Liberating Atlantis

by Harry Turtledove

  Insurrectionists had come out to make sure the white militiamen and regulars held to the terms of the surrender Frederick Radcliff had imposed on Newton, Stafford, and Sinapis. Most of the Negroes and copperskins, though, stayed under cover. If the whites didn’t go along, the rebels could always open fire again.

  Once officers convinced the regulars that the insurrectionists would also abide by those terms, the professional soldiers were willing enough—even happy enough—to stack their rifle muskets and pile up leather cartridge boxes below them. The artillerists drove spikes into the touch-holes on their fieldpieces, but nothing in the surrender terms said they couldn’t. Frederick and Lorenzo hadn’t thought of it, so the rebels would do without cannon a while longer.

  That wasn’t the truce’s real danger point. Persuading the militiamen to hand over their guns was. The militiamen hated and feared their opponents much more than the regulars did. Many regulars, after all, came from north of the Stour; they might well be personally opposed to slavery. All the militiamen favored it. They all hated the idea that the insurrectionists might win freedom on the battlefield, and they all feared—no doubt with reason—that their former chattels might seek vengeance as soon as they caught their white foes unarmed.

  Newton had to admit that Jeremiah Stafford did what he could to calm their fear, even if he was also bound to feel it himself. “They’ll let us go,” Stafford said, over and over again. “They’d be idiots if they did anything else.”

  “Damned right they’re idiots!” a militiaman burst out. “Copperskins and mudfaces can’t hardly be anything but!”

  “Since we’re stuck in their blamed trap, what does that make us?” Stafford inquired dryly. The militiaman blinked. That didn’t seem to have occurred to him. Maybe he really was an idiot.

  Hiding a rifle musket was next to impossible. When tipped with a two-foot bayonet, the weapon was taller than a man. Even without a bayonet, you couldn’t very well stick one up your sleeve or down your trouser leg. Pistols—eight-shooters and old-style pepperboxes and even older flintlocks—were a different story.

  “Not the end of the world, your Excellency,” Colonel Sinapis said when Newton remarked on it. “Some of our men will be able to protect themselves from robbers or shoot game for the pot. You cannot make war with pistols, not against rifle muskets.”

  “I see the sense in that,” Newton replied. “But will the insurrectionists? Or will they use a few holdout pistols as an excuse to treat our men more harshly than they would have otherwise?”

  Sinapis’ smile tugged up the corners of his mouth without reaching his eyes. “You think of such things, your Excellency. So do I, coming out of the cynical school of Europe. But that ploy never occurred to Frederick Radcliff or even to Lorenzo, who is less naive than the black man. When I mentioned it, they both promised they would not take it amiss, as long as the militiamen do not try anything foolish.”

  “That’s good news.” Newton tempered the remark by adding, “I hope so, anyhow.”

  “As do I,” Sinapis agreed. “A few hotheads could greatly embarrass us by doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. I would not be sorry if the rebels made an example of them. I fear I would be sorry if those people made an example of all of us.”

  “Sorry. Yes.” Consul Newton left it right there. The more rifle muskets went up in neat stacks of six, the more vulnerable the white survivors became. One thing was clear: even if the fighting continued after this disastrous battle, the insurrectionists would not lack guns, cartridges, or percussion caps for a long time to come.

  Here and there, blacks or copperskins robbed disarmed white soldiers. A handful of militiamen—no regulars—died suddenly. Maybe they refused to take orders from men they still thought of as natural inferiors. Maybe slaves recognized owners they hadn’t loved. Leland Newton found himself in a poor position to ask too many questions.

  The whites started back toward New Marseille the next morning. They hadn’t been able to bury all their dead. They had to rely on promises that the insurrectionists would see to it. And what were those promises worth? Anything? Newton had no idea.

  He also had other, more immediate, worries. He kept looking back over his shoulder. If the Negroes and copperskins came swarming after the defeated Atlantean soldiers, what could the white men do? Die, Newton thought.

  Stafford also kept looking over his shoulder. Nervous, are you? Newton couldn’t twit him about it, not when he was nervous himself.

