Liberating Atlantis Read online

  And so Consul Newton thought he would be glad to see Senator Radcliffe. He had no idea from which branch of the founding clan the Senator sprang; only a genealogist could keep them all straight. That didn’t matter, anyway.

  Whichever branch Hiram Radcliffe sprang from, he looked nothing like the most famous modern member. Where Victor Radcliff had been tall and lean, his distant cousin had a short, well-upholstered frame and some of the most ornate whiskers the Consul had ever seen: his muttonchops grew into his mustache, but he shaved his chin—or rather, chins.

  “Consul, what do you propose to do about the slave rising?” Senator Radcliffe asked, at the same time sending up clouds of pungent smoke from his pipe.

  “Why, just what I have been doing,” Newton answered. “I propose to keep the Atlantean government from pulling the southern states’ chestnuts out of the fire for them.” The image had traveled across the sea from England. The only chestnuts growing in Atlantis were a few ornamentals, likewise imported. The land had none native to it, nor any other broad-leafed trees.

  More smoke came up from Radcliffe’s pipe. “That’s what I thought,” he said, and then, amplifying, “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “Afraid of?” Leland Newton didn’t dig a finger into his ear to try to make it work better, but he caught himself barely in time to stop the motion. “Why do you say that?”

  “On account of it’s true,” Radcliffe answered. “Yes, the slaves have their grievances. Lord knows I understand that. But it’s still a damned uprising, Consul. They’re burning and ravishing and killing. New Marseille doesn’t seem able to put ’em down, and brush-fires are breaking out in some of the other southern states.”

  “That is the point of the business, is it not?” Newton said. “The rebels are being as moderate as their circumstances permit. Even accounts from their foes—the only accounts we have, remember—admit as much. They seem to aim to set up a colored republic of their own.”

  “And what will they do with the white folks caught inside it?” Radcliffe asked. “Treat them the way they’ve been treated themselves, for all these years? That’s how it looks right now.”

  “What if it is?” Consul Newton returned. “Can you deny the justice in such a turn of fate?”

  “You can’t make your own cause just by murdering or tormenting folks on the other side.”

  “Even when they’ve been doing the same to you since time out of mind?”

  “Even then,” Hiram Radcliffe said stubbornly. “One reason I want a national army down there is to get between the rebels and the militias trying to do unto them. If the uprising stops, maybe we can get around to talking sensibly about what made it start in the first place.”

  “Good luck! Meaning no disrespect, sir, but you will need it,” Newton said. “Expecting a southern white to talk sensibly about slavery is like expecting the sun to rise in the west. You may if you so desire, but you will be doomed to disappointment.”

  “D’you suppose the copperskins and Negroes are any more likely to?” Radcliffe said. “Seems to me they’re just the other side of the same coin.”

  “Would you not say they have two or three hundred years’ worth of pent-up spleen to vent?” Newton asked.

  “I would. I would indeed. But if they keep venting it, they will make the white southerners decide the only way to stop them is to kill them all. And if they set about it, how do you propose to stop ’em?”

  “They would do no such monstrous thing!” Newton exclaimed. But then he remembered his conversation with Consul Stafford. How monstrous would disposing of Negroes and copperskins seem to a man like that? Monstrous enough to keep him from trying it? Newton wished he could think so.

  His face must have shown what was going through his mind, because Senator Radcliffe said, “Now you see what I’m driving at.”

  “Well, maybe I do,” Newton said. “But keeping an army like that on anything close to an even keel won’t be easy. You know the law as well as I do: one Consul commands one day, the other the next. Against a foreign foe, this is no great disadvantage, since both men would naturally work toward the same end. But where one aims to push while the other wants to pull . . .”

  “Consul, if a Croydon man can’t slicker some poor slob from Cosquer, he isn’t worth the paper he’s printed on,” Hiram Radcliffe declared.

  “Your confidence flatters me,” Newton said dryly.

