Liberating Atlantis

XXI

Jeremiah Stafford might have been happier to see the arrival of the Antichrist at New Marseille than he was when Frederick Radcliff's emissary rode into town. On the other hand, he might not have. On the other other hand-assuming people came with three-he wasn't sure there was much difference between the Antichrist and a spokesman for the Free Republic of Atlantis.

Had he had any choice, he would have ignored the Negro named Samuel. But Samuel made sure Stafford and Newton and Colonel Sinapis had no choice. Carrying a flag of truce, he rode into town with a guard of half a dozen insurrectionists. Two of them had captured Atlantean cavalry carbines, three had eight-shooters, while the last bore the Free Republic's flag.

Up till then, Consul Stafford hadn't known the Free Republic had a flag. It hadn't shown one in any of its fights with Sinapis' soldiers. But it did now-one in stark contrast to the USA's crimson red-crested eagle's head on blue. The Free Republic's flag showed three vertical stripes: red, black, and white.

Samuel was only too happy to explain its meaning to New Marseille's newspapermen (and parading through town with it made sure the newspapermen noticed him). "It shows the three folks of the Free Republic," the Negro told anyone who would listen. "Copperskins, Negroes, and whites can all live together there in equality."

Not a single reporter asked him what had happened to the whites in the Free Republic, or why so many militiamen hailed from land it held. That the reporters didn't ask such questions infuriated Stafford. "The black bastard might as well have cast a spell on them!" he complained.

"He's clever," Leland Newton said, which only irked Stafford more. The other Consul went on, "And that flag is a master stroke. It makes the Free Republic look to be the same kind of thing the United States are."

"One more lie!" Stafford said. "He's trying to force us to treat with him."

"He's doing a good job, too, wouldn't you say?" Newton answered. "If we don't treat with him-or treat with his principals, which is what he's come to arrange-we have to start fighting again."

Although Stafford was ready for that, he and the militiamen seemed to be the only people in New Marseille-maybe the only people in the USA-who were. "He's arranged things so we have no choice," he said sourly.

That didn't get the response he wanted, either. "Well, your Excellency, if you think so, too, let's meet him and get it over with," Newton said.

Stafford didn't want to, which was putting it mildly. But he'd done all kinds of things he didn't want to do since leaving New Hastings. The more of them he did, the easier the next one seemed to become. Meet with a nigger fronting for a slave insurrection? Before leaving the capital, he would have laughed at the idea-if he didn't punch whoever was mad enough to suggest it. Now… Now he let out a wintry sigh and said, "All right. Maybe it will make those jackasses with pens shut up, anyhow. That would be worth a little something."

It didn't. Samuel made sure it wouldn't. He wanted to meet while New Marseille's reporters listened in. "Why not?" he said. "The Free Republic's got nothing to hide." That only made the scribes like him better.

And so they sat down together in the eatery attached to New Marseille's second-best hotel, the Silver Oil Thrush. Foreigners, no doubt, would have found the name peculiar. Consul Stafford cared little for what foreigners thought. Oil thrushes had grown scarce, even here in the southwest, but he'd eaten them often enough to know how tasty they were.

Samuel, on the other hand, was a stringy old buzzard, his woolly hair frosted with gray. He must have been somebody's butler, or something of the sort, before the insurrection: he spoke almost like an educated white man, with only a vanishing trace of a slave accent. Letting niggers and copperskins learn to read and write was a big mistake-Stafford had always thought so. It gave them ideas above their station.

Too late to worry about that now. "Tribune Radcliff and Marshal Lorenzo want to meet with you folks to end the war," Samuel said. Off to one side of the table where he talked with the Consuls and Colonel Sinapis, a sketch artist took down their likenesses. Soon, a woodcut of the scene would grace some New Marseille newspaper.

"If they think we'll recognize their crackbrained titles, they'd better think again," Stafford snapped.

Samuel only shrugged. "Talk to them about that, your Excellency. Talk to me about talking to them." His use of Stafford's title of respect annoyed the Consul instead of mollifying him.

"If I had my way-" Stafford began.