  Some of the rebels, still carrying weapons, walked along beside the soldiers who’d surrendered. Newton didn’t see anyone prominent. Frederick Radcliff wasn’t coming along. Neither was Lorenzo. They had more important things to do with their time. Probably taking charge of gathering up the loot, Newton thought. Both the Tribune and his marshal were bound to think that was the most important thing they could do right now.

  “Well,” Stafford said, “we’ll be marching like a couple of privates from the regulars by the time we get back to New Marseille.”

  “So we will. I know I’m in better shape than I was when I got on the train in New Hastings,” Newton answered.

  “So am I—here.” Consul Stafford brushed his leg with the palm of his hand. “But here . . . ?” He brought his hand up to his heart for a moment, then sadly shook his head. “Everything I ever believed in is coming to pieces.”

  “Everything outside of church, you mean,” Newton said.

  “No. Everything.” Stafford shook his head again. “I always truly thought it was God’s will that whites should rule over niggers and mudfaces. Hell’s bells, man, I still want to think so.”

  “The evidence would appear to be against you,” Newton said carefully.

  “Yes. It would. And I don’t like that for beans.” Stafford’s voice was cold as an iceberg drifting past North Cape in dead of winter. “Maybe God has changed His mind about the way things work—the way they ought to work, I should say. And if He has, then we’re all worse sinners than I ever thought we could be. That’s pretty bad, too, believe me.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I leave God to the preachers. Taking care of myself seems hard enough most of the time,” Newton said.

  He won a thin chuckle from the other Consul. “It does, doesn’t it? So you say you want to leave God to the Preacher? I didn’t know you’d taken up with the House of Universal Devotion.”

  “That’s not what I said, and you know it damned well.” A touch of irritation came into Leland Newton’s voice. No educated Atlantean could take the Preacher—even when he got called the Reverend—or the House of Universal Devotion seriously. Atlantis had spawned its share of sects and then some. That no educated man could take the House of Universal Devotion seriously hadn’t kept it from becoming one of the more successful and prosperous of those sects. No one had ever gone broke betting against the ordinary fellow’s good sense.

  “All right.” For once, Stafford didn’t seem to feel like arguing—or not about that, anyhow. He did have other worries: “What do you suppose they’ll do to us once we get back to New Marseille and word of what happened here gets to New Hastings?”

  “I don’t know,” Newton answered. “Maybe they’ll decide we were a pack of fools and send out a new army to take a shot at the insurrection. Or maybe they’ll try to turn this cease-fire into a real peace. If they do that, we’re the people on the spot.”

  “On the spot is right.” The prospect failed to delight Stafford. “Make peace? I wanted to kill them all! Sweet, suffering Jesus, but I still do!”

  “I want all kinds of things I’m not likely to get. No matter how well I’m marching now, a carriage would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Consul Newton tramped on for a while. He wondered what would happen if he wore through the soles of his shoes before he got back to New Marseille. You’ll start wearing through the soles of your feet, that’s what. After a furlong or so, he said, “That Frederick Radcliff is a piece of work, isn’t he?”

  Jeremiah Stafford made a horribl
e face. “Oh, just a little!” he answered. “Yes, sir, just a little. He’s a chip off Victor’s block. I don’t suppose anyone who ever met him would tell you anything different.”

  “I expect his owner might have,” Newton remarked.

  “Yes, I expect the poor bastard might—and much good it would have done him,” Stafford said. “Long odds that he’s dead now. I wonder what he did to deserve it. I wonder if he did anything.”

  “Some would say you deserve whatever happens to you if you buy and sell other people,” Newton said.

  “Some would say all kinds of damnfool things so they can fan themselves with their flapping jaws.” Stafford used a flint-and-steel lighter to get a cheroot going. He tried to blow a smoke ring, but didn’t have much luck.

  “Frederick Radcliff . . .” Newton tried to bring things back to what he wanted to talk about: “If he were his grandfather’s legitimate descendant, chances are he’d be Consul today instead of one of us. He knows his onions, no two ways about it.”

