Liberating Atlantis

BOOK IV
XX

Back in New Marseille, the telegraphers were proud of themselves and their colleagues farther east. In spite of the insurrection, they'd managed to open a connection with New Hastings on the other coast. Most of the time, Jeremiah Stafford would have been proud right along with them.

Most of the time. When the news he had to give the capital was of a disaster, his heart wouldn't have broken had the line stayed down a little longer. As things were, he had no choice.

Neither did Consul Newton or Colonel Sinapis. Each man composed his own report and gave it to the telegraphers. Stafford collaborated with neither of the other leaders. As far as he knew, the other two didn't collaborate with each other. He wondered how much the reports differed. He wondered if anyone, reading all three, would be sure they talked about the same event.

He couldn't do anything about that. He thought he was telling the unvarnished truth. If Sinapis or Newton felt like lying, that wasn't his affair. If they thought he would stoop to lying, they didn't know him very well.

Besides, while you could write around the awful news as much as you pleased, you couldn't make it go away. The insurrectionists beat the Atlantean army. They made it surrender. In lieu of slaughtering it to the last man, they made it march away without its weapons.

No one responsible could deny any of that. If anybody tried, it wouldn't do him any good. No, the remaining interesting questions were two. First, who was to blame for the catastrophe? And, second, what the devil was the Atlantean government supposed to do about it now?

Newspapers in New Marseille had no doubt on that score. They printed highly colored interviews with soldiers they didn't name (and a good thing for the soldiers that they remained anonymous, or all the dreadful things they'd escaped in the battle would have landed on them in the aftermath). They also printed headlines like STRING UP THE CONSULS! and EXILE THE COLONEL!

"Nice to know we're loved," Leland Newton said, holding up one of the more inflammatory papers.

"Don't worry about it, your Excellency," Stafford answered as he corrected his breakfast coffee with a healthy splash of barrel-tree rum. "They loved you before we lost the battle."

"I'm sure they did." If the prospect dismayed Newton, he hid it very well. "After all, I disagreed with them, and what crime is more heinous than that?"

Stafford knew the answer to that particular question: losing the battle that was liable to mean liberty for all the copperskins and Negroes in the USA. Instead of saying so, he sipped his rum-laced coffee. The other Consul could see the answer as well as he could himself. The only difference was, Newton wouldn't think liberating slaves was a heinous offense. He was a northern man, after all, so what did he know?

A raised eyebrow said Newton guessed most of what was going on in Stafford's mind. The other Consul made a small production out of lighting a cigar. He said, "We both must be getting old. Seems too early in the day to quarrel, doesn't it?"

"Now that you mention it, yes," Stafford answered. "I will if you really want to, though. I don't want to disappoint you."

"I'll pass, thanks," Newton said. "The papers are quarrelsome enough, and whatever New Hastings has to say is bound to be worse. When do you suppose we'll hear from the Conscript Fathers?"

After someone flings water in their faces, because they're bound to faint when they get the news, Stafford thought morosely. "Are you really so eager?" he asked aloud.

"Eager? Well, as a matter of fact, no," the other Consul replied. "Say rather curious, in a clinical way, as if I'm wondering whether the dentist will tell me whether he has to pull one tooth or two."

Stafford winced. He'd had some agonizing encounters with tooth-pullers before they found out about ether. No one went to one of those quacks unless he was already in pain, and what they did to you only made you hurt worse-for a while, anyhow. Afterwards, you won relief. But that was afterwards. During was another story altogether.

And what sort of relief could the United States of Atlantis win from the abscess of insurrection? They'd tried to lance it, tried and failed. Now the poison was spreading through the country's system. Stafford had no idea how to stop it. He would have been amazed if the Senators on the far coast did.

He hadn't finished his ham and eggs and fried yams when a messenger who hadn't started shaving yet handed him one telegram and Consul Newton another. "Oh, joy," Stafford said as he unfolded his.

"Looking forward to it, are you?" Newton said.

"Well… no," Stafford answered. The other Consul managed a chuckle of sorts, but one with a distinct graveyard quality to it.

Senate expresses its disappointment at failure to suppress slave insurrection, the wire read. It wasn't quite You clumsy idiot!, but it might as well have been. The telegram continued, Use any-repeat, any-measures necessary to end uprising. Manumission not mandatory but not-repeat, not-ruled out.