"You'd whip me within an inch of my life. I know that, your Excellency," Samuel broke in, with perfect accuracy. "But you don't have your way here, not any more you don't. Shall we talk instead?"

"Yes. Let's." That was Newton, not Stafford.

"I would still sooner fight it out," Stafford said. Knowing he would get no support from the other Consul, he looked to Balthasar Sinapis instead. He got no support from the colonel, either. He feared he knew what that meant: Sinapis didn't want the insurrectionists to humiliate him again. In a way, Stafford sympathized. In another way… "What good is having an army if you don't dare use it?"

To his surprise, Sinapis answered him: "To keep someone else from using his army against you."

"So that's why the niggers aren't in New Marseille, is it?" Stafford snarled.

"Yes. That is exactly why," Sinapis said.

"And on account of we don't want to come into New Marseille any old way," Samuel said. "We don't want to fight any more. We want peace. You gonna tell all the people in Atlantis you don't want peace?"

You sneaky son of a bitch, Stafford thought, watching the reporters scribble. Samuel knew how to play to the gallery-Frederick Radcliff must have understood what he was doing when he sent out the other Negro. Damn it, the people of Atlantis, or too many of them, didn't want anybody telling them their leaders didn't want peace.

"If you think the people of Atlantis-of the United States of Atlantis-will let the so-called Free Republic of Atlantis stand, you'd better think again," Newton said. Stafford blinked, the way he did whenever he and the other Consul agreed about something.

Samuel only spread his pale-palmed hands. "I'm not the one to talk about that, either," he said. "You've got to see what the Tribune and the Marshal have to say."

Consul Newton nodded. He was willing to do that. Colonel Sinapis was also willing to do it, or at least resigned to the prospect. If Stafford said no, all the blame would land on him. There was probably enough to crush him.

If only…! If only a lot of things, he thought. They started with wondering why Victor Radcliff had to get a slave with child and went on from there. Too late to do anything about any of them now. Stafford was stuck with the world as it was.

He didn't say yes. He couldn't make himself do that. But he didn't say no, no matter how much he wanted to.

Approaching the hamlet of Slug Hollow, Leland Newton wondered how it had got its name. The answer proved altogether mundane: it sat in a depression, and the trees thereabouts were full of cucumber slugs, some of them half as long as a man's arm. The settlers had had the imagination of so many cherrystone clams, but they'd told the truth as they saw it.

No whites were left in the hamlet. Maybe they'd fled. Maybe they hadn't had the chance. Newton didn't ask-he didn't want to know. Jeremiah Stafford did ask, pointedly. He made sure he did it where the reporters could hear him, too. Newton thought about teasing him for taking lessons from Samuel, but decided not to. He didn't think his colleague would appreciate it.

When Stafford asked, Samuel only shrugged and spread his hands again. "I don't know what happened," he said. "They were long gone by the time I came through here-that's all I can tell you."

"A likely story," Stafford said. "How do you suppose so many buildings burned down? Lightning?"

"I don't know," Samuel repeated. "If I don't know, I can't tell you."

"Would we find bones if we dug in the ruins?" Stafford asked.

"Maybe you would, your Excellency," the Negro said. "You got to remember, though-a war went through here."

Newton was ready to make allowances for that. Stafford didn't seem to be, which surprised the other Consul very little: "It's war when you do it, eh? But it's nasty and villainous when we fight back."

"You said it, your Excellency. I didn't," Samuel answered. Stafford sent him a murderous glare.

The Consuls and the soldiers they'd brought along camped west of the ruined Slug Hollow. Samuel and his smaller retinue camped east of the place. When Frederick and Lorenzo came down to join them, they would bring enough fighters to equalize the numbers.

Colonel Sinapis had a good-sized force within easy reach of Slug Hollow. He wasn't supposed to, but he did. Leland Newton would have been amazed if the same weren't true for the insurrectionists. If the talks failed-or maybe even if they succeeded-the war could start again any time.

Frederick Radcliff and Lorenzo walked into Slug Hollow two days after the men from New Marseille got there. The Negro and copperskin would have cut a fancier figure had they ridden. Maybe they didn't care. Or maybe they didn't ride. Why would they have learned while they were slaves?

