we both know you’re going to do it regardless?” Stafford returned.

  “How right you are,” Newton said. “My question is this: what do you suppose those white volunteers would have visited upon the colored insurrectionists had they reached New Marseille?”

  “What they deserved, by God!” Consul Stafford exclaimed.

  “Why does it matter so much to you that these men have white skins and those men have darker ones?” Newton asked. “Are they not all men, regardless?”

  By the angry rumble rolling up from the Conscript Fathers, Consult Stafford knew a great many of them did not believe a man was a man regardless of the color of his skin. Stafford didn’t believe it, either. “White men made the United States of Atlantis,” he said proudly. “Niggers didn’t, nor did mudfaces. In the wild, they’re all savages. And I will tell you something else, sir, since you seem to have forgotten it: white men’s ideas made the United States of Atlantis, too. Thanks to the Greeks and Romans, we are a republic, and a republic of laws rather than men. No feathered chieftain rules us, his every utterance the same as the word of God.”

  “Hear, hear!” “Bravo!” “Well said!” The cries of approval and the applause that went with them made Stafford smile. Not all of that came from southern men, not by any means. Stafford’s eyes slid over to his fellow Consul. He wanted to see how Leland Newton enjoyed this.

  If it fazed Newton, he didn’t show it. “Wouldn�
�t you agree, sir,” he said, “that one of the so-called white men’s ideas we’ve built upon is the notion that white men are better than any other sort?”

  “I would,” Stafford said proudly, “for that claim is the truth. White men are better than any other sort. The proof of which may be seen in the way that white men conquer and prevail all over the world.” More applause echoed from the ceiling.

  Consul Newton merely steepled his fingertips. “A few hundred years ago, Marco Polo visited Cathay. His book tells of all sorts of wonders the people there had, of which white men knew nothing. The cities in Cathay were bigger and cleaner and grander than any in Europe. The people used printing and paper money—not always a blessing, but they devised it first. Even the lowly noodle comes from Cathay. Would not any reasonable man in those days have said that the yellow folk there were far superior to the barbarous white Europeans?”

  “You twist things!” Stafford didn’t like to let Newton know his barbs stung, but couldn’t stop himself this time.

  “Do I? I think not. What looks to you like natural superiority seems to me more like picking the present in place of the past and a bit of luck besides. What does Ecclesiastes say? ‘I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.’ Or will you tell me you reckon the Good Book mistaken?”

  “I will tell you that the Good Book has as much to do with Cathay as chalk has to do with cream cheese,” Stafford snarled. “And I will tell you it has even less to do with mudfaces and damned niggers!”

  “ ‘ I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.’ ” Like the Devil, Consul Newton could quote Scripture to his purpose. As far as Jeremiah Stafford was concerned, the resemblance didn’t end there.

  He looked out onto the floor of the Senate chamber. Some of the Conscript Fathers looked as furious as he felt. Others seemed more thoughtful than usual. Not all the men who did were northerners, which alarmed him.

  He said, “I suppose you will next tell me, sir, that the Bible condemns slavery. It does not, and you must know it does not, neither in the Old Testament nor in the New.”

  “True enough.” But Newton spoiled what should have been a telling admission by adding, “It does, however, mitigate the conditions a slave is forced to endure, and liberates him during the jubilee. The institution as practiced in Atlantis does none of these things. I suppose you will next tell me that it does.”

  Consul Stafford growled, down deep in his throat. His colleague was the slipperiest thing this side of a greased eel. “In Biblical times, men enslaved others much like them,” he said. “Our system, being different from theirs and based on the inferiority of those enslaved, naturally has different requirements. Aristotle noted that some men are slaves by nature, which we see proved here.”

  “Aristotle said all sorts of things,” Newton answered easily. “Quite a few of ’em have turned out not to be so. Maybe this one is true, maybe it isn’t. But it sure isn’t true just because Aristotle says so. And the only thing the slave system in Atlantis proves is that white men here have the guns and the dogs and the whips, and the colored men don’t. The Bible talks about sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind, too. You might do well to remember that.”

  “You are helping the insurrection!” Stafford howled.

  “Me? I’m just sitting here,” Newton said.

  “When you should be moving! When we should be!” But Stafford couldn’t make the other man see.

  VIII

  Enterprising restaurateurs in New Hastings brought fat frogs and big flapjack turtles up from the southern part of Atlantis and served them in stews and soups to men from that part of the country: men who’d grown up on such fare. Leland Newton hadn’t. Oh, Croydon had its share of frogs and pond turtles, too. But they hardly ever got bigger than the palm of a man’s hand. There wasn’t enough meat in them to bother with, especially since they spent the cold seasons sleeping in the mud at the bottom of streams and puddles.

