Liberating Atlantis

VIII

Enterprising restaurateurs in New Hastings brought fat frogs and big flapjack turtles up from the southern part of Atlantis and served them in stews and soups to men from that part of the country: men who'd grown up on such fare. Leland Newton hadn't. Oh, Croydon had its share of frogs and pond turtles, too. But they hardly ever got bigger than the palm of a man's hand. There wasn't enough meat in them to bother with, especially since they spent the cold seasons sleeping in the mud at the bottom of streams and puddles.

He'd had flapjack-turtle stew a few times since coming to New Hastings, when he was eating with southern men. It was fine… if you'd grown up eating it. These days, as pro- and antislavery forces found themselves ever more often at loggerheads (a different kind of turtle altogether), he felt less inclined to make such gestures. When he ate at Kingsley's Chop House, he ate mutton chops. Whoever wanted to gorge on turtles and frogs was welcome to his share.

A mutton chop with mint jelly, some fried potatoes, a glass of beer or burgundy or perhaps a tawny port… That was a civilized way to make a midday meal. If you had to eat something that swam, salmon and cod were tasty enough.

Which didn't mean the Consul ignored gentlemen who had other cravings. He was enjoying Master Kingsley's artistry with the mint jelly when a party of southern men took the table next to his. He sat more turned away from them than not, or they might have recognized him. They were talking a blue streak when they got there, and they went right on doing it.

His ear identified them as southerners even before they ordered. Like Jeremiah Stafford, they kept the faintest trace of a French accent-the ghost of a French accent, really. He wouldn't have been surprised if they were all of English stock. Even so, the tones of the first settlers lingered. Irishmen who knew not a word of Erse spoke English with a brogue.

"Can you believe the nerve of those niggers and mudfaces?" one of them said. Before his friends could answer, a waiter came up to see what they wanted. Their orders also showed they'd grown up on the far side of the Stour. After the waiter went away, the fellow who'd spoken before resumed: "A Free Republic of Atlantis for their own kind? Sweet Jesus, don't make me laugh!"

"Likely tell!" one of his friends scoffed. "It's all talk to make the northern states keep putting the screws to us. But we know how things really work, we do." He sounded more silly than worldly wise.

Consul Newton thought so, anyhow. The man's friends didn't. "I should hope we know. That damned nigger will keep telling them what to do, and they'll keep doing it."

"That devil!" The first man had an uncommonly raspy voice. "The nerve, to call himself Victor Radcliff's grandson!"

"Yes. The nerve!" his comrades echoed. Did their voices sound a little hollow? Newton thought so. He knew his would have in their place. Where did all the griffes and mulattos and quadroons and their copperskinned equivalents come from if white men didn't lie down with colored women? No one south of the Stour would let colored men lie down with white women: that was certain sure.

And hadn't Victor Radcliff been a man like other men? No matter what the schoolbooks said, Consul Newton figured the man who gave Atlantis liberty had sometimes needed to squat behind a bush and clean himself with a handful of leaves. He'd probably needed to get his ashes hauled now and again, too. He might well have left a byblow behind.

The waiter came back with beer for the men at the next table. "Your stew will be along soon," he assured them.

"Not slow as a turtle, eh?" one of them said. They all thought that was funny, which made Newton wonder how much they'd drunk before they got to Master Kingsley's establishment.

"Not even," the waiter answered, and went away.

One of the men said, "I don't care if that nigger says Alexan der the Great is his grandfather. Ain't gonna do him any good any which way."

"Well, it wouldn't," another one answered. "We could squash him like a katydid if the government didn't act like a honker with its head stuffed up its-"

"It doesn't matter, not in the long run," the raspy-voiced man broke in.

"Devil it doesn't!" said the fellow he'd interrupted. "Tell that to all the decent white folks who've had to run for their lives. Tell it to the ones who didn't get away, too. Some of those poor ladies… Jesus God!"

"Doesn't matter," Raspy Voice repeated. "Doesn't matter what the damnfool Consul from damnfool Croydon says, either, not a cent's worth."

The aforesaid damnfool Consul pricked up his ears. Leland Newton was of the opinion that his opinion mattered. If these fellows weren't, he wanted to know why.

And one of them obligingly spelled it out for him: "Army's going to get New Marseille what it needs to whip the slaves no matter what. If they don't have to talk about it, who's going to know the difference?"

Isn't that interesting? Newton thought. He felt like thumping himself in the head. The only reason he didn't was that it might have made the mouthy men at the next table notice him. But he knew he should have realized the southerners might try such a ploy. Since he was an uncommonly upright man himself, the idea of dealing from the bottom of the deck hadn't sprung into his mind right away. But he could see the possibility once someone else pointed it out to him.

The waiter brought the southern men their flapjack-turtle stew. The heavy smell of the spices-and of the turtle meat-reminded the Consul of his efforts to accommodate other southerners by eating as they ate. It hadn't worked; he knew that. He had tried, though. He didn't want to accommodate them any more. He wanted to hamper their every move.

And they wanted to hamper him, too. If they couldn't get their way through the legal channels the Atlantean government afforded them, they'd do it any way they could. Yes, he should have seen that that might-would-happen.

