Liberating Atlantis

III

When the horn's bray woke Frederick for his second day as a field hand, he didn't feel a day over ninety-seven. Every part of him ached or stung. Quite a few parts ached and stung. As he had the afternoon before, he got about a third of the way toward wishing he were dead.

He'd fallen asleep right after supper. He'd come that close to falling asleep in the middle of supper, with his mouth hanging open to show off the cornmeal mush or the chunk of fat sowbelly he'd been chewing when his mainspring ran down. Somehow, he'd kept his eyes open till he and Helen got back to the cabin. But he didn't remember a thing after the two of them lay down.

Beside him, Helen groaned as she sat up. She rubbed her eyes. She had to be as weary as he was. The first words out of her mouth, though, were, "How's your back?"

"Sore," he answered. "Better than it was. Not as good as it's gonna be-or I sure hope not, anyways." He made himself remember he wasn't the only one with troubles. "How you doin', sweetheart?"

"Well, I thought I worked hard back in the big house." She shook her head at her own foolishness. "Only goes to show what I knew, don't it?"

She didn't call him twelve different kinds of stupid, clumsy jackass for costing both of them the soft places they'd enjoyed. Why she didn't, Frederick had no idea. If it wasn't because of something very much like love, he couldn't imagine what it would be.

The horn blared out again. This time, Matthew's warning shout followed: "Last one out's gonna catch it!"

Frederick had taken off only his hat and his shoes. Putting the straw hat back on was a matter of a moment. Shoes were a different story. His fingers were stiff and crooked, his hands sore. He had a devil of a time tying the laces.

Then he had to help Helen. Her palms looked even worse than his. "Should've put your ointment on 'em," he scolded.

"I was savin' it for you."

"Well, don't, confound it," he told her. He also kissed her on the cheek, not least because he knew she wouldn't listen to him. Yes, that was love, all right, even if the words the colored preacher'd said over them didn't mean a thing in the rarefied air the Barfords breathed.

They weren't the last ones out. The overseer unbent enough to nod to them as they took their places with the field hands. With the other field hands-Frederick corrected himself. "Ready for another go?" Matthew asked.

"I'm ready," Frederick said shortly. He resolved to die before admitting to the white man that he was anything less.

"Well, all right." Matthew was taciturn, too. But he could have been much nastier. Maybe he was wondering if Frederick and Helen would go back to the big house before too long. If they did, they would be personages even an overseer had to reckon with. Was he hedging his bets now? Frederick could hope so. That might make life a little easier. And even a little seemed like a lot.

When a Negro couple didn't come out, Matthew went into their cabin after them. The shouting and screeching and carrying on made everybody in the labor gang smile. "I slep' through the blame horn!" the male slave in the cabin wailed.

"You'll sleep in the swamp with a rock tied to your ankle if you don't get moving, you stupid toad!" the overseer said. In less time than it took to tell, both the slave and his woman were out there. If some of her buttons were still undone, if he had to bend down to tie his shoes, Matthew wasn't fussy about such things. They were there. Nothing else mattered.

Frederick wolfed down his breakfast. He wished he could have got twice as much. He wouldn't starve on a field hand's rations. But he would wish-he would always wish-he could get more.

Mosquitoes buzzed around him as he ate. They were worse in the close little cabin at night. So the raised, itchy places on his arms and ankles and the back of his neck insisted, though he didn't remember getting bitten. They were worse, then, yes, but they never went away. He wondered if he could get some mesh or screening for the windows. Or would Matthew think something like that was too good for field hands? Slapping at a bug that landed on his wrist, Frederick thought, I can find out.

The overseer glanced at the ascending sun. With a theatrical shake of the head, he shouted at the slaves: "Eat up! You ain't porkers! Master Henry ain't fattening you up. You got work to do."

A Negro pointed to the path that led from the big house to the road to New Marseille. "What's goin' on there?" he said.