That was all. That was quite enough. That was, as far as Jeremiah Stafford was concerned, much too much. "What does yours say?" he asked Newton.

"They want us to patch up a peace. That's what it amounts to, anyhow," his colleague answered. "How about yours?"

"The same, more or less," Stafford said heavily. "By God, it frosts my pumpkin. If we fight a proper war, we can win it."

"Maybe we can, but how much more money will it cost?" Newton said. "How many more lives will we lose? How much longer will the Senate put up with that? How long will the Atlantean people put up with it?"

"Even Colonel Sinapis thinks we can win it." Stafford was clutching at straws, and he knew as much.

In case he hadn't, Consul Newton rubbed his nose in it: "Right now, how far will anyone follow Colonel Sinapis?"

Stafford didn't answer. No answer seemed necessary-or possible. Anyone who didn't blame the two Consuls for surrendering to Frederick Radcliff and the insurrectionists blamed Colonel Sinapis instead. Quite a few Atlanteans were sure there was plenty of blame to go around. That seemed to be the sense of the Senate's telegram.

Gently, Leland Newton said, "It won't be so bad. Truly, it won't. We've had free Negroes and copperskins in Croydon for more than a hundred years now. Our republic hasn't fallen apart. Your states won't, either."

"Easy for you to say," Stafford replied. "You may have freed them, but you never had very many for you to free. Things are different down here."

"They certainly are," Newton said. "The copperskins and blacks in Croydon are peaceful citizens, just like anyone else. They're up in arms here. Don't you see the connection? It's time to admit that what you've been doing here isn't working, even if it has made white people money."

That made Stafford scratch his head. As far as he was concerned, making money and working meant the same thing. At last, he saw, or thought he saw, some of what Newton had in mind: "You mean a few of the slaves don't fancy it."

"More than a few, don't you think? And 'don't fancy it' is like saying 'The ocean isn't small,' " Newton answered. "They 'don't fancy it' enough to pick up guns and risk their lives to try to do something about it. Shouldn't that tell you something?"

"You want me to say slavery is wicked and horrid, and everyone who has anything to do with it ought to be ashamed of himself, don't you?" Stafford said. "I'm very sorry, your Excellency, but I honestly don't believe that."

"I know. But whether you believe it isn't the point any more," Newton said.

That puzzled Stafford again. "How do you mean?"

"The point is, the slaves-the people who were slaves, I should say-do believe it. They would rather die than go on being slaves," Newton said. "A lot of them have died. They've made a lot of us die, too. Shouldn't that tell you something?"

"You're playing the schoolmaster here. Suppose you give me the lesson." Consul Stafford admired his own patience. Whether anyone else would admire it-or call it patience and not mulish intransigence-never crossed his mind.

And Newton seemed willing-maybe even eager-to do just what he'd asked. "The lesson is simple. If Negroes and copperskins go on being them and whites go on being us, Atlantis is ruined. We have to find a way for all of us to be Atlanteans together, or else we'll spend the next hundred years fighting."

"We had a way to live together," Stafford insisted.

"Yes, but too many people couldn't stand it. That's why we've got the insurrection now."

"Whites in the south won't like the way you have in mind. If blacks and Negroes can grab guns and fight, what makes you think white men can't?" Stafford said.

"That's simple enough." Newton aimed a forefinger at him as if it were a rifle musket. "You have to persuade them not to."

"We ought to try and grab New Marseille now," Lorenzo said. "We've got the white soldiers' guns. Besides, their hearts have to be down in their shoes. We should hit hard and fast, before they get reinforcements and fresh supplies."

Frederick Radcliff drummed his fingers on the outside of his thigh. A few weeks ago, he might have agreed with his marshal. Now… everything had changed. Or, if things hadn't changed, the insurrection still had no hope. "Ask you a couple of questions?" he said.

One of Lorenzo's eyebrows rose. "How am I supposed to tell you no? You're the Tribune. What you say goes."

That wasn't how Frederick thought of his power-which didn't mean it wasn't useful here. "What happens if the white folks get riled enough to throw everything they've got into the fight against us?"

