Liberating Atlantis

by Harry Turtledove

  “Hmp. You’ve got some sense, anyhow. Who would have thought so?” Stafford managed a crooked grin.

  “May I speak to this point?” Colonel Sinapis asked.

  Newton and Stafford both eyed him in surprise. Neither intermarriage nor education had much to do with soldiering, which was his province. But Newton said, “By all means, Colonel,” and Stafford nodded.

  “Thank you, your Excellencies,” Sinapis said. “In Europe we have only a handful of copperskins and Negroes—not enough for people to get excited about. What we have instead is a great plenty of Jews.”

  “We have some here, too,” Newton said. “We treat them more or less like any other white men.” Consul Stafford nodded again. Newton finished, “My secretary, Mr. Ricardo, is a Jew, and a very able man.”

  “I have seen what you do here. Even in your army you have some officers who are Jews—not many, but some. In Europe, this would never happen.” By the way the colonel sounded, he approved of the European practice. But he went on, “I understand why this is so, too. You have not so many Jews here. And you have so much dislike for colored people, not much for Jews is left over.”

  “That’s an . . . interesting way of looking at things,” Consul Newton said uncomfortably. It made more sense than he wished it did.

  “But what’s your point, Colonel?” Stafford asked.

  “Ah. My point, yes.” Before coming to it, Balthasar Sinapis made a small production of lighting a cigar. Once it was drawing well, he went on, “In my lifetime, European laws against intermarriage with Jews have mostly fallen into disuse. Some people said the sky would fall or the Antichrist would come after this happened, but the world still goes on as it always did. Maybe things would turn out the same way here.”

  “Maybe they would,” Newton said thoughtfully. “We can hope so, anyhow.”

  “I wouldn’t bet anything I wasn’t ready to lose,” Stafford said. “Marrying Jews, at least you’re marrying money. Marrying a nigger . . .” His disgusted look told what he thought of that.

  “No one would make anybody marry someone of a different color,” Newton said. “The question is whether it ought to be legally possible.”

  “I know what the question is,” Stafford replied. “I know what the answer ought to be, too.”

  “When you make a treaty to settle a war, you do not always get everything you want,” Colonel Sinapis said.

  “I understand that. But I’d like to get some of what I want,” Consul Stafford said.

  “So would the Negroes and copperskins,” Newton reminded him. Stafford’s expression said he didn’t need—or, more likely, didn’t want—reminding.

  Every time Frederick Radcliff walked into the tumbledown tavern to talk with the white Consuls and colonel, he felt like a trainer sticking his head into a tiger’s mouth. He’d come away safe every time up till now, but things only had to go wrong once and. . . .

  He felt doubly nervous walking in there this particular morning. It must have shown, because Lorenzo said, “Don’t worry. This is what we decided. If the white folks don’t like it, that’s their hard luck.”

  Frederick shook his head. “Liable to be everybody’s hard luck. That’s what I’m worried about.”

  “We whipped them,” Lorenzo said. “Let them sweat.”

  With an effort, Frederick made himself nod. The white men sat there waiting for him and Lorenzo to join them. Frederick didn’t trust any of them. Consul Stafford was an open enemy. Consul Newton was less of one, at least openly, but Frederick wondered what he thought down deep of Negroes and copperskins. As for Colonel Sinapis . . . Maybe it was Frederick’s imagination, but he thought the foreign officer looked down on the two Consuls almost as much as they looked down on the uprisen slaves they faced. That puzzled Frederick. Did coming from Europe count for so much? He thought Colonel Sinapis thought it did.

  “Good morning,” Newton said as Frederick and Lorenzo sat down across the table from him. “What have you decided about my proposal?”

  After a deep breath, Frederick answered, “Sorry, but we aren’t going to take it.”

  Newton looked as if he’d bitten into something sour. “Are you sure? Many—even most—of your people would benefit from education. Only a handful would take advantage of intermarrying, and chances are some of them would end up sorry they’d ever tried it.”