"Don't waste my time with your silly games, Lou," Matthew snapped. "You-" He broke off. Lou wasn't playing games, not this morning.

"Dog my cats if them ain't soldiers," another Negro said.

"Cavalry," a copperskin named Lorenzo-a power among the field hands, as Frederick had already seen-added with precision.

It wasn't just that the men were on horseback. Infantry could mount horses when they needed to get from here to there in a hurry. But the soldiers' gray uniforms had yellow piping and chevrons, not the blue foot soldiers would have used. The troopers es corted two supply wagons: smaller versions of the prairie frigates settlers in Terranova used to cross the broad plains there. The copperskins who lived on those plains didn't care for that, but when a folk that had to buy or steal firearms and ammunition bumped up against one that could make such things, the end of the struggle was obvious even if it hadn't arrived yet.

Matthew watched the wagons and their escort come up the path. Absently slapping at a mosquito, he said, "Never seen the like in all my born days. I wonder what the devil they want."

Frederick had never seen the like, either, and he'd lived on the plantation much longer than the overseer. Were he still back at the big house, he would have come out onto the front porch and asked the soldiers what the devil they wanted-though he would have been more polite about it than that. As a field hand with stripes on his back, all he could do was stand there and watch.

Henry Barford came out himself. He was barefoot and wore homespun wool trousers not much better than his slaves', though his linen shirt was white. He hadn't combed his hair; as usual when he hadn't, it went every which way. He looked like a drunken stumblebum. But the unconscious arrogance with which he bore himself declared him the planter here.

"What in tarnation are you doing on my land?" he shouted to the incoming cavalrymen.

Their leader wore two small silver stars on either side of his stand collar: a first lieutenant's rank badges. He gave Barford a crisp salute. "Sorry to trouble you, sir, but we're bound for New Marseille with a cargo of rifle muskets and ammunition." He waved at the wagons behind him. "Much as I hate to say it, three of my men are down with what looks like the yellow jack."

A low murmur ran through the slaves. The morning sun was already hot, but Frederick shivered all the same. He wouldn't have wanted to take men with yellow fever into New Marseille. What would they do to an officer who let a plague like that get loose in a city? Frederick wouldn't have wanted to find out, and evidently the lieutenant didn't, either.

None of which appeased Henry Barford, not even a little bit. He jumped straight up in the air, as if a scorpion had stung him on the ankle. He let out a wordless howl of fury as if he'd been stung, too. Then he did find words: "You mangy son of a bitch! Take your stinking sick soldiers and get the hell off my property! How dare you bring the yellow jack here?"

"My apologies, sir, but I can't do that," the officer said stolidly. "The men need bed rest, and we happened to see your place here. Yellow fever doesn't kill everyone who comes down with it-not even close. And I assure you that you will be generously compensated for your time and trouble."

"How can you compensate me when I'm dead and buried-if anybody'd have the nerve to plant me?" Barford said. "Go on, get lost, or I'll grab my shotgun and blow some sense into you!"

The lieutenant nodded to his healthy troopers. In the twinkling of an eye, they all aimed eight-shooters at Henry Barford's head and midsection. "Meaning no disrespect, sir, but don't talk silly talk," the officer said. "We're here, and we're going to stay until my men recover."

"Or until you put them six feet under," Barford said. But he made no sudden moves and kept his hands in plain sight. Frederick hadn't thought anyone could make a mistake worse than his in the dining room. If Master Henry made one now, though, he'd never make another. He glumly eyed the revolvers. "Don't look like I can stop you."

"No. It doesn't," the lieutenant agreed. His voice turned brisk. "Now… You won't want me to quarter Jenkins and Merridale and Casey in the main residence, will you?"

"In the big house? I hope to spit, I won't!" Maybe Barford said spit. "What you ought to do is put 'em in tents way the devil away from anybody."

"No," the lieutenant said in a hard, flat voice. "They're good men. They deserve the best we can give them. I suppose your slave quarters will have to do."