"Well…" The copperskin pursed his lips. As with the raised eyebrow, it wasn't a showy gesture; it was, in fact, hardly noticeable. That he'd made it at all counted for a good deal. So did his hesitation before he said, "Wouldn't be easy. They send everything, we'd have to be mighty careful fighting pitched battles. Raids, ambushes-we could keep on with that kind of stuff for a long time."

"Would we win in the end if we did?" Frederick persisted.

"Damned if I know." Lorenzo's answering grin was crooked. "Tell you the truth, when this whole thing started I figured we'd both be dead by now-dead or wishing we were."

"You ain't the only one," Frederick replied with feeling, and Lorenzo laughed out loud. "But the way it looks to me is, there's a time to push and a time to go easy. We showed 'em we could beat 'em, and we showed 'em we didn't aim to kill all the white men we could. Seems to me we got to let 'em chew on that for a while, see what they do next. If we push 'em now, we only tick 'em off-know what I mean?"

"Sure do. What I don't know is whether you're right." Lorenzo took a deep breath and let the air whuffle out between his lips. "What the hell, though? Like I say, you're the Tribune. You've got us this far. Seems like you know what you're doing."

I'm glad somebody thinks so. But Frederick didn't say that out loud. One of the tricks to leading he'd learned was never to let your followers know you had doubts. Sometimes you could get away with being wrong. With being unsure? No. That made you look weak, and how could a weak man lead? Not even Helen knew about some of the fears that knotted Frederick's insides. What you didn't show, you didn't have to explain. You didn't have to wonder about it so much yourself, either.

For once, he and his army didn't need to do anything right this minute. The white Atlanteans weren't pressing them-couldn't press them for a while, as Lorenzo had pointed out. Food wasn't a worry. Hardtack and salt pork and bully beef captured from the soldiers' supply weren't exciting, but kept body and soul together. And the hunting in this sparsely settled countryside was better than it would have been with more people around-though there wasn't much livestock to take here.

Just waiting around felt good. It took him back to his days as a slave. You weren't always busy, working for the masters. But you always had to be ready to get busy, and to get busy at someone else's whim. That was how things worked here, too. If he'd made a mistake about how the white men would respond after being defeated and spared, they would be the ones who let him know it.

Slaves always kept their eyes on masters and mistresses. They needed to know what the white folks were up to, sometimes before the whites were sure themselves. And the Negroes and copperskins still slaving it in New Marseille were the insurrectionists' eyes and ears there.

Frederick Radcliff didn't think the Consuls' army could move without his knowing about it beforehand. The slaves in New Marseille saw no signs that it was getting ready to move. Frederick took that for a good omen.

So did Lorenzo, who heard about it as soon as he did, or maybe even sooner. "Looks like you know what you were talking about," the copperskin said.

"I'm as happy about it as you are-you'd best believe I am," Frederick said.

"How long you aim to give 'em?" Lorenzo asked.

"Till it feels right. Don't know what else to tell you," Frederick answered.

To his surprise, that got a smile from the marshal. "We're all makin' this up as we go along," Lorenzo said.

"Ain't it the truth!" Frederick never would have admitted it if the other man hadn't come out with it first, but he wasn't about to deny it once Lorenzo pointed it out.

After a while, fighters started slipping out of camp. They thought they'd already got what they wanted. And they didn't think the Free Republic of Atlantis had any business telling them what to do any more. They were free, weren't they?

Lorenzo and Frederick took a different view of things. With Frederick's approval, Lorenzo posted guards around the encampment to catch deserters and bring them back. The United States of Atlantis didn't let their soldiers walk away whenever the men happened to feel like it. As far as Frederick was concerned, the Free Republic of Atlantis shouldn't, either.

That highly offended some of the men who wanted to go home. "Who you think you are, playing the white man over me?" a black fighter demanded when he was hauled before Frederick. "You ain't nothin' but a nigger, same as me. You got no business tellin' me what to do!"

"If I had me ten cents for every time I heard that, I'd be the richest nigger in Atlantis," Frederick said.

"It's the truth, damn it," the other Negro said. "If I'm a free man, ain't nobody can make me do nothin' I don't want to."