  “You may be right. You likely are. But that isn’t the point,” Frederick said.

  “Oh? Suppose you tell me what is, then.” Newton’s voice was light and clear, as usual, but the Consul was provoked enough to show the iron underneath, which he seldom did.

  Frederick took another deep breath. He needed one. He tried to hold his own voice steady as he answered, “Point is, if we’re gonna be equal with white folks, we got to be equal every way there is. We deserve to get schooled same as white folks if we’re equal. And we deserve the right to marry no matter what color somebody is. If we say you can take that away from us, what are we sayin’? We’re sayin’ you’re better’n we are, an’ all the talk about bein’ equal is just that—talk.”

  The white men glowered at him and Lorenzo. Lorenzo glowered right back. Frederick only sat there waiting. Slowly, Consul Newton said, “It’s hard to negotiate with you if you give us nothing to negotiate about.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. That’s why we rose up,” Frederick said. “How can you negotiate about freedom? Either a man’s free, or he ain’t. If we got to be free, we got to be all the way free.”

  “A matter of principle.” Consul Stafford sounded less scornful than he often did.

  “That’s right. A matter of principle.” Frederick nodded. The white man had come out with what he was trying to say.

  “We have our own principles, you know,” Stafford said.

  “Sure you do.” That was Lorenzo, answering before Frederick could speak. “You can buy us and sell us and lay our women whenever you’ve got a stiff dick you don’t know what to do with. Only you can’t, not any more. That’s how come we rose up, too.”

  Stafford didn’t explode, the way Frederick thought he might. All he said was, “Getting this past the Senate will be harder than you seem to think.”

  “Tell ’em you’re doing what’s right,” Frederick said. “It’s the truth.”

  “As if that matters,” Leland Newton muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.

  “It better matter,” Frederick said. “If it don’t, we got to start over. An’ startin’ over means the Free Republic of Atlantis an’ lots more shootin’.”

  “I told you before—we can start shooting again if you push us hard enough. You won’t like what happens if we do,” Stafford said.

  “You won’t like it, either,” Lorenzo promised, and exchanged more glares with the Consul from Cosquer. But they weren’t the same kind of glares as they had been before the two leaders drank together on the overgrown streets of Slug Hollow. Then, Stafford might have been scowling at a dangerous dog, Lorenzo eyeing a fierce red-crested eagle. Now each recognized the other as a man. That much was plain. Whether such recognition improved things was, unfortunately, a different question.

  “We rose up on account of freedom,” Frederick said. “If we could’ve got it without fighting, we would’ve done that. But it wasn’t about to happen—you folks know it wasn’t, and you know why, too.”

  “Do you see the day, then, when one of the Consuls of the United States of Atlantis will be a Negro and the other a copperskin?” Jeremiah Stafford didn’t sound as if he saw that day, but he didn’t—quite—sound as if he were mocking Frederick, either.

  Since he didn’t, Frederick judged he deserved a serious answer: “Not any time soon. More white folks than there are colored, and people just naturally vote for their own. But maybe the day will come when nobody cares what color a man is, as long as he’s a good man and he knows what he’s doin’.”

  “A noble sentiment,” Consul Newton said softly.

  “Well, so it is,”
Stafford agreed. He looked across the table at Frederick. “You’d better not hold your breath waiting for that day, though.”

  Frederick looked back at him. “No need to worry about that, your Excellency. I don’t aim to.”

  “I don’t care if a copperskin gets to be Consul,” Lorenzo said. “What I care about is whether it’s against the law for him to try. Long as he can try—long as nobody ties him to the whipping post and stripes his back for even thinking about it—I won’t fuss. Same with marryin’ out of your color: I don’t reckon it’ll happen real often, but there shouldn’t be a law against it.”

  “That’s right,” Frederick said. “That’s just right. That’s how it ought to be.”

  “Easy enough for you to say so, out here in the middle of nowhere,” Consul Stafford said. “As I told you a little while ago, it won’t be so easy to convince the Senate in New Hastings.”