"If my niggers and mudfaces come down sick, I'll take compensation out of your hide," Barford said.

"I understand, sir," the lieutenant said. Of course, if the slaves came down sick, he was liable to do the same thing himself. If he did, he'd be in no condition to compensate Henry Barford.

Barford was also liable to come down sick. The officer didn't say anything more about that. Neither did the planter.

"Matthew!" Barford bawled.

"Yes, Mr. Barford?" the overseer said.

"Put up the sick soldiers in one of the cabins. Make sure they've got themselves a wench to take care of 'em. We'll do the best job we can, but you know as well as I do they're in God's hands now." Barford might be talking to his overseer, but he also aimed his words at the lieutenant. If your men die, it won't be my fault, he meant.

"I'll see to it." Matthew turned to the cavalry officer. "Can your men tote 'em into the cabin? They've already been around 'em."

"I'd thought it would be slave work, but…" The lieutenant nodded grudgingly. "Yes, that does seem reasonable. Let it be as you say." He barked orders at his men. They obeyed more readily-certainly more quickly-than slaves obeyed an overseer. And they were all white men, too! Oh, one of them was swarthy and had a Spanish-sounding name, but he remained on the good side of Atlantis' great social divide.

The sick cavalrymen weren't quite so yellow as the trim on their uniforms, but they weren't far from it. The soldiers who carried them from the wagons to the slave cabins didn't look happy about their work. Frederick wouldn't have been, either. Nobody knew how the yellow jack spread. Come to that, nobody knew how any disease except the pox and the clap spread. Handling someone who already had the sickness seemed as likely a way as any, and more likely than most. The copperskinned woman Matthew chose to care for them wasn't thrilled about the honor, either.

"Somebody's got to do it," the overseer said. "Why not you, Abigail?"

Abigail had no answer for that. In her place, Frederick didn't suppose he would have himself. He would have looked everywhere he could to find one, though. He was sure of that.

Matthew faced the rest of the slaves. "Well, come on," he said. "Get your tools and head on out to the fields. Or do you want to hang around here with the sick soldiers?"

They headed out. The pace left stiff, sore Frederick struggling to keep up. It also left the overseer goggling. Had he ever seen slaves move so fast? Had anybody, since the beginning of the world? If the other choice was sticking close to people down with the yellow jack, even weeding a cotton field under the blazing subtropical sun didn't seem bad at all. Dragging back as the sun went down, Frederick wearily shook his head. Going out to weed under the subtropical sun might not have seemed so bad. Doing it all day, even at the slowest pace the overseer would let people get away with, was something else again. If it wasn't hell on earth, he didn't know what would be.

The yellow jack, maybe?

One of the troopers died two days later. A copperskin and a Negro dug a grave for him in the plot back of the cabins where they buried their own. Frederick and Helen had lain two small bodies to rest there. The lieutenant-his name was Peter Torrance-borrowed a Bible from Henry Barford and read the Twenty-third Psalm over the man's body. The Barfords and their slaves and the cavalrymen all stood around the grave together, listening to the somberly inspiring words and now and then brushing and slapping at buzzing bugs.

"Wish we could go on to New Marseille," a soldier grumbled after the service broke up.

"Well, we damned well can't," a sergeant answered; angry puffs of smoke rose from his pipe. "We've got to stay put till we're good and sure we ain't gonna make the whole damned town sick."

"Don't want to get sick myself, neither," the soldier said.

"You run off, they'll call it desertion and hang you," the sergeant said. "You ain't like the slaves here-your carcass isn't worth an atlantean while you're still alive." The inflated paper money of the war against England lived on in memory.

"I'm not going anywhere," the soldier assured him.

"God-damned right you're not." The sergeant sounded very sure of himself.

But it was the sergeant who fell sick the next day-and the copperskin who'd dug the dead trooper's grave came down with the yellow jack the day after that. The copperskin rapidly got worse. His kind sickened more readily than whites, who seemed to sicken more readily than Negroes. A copperskin with smallpox was almost sure to die, where a man of some other breed might pull through.

