Liberating Atlantis Read online

  Leland Newton eyed Crocodile Flats with distaste. It was bigger than a village, smaller than a town. It had got carved out of the primeval Atlantean wilderness on the banks of the Little Muddy River, a name that struck Newton as perfectly accurate. Once upon a time, crocodiles had laid their eggs there—hence the name. Now the crocodiles were gone. A more deadly species raised its broods in Crocodile Flats.

  A militia captain in homespun, a broad-brimmed, floppy hat all but covering his eyes, told Colonel Sinapis, “You can’t go no further by railroad. It’s all niggers and mudfaces from here on out.”

  “They have spread this far?” Sinapis muttered to himself. “This is not what we were told when we left New Hastings.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s so anyways,” the captain said.

  “Can we force our way through the rebel pickets to get to the heart of the insurrection?” Sinapis asked.

  “Not by train, you can’t,” the militia captain answered. He paused to spit a stream of pipeweed juice into the dust, shifted a chaw to the other cheek, and went on, “Bastards have torn up as much track as they could.”

  “God damn them to hell!” That wasn’t Colonel Sinapis—it was Jeremiah Stafford. The news made his temper burst like a mortar bomb. “Have they got any notion how much money they’re costing the USA? Why, without a railroad connection New Marseille will wither on the vine!”

  Newton wasn’t sure whether he meant the state or the town that gave it its name. The town still had all its sea commerce, of course. The colored rebels weren’t likely to turn pirate and harry that. A couple of hundred years before, Avalon had been a famous pirates’ roost, but times were different now. Newton looked to Sinapis and asked, “What do you recommend, Colonel?”

  “That we disembark and advance,” Sinapis answered. “High time we discover what we are up against.”

  “I couldn’t agree more!” Consul Stafford declared.

  Whether he agreed didn’t matter . . . today, because it was Newton’s turn to command. But tomorrow the southern man would lead. Unless Newton marched east, away from the Little Muddy, they would go into action then in any case. Newton saw little point to putting things off a day. “Very well,” he said. “Prepare the advance as you think best, Colonel.”

  Balthasar Sinapis saluted crisply. “Just as you say, your Excellency.”

  He turned away to start giving orders to his subordinates. Before he could, the militia captain tugged at his sleeve. “You’ll want our men to go along, won’t you? We know the countryside like you know the shape of your wife’s . . . Well, hell, you know what I mean.”

  “They may come.” If the prospect pleased Sinapis, he hid it very well. “But if they do, they will find themselves under the command and under the discipline of the army of the United States of Atlantis.”

  The captain shifted the wad of pipeweed from cheek to cheek again. “What does that mean exactly?” he asked.

  “To give you a basic example, if they kill prisoners or torture them for the sport of it, I shall hang them from the closest strong tree branch,” Sinapis answered calmly. “Is that plain enough, or do you need further illustration?”

  “But—” The captain broke off. He might have said several different things, but he wasn’t stupid enough to imagine that any of them would have done him any good. “All right, Colonel. Have it your way. We’ll play along.”

  We’ll play along till we don’t think you’ll catch us. So Newton judged his meaning, anyhow. Did Sinapis judge it the same way? Newton expected he did. The colonel might be a good many things, but he was neither foolish nor naive.

  The bridge across the Little Muddy remained in the militia’s hands. They had pickets on the west side of the river. Those men seemed mighty glad to see regular Atlantean troops come join them.

  “Now we get down to business,” Stafford said, ferocious anticipation in his voice, as Newton and he crossed the plank bridge together.

  “So we do—whatever the business turns out to be,” Newton said. His shoes and Stafford’s thudded on the timbers. So did those of the soldiers they led. The men broke step as they crossed, lest rhythmic vibrations from marching in unison shake the bridge down. It wasn’t likely, but it could happen. They took no chances.

  Colonel Sinapis sent pickets—some militiamen, others regulars—out ahead of his main force and into the woods west of the river. Newton waited a little queasily for the sound of gunfire. Consul Stafford looked to be waiting for the same thing, and to be looking forward to it. The more the army fought the insurrectionists, the less inclined it would be merely to keep the peace.