Stafford greeted them with, "If you keep up this nonsense about the Free Republic of Atlantis, we have nothing to say to one another."

"If you call everything that's ours nonsense before we even start talking about it, maybe you ought to send in your soldiers again," Lorenzo answered. "You want to settle things by fighting, I reckon we can do that."

If Newton hadn't got it for free, he would have paid a hundred eagles for a glimpse of Stafford's face. The other Consul plainly did want to settle things by fighting. Just as plainly, he knew he couldn't. The United States of Atlantis had ended up with egg on their face when they tried. No matter how much he despised the idea, he had to sit down and talk with the insurrectionists now. And he did despise the idea, and made only the barest effort to hide it.

Frederick Radcliff said, "If we can get what we need inside the United States of Atlantis, we don't need to worry so much about the Free Republic. If we can't… Well, that's a different story." He made hand-washing motions to show how different it was liable to be.

"What do you need?" Newton asked. "Can you put it into words for us?" If Radcliff couldn't, the Consul feared the talks would end up going nowhere.

But the Negro leader didn't hesitate. "You bet I can," he said. "We want to be free. We don't want anybody, no matter what color he is, to buy us and sell us any more. We want the law in Atlantis to forget about color, matter of fact. Whatever a white man can do, a Negro or a copperskin ought to be able to do. Whatever a white man gets in trouble for, one of us ought to get in trouble for, too-as much trouble, but no more."

Consul Stafford seemed bound and determined to make himself as difficult as he could. "You want the right to miscegenate with white women!" he exclaimed.

"To do what?" Lorenzo asked.

"To screw 'em," Frederick Radcliff explained, which wasn't the whole answer, but which came close enough.

"Oh. That." To Newton's surprise, Lorenzo laughed out loud. "What makes you think we think white women are pretty enough to be worth screwing?" he asked Stafford. Again, Newton would have paid money to look at an expression he got to see for nothing.

"White folks always get hot and bothered about that," Frederick said gravely. "They spent all this time screwin' our women, so naturally they figure we got to pay 'em back the same way."

Consul Stafford finally quit spluttering and gasping like a newly landed trout. "Will you have the infernal gall to claim you've all been chaste throughout this uprising? I hope not, by God, because I know better."

"No, I don't say that. You don't like it so much when it happens to your womenfolk, do you, your Excellency?" Frederick Radcliff answered. "But I say this-put us under fair laws and we'll live up to them. My woman's about the same shade I am. We been together lots of years. I don't want a white woman-I want her to be my legal wife. What's so bad about that?"

"A lot of men from south of the Stour will tell you it's the wickedest thing they ever heard," Newton said.

"A lot of men from south of the Stour are damned fools," Lorenzo said, and then, "Hell, it ain't like we didn't already know that."

"If you provoke us, we will keep fighting," Consul Stafford warned. Colonel Sinapis stirred, but he didn't come right out and call the Consul from Cosquer a liar.

Can we go on fighting? Newton wondered. He supposed it was possible. He didn't think it would be easy or cheap or quick. What would the United States of Atlantis be like after a generation of nasty campaigning and ambushes? Would they be any kind of place he wanted to live? He didn't think so. Would they be any kind of place where a Negro or copperskin could live? He also had his doubts about that.

"You don't love us, and we don't love you," Frederick said. "Might be better if we went our own way in a chunk of this country."

"A minute ago, you claimed you would follow our laws," Stafford said. "If you make your own country out of ours, do you aim to pay for what you take away from us?"

Frederick rubbed his chin. "That might cause some trouble," he admitted.

"Oh, maybe a little," Stafford said. "For that matter, how do you propose to compensate all the slaveowners in the USA for having their property forcibly stolen from them?"

"You know what, your Excellency? That ain't my worry," Frederick Radcliff said.

"Why not?" Stafford pressed.

"On account of any man who's been a slave will tell you slavery's wrong to begin with," the Negro answered. "Why should you get paid 'cause you can't do now what you never should have started doing?"

"Isn't that an interesting question?" Newton murmured.

"Shut up," Stafford told him. He turned back to Frederick Radcliff. "Will you tell me slavery is illegal?"