Henry Barford was incensed, as Frederick had known he would be. "You are a son of a bitch!" he shouted at Lieutenant Torrance.

Torrance seemed more distracted than offended. "Sorry, Mr. Barford," he managed at last.

That didn't come close to placating the planter. "Sorry? I don't think so!" Barford said. "I'm going to write to my Senator-that's what I'm going to do."

The Atlantean officer looked through him. "Mr. Barford, you may write to the Pope for all I care, and much good may it do you. My back hurts, and so does my head. If I have not got a fever, I should be very much surprised."

Henry Barford stared at him in undisguised horror. "Lord love a duck! You're coming down with it, too!" He edged away from the lieutenant.

If that offended Torrance, he hid it very well: or, more likely, he had other things to worry about. "I fear I am. I hope I am not, but I fear I am." He muttered to himself, then spoke aloud again: "I wish we could have got these rifle muskets to New Marseille. Before long, the garrison there will commence to wondering what has become of them."

Frederick heard that-the two white men were talking outside the big house after the work gang came in for the day. Frederick was healing, and was also beginning to get used to the work. He wasn't collapsing the minute he'd had supper, the way he did the night after his first day in the cotton fields. What Torrance and Barford said didn't fully register, not at the moment, but he took it in so it could spend the time it needed in ripening.

"You could send somebody to let 'em know," Barford said. "Not that far to town-even closer to the nearest place where you could send a telegram." Wires were beginning to crisscross Atlantis. The telegraph was new in the past ten years, so the process wasn't complete yet. But it seemed to pick up speed year by year, because the device was so obviously useful.

Lieutenant Torrance shook his head. "I stopped here to keep from spreading the sickness any farther."

"Oh, and a hell of a job you did, too, my boy!" Barford exclaimed.

As if on cue, his wife's voice floated down from their bedroom. "Henry! Are you out there, Henry?"

"Sure am," he answered. "What's going on?"

"I don't feel well, Henry." By the way Clotilde Barford said it, it could only be her husband's fault.

But that wasn't quite true, was it? It could also be Lieutenant Peter Torrance's fault. If he'd picked a different plantation… How much difference would it have made? Maybe not much-when yellow fever spread, it could spread like wildfire. But maybe it wouldn't have come here at all. You never could tell. And if that wasn't enough to drive you crazy, nothing ever would.

Henry Barford absently slapped at a mosquito, then wiped the palm of his hand on his trouser leg. "Don't feel good how?" he asked.

"I've got a headache. My back hurts, too. And I'm warm-I swear I'm warm," Clotilde said. She didn't give her symptoms in the same order as Lieutenant Torrance had, which didn't mean they didn't match.

Frederick realized that right away. Barford took a few seconds longer, and then delivered a double take worthy of the stage. "Oh, you son of a bitch!" he snarled at the Atlantean lieutenant. He rushed back into the big house.

Torrance just stood there. He swayed slightly-he looked as if a strong breeze, or even a breeze that wasn't so strong, would blow him away. He caught Frederick's eye. "You. Come here."

"What you need, sir?" Frederick asked as he walked over. He didn't-he couldn't-move very fast.

Chance were it didn't matter. The lieutenant looked through him, too. "I didn't mean to bring the sickness here," he said after a long, long pause.

"Who would mean to do something like that, sir?" Frederick said, which seemed safe enough.

The answer seemed to focus the lieutenant's attention on him. Frederick wasn't nearly sure he wanted it. "What's your name?" Torrance asked.

"Frederick," the Negro answered automatically. But, a heartbeat later, something made him add, "Frederick Radcliff."

Most white men would have laughed at him for his pretensions. At a different time or place, in different circumstances, Lieutenant Torrance might well have laughed, too. Now he gave Frederick his full attention. "I can see why you say so," Torrance observed. "You have something of the look of one of the First Consuls to you."