"It doesn't work that way," Frederick answered. "Nobody can buy you or sell you. That's what bein' free means. But you're in the army now. Nobody made you join up. You did it your own self."

"That's right. And that means I can leave whenever I please, too," the prisoner said.

"Means no such thing. If people left whenever they wanted to, pretty soon we wouldn't have an army any more. You go in, you got to stay in till the job is done unless you made a deal beforehand to get out sooner," Frederick said.

"Nobody told me I could make a deal like that!" the other Negro exclaimed.

Frederick smiled sweetly. "Then it looks like you're in till the job is done, doesn't it? That's how my granddad did things, and that's how I'm gonna do 'em, too."

"Your granddad was nothin' but a white man, and he didn't set no niggers free," the other man retorted. "Look where you was at 'fore we rose up. House nigger, that's all you was, an' I bet you felt all jumped-up about it, too."

How right he was! Frederick was embarrassed to remember the way he'd looked down on field hands before he got stripes on his back and became one himself. He was also damned if he'd admit any such thing. Instead, he answered, "You've got to start somewhere. Everybody's got to start somewhere. Before Victor Radcliff done what he done, nobody in Atlantis was free. White folks had to do what the King of England and his people said-"

"An' black folks an' copperskins had to do what the white folks said," the other Negro broke in.

"That's right." Frederick nodded. "My granddad made it so white folks were free, anyways. My grandma used to say he wished he could do more-"

"He done plenty with her, didn't he?"

"Shut up!" Frederick said fiercely. "If I was a white man an' you talked to me like that, I'd make you regret it-bet your sorry ass I would. But he figured out you can't have an army 'less you got people who have to stay in. He was right. All the white folks' countries do it that way. We're gonna win, we got to do it that way, too."

"I'll run off again. You wait an' see if I don't," the prisoner declared.

"I know who you are, Humphrey," Frederick said. He hadn't till one of the guards whispered the man's name in his ear, but he sure did now. "This time, you don't get anything but a talking-to, on account of you didn't know no better. We catch you again, you'll be sorry for sure."

The prisoner-Humphrey-stripped off his shirt and turned his back. His scars made Frederick's look like a beginner's. "What you gonna do to me that the white folks ain't already done?" he asked as he faced Frederick once more.

And what do I say to that? Frederick wondered. To his surprise, he found something: "White folks whipped you 'cause you did stuff they didn't like. You run off from us, they'd thank you for it. Chances are they'd pay you for it, same as the Romans paid Judas. You want their thirty pieces of silver, go ahead an' run, you bastard."

That shut Humphrey up, anyhow. Maybe he'd stick around. Maybe he'd try to desert again. If he succeeded… Frederick couldn't do anything about that. If Humphrey failed, he couldn't say he hadn't been warned. Freedom had limits. It had to have limits, or it turned into chaos.

Frederick hadn't understood that before tasting freedom himself. But there was nothing like running a revolution to drive the lesson home. His grandfather could have told him the same thing-if Victor Radcliff wasn't fighting on the other side.

Colonel Sinapis emptied New Marseille's arsenal to equip most of his regulars with rifle muskets-and with some ancient flintlock smoothbores that had gathered cobwebs there for God only knew how long. There weren't enough weapons for all the regulars. There weren't enough for any militiamen. They were loudly unhappy about that.

Sinapis stuck by his guns, and by the way he handed them out. Leland Newton backed him. "It's not a state arsenal-it's an arsenal of the United States of Atlantis," Newton told a self-appointed militia colonel. "It's only right that the guns go to troops from the national government first. If we had more, you'd get your share."

"Or maybe we wouldn't." The colonel-who decked himself out in a uniform far fancier than Sinapis'-had a pointy nose, a whiny voice, and a suspicious mind. "Reckon you're afraid we'd do us some real fightin' against them damned niggers."

Newton was afraid they'd try, and would shatter the fragile tacit truce that still held. Since he didn't care to admit that, he answered, "I haven't seen your men win any more laurels than the regulars."

"We never got the chance!" the militiaman complained. "That damnfool foreigner you've got in charge of your soldiers wouldn't turn us loose and let us fight the way we wanted to."