  A corporal came back to Colonel Sinapis. “There’s a copperskin up ahead carrying a flag of truce, sir,” he said. “What do we do about him?”

  Sinapis looked a question to Newton. “Honor it,” Newton said at once. “Let’s find out what they have to say.” Stafford made a disgusted noise, but he couldn’t do anything about it—not today he couldn’t, anyhow. The colonel told the corporal what to do. The two-striper saluted and went off to do it.

  He came back fifteen or twenty minutes later with a strong, stocky copperskin who still carried his white flag. Newton had expected the rebels’ emissary to be wearing stolen white men’s finery, but he still had on homespun wool trousers and an undyed, unbleached cotton shirt: slave clothes.

  “My name is Lorenzo,” the fellow said. “I speak for Frederick Radcliff, the Tribune of the Free Republic of Atlantis.”

  “There is no such place!” Consul Stafford exploded. “There is no such title! And slaves haven’t got the right to last names!”

  “There is such a place, because that’s where I come from. Frederick Radcliff is the Tribune there,” Lorenzo answered calmly. “And he’s not a slave—he’s a free man. And so am I. Wouldn’t be much point to talking if we weren’t, would there?”

  “What do you want? What do you expect from us?” Leland Newton asked.

  “Leave us alone, and we’ll do the same for you,” the copperskin said. “The Free Republic of Atlantis is a place where anyone can live in peace. A lot of whites have run away from us, but they didn’t need to. As long as they don’t try to make anybody into a slave any more, we won’t give them any trouble.”

  “Likely tell!” Stafford jeered.

  “You’ve already killed a lot of people and done a lot of damage,” Newton said. “Why shouldn’t we treat you as so many rebels and criminals?”

  “Because this is a war, and wars mean fighting, and fighting means killing,” Lorenzo replied—the same answer Newton had given to Stafford back in New Hastings. “And because Frederick Radcliff is fighting for the same thing his grandfather fought for a long time ago—the chance to be free.”

  “Mudfaces and niggers have no business being free!” Stafford shouted, his face purpling with fury.

  “Easy, Jeremiah, easy,” Newton said. He turned back to the rebels’ emissary. “You are not going to be allowed to form a nation apart from the United States of Atlantis. If you think that can happen, you are only fooling yourselves. Your commander is only fooling himself.”

  “By God, that’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard you say all day,” Stafford told him.

  Newton ignored him. If Lorenzo was fazed, he didn’t let on. Nodding to the Consul, he said, “Give us our rights inside the United States of Atlantis, then, and we’ll be happy enough to stay.”

  “You have no more rights than a cow,” Stafford said. “You have no more rights than a chair, damn you!”

  “What rights do you have in mind?” Newton asked the emissary. Ignoring his colleague seemed best.

  “The same rights white folks have,” Lorenzo answered. “The right to be free. The right to a last name. The right to marry and raise a family. The right to buy and sell things. The right to learn reading and ciphering. Frederick, he can do that, but not many slaves can. The right to vote, even.”

  “You want to become citizens.” Consul Newton summed it up in a handful of words.
/>
  Lorenzo nodded gratefully. “Yes, sir. That is just what we want.”

  “Will you let the whites who have run away return to their land?”

  “As long as they don’t try to buy us or sell us or order us around,” the copperskin said. “Some of us want land of our own, too, so we can farm. If the white folks take everything back, nothing’s left for us.”

  Stafford clapped a hand to his forehead. “They’re as Red as the crazy radicals in Paris! They probably preach free love, too.”

  “You weren’t listening,” Newton said. “He told you one of the things they wanted was the right to get married.”

  “Yes, he said that,” Stafford answered. “Why do you believe him? They’re full of savage animal lust.”

  Lorenzo stretched out his arm and looked at his hand. Then his eyes went to Stafford’s hand. “My skin is darker than yours,” he said, “but it is lighter than Frederick Radcliff’s. Past that, I do not see much difference between us.”

