Liberating Atlantis

XIX

When the firing from all around the white army slackened, sudden crazy hope flowered in Jeremiah Stafford. Maybe the insurrectionists were running out of ammunition! Maybe the whites could snatch victory from what had looked like sure disaster. Maybe…

Maybe Stafford was building castles in the air. That seemed much more likely when a stocky, middle-aged Negro scrambled none too gracefully over the rampart with a big white flag. The man held it up as he came toward the surviving whites.

"Boy, if he wants to parley, I'd talk till the cows come home," a soldier not far from Stafford said. "They can murder every fuckin' one of us, and they don't got to sweat real hard to do it, neither."

That was an inelegant way of summing up the situation, which didn't mean it wasn't true. Now that the shooting had paused, the moans and howls and shrieks of the wounded took center stage. Stafford wished a man could close his ears to shut out dreadful noises, the way he could close his eyes so he didn't have to see dreadful sights.

Colonel Sinapis limped back to the two Consuls. A blood-soaked bandage was wrapped around his left calf; he carried a stick in his right hand in place of his sword. Dipping his head to Stafford and Newton in turn, he said, "If they wish to treat with us, your Excellencies, I must recommend that we do so. However much I regret to say so, we are in no position to resist them."

"That does seem to be the case, doesn't it?" Leland Newton was doing his best to stay calm: an admirable sentiment, as far as it went.

He and Sinapis both eyed Consul Stafford. "If Satan wanted to talk to me right now, I do believe I listen respectfully," Stafford said. "That nigger there isn't the Devil-not quite-but I'll hear him out."

"Thank you, your Excellency." Sinapis' voice seldom showed much. But if he wasn't relieved right this minute, Stafford had never heard anyone who was.

All the soldiers seemed glad the insurrectionists weren't shooting any more. The regulars and militiamen also ceased fire. Stafford saw a couple of them doff their hats to the Negro as he approached. Even without orders, some regulars formed an escort for him and led him back to the Consuls and Colonel Sinapis.

Stafford fought down the impulse to salute the rebels' spokesman. Yes, the Consul was glad to be alive-and even gladder he might stay that way a while longer. In lieu of the salute, he asked, "Who are you?"

"My name is Frederick Radcliff." The Negro didn't sound like a university man, but neither did he sound as ignorant as many of his fellow slaves. Under dark, heavy brows, his eyes flashed. "And who are you, friend?"

I am no friend of yours, Stafford thought, even as he gave his own name. He studied the black man's face, searching for traces of his illustrious grandfather. He didn't need long to find them, either. The nose, the line of the jaw, the shape of this Radcliff's ears… Yes, he did have a white ancestor, and Stafford was willing to believe it was the man from whose line he claimed to spring.

Consul Newton also introduced himself. Then he asked, "Well, Mr. Radcliff, what do you want from us?"

The Negro eyed him with scant liking. "You ever call a black man 'Mister' before?" he asked.

"Yes. There is legal equality in Croydon." Newton hesitated, then added, "I haven't done it very often, though."

Stafford wondered whether that would do more harm than good. Had someone admitted something like that to him, he wouldn't have liked it much. But Frederick Radcliff only grunted thoughtfully. "Well, maybe you'll talk straight to me," he muttered, before rounding on Stafford again. "How about you?"

"I doubt it," Stafford answered. Had he thought Radcliff would believe a lie, he would have tried one. But if the black man had the faintest notion of who he was and where he came from, a lie would prove worse than useless. Better not to trot one out where that was so.

Frederick Radcliff grunted again. "You don't reckon I'm dumb enough to believe any old story, anyways. That's somethin'." He waved back to the rampart from which he'd come, then to the sloping sides of the valley, and last of all to the insurrectionists who'd been pouring bullets into the white Atlanteans from behind. "You know we've got you. You can't hardly not know we've got you."

Both Stafford and Newton looked to Balthasar Sinapis. They weren't about to admit they could recognize military defeat-no, military catastrophe. That was what a colonel was for. Sinapis made a steeple of his fingertips. "The present situation is difficult," he allowed, which had to be the understatement of the year.