What did that mean? Newton feared he knew. The colonel wanted to rape and loot and burn and slaughter. He would have made a fine freebooter from western Atlantis' piratical past. A soldier? That looked to be a different story.

"Your private war against the men and women who were your slaves is not the only thing at stake here," the Consul said coldly. "The fate of the United States of Atlantis rides on this, too."

"You reckon they don't go together?" The militia colonel made as if to spit, then-barely-thought better of it. "If you do, you're even dumber'n I give you credit for, and that's saying something." He clumped away, disgust plain in every line of his body.

Staring after him, Newton sighed. Then he swore under his breath. The militiamen didn't have to stay under Colonel Sinapis' command. If they grew desperate enough, and if they got their hands on some muskets (which they could probably manage if they grew desperate enough), they could storm off against the insurrectionists on their own. Newton didn't think they would cover themselves in glory. He knew he might be wrong, though. And even if he was right, that might not stop them.

He started to go warn Sinapis. But what would that accomplish? The most the regular officer could do would be to put the militiamen under guard. That would only complete the breach Newton wanted to prevent. The militiamen wouldn't listen to reason from Sinapis, any more than that damned colonel had wanted to listen to Newton.

What then? Reluctantly, Newton hunted up Jeremiah Stafford instead of the regular colonel. He feared the other Consul wouldn't listen to him, either. Still, if Stafford didn't, how were they worse off?

Stafford did hear him out. Then he asked a reasonable enough question: "What do you want me to do about it, your Excellency?"

"We aren't fighting Frederick Radcliff's men right now," Newton answered. "I'd like to keep it that way if we can."

"Right this minute, the militiamen have damn-all to fight with," Stafford said. "That's the biggest part of what's eating them."

"Not the biggest part," Newton said. The other Consul looked a question at him. He went on, "What's bothering them is the same thing that's bothering you. They don't want the Negroes and copperskins to get their freedom."

"Yes, that's about the size of it," Stafford said. "Why do you think I'd want to slow them down, then?"

"Because they'll only spill sand in the gears, and you know it as well as I do. God knows the two of us don't agree, but you're not a stupid man. That militia colonel…" Newton shook his head. "He couldn't cut his way out of a gunnysack if you gave him a pair of scissors. Your Excellency, we have a chance to end this peacefully. We-"

Stafford interrupted: "Peacefully, maybe, but not the way I'd want it."

"To end this the way you want it, we'd have to soak Atlantis in blood. Even that might not do it, because killing all the Negroes and copperskins leaves the country without slaves, which isn't what you have in mind, either. Or it might not end at all-there might be murders and burnings and bushwhackings a hundred years from now. You can have peace, or you can have slavery. I don't think you can have both any more. It's not just cooking and sewing and barbering these days. Will an overseer ever be able to turn his back on a slave with a shovel in his hands again?"

"You… God… damned… son… of… a… bitch." The words dragged from Stafford one by one, as if dredged up from somewhere deep inside him.

"Your servant, sir." Newton made as if to bow.

The other Consul started to say something else, then broke off with an expression of almost physical pain-or maybe of true hatred. Now Stafford was the one who shook his head, like a horse bedeviled with flies. He tried again: "You are a son of a bitch. You know how to rub my nose in it, don't you?"

"I'm sorry." Newton lied without hesitation. "The thing is there. You know it's there, even if you don't like it. That's the difference between you and the colonel of militia. If I make you see it or smell it or whatever you please, you won't go on telling me it's not."

"I wish I could," Stafford said bitterly.

"I'm sure you do. But it's too late for that, isn't it? The Senate wants to get this over with. By the way the wires sound, it doesn't care how we do it. People south of the Stour-white people, I mean-will get used to the idea of freeing slaves faster if someone they respect tells them they don't have much choice any more."

"Some of them may. The rest will stand in line to shoot me. It'll be a long line, too." Stafford didn't sound like a man who was joking.

"What will things be like if they go on the way they have? Better? Or worse?" Newton asked. If anything would keep Stafford thinking about what needed doing-whether he liked it or not-that was it.

By the way he screwed up his face, he might have been passing a kidney stone. "This is not the way I wanted things to turn out when we left New Hastings," he said. "But you're happy now, aren't you?"