  “It had better, your Excellency, on account of that’s what I had in mind,” the Senator from Penzance replied, not a bit abashed. “But you need to think about this whole business some more, and I’m not the only one who figures you do.”

  “I . . . see. And how large is your cabal?” Leland Newton’s tone remained dry, which didn’t mean he didn’t mean the question. What kind of plotting had been going on behind his back?

  “Large enough, by God,” Radcliffe said, which conveyed strength without informing: no doubt exactly the effect he had in mind. He coughed a couple of times. “Large enough so that, if we have to vote with the southerners to get an army sent down there, the size of the majority on the resolution will make your eyes pop.”

  “It can be as big as a honker, for all I care,” Consul Newton answered, doing his best not to show how much the warning—the threat?—shook him. Hiram Radcliffe was, or had been, on his side. Still trying to seem unconcerned, he went on, “The resolution can be unanimous, for all I care. If I disagree with it, it will not pass.”

  “You know what the history books say about Consuls who forbid measures just for the sake of forbidding,” Radcliffe warned.

  Newton did know. There had been a couple of Consuls like that in the early days of the United States of Atlantis. The horrible bad example they offered dissuaded later Atlantean leaders from imitating them. All the same, Newton said, “Let history judge me. I will do what I think is right.”

  “What’s wrong with being able to ride down a road without worrying about whether you’ll get robbed or murdered before you get where you’re going?” Radcliffe asked.

  “If since time out of mind you have been robbing and murdering the people who have finally risen in arms against you, maybe you deserve to worry,” Newton said.

  “Maybe.” By the way Hiram Radcliffe said the word, he didn’t believe it for a minute. He took the pipe out of his mouth to lick his lips. “I hate to say it, Consul, but you’d better worry that people don’t finally rise in arms against you.”

  Newton had been in politics for many years. He didn’t miss much. And he didn’t miss the key phrase here. “In arms?” he echoed quietly.

  Senator Radcliffe looked unhappy—he looked most unhappy—but he nodded. “In arms,” he repeated.

  “Well.” Leland Newton made a steeple of his fingertips. “I never looked to be threatened with assassination—never so politely, anyhow.” In the hurly-burly of the Senate chamber, anything could happen. But this wasn’t like that. This spoke of dangers in a back alley in the middle of the night, or maybe of poisonous mushrooms garnishing a plate of boiled pork.

  “I am not threatening you, Consul. I am trying to warn you,” the Senator from Penzance said. “If you keep on with it, more and more people will want to put you out of the way. Surely you can see that?” He sounded as if he was pleading.

  “I might have expected something like this from Senator Bainbridge or some other froth-at-the-mouth southerner,” Newton said bitterly. “But . . . Et tu, Hiram?”

  “Et ego,” Radcliffe answered, proving he remembered at least some of the Latin he’d had drilled into him as a schoolboy. “Sometimes you need to have your friends tell you, because you don’t take your foes seriously enough. We’ve got to do something down there, Leland. Doing nothing isn’t enough any more.”

  “So you say.”

  Hiram Radcliffe nodded. “So I say.” He heaved his bulk up from the chair in front of Newton’s desk. “And now I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  “Does Consul Stafford know you came her
e?” Newton asked.

  “Not yet,” Radcliffe said. “I hope I don’t have to tell him. And if you publish abroad what’s personal, private business I will damn you as a liar from here to Avalon.”

  “I assumed that,” Newton said. Photographers had started capturing light. If only there were some way to capture sound as well!

  “Figured you did, but even so . . . Good day to you, your Excellency.” Radcliffe lumbered out of the office. Newton fought down the impulse to speed him on his way with a good kick in the breeches.

  IX

  “Wait.” Sitting up there on the dais in front of the Conscript Fathers of Atlantis, Consul Jeremiah Stafford had trouble believing what his colleague had just said. “Repeat that, if you would be so kind.”