"He was my grandfather," Frederick said.

"Easy enough to claim," the officer answered. But he held up a hand before Frederick could get angry. "It could be so-I already told you you have the look."

"Victor Radcliff's grandson, a field nigger." Frederick didn't bother hiding his bitterness.

"I can't do anything about it," Lieutenant Torrance said. "I can't do anything about anything. If I am alive a week from now, I shall get down on my knees and thank almighty God. If you are alive a week from now…" He ran down like a watch that wanted winding.

"What?" Frederick asked.

The lieutenant pressed his palm against his own forehead. Frederick had always found you had a hard time telling whether you had a fever that way, because when you did your palm was also warmer than it should have been. But Torrance's grimace said he didn't like what his own flesh told him. "I am from Croydon," he said, out of the blue-or so it seemed to Frederick.

"Yes?" the Negro said, wondering if Peter Torrance's wits were starting to wander.

"No slaves in Croydon," the lieutenant said, so he had been going somewhere after all. "We don't put up with that kind of thing up there. We haven't, not for a man's lifetime and longer. Doesn't always stop our traders from making money off of what slaves do, but we don't keep 'em ourselves. Some folks think that makes us better. But I'll tell you something, Frederick Radcliff."

"What's that?"

"If folks don't want you to be free, you can still take care of the job. Look what your grandfather did against England."

He made it sound easy. Maybe he thought it would be. Or maybe his wits were wandering but he didn't realize it yet. Running off was deadly dangerous and much too likely to fail. Rising up… Frederick's mind shied like a frightened horse at the mere idea. Even if slaves did rise up from time to time, they had never yet failed to regret it. And the reprisals vengeful whites took were designed to make the survivors think three times before trying that kind of thing again.

Lieutenant Torrance shrugged. "If you are your grandfather's grandson, you'll find some way to be worthy of his name. And if you aren't…" He let that hang, too. After touching one finger to the brim of his black plug hat, he walked back to the tent he'd run up. He wasn't steady on his legs, and it wasn't because he'd had too much to drink.

"What did the white man want?" Helen asked when Frederick came back to her.

"Don't quite know," he answered. "Tell you somethin', though-don't reckon I ever talked with anybody like him before."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Don't quite know," Frederick repeated. He wished he could spend more time ciphering it out. An enormous yawn soon put paid to that notion. He wasn't so exhausted as he had been that first dreadful night, and his stripes didn't pain him so much. But they did still hurt, and he was still weary.

He and Helen headed back to their cabin. He woke up in the night needing to use the chamber pot. As he lay back down, several itchy new mosquito bites reminded him again that he hadn't screened the window. They kept him awake a little while. That was one more mark of progress; the first night, he hadn't even noticed he was getting eaten alive.

No one blew the horn the next morning, not till the sun stood higher in the sky than it should have. And when the horn did sound… It always reminded Frederick more of an animal's bellow than of a product of human ingenuity, but this morning it reminded him of an animal in pain.

He soon found out why: Matthew was blowing the horn, and he had no more idea how to do it than Frederick knew how to paint portraits. "What happened to Jonas?" Frederick asked. Several other slaves said the same thing as they came out of their cabins.

"Down sick," Matthew answered economically. He looked toward the newly sprouted tents. "Those miserable, stupid soldiers…" Then he sighed, shifted the chaw in his cheek, and spat a brown stream of pipeweed juice. "They're paying for it. But so are we. Mistress Clotilde…"

There was no sign of Master Henry, either. Frederick supposed he was tending to his wife. But he might have come down with the yellow jack himself. And Lieutenant Torrance didn't come out of his tent. Only a couple of soldiers did emerge. They cared for the horses with the air of the stunned who'd lived through an annihilating battle.

Worse, there was no guarantee yet that they had lived through things, and they were bound to know it.

They went through the day without anyone falling over in the fields. To Frederick, that seemed something worth celebrating. And he might have celebrated if he weren't so stiff and sore and tired, and if he thought the overseer would let him get away with it.