" ' Happy' probably goes too far," Newton replied. "I've always thought the slaves deserve to be free. I hoped we wouldn't need bloodshed to free them."

"It may not be over yet, or even close to over," Stafford said. "Do you remember what I told you before? No matter how happy"-he used the word again, with malice aforethought-"you are that niggers and mudfaces get to ape white men, plenty of people south of the Stour won't be. A lot of them will be like the militia colonel you don't care for-they'll want to keep fighting no matter what."

"I do remember. We've been over this ground before. What's the most they can hope for? I can think of two things." Newton held up two fingers. He touched one with the index finger of his other hand. "Maybe they'll kill off all the blacks and copperskins down here. Then they won't have any slaves left, whatever they were fighting for will be pointless, and their grandchildren will ask them, 'How could you do such a horrible thing?' " He touched the other finger. "Or maybe they'll win. I don't think it's likely, but you never can tell. But even if they do, will they trust slaves around anything sharp from then on out? I asked you that a couple of minutes ago, and you swore at me."

"You deserved it, too," Stafford said.

"Which still doesn't answer my question, your Excellency." What Stafford called him then made everything the other Consul had said before sound like an endearment. It would have made a hard-bitten regular sergeant, a twenty-year veteran, blush like a maiden aunt. Even on the receiving end, Newton admired it. When his colleague finally ran down, he inclined his head. "Your mother would be proud of you," he said.

"If she knew what you had in mind, she'd call you worse than that," Stafford said.

"The worst of it is, I believe you-which also doesn't answer my question," Newton said. "For God's sake, Jeremiah, if you think that hero from the militia will get you what you want, turn him loose. But if you think he's the biggest jackass this side of a stud farm, you ought to slow him down before he makes a bad spot worse."

He wondered whether Stafford would ream him out yet again. The other Consul didn't. He just gestured wearily, as if to say he wanted nothing more to do with Leland Newton and his impertinent questions. Knowing when not to push any more could be even more important than knowing when to keep pushing no matter what. Newton touched a finger to the brim of his tall beaver hat and left Stafford alone with his conscience-assuming he had one.

And the militiamen did not march off against Frederick Radcliff's fighters on their own. Newton didn't know whether Stafford had anything to do with that. Nor did he try to find out. What difference did it make, anyhow? In politics as in sausage-stuffing, the result often proved more appetizing than what went into producing it.

Frederick Radcliff had never dreamt his word would be as good as law in much of the state of New Marseille, as well as being heard in states east of the Green Ridge Mountains. People all over Atlantis had paid attention to his grandfather, but what did that have to do with anything? Victor Radcliff had enjoyed the enormous advantage of a white skin. For a man who had to do without one, Frederick had come further than he'd ever imagined he could.

"I hope to Jesus you have!" Helen exclaimed when he remarked on that. He could always count on his wife to keep him from getting a big head. With a sly smile, she went on, "Beats the daylights out of being Master Barford's house nigger, don't it?"

"Oh, you might say so," Frederick answered-she didn't know Humphrey had mocked him for his former post. "Yeah, you just might. And I was all puffed up about that when it was what I had. I sure was. Seems like a thousand years ago."

His cheeks heated. For once, he was glad his skin was too dark to show much of a flush. Humphrey had known the difference between house slaves and field hands, all right. So far, Humphrey hadn't tried to run off again. Or, if he had, the word hadn't got to Frederick.

Those weren't the same-not even close. One of the things Frederick had learned was that being a leader didn't mean knowing everything that was going on. You could be pretty sure of what you saw with your own eyes. Past that, you had to rely on what other people told you.

That sounded better than it really was. As any slave knew, people lied whenever they thought it would do them some good-or sometimes whenever they felt like it. They kept quiet about things that made them look bad. If nobody found out about things like that, they won the game.

Or they thought so, anyhow. Trouble was, the things people lied about or swept under the rug were often the things a leader most needed to learn. Frederick didn't like using side channels to find out about things his lieutenants should have told him. That didn't mean he didn't do it. Back on the plantation, Henry Barford had done the same kind of thing. In the end, it didn't save him-the uprising was too sudden, too swift, to be sidetracked. But it had helped him run things for years. And it helped Frederick now.