"Not yet," Frederick answered. "But it sure ought to be."

"You'll find plenty of people who disagree with you," Stafford said.

"Damned few who've ever been slaves," Lorenzo told him.

"This is what we're here to talk about," Newton said. "What we have now plainly isn't working." He waited for the other Consul to quarrel with him, but Stafford didn't. Thus encouraged, if that was the word, he went on, "We want to see what we can work out that will leave almost everyone not too unhappy."

This time, Jeremiah Stafford looked like nothing so much as a stray dog vomiting in the middle of the street. But Frederick Radcliff slowly nodded. If that wasn't a politician's nod, Consul Newton had never seen one. And if that was a politician's nod… In that case, the Negro leader was-or at least might be-a man with whom it would be possible to deal.

Newton dared hope so.

"Almost everybody not too unhappy!" Lorenzo not only mocked the sentiment, he did a rotten job of imitating Leland Newton's accent. To Frederick's ear, the copperskin sounded like a man trying to talk around a mouthful of rocks.

"Have you got a better idea?" Frederick asked. "What are we supposed to do if we can't find a bargain the white folks will live with?"

"What we ought to do is kill the Consuls and that damned foreign colonel," Lorenzo said. "After that, they'd all thrash like a pullet that just met the chopper." With the flat of his hand, he mimed a hatchet coming down on a skinny neck. Then he did an alarmingly accurate impression of a chicken that had just lost its head.

But Frederick held up both hands in horror. "They would act like that-for a little while. Then they'd decide they could never trust us again, even a tiny bit, and they'd hunt us down no matter how long it took or what it cost."

"Let 'em try, and good luck to 'em," Lorenzo said.

"Do you want to live like a hunted animal the rest of your days?" Frederick asked. "If you do, you found the fastest way to get what you want."

"Me? I want to live like the fancy masters wish they could," Lorenzo said. "I want to have servants fan me with those big old feathers-"

"Ostrich plumes," Frederick put in. Sure enough, such fans were in great demand among the richer plantation owners. Or they had been, till the people who would have done the fanning decided they didn't care for the work.

"Yeah. Them," Lorenzo agreed. "And I want pretty girls to drop grapes in my mouth whenever I get hungry, or maybe thirsty."

Frederick didn't know whether to laugh or to be appalled. "How do you propose to get that without turning into a master yourself?"

"Maybe we could make the Consuls slaves instead of killing 'em." Lorenzo was full of ideas today. Not necessarily good ideas, but ideas all the same.

"And where would you get the pretty girls?" Frederick asked, with the air of a man humoring a lunatic.

"Oh, what pretty girl wouldn't want to come to Slug Hollow?" Lorenzo said, and if that wasn't the most lunatic thing Frederick Radcliff had ever heard, he didn't know what would be. No one in his-or her-right mind would want to come to Slug Hollow. No one would have wanted to come here if the place were named Silver Nugget. Slug Hollow by any other name would have been a place people tried to get away from, not one they flocked to.

"They could drop cucumber slugs into your mouth when you got hungry," Frederick said.

"Ain't like I never ate 'em before," Lorenzo answered. "Don't know many field hands who haven't. Maybe it's different with house slaves."

"I know what they taste like," Frederick said, which was true enough. If the copperskin wanted to claim field hands ate such delicacies more often than house slaves did, Frederick couldn't argue with him.

But Lorenzo chose to change the subject instead: "Reckon we'll get what we're after here?"

"Don't know," Frederick answered uneasily. "We don't want to keep fighting forever, though, we gotta try."

"Fighting forever'd be better'n going back to where we were. Damned if I'll ever pick any more cotton for a white man," Lorenzo said.

"That, I know," Frederick said. He felt the same way, and he'd done it for days, not for years. All the Negroes and copperskins who followed him felt the same way. If the whites camped on the far side of Slug Hollow didn't understand that, these talks would fail. And if they failed… fighting forever was what would come next.

He tried to picture what Atlantis would look like after ten years of skirmishing, or twenty, or thirty. Like a restive horse, his mind shied away from what that called up. Would anyone, white or colored, care to live here after something like that? Frederick flinched at all the unpleasant possibilities he could see. And they weren't just possibilities-they struck him as being likelihoods.