"Difficult, nothing." This time, Victor Radcliff's grandson didn't grunt-he snorted in fine derision. "If I wave my hand, you're all dead."

"If you think you would live more than a heartbeat after you did that, you're wrong," Stafford said.

"Oh, I know," the Negro answered easily. "As long as I have some other choice, I won't do it. If I don't…" He shrugged.

"If you think murdering all of us will help your cause, you may be making a mistake," Stafford told him.

"Yeah. I figured that out, too," said the Tribune of the Free Republic of Atlantis. Stafford had long been convinced Negroes had less in the way of wits than white men did. Dealing with Frederick Radcliff made him wonder, however little he wanted to. The leader of the insurrection nodded back toward the rampart. "Lorenzo, he hasn't worked it through yet. He trusts me, but he doesn't see it for his own self. He wants you folks dead."

So you'd better deal with me. The Negro didn't say it, but it hung in the air nonetheless. Yes, he was a man of parts, all right.

Leland Newton said, "You wouldn't have come out unless you had something in mind besides killing us all."

"Think so, do you?" Frederick Radcliff had a very unpleasant grin. "Better not give me a hard time, or you're liable to find out you're wrong."

Colonel Sinapis stirred. "You have the air of a man who is about to demand a surrender and ready to put forth the terms on which he will accept it."

"That is just what I am, Colonel," the Negro said. "If you say yes, you get away with your lives. If you say no, we will wipe you out and then see what troubles jump up because we did. Up to you."

"Before we say yes or no, we had better find out what you are asking," Consul Stafford said.

Frederick Radcliff fixed him with a glare. "I am not asking one single, God-damned thing. I am telling you how it will be. If you don't like it, it's your funeral. Yes, sir, that's exactly what it is."

"If your terms are completely unacceptable, we can go on with the fight," Stafford said. Colonel Sinapis' horrified expression warned him they could do no such thing. Stafford pretended not to see it as he continued, "You may kill us, but we're liable to ruin your army while you're doing it."

"In your dreams, Stafford," Frederick Radcliff said. The Consul didn't think he'd ever had a colored man fail to give him his proper titles of respect before. He knew what he could do about it here: nothing. It rankled regardless.

"The terms," Consul Newton said.

"Right." The insurrectionists' leader seemed to remind himself that was why he'd come forth to talk with his enemies. "Terms. You can have your lives, and that's it. Give up all your rifle muskets and pistols. Give up all your artillery. Give up all your ammunition. Give up all your horses, too, except the ones you'll need for the wagons that haul your wounded. Then march away to New Marseille, and don't you ever come back again."

"That's outrageous!" Stafford exclaimed. "Once you have all our weapons, what's to stop you from starting the massacre again when we can't fight back?"

"Nothing," Frederick Radcliff answered. "If you'd licked us, we would've had to take whatever mercy you felt like giving us-and there wouldn't've been much, would there? Well, now the shoe's on the other foot, so see how you like it."

Consul Stafford liked it not at all. He took Newton and Colonel Sinapis aside to see how they felt about it. "What choice have we?" Sinapis asked bleakly, the wails from the wounded underscoring his words. "They can go back to killing us whenever they please."

"I don't believe they would violate the terms once made," Newton added. "They don't want to make themselves infamous in the eyes of Atlantis as a whole."

"You hope they don't," Stafford said.

"Yes." The other Consul nodded. "I hope."

They stopped talking. They didn't seem to have much else to say. When they turned back to Frederick Radcliff, he asked, "Well? What's it going to be?"-which made things no easier.

Consuls and colonel all looked at one another. Nobody wanted to say the fateful words. But someone had to. After a long, painful moment, Colonel Sinapis took the duty on himself. "We agree," he said, and then, sensing that that by itself wasn't enough, "We surrender."

When Cornwallis' troops surrendered to Victor Radcliff, their band played a tune called "The World Turned Upside Down." No bands played here, but the idea stayed with Leland Newton all the same.

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 horrible 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 nodded. "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!"

"What kind of shit is he going on about now?" Lorenzo asked.

All Frederick said was, "Uh-oh." He knew what the preacher was going on about. The House of Universal Devotion hadn't attracted many slaves, but he'd heard of it. He thought the Preacher and his followers were a flock of loons.