  “Onions,” Stafford echoed disdainfully. “I half wish he would have killed us all. That would have set the country going in the right direction, anyhow. This way . . . It’s humiliating, to know the damned insurrectionists could have killed you but decided not to on account of politics.”

  “In theory, I can see that,” Newton said. “In theory.”

  “Reminds me of the Caudine Forks,” Stafford continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. Back even before the battle of Cannae, the Sam nites had beaten a Roman army there and made the defeated soldiers pass under a slave’s yoke before letting them go. Sharing a classical education with the other Consul, Newton understood the allusion. “Humiliating,” Stafford repeated.

  “It could be so,” Newton agreed.

  “Could be! My dear fellow—”

  “It could be,” Newton repeated, more forcefully this time. “But whether it is or not, I’m still damned glad to be alive. This way, at least I have a chance to sort things out later. If I were dead, I don’t know how I’d manage that. Do you?”

  Stafford opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. Newton had tried any number of things without obtaining that desirable result. He cherished it now that he finally had it.

  Lorenzo admired the rifle muskets and the cartridge pouches and all the other impedimenta of war the white Atlanteans had to leave behind for their long march back to New Marseille—and their even longer march into disgrace. “Will you look at this shit?” the copperskin crooned. “Will you just fucking look at it?”

  “I am looking at it,” Frederick Radcliff answered. “Believe me, I like it as much as you do.”

  “You’ve got to go some to do that,” Lorenzo said. Frederick believed him; Lorenzo might not have paid such careful, loving attention to a beautiful woman dancing naked before him. “We’ve even got cannon,” he added.

  “Can’t do anything with ’em,” Frederick said. “Now I know why people talk about spiking somebody’s guns.”

  Lorenzo waved that aside. “We’ll fix ’em. Won’t take too long, neither, I bet. And even if we don’t, so what? Damned white folks won’t be able to shoot ’em at us.”

  “Yeah.” Frederick had no trouble sounding enthusiastic about that. He’d never found anything he liked less than trying to stay nonchalant while roundshot screamed by. But, like most slaves, he had no trouble seeing the clouds that darkened silver linings. “Trouble is, these are the onliest cannons we’ve got. The damned buckra can go and pull more out of their assholes any time they please. It’s the same deal as percussion caps—they can make ’em, and we can’t.”

  “Won’t have to worry about percussion caps for a hell of a long time, not after all the ones we took,” Lorenzo said. Frederick wondered whether he’d missed the point. A moment later, Lorenzo proved he hadn’t: “I bet some of our blacksmiths could make cannon if they set their minds to it.”

  “Maybe.” If Frederick didn’t sound convinced, it was only because he wasn’t. “Sure wouldn’t want to stand behind one the first time some poor damned fool fired it.”

  “Use a long fuse the first time,” Lorenzo said. “After that, though . . . Hell, these guns the white folks make blow up every once in a while. Chance you take when you join the artillery.”

  “Reckon so,” Frederick said. “With luck, though, won’t be anybody shooting for a while now. Maybe the shooting’s over. I hope so. Jesus! Do I ever!”

  “Oh, I hope so, too. Doesn’t mean I won’t stay ready to fight,” the copperskin answered. “White folks are likely too muleheaded to quit just on account of we licked ’em once. That’s why I was so surprised you let ’em go when we could’ve hurt ’em a lot worse’n we did.”

  “If they want to beat us bad enough, they can. They got to decide to spend the money and spend the men, but we’re whipped if they do,” Frederick said. “What we’ve got to do is, we’ve got to make ’em decide not to do that stuff. If we scare ’em too much, we’re dead. It will take a while, but we’re dead. We’ve got to make ’em think, These niggers and mudfaces ain’t so bad. Fighting them is more trouble than it’s worth. We let ’em go free, after a while they’ll be just like anybody else.”

  “Fuck ’em,” Lorenzo said. “I don’t want to act like Master Barford did, puttin’ on airs like the fat fool he was.”