Lorenzo said, "Ain't many women here gonna let white men do what they want with 'em no more, neither."

"Uh-huh," Frederick said. That shot hit much too close to the center of the target-much too close to the heart of who he was. What had things been like between his grandmother and Victor Radcliff? Her owner lent her to the other white Atlantean for his pleasure; Frederick knew that. Had she taken any of her own? Had they even liked each other? As far as Frederick knew, his grandmother had never said anything to his father about his father's father beyond letting him know who that famous father was.

Had the insurrection come two generations earlier, would Frederick's grandmother have picked up a musket and tried to blow out Victor Radcliff's brains for using her the way he did? Again, Frederick had no idea.

Lorenzo pressed ahead: "So we've got to get free, or else we've got to keep fighting. No other way we can go." He looked at Frederick. Frederick understood exactly what that look meant, too: no matter what he said about it, if the talks failed the fight would go on with him or without him.

But he didn't disagree with Lorenzo, not here. "Nope. No other way," he said. The copperskin seemed satisfied. The white men camped on the far side of Slug Hollow wouldn't be so easy to placate. Well, if we go back to shooting at each other, how are we worse off? Frederick wondered. He saw no way. And if that wasn't a judgment on the United States of Atlantis, what would be?

Jeremiah Stafford scowled across the table at Frederick Radcliff and Lorenzo. Pretending even for a moment that a Negro and a copperskin had any business treating with him as equals was galling enough. Remembering that they could have killed him but hadn't didn't make him feel any more kindly toward them-not now, when he no longer lay in their grasp.

The table also reminded him what a travesty this was. Back in New Hastings, he'd dickered with Senators across tables ornamented with marquetry so fine and intricate, it must have left the woodworkers shortsighted for life. This one was of roughly planed boards hacked from the local pine. It stood in the taproom of a tavern abandoned when the insurrection flooded over Slug Hollow. Since that day, spider webs had grown thick up near the ceiling and in the corners of the room-or maybe they'd been there all along. In a miserable place like this, who could tell?

"You seem to think turning all the slaves south of the Stour loose will be easy," Stafford said to the leaders of the insurrection. "Wave our hands-abracadabra!-and it's done. I have to tell you, it won't be like that."

"Oh, we know," Frederick Radcliff answered. "You better believe we know."

"If it was gonna be easy, we wouldn't've had to start killing people," Lorenzo added.

Bloodthirsty savage, Stafford thought. "You had no business doing that any which way," he said.

"Oh, yes, we did," Frederick Radcliff said. "It was the only way we could make you notice we were there. White folks don't notice slaves, except to make money off of 'em or to lay the women." Bitterness edged his voice. Considering who his grandfather was, that was understandable enough.

As far as Stafford knew, he'd sired no colored babies himself. Not for lack of effort, though. Admitting as much probably wasn't the smartest thing he could do. Instead, he said, "If we turn you loose, it will break a lot of white families. You said it yourself-people do make money from slaves. That's one of the big reasons they won't want to give them up."

"Good luck making money off of slaves now," Frederick Radcliff said. "The devil's come out. You can't put him down again so easy."

"That is an unfortunate fact, but a fact we must face," Leland Newton said. Stafford sent his fellow Consul a sour look. Much as he wished he could, though, he didn't contradict him. This rebellion had succeeded all too well. It warned that others could succeed, too. Slaves might be ignorant, but they weren't too stupid to see that. If only they were!

"One reason you don't want to turn slaves loose is money," Lorenzo said. "What are the others, Mr. Consul, sir?" He turned the titles of respect into sneers.

Before either Stafford or Newton could answer, Frederick Radcliff said, "C'mon, friend-you know why. White folks reckon they're better'n niggers and mudfaces. Gives 'em somebody to look down their noses at."

"I knew they had those long, pointy ones for some kind of reason," Lorenzo said, even if his was almost as long and sharp as the average white man's. Frederick Radcliff's was lower and flatter. He didn't take after his grandfather there, anyway.