He wasn't the only one who did, either. A white prisoner threw a clod of dirt at the man preaching over the graves. "Shut your lying mouth!" the prisoner yelled.

"That's right!" another white man shouted. "The House of Universal Devotion is the doorway to hell!"

"Liar!" yet another captive said. "God talks to the Preacher, and the Preacher tells his people the truth!"

The preacher-without a capital letter ornamenting his calling-standing by the mass grave tried to go on, but his audience didn't want to listen to him any more. The white prisoners shook their fists at one another and bawled out curses and catcalls. They might have started brawling if not for the bemused insurrectionists standing guard over them.

"White folks are crazy. Crazy, I tell you." Lorenzo spoke with great sincerity. "Only one who cares which church you go to ought to be God. He's the only one with the answers, anyways."

"Of course white folks are crazy," Frederick answered. "They reckon they can keep slaves and keep 'em like beasts, and they reckon God loves 'em. You believe both those things at the same time, you got to be nuts."

"Yeah. Hadn't looked at it like that, but yeah." Lorenzo pointed at the angry prisoners. "What are we gonna do about those sorry bastards?"

"Long as they're just yelling, it doesn't hurt anybody. It's like a waddayacallit-a safety valve-on a steam engine," Frederick said. "They blow off steam against each other, they won't give us so much trouble."

One of the white men chose that moment to decide he didn't care whether the Negroes and copperskins were carrying guns. Full of crusading zeal, he decked another white who presumed to hold an opinion different from his about the House of Universal Devotion. A few seconds later, another enthusiast flattened the first fellow who'd used fists to make his point.

Frederick drew his eight-shooter and fired a round into the air. Nothing got people's instant, undivided attention like a gunshot. Christians who'd been about to swing on their fellow Christians suddenly had second thoughts.

"That will be enough of that," Frederick said into the pool of silence that spread as the echoes of the shot died away. "What you think about God is your business. When you punch somebody in the nose on account of what he thinks about God, that's my business. You leave other folks alone, and hope like hell they leave you alone, too. You start acting like mad dogs, you get what mad dogs deserve." Whites called slaves who dared rebel mad dogs. Frederick enjoyed throwing the phrase back in their faces. He pulled the trigger again. Another tongue of flame spat from the revolver's muzzle.

To his amazement, some of the prisoners wanted to argue with him. "I'm trying to save that ignorant fool's soul from hell," one white protested earnestly.

"He reckons you're headed that way yourself," Frederick answered. "What makes you so sure you're right and he's wrong?"

"Why, the Bible says so," the white man replied, as if to a fool.

"Suppose he reads it some different way? Or suppose he doesn't care about it at all?"

"Then he's surely bound for hell. And you'd better look to your own soul, too." The captive edged away from Frederick, as if afraid God would strike the Negro dead for presuming to ask such questions-and might singe him, too, if he stayed too near.

"I will. I do. I look to mine. You look to yours. Let that other fella look to his," Frederick said. "I promise you one thing: you start that kind of stupid trouble, we'll be the ones who end it."

Some of the prisoners thought the Preacher and the House of Universal Devotion were the fount of true doctrine. Many more were of the opinion that everything about them came straight from Satan. Frederick had heard that the Preacher opposed slaveholding. That inclined him toward giving the House of Universal Devotion the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, he had a hard time caring one way or the other.

His main goal was to keep the captives from quarreling among themselves. Sooner or later, he hoped to exchange them for fighters captured by the white Atlanteans. Under the laws of war, both sides got treated the same way. What color a combatant was didn't matter. (The Europeans who put those laws together hadn't imagined fighting people of a different color. But that was all right-the laws had more stretch to them than their framers figured.)

Just by treating with Frederick and his fighters under the laws of war, the white Atlanteans granted them more equality than they'd ever enjoyed here before. If the whites won, that equality would vanish. Both sides recognized as much.

And, up till lately, neither side had seriously wondered what would happen if the Negroes and copperskins won. The whites hadn't dreamt it was possible. Neither had Frederick, not really. But dreaming time was over. Reality was here. Now both sides had to try to make the best of it.