A barrister named Ezra Pilkington came up to his table. Pilkington was a Croydon man, too; they'd known each other since they went to Radcliffe College together. Tipping his hat, the lawyer said, "Eating by yourself, your Excellency? Mind if I join you?"

He ignored Newton's frantic but subdued shushing motions. They must have been too subdued to do any good. Resignedly, Newton glanced over to the next table. All the men sitting there were staring at him in dismay altogether unfeigned. How much had he heard? Too much; that was plain. Even more resignedly, the Consul said, "Not at all, Ezra. Sit right down."

"Don't mind if I do." Pilkington didn't notice anything amiss in Leland Newton's voice, either. Or, if he did, he had the skill to dissemble. Waving to draw the waiter's attention, he said, "What are the United States of Atlantis going to do about that damned slave insurrection?"

Now the men at the other table listened attentively to Consul Newton. He said as little as he could. Some of the things he was going to do, he couldn't do officially. But, if he was going to start bending the rules, he didn't aim to let anyone else know about it beforehand.

Meeting by night in a dive in one of New Hastings' dingier quarters, Jeremiah Stafford felt like a conspirator. And with reason: he was. He sat in a dark corner nursing a shot of popskull and waiting impatiently for his fellow plotter to show up. A woman as good as you paid her to be sidled up to him. She must have seen a lot in her time, and little of it good, but the look he gave her sent her reeling away.

"You could just say no!" she shrilled.

"No," he said. She glared, but she left him alone after that.

When Major Duncan appeared at last, Stafford had all he could do to keep from laughing. The Atlantean officer had swathed himself in a great black cape that covered everything from the eyes down. A broad-brimmed black hat covered everything from the eyes up. He looked like a woodcut in a lurid novel translated from the French.

A man larger than he was planted himself in his path. "What are you supposed to be?" the fellow demanded.

Duncan's voice came from behind the black cape as if from beyond the grave: "Get the hell out of my way, shitheel, or you'll find out."

The man let out a roar of rage and swung on him. A moment later, the fellow was on the floor. It happened so fast, Stafford couldn't see what the major did. Whatever it was, Duncan had proved himself a man of parts. For good measure, he kicked the bigger man behind the right ear to make sure he didn't get up for a while.

Then he looked around. "Anyone else?" he inquired.

Stafford wondered when the dive had last been so quiet. Into that silence, the ring of the silver tenth Sam Duncan tossed onto the bar seemed double sweet. Duncan took his barrel-tree rum and strolled back to the table where Stafford was sitting. Slowly, slowly, the tavern came back to life. People stepped over or around the man the major had decked. After several minutes, the fellow stirred and groaned, clutching the back of his head. He stayed flat. The dazed look in his eye said he didn't remember what had happened to him: only that he hadn't enjoyed it.

"That was nicely done," Stafford remarked.

"Thanks," Major Duncan said.

"All the same," the Consul continued, "why didn't you paint yourself blue and come in juggling flaming torches?"

"I didn't want anybody to know what I looked like." Duncan sounded aggrieved.

"But the idea is to make sure no one wonders about you," Stafford said. "They're not the same."

The Major looked almost comically astonished. He'd lowered the cloak to reveal his face-and to be able to drink. After pouring down his rum, the officer gave his attention back to Stafford. "Be damned," he said. "You're right. Fry me for an oil thrush if you're not. Have to remember that." He waved for a refill.

"Do," Stafford urged. "Cloak and dagger doesn't mean literally."

"I haven't got a dagger, by God," Duncan said. "I've got an eight-shooter in my belt, and a double-barreled derringer with a charge of shot in the bottom barrel, too. If that bastard gave me even a little trouble, I would have ventilated his spleen for him."

"You don't need to worry about that," Stafford said. The tavern tough still lay where he'd gone down. He'd barely wiggled; he wouldn't be getting up any time soon. Someone bent over him, perhaps to minister to him, perhaps to pick his pocket.

The barmaid brought the major a new shot of rum. She seemed to have to remind herself to linger long enough to get paid. Then she disappeared again.

Consul Stafford still had whiskey in his glass. He raised it. "Your health," he said, and they both drank. Then he asked, "What's gone wrong? Something must have, or you wouldn't have come to meet me" dressed like a damned fool. But the last handful of words Stafford kept to himself.

"Newton knows what we're up to." Duncan delivered the bad news as straightforwardly as he would have reported a reverse on the battlefield.

But Leland Newton, damn his black heart, wouldn't let the Atlantean army take the field against the colored insurrectionists. If he was going to try to snuff out covert aid to the southern states as well… "How did he find out?" Stafford asked.

"My best guess is, somebody blabbed." Duncan spoke in tones of resigned anger. "I have a notion who, too: some clerks from the Ministry of War. They all looked like they wanted to hide when people came around asking questions."

"Did they give straight answers?" Stafford asked. "That could be inconvenient." He was proud of himself. Duncan would have to go some to outdo his understatement.