But the Negro hit a nerve with Jeremiah Stafford, all right. "We think so because it's true," Stafford growled. "Everything says so, from the Bible to the most modern scholars. It must be so."

To his amazement-and fury-the Negro and copperskin both burst out laughing. "It's your Bible," Frederick Radcliff said. "They're your scholars. What are they gonna say? 'No, we're just a bunch of stupid cows next to these other folks'? I don't think so!"

That had never occurred to Stafford. It disconcerted him, but only for a moment. "The Bible is the word of God," he said sternly. "God would not lie, and you face hellfire if you say He would."

Lorenzo went right on laughing. "Devil'd have you on the fire right now if we didn't turn you loose."

No, Jeremiah Stafford didn't care to be reminded of that, not even slightly. This time, Frederick Radcliff spoke before Stafford could say anything: "That's about the size of it. Bible doesn't matter, not for this. I don't care if white folks reckon they're better'n we are. That doesn't matter, either. What matters is, you aren't strong enough to hold us down any more, and now we know it."

"Realpolitik," Colonel Sinapis murmured. It sounded almost as if it ought to be an English word, but not quite.

Consul Newton's thoughtful grunt said he understood it. Stafford believed he did, too, which didn't mean he liked it. But then Newton spoke to the insurrectionists: "You can't leave what white men think out of the way you think. If your horses rose up against you-"

That was precisely how Stafford saw things. It was also precisely calculated to enrage the Negro and the copperskin. "You call me an animal, you can kiss my ass," Frederick Radcliff said.

"I didn't. I don't." Newton held up a hand, as if to deny everything. "But most white men south of the Stour are liable to. More than a few from north of the river, too, I have to tell you, but maybe not so many. If you forget that, or if you try to pretend it isn't there, you're missing something important."

Stafford stared at his colleague in amazement. "He said it-I didn't," Stafford said. "I agree with every word of it, though."

"Well, I've got two words for those damnfool white folks," Lorenzo said: "Tough shit."

"Realpolitik," Colonel Sinapis repeated, louder this time. He looked across the table at the rebels. "The Consuls are right. White men in Atlantis do feel this way. You cannot ignore it because you do not care for it."

"Maybe us winning this fight here has gone a ways toward changing their minds," Frederick Radcliff said.

Balthasar Sinapis politely dipped his head. "Maybe," he said. "I would not bet on this anything I was not ready to lose."

"Most white men will go to their graves sure they are better than any copperskin or Negro ever born," Stafford added.

"If that's what it takes, we'll send 'em there," Lorenzo said. He started to get up from the table.

"Wait." Frederick Radcliff and Consul Newton said the same thing at the same time. They both blinked, then smiled almost identical sheepish smiles. Lorenzo blinked, too, and did sit down again. Newton went on, "We need to bring back something like peace. We can't go on the way we have been. The country will fall to pieces if we do, and that won't help anyone."

"I was thinking the same thing," Frederick Radcliff said. "We keep fighting the rest of our lives, we've got nothin' worth havin'."

"Slaves don't get set free, we've got nothin' worth havin', either," Lorenzo said.

"What have you got if you make the white men south of the Stour want to fight you to the death?" Stafford asked. "The way you're going, that's just what you're doing."

"We have to be free. Have to be," Frederick Radcliff said. Lorenzo nodded.

"Freeing you will break hundreds of thousands of white men, maybe millions," Stafford said. "They won't put up with it. Neither would you, not in their shoes."

This time, both Lorenzo and Frederick Radcliff got up. Newton started to say something. Then he stopped-he seemed to have no idea what would call them back. They walked out of the tavern together.

Newton and Colonel Sinapis both turned on Stafford. "A bad peace is worse than none at all," Stafford insisted. Neither of the other two men said a word. He didn't think that was because he'd convinced them.

Leland Newton held on to his temper with both hands. "It's either free them or fight forever," he said.

"Suppose I asked you to bankrupt yourself. Suppose I asked every fifth man in the state of Croydon to do the same," Stafford returned. "How eager would you be?"

"It won't be so bad as that," Newton said.