  “Not what I meant,” Frederick said. “We got to make ’em figure we’ll be peaceable once we’re free. If they reckon we’ll keep on stealin’ and burnin’ and killin’, they won’t give in no matter what.”

  Quite a few insurrectionists had found they liked the outlaw life. That would cause trouble when peace came—if it ever did. One more thing to worry about later, Frederick thought. First we’ve got to get peace.

  Negroes and copperskins and captured white soldiers who weren’t badly wounded dug long trenches in which to bury the Atlantean regulars who’d died trying to get over the rampart and up the gently sloping sides of the valley. The stench of blood and shit and fear that hung over any new battlefield was beginning to go off, to change to the spoiled-meat stink that announced what the flesh was heir to. The fight was only one day past; in the humid heat of Atlantis’ southwest, nothing stayed fresh for long.

  “Good to get them underground,” Frederick said.

  “Sure is,” Lorenzo answered. “And you’d best believe our boys and girls’ll go through their pockets one more time, make damned sure nobody goes into a hole in the ground while he’s still got anything anyone can use.”

  “That’s the way it ought to be,” Frederick said. His fighters had already plundered the battlefield. Plenty of them wore boots and socks that had graced white soldiers who didn’t need them any more. (Some of the white prisoners walked around barefoot, too. If a man with a rifle musket wanted what you wore on your feet, would you tell him no?) Some of the copperskins and Negroes sported trousers or belts or tunics they hadn’t owned a couple of days earlier. Some of the clothes were still bloodstained. Soaking them in cold water would get rid of most of those sinister marks.

  Two copperskins led a skinny white man up to Frederick. One of them said, “This fella says he’s a preacherman. He wants to say a prayer over the dead white men once they go in the graves.”

  “Oh, he does?” Frederick eyed the volunteer minister. “You ain’t gonna do nothin’ stupid, are you?”

  “I hope not,” the skinny man answered. “What do you mean, stupid?”

  “Goin’ on about how white folks’re better than niggers and mudfaces, for instance,” Frederick said. “Or about how they’re sure to go to heaven ’cause they were fighting on God’s side. You come out with shit like that, you’re gonna end up in one of those trenches, not preachin’ over it.”

  “That’d be just what you got coming, too, for bein’ a fool,” Lorenzo put in.

  “I was going to recite the Twenty-third Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer,” the white man said. “I don’t see how that can offend anybody.”

  Frederick thought about it, then nodde
d. “All right. Fair enough. Long as you stick to those, you can talk. I don’t know that it’ll do the white folks any good, but I don’t see how it’ll hurt, either.”

  His lack of zeal seemed to offend the would-be preacher, but the man had the sense not to open his mouth about it—a good thing, too. Lorenzo said, “As long as you stick to that kind of stuff, you won’t get our fighters mad at you, neither. You do, it’s the last dumb mistake you’ll ever make.”

  “I understand,” the prisoner said.

  “You better,” Frederick warned.

  Most of the white captives turned out to hear the memorial service for their fallen friends. So did some of Frederick’s Negroes and copperskins—more than he’d expected, really. One of the most successful tools whites had used to hold their slaves in line was a religion where God came down to earth as a white man. Frederick had taken years to realize that was what was going on. In spite of realizing it, he still thought of himself as a Christian more often than not. A lot of his fighters evidently felt the same way.

  Still in a dirty gray uniform, the preacher stood in front of one of the filled-in trenches that scarred the meadow. Looking out over his audience, he said, “Let us pray.”

  Whites, blacks, and copperskins bowed their heads. Some of them clasped their hands or pressed palms together. As he’d promised, the preacher recited the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm. Everybody knew those. If you were going to draw comfort from a prayer, you’d find it in one or both of them.

  Frederick thought the man would stop there. Had he stopped, he would have done well enough in an ordinary way. Instead, the fellow looked out over his audience and went on, “These soldiers gave their last full measure of devotion fighting for their country. And they will be repaid, for the House of God is a House of Universal Devotion, one where those who believe truly shall be made glad throughout all eternity—not just some eternity, mind you, but all of it!”