  “Do we have to bring the war across the mountains, then? We can do that.” Frederick wasn’t really sure the insurrectionists could do any such thing, but he wanted to keep the white men worried.

  By the looks on their faces, he did. “Even if we give you everything you say you want, you may not end up happy with it,” Newton said.

  “If the law says we’re free, we’ll be happy with it,” Frederick answered.

  “If the law says we’re equal, we’ll be happy,” Lorenzo added.

  Colonel Sinapis suddenly spoke up: “Not matter what the law says, white men will keep running Atlantis for a long time to come. You are right—there are more of them than there are of you. And they have more money. They have more experience running things, too. You may not be slaves in law any more, but you will not at once become equals, no matter what the law says.”

  Frederick Radcliff glanced over at Lorenzo. The foreign colonel’s words seemed much too likely for comfort. Lorenzo spread his hands, as if to say he felt the same way. But what came out of his mouth was, “Chance we’ve got to take.”

  “I think so, too,” Frederick said. “We have to start somewhere.”

  Leland Newton had drafted the accord that would, with luck, put an end to what almost everyone these days was calling the Great Servile Insurrection. He wrote it in language more simple than he would have used most of the time. He was a barrister; keeping things simple wasn’t something he normally did. But, while Frederick Radcliff could read and write, he wasn’t trained in the law. Newton didn’t want him to be able to claim he’d signed something he didn’t fully understand.

  “Why not?” Stafford said when Newton remarked on that. “It’d served the damned nigger right.”

  “We came to Slug Hollow to stop trouble, not to stir up more of it,” Newton said.

  “We came west to stamp out the insurrection,” Stafford replied, “and look what a good job of it we did.”

  “If we bring home a peace the whole country can live with, we will have done well enough here,” Newton said.

  “If.” The other Consul bore down heavily on the word. “And if the whites south of the Stour rebel because of the peace we’ve brought home, how well will we have done here? That may yet happen, you know.”

  “I do intend to propose that they be compensated for the loss of what has been their property,” Newton said.

  “That may do some good. Then again, it may not,” Stafford replied. “If living in houses were to be made illegal tomorrow, how happy would you be to get money for a house you had to leave?”

  “Happier than if I didn’t get any, I suppose,” Newton answered.

  “You would still be angry, though, wouldn’t you? You might be angry enough to go to war about it,” Stafford said.

  “I hope not.” Newton heard less conviction in his own voice than he would have liked. He gathered strength as he went on, “White men south of the Stour can’t go back to living in the house they had before. Their neighbors will burn it down around their ears if they try. You know that’s so.”

  Unwillingly, his colleague nodded. “But a good many of them don’t understand that it’s so,” Stafford said.

  “We’ve got to convince them. You’ve got to convince them,” Newton said. “They admire you. They respect you. They believe you. They believe in you.”

  “And much good any of that will do me. As soon as I tell them they really do have to give up their slaves, they’ll start plotting to assassinate me. And if you think I’m exaggerating, you’d better think again,” Stafford said.

  Newton didn’t think the other Consul was. He knew how high passions ran among slaveholders. “Maybe what’s happened to our army—and what’s happened to some of them—will give them the idea that times have changed,” Newton said hopefully.

  “Maybe.” Stafford didn’t sound as if he believed it for a minute.

  “If you feel the way you do, why are you signing the agreement?” Newton asked.

  “This will be bad. Not signing would be worse,” Stafford said. “I can see that much. I’m not a blind man, no matter how often you’ve called me one on the Consuls’ dais. But you and the insurrectionists seem sure angels will sing hosannas as soon as everyone’s name goes on that paper. I am here to tell you things won’t be so simple.”

  Do I think everything will be wonderful once we have an agreement? Newton wondered. Maybe he did. And maybe Stafford was right to have his doubts. But he was also right about something else: “Not signing would be worse.”