  “No, eh? Well, you will,” Stafford said.

  “Tell your principal that, if you put down your guns and petition peaceably for the redress of grievances, something may come of it,” Newton said. “It is hard for Atlantis to talk with men in arms against us.”

  This time, the copperskin looked Stafford in the face. He shook his head. “If we put down our guns, you will slaughter us,” he said. Stafford didn’t waste time denying it. Lorenzo went on, “Better we should fight.”

  “If you do, we will slaughter you anyway,” Newton warned.

  “Well, you can try,” Lorenzo said.

  The corporal took him back past the pickets then. “You tried it your way. See what it got you,” Stafford said to Newton.

  “You didn’t help,” Newton said.

  “Let me understand,” Colonel Sinapis said. “It is to be war now?”

  “For the moment, yes,” Newton answered regretfully.

  War against slaves who’d risen against their masters! Jeremiah Stafford could imagine no more noble cause. He must have done something right, or God wouldn’t have been so generous to him.

  But it wasn’t the kind of war he’d had in mind when he set out from New Hastings with the army. The gray-clad soldiers owned the ground where they marched, but not another square foot of soil in the so-called Free Republic of Atlantis. Any man who left the line—say, to go behind some ferns and answer nature’s call—was liable not to come back again. A Negro with a dagger or a copperskin with a bayonet might cut his throat and sneak off with his rifle musket and boots.

  Any time the soldiers came within a quarter-mile of trees or ferns or fences or buildings, they were in danger. Enemies would pop out or pop up, fire, and then run off as fast as they could. The Atlanteans would shoot back, but it took uncommon marksmanship and uncommon luck to hit a single man at that range, even if he didn’t disappear. Firing at large masses of soldiers, the mudfaces and niggers had much better luck.

  No, it wasn’t the way Stafford had imagined it. In his mind’s eye, he’d seen dramatic pitched battles, like the ones Victor Radcliff had fought against the redcoats. Paintings of those—or woodcuts, sometimes colored, copied from paintings of those—hung in every government building from the Senate House down to the lowliest village post office. He didn’t suppose the actual battles were just like the paintings, but the art gave him his most vivid notions of what war was like.

  Colonel Sinapis didn’t seem surprised at how things were going. “In charge of raw men like that, I would fight the same way,” he said as the army encamped two evenings after crossing the Little Muddy. “Why should they risk a big battle? All the advantage would lie with us.”

  “What better reason?” Stafford said.

  Sinapis gave him a crooked smile. “And do you also look for your chicken to climb up onto your plate already fried, your Excellency?”

  “Well . . . no,” the Consul admitted.

  “Then do not expect the enemy to do what is convenient for you,” Sinapis said.

  Reluctantly, Stafford nodded. “All right. I can see the sense in that. How do we go about forcing the damned insurrectionists to fight on our terms, then?”

  “That is a better question.” Balthasar Sinapis plucked at his shaggy mustache. “In Europe, I would say the way to do this is to attack some place the enemy feels obliged to defend.”

  “In Europe? Why not here?” Stafford said.

  “Because I see no place in these parts that the enemy would feel he had to hold,” the colonel replied. “Where is the capital of the so-called Free Republic of Atlantis? Wherever Frederick Radcliff happens to be, unless my guess is wrong. Where are the rebels’ manufactories? As far as I know, they have none. This being so, what position must they hold to the death?”

  He waited. By all the signs, he really wanted an answer. Stafford opened his mouth, then closed it again when he realized he had no good one to give.

  “You see the difficulty,” Sinapis said. Even more reluctantly, Stafford nodded again. The Atlantean officer continued. “Do you intend that we should kill every Negro and copperskin within the area the rebels claim?”

  “If that is what it takes to put down the insurrection, yes!” Stafford said.

  “Those who own these persons under current Atlantean law would not thank you for destroying their property,” Sinapis warned. “And what better reason to give the rebels still in the field to keep fighting instead of yielding?”