"A thousand years ago," his wife echoed. "It does, but it seems like day before yesterday, too. I reckoned I'd die a slave-I really did."

"So did I," Frederick said. Considering who his grandfather was, he thought that fate seemed even more bitter to him than it did to Helen. He'd never had the nerve to tell her that, though. His best guess was that she'd call him a stupid, uppity nigger if he dared do such a thing. Sometimes you didn't want to find out how good your best guess was.

"Ain't gonna happen now," Helen said in wondering tones.

"No. It won't. We'll die free," Frederick agreed, adding, "And it's startin' to look like that won't happen in the next ten minutes, neither."

"Wouldn't have believed that when you clouted Matthew," Helen said. "I reckoned you was dead. I reckoned I was, too. And not just the two of us-the whole work gang."

"Things turn out right, fifty years from now old niggers'll go on about how tough things were in the work gangs, and young niggers listenin' to 'em won't have any notion of what they're talkin' about. That's what I'm aimin' for," Frederick said.

While he was a house slave, he hadn't understood what a hard life field hands led. He'd known, but he hadn't understood, not till he lived it himself for a little while. It was even harder for him, because they got used to it from childhood while he was dropped into it as a middle-aged man with soft hands and with welts from the lash on his back.

"Be somethin' if we got it," Helen said. His disaster had turned her out into the fields, too. She'd never blamed him for it, not out loud, which surely made her a princess among women. She asked, "Any news about what the white folks in New Marseille're up to?"

Not altogether comfortably, Frederick shook his head. "Only thing I know for sure is, they haven't come out against us. And some of the militiamen done gone home, on account of they can't get their hands on any guns."

"Aw, toooo bad." Helen didn't sound brokenhearted.

Frederick laughed. "Ain't it just?"

"They ain't comin' out to fight. But they ain't comin' out to talk with us, neither," his wife said.

"That's about the size of it. You'd know if they were," Frederick said.

"Well, I hope so," Helen said, which reminded Frederick of his own thoughts about how hard it was to be sure of what was going on. Then she asked, "What if they don't do either one?"

"If they don't fight or talk?" Frederick said. Helen nodded. He scratched his head. The white folks had to do one or the other… didn't they?

"Maybe they try an' wait us out, see if our army falls apart," Helen said. "They know how to hold things together better'n we do."

Once more, that reminded Frederick of his unpleasant encounter with Humphrey. "You're right," he said in somber tones. "They do. They've had more practice doin' it."

"Think we ought to, like, push 'em, then?" Helen asked. "Be harder for them to make like they don't want to talk with us if we try an' talk with them right in front of all the newspapers an' everybody."

"It would," Frederick murmured. Damned if it wouldn't, he thought. Saying no or saying nothing was easy in private. Doing it where people who wanted you to say yes could listen in… That was another story.

"Dunno if you ought to go yourself. Talkin' with 'em face-to-face when we had guns all around, that was fine. Stickin' your head in the lion's mouth in New Marseille… Maybe they listen to you. But maybe they shoot you instead. Even if the Consuls don't tell 'em to, maybe they do it irregardless," Helen said.

"Uh-huh. Same goes for Lorenzo." Frederick could easily imagine a militiaman pulling out an eight-shooter and blazing away. The white men from south of the Stour loved rebellious slaves no more than the Negroes and copperskins loved them. The militiamen were having trouble getting firearms in New Marseille. That might count for very little. A length of rope might suit them better, in fact. Yes, watching a leader of the insurrection kick away his life might make them laugh like hyenas.

Frederick had never heard a hyena, or seen one. Atlanteans often said things, or thought them, for no better reason than that they were embedded in the English language. He supposed his African ancestors and cousins knew all about hyenas.

"Lorenzo." Helen's nostrils flared. "Don't know if you oughta trust that copperskin. He's liable to want to be the top fella, not the second one."

It wasn't as if that thought hadn't also occurred to Frederick. But he said, "If he aimed to kill me, he could've done it a hundred times by now. White folks are the ones we got to worry about, not our own kind."

"You hope," Helen said.

So Frederick did. If he remembered that Lorenzo was a copperskin, wasn't exactly his own kind… If he remembered that, the insurrection would eat itself up. Quite deliberately, he made himself forget it.