Later, he realized Matthew might have. The white man also seemed delighted to have got through a day's work with no new catastrophes. "Wonder what things'll be like when we get back to the big house," he muttered as the gang shouldered tools and started back for supper.

Things were… not so good. Soldiers and house slaves had dug a grave for another of the troopers who'd been sick when the cavalry detachment arrived at the plantation. Had Lieutenant Torrance read the Bible over this dead man, too? Frederick had his doubts. The lieutenant was likely to be too sick to get off his cot or blanket or whatever he was lying on.

Henry Barford came out to watch the slaves return. He hadn't combed his hair or shaved. Frederick thought he had done some drinking, or more than some. "Clotilde's mighty poorly," he announced from the front porch. "Mighty poorly."

Frederick didn't know whether to be sorry or not. He'd spent a lot of years with the Barfords. Most of the time, he'd got along well enough with the mistress of the plantation. But she was the one who'd had him whipped and degraded. She was the one who'd wanted to give him more lashes than he'd got. Why should he sympathize with her now?

Because anything that can happen can happen to you, he answered himself. Because you could be moaning in a sickbed just like her a day from now. Or, God forbid, so could Helen.

He ate more supper than usual-not better, but more. Quantity had a quality of its own. No one had thought to tell the cooks to make any less than they would have without sickness tearing through the plantation. They hadn't made any changes on their own. If you waited for slaves to show initiative, you'd spend a long time waiting. So the same amount of food was shared among fewer people. Frederick's belly appreciated the difference.

Another cavalry trooper came down sick not long after supper. The men still on their feet had all kinds of worries. "We got enough men to post a guard on the wagons?" one of them asked.

"Hell with the wagons. Hell with everything in 'em," another soldier replied. "Any of us still gonna be on our feet by the time this God-damned plague gets done with us?"

The first soldier didn't say anything to that. Frederick wouldn't have, either. It was much too good a question.

He glanced over toward the wagons. Sure enough, there they sat-they wouldn't go on to New Marseille any time soon. But so what? The United States of Atlantis were at peace with the world. For the most part, they'd stayed at peace since the war that set them free. No invader was likely to descend on them now. What would the rifle muskets do but gather dust in some armory?

Frederick had been a boy when Atlantis got into a brief second scrape with England. Redcoats had suppressed the Terranovan risings that accompanied Atlantis' revolt against the mother country. The Terranovan settlements rebelled again a generation later when England was distracted by the great war she fought against France. Atlantis covertly aided the Terranovans-but not covertly enough. And so England declared war on her former possession.

Atlantean frigates won their share of glory in what people these days called the War of 1809. But England had the greatest navy the world had ever known, a navy that spanned the seven seas. Despite her endless troubles with France, English ships bombarded Freetown and Pomphret Landing, and English marines burnt the latter town to the ground and slaughtered everyone who didn't run away fast enough. Another force landed south of Avalon, but word of an armistice reached them just as they were about to engage the garrison there. Atlanteans these days sang songs about the Battle That Never Was.

No, New Marseille had no urgent need of those rifle muskets. Frederick had trouble seeing why the soldiers even bothered mounting guard over them.

Were he still a house slave, he probably would have gone on having trouble seeing why. As a field hand-as a field hand with the marks of the overseer's lash still no better than half healed on his back-he suddenly understood. They didn't want the weapons to fall into slaves' hands.

And he understood why, too. Slaves with fancy new rifle muskets could rise against the whites who put stripes on their backs, who lay down with their women whenever they pleased, and who could sell them like so many sacks of beans. No slave rising yet had succeeded. But the chance was always there.

"You awake?" he whispered to Helen when they lay down in the muggy little cabin that night.

"Not me," she answered. "I done went to sleep an hour ago."

Frederick laughed softly. "I been thinkin'," he said.