"Like hell it won't," the other Consul replied. "We won't do it. I know my people. Why won't you listen to me?"

"Negroes and copperskins were 'your people,' too," Newton said. "Why wouldn't you listen to them?"

He took a certain malicious pleasure in watching the other Consul's mouth fall open. "They don't vote!" Stafford sputtered. He needed a moment to gather himself. Then, his voice strengthening, he added, "And they've got no business voting, either!"

"It doesn't seem to do any harm in Croydon," Newton said. "No great pestilences-we don't even have the yellow jack up there, the way you do in Cosquer. God hasn't chosen to drop the city into the sea."

"I don't know why not," Stafford said. In the south, people thought Croydon and Hanover were dens of iniquity, full of sin and degradation. What Stafford didn't understand-one of the many things he didn't understand-was that people in Hanover and Croydon felt the same way about the states south of the Stour, and all because of slavery.

"You need to ask God about that," Newton said. "But you can't really believe you'll be able to put all the insurrectionists back in bondage… can you?" The question said he didn't want to believe Stafford could believe any such thing.

His colleague's mutinous countenance declared that Stafford wanted to believe it-wanted to with all his heart and all his soul and all his might. It also said Stafford wanted to kill as many men and women as he needed to in order to bring the rest back to submission. But then, slowly, the other Consul's features crumpled. "No," he said. "I can't." No bombastic tragedian playing Hamlet could have packed more anguish into three words.

Hearing them made Newton want to jump for joy. He didn't-nor did he show that he wanted to. Showing Stafford any such thing would only have further stiffened his colleague's already stiff back. So Newton spoke as if it were nothing but a matter of practical politics: "Well, then, how do we do what wants doing?"

"Good question," the other Consul said. "I warned you before-the whites south of the Stour won't put up with nigger freedom, let alone nigger equality."

"The way it looks to me, their only other choice is going on with this war, and that hasn't worked so well, either," Newton said.

"A lot of them won't care," Stafford said bleakly.

"Well, the militiamen we had with us can help spread the word," Newton said. "And they can help spread the word that the copperskins and Negroes could have killed every last one of us, but didn't."

"Good God!" The Consul from Cosquer looked at him as if he'd taken leave of his senses. "Do you think those people will do anything on account of gratitude? You know what that's worth."

So Newton did, much too well. Anyone who counted on gratitude in politics wouldn't stay in politics long. "No," Newton insisted. "But people all over the south need to know the insurrectionists aren't devils with horns and barbed tails."

"Are you so sure? What about the ones who slaughtered their masters and violated their mistresses when the uprising started?" Stafford said. "Shouldn't they hang for murder?"

"It was a war. Bad things happen in wars-that's what makes them what they are," Newton replied. "I think we will have to declare an amnesty. Otherwise the fighting starts again, doesn't it?"

"Amnesty." Stafford spat the word back at him. "So they get away with all their crimes? Makes me wish I were a nigger myself."

"Don't be silly, Jeremiah. Nothing could make you wish you were a nigger," Newton said with great assurance. His colleague couldn't deny it, either. Newton went on, "And can you see any way around it? As far as the slaves are concerned, everything their masters ever did to them was a crime."

"Oh, piffle," Stafford said. He owns slaves, too, Newton reminded himself. "What about masters who keep slaves on when they're old and useless?"

That did happen. Newton knew as much. He also knew something else: "What about the ones who don't? There are plenty of them, too."

Stafford waved that aside. "From now on, I can see broken-down copperskins begging in the streets and dying in the gutter. Too many slaves can't make a living unless somebody tells them what to do."

"How do you know? How does anyone know?" Newton said. "They deserve a chance, just like everybody else."

"You'll find out. And when they do start starving, do you know what will happen? They'll blame us for turning them loose," Stafford said.

That didn't sound as improbable as Leland Newton would have wished. All the same, he said, "Freedom isn't easy for every white man, either. But how many whites do you know who want to be slaves?"

"You make everything sound so simple," Stafford said. "It won't be. You wait and see-it won't."

"So what?" Newton said. "We've got to start somewhere, unless we go back to the war. Can we do that?" To his vast relief, Stafford shook his head.