  He wasn’t the only one to doubt his hearing, either. Half the Senators were staring at Leland Newton as if he’d just disappeared an elephant right before their eyes. One fellow dropped his glasses. Jaws dropped on both sides of the aisle in the Senate House, but especially among the men who came from south of the Stour.

  Consul Newton turned to Stafford with an ironic smile. “You heard me correctly, sir,” he said. “I spoke, and I shall continue to speak, in favor of using an Atlantean army to interpose itself between the insurrectionists and the New Marseille militia—and, if necessary, between the insurrectionists and the militias belonging to the other southern states.”

  A burst of applause echoed from the ceiling of the Senate House. Some of it, again, came from southern men. But others—firebrands like Radcliffe of Penzance—also joined in the cheering. That they did roused Stafford’s ever-vigilant suspicions.

  “Wait,” he said again. “What precisely do you mean when you say you want to interpose an Atlantean army down there?”

  “I mean what I say: neither more no less,” Newton answered blandly. “As you do, sir, I consider that an admirable habit. In my opinion, we would be better off if more persons in political positions followed our example.”

  “We would also be better off if fewer persons in political positions were as exasperating as you make a point of being,” Stafford said.

  His colleague gave him a seated bow. “I am your servant, sir.”

  Stafford ignored that. It wasn’t easy, but he managed. “In a game of chess, for instance, you may interpose a bishop between your king and your opponent’s castle.”

  Newton beamed at him. “Just so! You see? You understand perfectly! So why were you so troubled a moment ago?”

  “Why? I’ll tell you why,” Stafford answered. “Because an interposed piece does not necessarily capture the one that is causing the difficulty.”

  Leland Newton stopped beaming. Consul Stafford got the idea that his colleague hadn’t expected him to realize that quite so fast. Croydon men commonly thought no one was clever except their own kind. Comprehension took longer to dawn out on the Senate floor than it did inside Stafford’s mind—which might have meant that Consul Newton had a point.

  In case any of the Conscript Fathers missed anything, Stafford made it—he hoped—unmistakably clear: “You want to put the national army between the niggers and the honest white men now fighting them. You have not said one word about using the national army to fight them, however. Why is that, if I may enquire?”

  “Separating the opposing forces seems to me an excellent first step toward peace,” Newton answered.

  “Wait a minute!” Senator Bainbridge shouted from the Senate floor. “You just wait one damned minute! An excellent first step toward peace is stringing up all the slaves who rose up against their rightful masters. That’s what a first step toward peace is!”

  He got thunderous cheers from his southern friends. This time, though, Senator Radcliffe and the other northern fire-brands sat on their hands. That told Stafford as much as he needed to know about the kind of game Newton and his cohorts were playing.

  But there were games, and then again there were games. “I am willing to support Consul Newton’s resolution,” Stafford said. Jaws dropped again. Eyes popped—among them, those of Leland Newton. No, Newton wouldn’t be able to call Stafford names for rejecting the resolution out of hand, even if it came with a poison pill. Stafford went on, “The usual command arrangements will of course apply.”

  “Of course,” Newton said. “I am not trying to change the way the United States of Atlantis work.”

  “No, indeed.” Sarcasm dripped from Stafford’s tongue. “Freeing the mudfaces and niggers would do nothing of the sort.”

  “As a matter of fact, sir, it wouldn’t,” Newton said. “It would only extend citizenship to men and women who are now but residents.”

  “And it would ruin an entire class of white men who have contributed greatly to making Atlantis strong,” Consul Stafford pointed out.

  “Some form of compensation might be arranged,” Newton said.

  “How generous!” Stafford fleered. “Tell me: what compensates for murder?”

  “Killing in war is not murder,” Newton replied.

  “Killing in an uprising is,” Stafford said. “And inflicting a fate worse than death upon helpless women is a foul crime in war or peace.”

  “I would agree with you,” his colleague said. “So, no doubt, would countless black and copperskinned women compelled to be the vessels of their masters’ lusts.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” Stafford insisted uncomfortably, recalling the mulatto woman who’d initiated him into the rites of loving.