"You should've gone to sleep an hour ago, too," Helen said, and he couldn't very well tell her she didn't have a point. But she relented enough to ask, "What was you wastin' your time thinkin' about?"

His voice dropped lower still. "Them guns," he said. If those two words reached Henry Barford's ears, it wasn't a lashing matter any more. Frederick would die, quickly if he was lucky but more likely with as much pain and cruelty as his master could mete out. Even talking about uprisings was a capital crime.

Helen's sharp intake of breath said she understood as much. "You out of your mind?" she said. "You pick one of them up, you can't never put it down no more."

"I know," Frederick said. "But do you reckon Victor Radcliff wanted his grandson to be a field nigger?"

"I reckon Victor Radcliff wanted his grandson to be a live nigger," Helen said. "Lord Jesus, Frederick, first one of those other field hands you talk to, he's liable to sell you down the river for whatever Master Henry give him. Thirty pieces of silver, I reckon-that's the goin' rate."

"If we're gonna rise up, we'll never find a better time to do it," Frederick said.

"Says who?" Helen retorted. "Way the yellow jack's goin' around, half your army may be dead week after next."

"If it gets us like that, it'll get the white folks we're fighting the same way," Frederick said, which was true-or he hoped it was, anyhow. He went on, "That's not what I was talkin' about, anyways."

"Well, what was you talkin' about, then?" Helen asked pointedly.

"You know that lieutenant, the one who's down sick? He's a Croydon man, from way up north. They don't have slaves up there. He just about told me I had to free myself if I ever wanted to be free," Frederick said.

"Fever must've scrambled his brains," Helen said. "I wish to heaven you would've just dozed off like you should have."

"Most folks from Croydon hate slavery," Frederick went on as if she hadn't spoken. "I hear tell there's even niggers and mudfaces who can vote in the state of Croydon. And Consul Newton, he's from Croydon, too. Everybody knows he can't stand the notion of one man buying and selling another one."

If he'd hoped to impress his wife-and he had-he failed. "Well, la-de-da!" Helen said. "And Consul Stafford, he's from Cosquer, down here on this side of the slave line. He's a planter his own self. He's got a bigger place than this here one, and he works more slaves'n Master Henry ever dreamt of owning. Gotta have both them fellas on the same side to do us any good." Negroes and copperskins in bondage could no more vote than they could fly, which didn't keep them from paying attention to Atlantean politics.

Frederick grinned, there in the dark. "Most of the time, sure," he said. "The Senate passes a law that says all the slaves are free, Consul Stafford can veto it, and nobody can say boo. But suppose we rise up now. Consul Stafford says, 'The United States of Atlantis got to send soldiers over there and put those slaves down.' "

"An' the soldiers come, an' they start killin' niggers an' mudfaces. It's happened before," Helen agreed.

"It has," Frederick agreed. "But I bet it won't happen this time, on account of all Consul Newton's got to do is, he's got to say, 'I veto it,' and nobody goes anywhere."

"He do that?" Helen didn't sound as if she believed it. And she knew why she didn't: "Even white folks who don't like slavery, that don't mean they do like niggers an' mudfaces. The whites down here start screamin' loud enough…"

She had a point. Frederick would have been much happier if she didn't, but she did. He paused a while in thought, listening to mosquitoes buzz and to more distant crickets trill and frogs squeak and croak. At last, he answered, "What we got to do is, we got to fight clean, like it's a war, not an uprising. Can't go killing women and children for the fun of it, the way they do in uprisings." Can't go raping white women for the fun of it, either, he thought. That happened in every slave revolt. What vengeance was more basic?

"Reckon it'd make any difference?" Helen still sounded dubious.

"Bound to make some," Frederick said.

"Reckon slaves with guns in their hands'll want to let them folks go?" She knew which questions to ask, all right.

"They will if their commanders make 'em," Frederick answered. And then, just before sleep took him at last, he added, "If I make 'em." He was ready. Whether anyone else was… he'd find out.