  He’d had flapjack-turtle stew a few times since coming to New Hastings, when he was eating with southern men. It was fine . . . if you’d grown up eating it. These days, as pro- and antislavery forces found themselves ever more often at loggerheads (a different kind of turtle altogether), he felt less inclined to make such gestures. When he ate at Kingsley’s Chop House, he ate mutton chops. Whoever wanted to gorge on turtles and frogs was welcome to his share.

  A mutton chop with mint jelly, some fried potatoes, a glass of beer or burgundy or perhaps a tawny port . . . That was a civilized way to make a midday meal. If you had to eat something that swam, salmon and cod were tasty enough.

  Which didn’t mean the Consul ignored gentlemen who had other cravings. He was enjoying Master Kingsley’s artistry with the mint jelly when a party of southern men took the table next to his. He sat more turned away from them than not, or they might have recognized him. They were talking a blue streak when they got there, and they went right on doing it.

  His ear identified them as southerners even before they ordered. Like Jeremiah Stafford, they kept the faintest trace of a French accent—the ghost of a French accent, really. He wouldn’t have been surprised if they were all of English stock. Even so, the tones of the first settlers lingered. Irishmen who knew not a word of Erse spoke English with a brogue.

  “Can you believe the nerve of those niggers and mudfaces?” one of them said. Before his friends could answer, a waiter came up to see what they wanted. Their orders also showed they’d grown up on the far side of the Stour. After the waiter went away, the fellow who’d spoken before resumed: “A Free Republic of Atlantis for their own kind? Sweet Jesus, don’t make me laugh!”

  “Likely tell!” one of his friends scoffed. “It’s all talk to make the northern states keep putting the screws to us. But we know how things really work, we do.” He sounded more silly than worldly wise.

  Consul Newton thought so, anyhow. The man’s friends didn’t. “I should hope we know. That damned nigger will keep telling them what to do, and they’ll keep doing it.”

  “That devil!” The first man had an uncommonly raspy voice. “The nerve, to call himself Victor Radcliff’s grandson!”

  “Yes. The nerve!” his comrades echoed. Did their voices sound a little hollow? Newton thought so. He knew his would have in their place. Where did all the griffes and mulattos and quadroons and their copperskinned equivalents come from if white men didn’t lie down with colored women? No one south of the Stour would let colored men lie down with white women: that was certain sure.

  And hadn’t Victor Radcliff been a man like other men? No matter what the schoolbooks said, Consul Newton figured the man who gave Atlantis liberty had sometimes needed to squat behind a bush and clean himself with a handful of leaves. He’d probably needed to get his ashes hauled now and again, too. He might well have left a byblow behind.

  The waiter came back with beer for the men at the next table. “Your stew will be along soon,” he assured them.

  “Not slow as a turtle, eh?” one of them said. They all thought that was funny, which made Newton wonder how much they’d drunk before they got to Master Kingsley’s establishment.

  “Not even,” the waiter answered, and went away.

  One of the men said, “I don’t care if that nigger says Alexan der the Great is his grandfather. Ain’t gonna do him any good any which way.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t,” another one answered. “We could squash him like a katydid if the government didn’t act like a honker with its head stuffed up its—”

  “It doesn’t matter, not in the long run,” the raspy-voiced man broke in.

  “Devil it doesn’t!” said the fellow he’d interrupted. “Tell that to all the decent white folks who’ve had to run for their lives. Tell it to the ones who didn’t get away, too. S
ome of those poor ladies . . . Jesus God!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Raspy Voice repeated. “Doesn’t matter what the damnfool Consul from damnfool Croydon says, either, not a cent’s worth.”

  The aforesaid damnfool Consul pricked up his ears. Leland Newton was of the opinion that his opinion mattered. If these fellows weren’t, he wanted to know why.

  And one of them obligingly spelled it out for him: “Army’s going to get New Marseille what it needs to whip the slaves no matter what. If they don’t have to talk about it, who’s going to know the difference?”

  Isn’t that interesting? Newton thought. He felt like thumping himself in the head. The only reason he didn’t was that it might have made the mouthy men at the next table notice him. But he knew he should have realized the southerners might try such a ploy. Since he was an uncommonly upright man himself, the idea of dealing from the bottom of the deck hadn’t sprung into his mind right away. But he could see the possibility once someone else pointed it out to him.

  The waiter brought the southern men their flapjack-turtle stew. The heavy smell of the spices—and of the turtle meat—reminded the Consul of his efforts to accommodate other southerners by eating as they ate. It hadn’t worked; he knew that. He had tried, though. He didn’t want to accommodate them any more. He wanted to hamper their every move.

  And they wanted to hamper him, too. If they couldn’t get their way through the legal channels the Atlantean government afforded them, they’d do it any way they could. Yes, he should have seen that that might—would—happen.

  A barrister named Ezra Pilkington came up to his table. Pilkington was a Croydon man, too; they’d known each other since they went to Radcliffe College together. Tipping his hat, the lawyer said, “Eating by yourself, your Excellency? Mind if I join you?”