  “No, eh?” Newton said. “It all depends on who is doing what to whom, I suppose.”

  “You make that into a joke, and a nasty one, at that,” Stafford said. “But you are quite right. A chattel has no say over his person—”

  “Or over hers,” the other Consul broke in.

  “Or over hers,” Stafford agreed. “But when a slave callously violates a free white woman—”

  “He only imitates what white men have done to the women he is not permitted to call wives.”

  “That is not what I was going to say.”

  “Really? Why am I not surprised?”

  Once the bickering ended, the resolution passed. And we’ll see who ends up outsmarting whom, Jeremiah Stafford thought. His guess was that, once an army full of white men bumped up against the insurrectionists, it would go after them full bore whether Consul Newton wanted it to or not. And even if by some mischance it didn’t, he could still use his alternate days in command to steer it in the direction he wanted it to go. He looked forward to it.

  Politicians in Atlantis won votes by railing at bureaucrats. Leland Newton had done it himself. If you listened to politicians, bureaucrats were miserable old slowcoaches. The fist-sized snails in the southern states could move faster than they did. And cucumber slugs had more in the way of brains (to say nothing of less in the way of slime).

  If you made a speech like that, you commonly believed it, at least while you were giving it. Newton knew he sometimes exaggerated for effect, but even so. . . . He expected the Ministry of War would need weeks to gather together the soldiers and munitions and other supplies an army required if it proposed campaigning against the rebels west of the Green Ridge Mountains.

  The army was ready to move four days later. The Minister of War told Newton that Colonel Balthasar Sinapis, the senior officer who would accompany the Consuls into the field, had already apologized for taking so long. “I hope you will not be hard on him because of the delay,” the functionary added.

  “Well, I may possibly forgive him this once,” Newton said.

  “He does promise to do better in any future emergency,” the Minister of War said.

  “Good,” was the only answer Newton could find.

  Colonel Sinapis was a swarthy professional soldier who spoke with some sort of guttural accent. He’d come to Atlantis in the wake of the upheavals following the recent failed revolutions in Europe. Consul Newton thought of him as a human rifle musket: aim him at whatever you pleased, and he would knock it over for
you.

  What the colonel thought of the Consuls was something that hadn’t occurred to Newton till Sinapis sat down in the leading railroad car of the leading train that would take the army into action against the rebels. Sinapis had an axe-blade of a face, a shaggy gray mustache under a scimitar nose, and the fierce, unblinking stare of a peregrine falcon.

  “You gentlemen will have a plan of campaign for the days ahead?” he asked. When he spoke, his accent and his ferocious manner gave him the aspect of a talking wolf. The only wolves Newton had ever seen paced an iron-barred cage back in Croydon. Had one of those wolves worn a gray uniform instead of coarse gray fur, it might have been Balthasar Sinapis’ brother-in-law.

  However lupine Colonel Sinapis’ manner, his question was only too cogent. Newton glanced over at Jeremiah Stafford. He was anything but surprised to find the other Consul looking back at him. “Well . . .” they both said slowly. Neither seemed to want to tell the colonel how much they disagreed about what ought to happen after the army encountered the insurrectionists.

  A flash of scorn in Sinapis’ dark eyes warned that he already knew they couldn’t even agree to disagree. “Some thought now would spare us much trouble later,” he said, as if to squabbling children.

  His accent might remain strong, but his English was grammatically perfect. Newton had already noticed as much. The colonel might have said, Some thought now will save us much trouble later. He might have, but he hadn’t. Which meant . . . what? That he expected no such planning; he just wistfully hoped for it.

  Consul Stafford’s expression said he was making the same calculation, and liking it no better than Newton did. “We’ll do what we can to obtain a satisfactory result,” he said at last.

  “Certainly, your Excellency,” Colonel Sinapis said. “And how do you propose to define success?”