  He might be nothing but a damned foreigner, but he was a shrewd damned foreigner. Slaveholders didn’t want their human property destroyed; they wanted it restored to them. As far as Stafford was concerned, they hadn’t thought things through. “How far will they be able to rely on slaves experienced in rebellion?” he asked. “Would you trust such a man to shave your face, Colonel?”

  “Me? Not a bit of it,” Sinapis answered. “But if a man can get no use from this form of property, what point to having it?”

  It wasn’t so simple. House slaves had to be trusted. They gave personal service and cooked; if you couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t turn on you, you couldn’t keep them around. Field hands were different. All you needed from them was work, and even before the uprising overseers had had to watch their backs. Plantations could stay profitable after the insurrection. But even if they did, white planters’ lives on them would have to change. Colonel Sinapis saw that clearly. So did Stafford.

  “We shall burn that bridge when we come to it,” the Consul said after what he hoped wasn’t too awkward a pause. “First we have to win this war one way or another. If we lose it, nothing else matters any more. Or do you disagree?”

  “No, your Excellency,” Sinapis answered. “As you say, winning comes first. Maybe not even winning, though, will solve all our troubles here. What do we do in that case?”

  “Worry about it after we win,” Stafford said at once. “If we don’t win, we’ll have a pile of other things to worry about. Will you tell me I’m wrong?”

  “About that? No,” Sinapis said.

  He does think I’m wrong about other things, Stafford realized angrily. About what? About slavery? Well, the Devil take him if he does.

  By the map, the Gunston plantation lay only a couple of days’ march to the west. Leland Newton had studied maps till he was sick of them. What difference did they make if the enemy wouldn’t stand and fight? He didn’t like thinking of the insurrectionists as enemies, but he couldn’t think of people who’d shot at him as friends.

  This stretch of countryside had belonged to the rebels till the Atlantean army marched in to reclaim it. Signs of that were everywhere. Big houses stood empty. Doors gaping open and smashed windows said they’d been plundered. Every so often, the army would march past one that had burnt to the ground.

  Fields went untended. Ripening maize and wheat stood forgotten. So did acres and acres of cotton and pipeweed. No livestock was in sight. Even if surviving white plantation owners reclaimed this land, they would have lost a fortune. Consul Staff
ord couldn’t open his mouth without going on about that.

  Consul Newton didn’t need long to get sick of listening to his colleague. “You didn’t care while whites were taking everything away from blacks and copperskins,” he pointed out. “Why do you bellow so loud when the shoe is on the other foot?”

  “Because I am a white man, damn it,” Stafford snapped. “And so are you, if you take the time to remember it. The United States of Atlantis are a white man’s country, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I thought we were a free man’s country,” Newton said mildly.

  “Same thing,” Stafford insisted.

  “Come to Croydon and you’ll see how wrong you are,” Newton said.

  “If I came to Croydon, I would see all kinds of things I don’t care to see: free niggers and mudfaces, screeching bluestockings, trade unionists, free lovers, and every other sort of crackpot under the sun,” Stafford said. “Since I already know as much, I have the sense to stay away.”

  Before Newton could come up with the retort that would leave the other Consul gasping for air, a brisk racket of gunfire broke out ahead. “I wonder what that’s in aid of,” he said.

  “It’s a demonstration of patriotism,” Stafford said. “What else would it be?”

  “I’m sure the people shooting at our men would agree with you,” Newton said. “I own myself surprised, though, that you of all people would say such a thing.” Sometimes the worst thing you could do to sarcasm was take it literally.

  This skirmish seemed sharper than the Atlantean army was used to fighting. Maybe the insurrectionists held no vital strong-points. Maybe they could melt off into the woods whenever they chose. But they could also fight whenever they chose, and they seemed to have chosen to fight here.

  Newton rode forward to get a better look at what was going on. That made him a target: something he didn’t realize till he came close to the fighting. When he did belatedly figure it out, he wasn’t sorry to dismount and hand the horse’s reins to an ordinary soldier. He continued on foot.