  “I said so.” Jeremiah Stafford gestured impatiently. “But that doesn’t mean signing will be good. It just means signing won’t be so bad. You can say right away that a man is free. How long does it take before he truly believes he’s free, though? And how long before his neighbors believe it?”

  He was full of hard questions this morning. Newton wished he himself were as full of answers. He said, “All we can do is find out.” He handed the other Consul the paper he’d been working on. “Does this say everything we need to say? Is it clear? Have I forgotten anything?”

  Stafford perused it. He suggested two or three small changes. The points he raised were cogent; Newton made the changes without a murmur. His colleague sighed. “Now I suppose it is as good as it can be. Whether it should be . . .” Stafford sighed again. “I think not, but events have overtaken me.”

  “General Cornwallis must have said the same thing when Victor Radcliff trapped him in Croydon,” Newton remarked.

  “He ended up doing well for himself—and for England—in India,” Stafford said. “Atlantis can’t send me so far away. When the country learns what we’re about to do here today, it may wish it could.”

  “The Treaty of Slug Hollow, or perhaps the Slug Hollow Agreement. Schoolchildren from now till the end of time will have to learn about it, and about the people who signed it,” Newton said.

  “But what will they learn?” Stafford asked. “Will teachers say we were heroes, or will they call us a pack of fools and thrash all the little brats who can’t remember how we made a hash of things?”

  More hard questions. Newton could only shrug. “We’ll have to do it and then find out, that’s all,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  “No, but we’re going to do it anyhow,” the other Consul answered. “Then we have to persuade the Senate not to crucify us because we did it. And good luck on that score, your Excellency.”

  “We’ll both need all the luck we can find,” Newton said. “So will the United States of Atlantis.” He carefully folded the Slug Hollow Agreement and put it in a jacket pocket. It meant nothing till it was signed. But that moment was only a few steps away now.

  XXIII

  Frederick Radcliff studied the paper in front of him with more care than he’d ever given any other piece of writing. No other piece of writing he’d ever seen would affect his life so much, or affect the lives of so many other people.

  “Is it all right?” Lorenzo asked anxiously. The copperskin couldn’t read, and had to trust his judgment. With much effort, and with his tongue wagging from a corner of his mouth
like a hard-working schoolboy’s, Lorenzo could write his name. Even that little put him ahead of most slaves.

  “I . . . think so,” Frederick answered. He glanced across the table at Consul Newton, who’d given him the document. Newton was a white man, a barrister, and a politico, and so triply not to be trusted. He smiled back blandly now. Frederick discounted that. His gaze swung to the other Consul, the southern Consul. The less happy Jeremiah Stafford looked, the more relieved Frederick felt. Stafford was bound to have seen the agreement beforehand. If he didn’t like it, it was less likely to hold hidden traps that would limit the future liberty of blacks and copperskins.

  “As you will see, we have already signed the document,” Newton said. “It needs only your signature, and that of your marshal, for us to submit it to the Senate and end this insurrection that has discommoded everyone.”

  “Not everyone, your Excellency. Oh, no. Not everyone,” Frederick said. “You see freedom in front of you, you don’t reckon you’re—what did you call it? Discommoded, that’s right.” He filed the word away so he could use it again if he ever found the need.

  Consul Stafford sniffed. “You see a chicken coop in front of you, you don’t care who owns it.”

  “I expect that’s so, your Excellency,” Frederick said. “You’re hungry enough, I expect it’s so no matter what color you are. You want to get free bad enough, I expect you rise up no matter what color you are, too. Back in the old, old days, weren’t white men slaves? And didn’t they rise up whenever they saw the chance?”

  “Spartacus,” Newton said.

  “That’s the fella!” Frederick nodded. He knew little more about the ancient slave insurrectionist than his name. He hadn’t even been able to come up with it a moment before. All the same, lots of Negroes and copperskins knew there’d been plenty of slave revolts before their day. Whites didn’t want them learning such things, which was all the greater incentive for doing so.