Instead of attempting it, the major drained his glass, then held it up and waved for another refill. Stafford finished the whiskey, too. He also waved for a fresh one. Maybe the first would have numbed his tongue enough to keep him from tasting the second so much. And his brain needed more numbing than it had got yet.

Only after Major Duncan got halfway down his third glass of rum did he say, "I can't tell you for certain, Consul. The snoops made sure they questioned each man alone. In their boots, I would have done the same thing. Doesn't make life any easier for us, though."

"No. It doesn't," Stafford said. He'd never denied Newton's competence-he'd only regretted the other Consul's adherence to the vile cause of equality for niggers and mudfaces. "Have you got any notion how much they know?"

"More than they ought to. That's all I can tell you for sure," Duncan answered. "Knowing anything at all is too damned much."

"So it is. Well, I did need to know that myself, and I thank you for bringing me word," Jeremiah Stafford said. "We should leave separately." It might help less than Stafford wished it would. Anyone who saw the major wouldn't forget him in a hurry, and might also remember his companion too well.

"I was last in. I should be first out," Sam Duncan said. Why that followed eluded Stafford, but he didn't argue. Life was too short. And so Duncan gulped what was left of the rum, stood up, and draped himself in his cape once more. He couldn't have been less conspicuous had he caught fire.

The man he'd decked was just starting to sit up when he swept by. Stafford wondered whether Duncan would flatten him again-for the sport of it, you might say. But the officer just walked into the night.

"Who was that crazy son of a bitch?" someone asked.

"Beats me," someone else answered. "He may look dumber'n a honker, but he's nobody you'd want to mess around with-that's for damned sure. Ain't it, Scrap Iron?"

Scrap Iron proved to be Major Duncan's victim. He rubbed the side of his head again, then winced and thought better of it. "He better hope I never see him again," he said, but his voice lacked conviction.

And well it might. The fellow who'd addressed him laughed and said, "You better hope you never see him again." Thus do the heroes fall. Scrap Iron got to his feet. He needed three tries, but he made it. When he set money on the bar, the man behind it poured him a restorative.

Consul Stafford slid out of the tavern. He had a pistol on his belt, too. In this part of town, you might need one. Better to have and not need than to need and not have. Gas lamps lit the streets and sidewalks in richer quarters of New Hastings. Hereabouts, the only warning a passerby gave was the glowing coal on the end of his cigar. And if he didn't smoke a cigar, he gave no warning at all-which was just what footpads had in mind.

Stafford didn't quite sigh with relief when he reached a lighted street. A less disciplined man surely would have, though. He made his way back to his residence. A couple of sentries stood outside the door. One puffed on a stogie-all of it visible under a hissing gas lamp-while the other sent up smoke signals from a pipe.

The cigar smoker's rifle musket screaked on its sling as he shifted weight. How many longarms just like that did the insurrectionists have? One would have been too many, and they had far more than one.

"Out late tonight, sir," the sentry said.

"Some business I needed to attend to," Stafford answered.

"Yes, sir," the sentry said. But his eyes slid toward his comrade's. Did they think his business had to do with someone perfumed and softly curved? As a matter of fact, Stafford did not care one broad copper cent for what they thought. His wife's opinion was another matter. Was Annabelle sitting up in there, waiting for him to come back? A man might take a mistress, but flaunting one was bad form.

Here, though, Stafford had done no such thing. And all he smelled of were whiskey and pipeweed-no perfume. Annabelle ought to notice that-if she was in a mood to notice anything.

She was waiting for him, darning socks by the light of a lantern. She was small and dark and sad-looking, as any mother who'd buried three babies would have been. Jeremiah Stafford feared he might be the last of his line. Annabelle put down the sock she was working on (she was shortsighted, which helped her with the needle if not with the wider world) and blinked up at him. Like the sentry, she said, "You were out late."

"Business," he said, as he had before. But he would explain to his wife, where he wouldn't for a no-account soldier: "Sam Duncan."

"Ah. Your… friend." She knew the name if not the man. Her voice didn't say whether she believed him.

He described Duncan's disguise and the way it concealed and proclaimed at the same time. He also described how the major had rusted Scrap Iron. Annabelle smiled faintly. "Quite a man," she said.

"Yes-almost as much as he thinks he his. If only he had more common sense to go with his courage and strength. That costume! Good Lord!" Stafford rolled his eyes.

"And why did you have to meet him in some low dive? Why wouldn't a walk around the Senate House do as well?" Annabelle asked.

"Because if anyone connected to northern Senators or to my esteemed fellow Consul"-Stafford's tone turned the praise into a filthy lie-"saw us walking together, he would understand why we were talking together, whereupon trouble would immediately follow. You know we are quietly doing what we can to aid the states against the servile insurrection?"

"Well, of course." His wife had been born in the state of Cosquer, too, down close to the border with Gernika. She came from a slaveholding family, as he did. In fact, the threat of uprisings always seemed worse in that part of the country. Gernika had still been Spanish Atlantis when she was a girl, and Spanish Atlantis always sizzled and sometimes exploded. The dons squeezed all they could from their copperskins and blacks, and squeezed out hatred along with everything else.

"You see," Stafford said. "Duncan's news was that Consul Newton has found out about our quiet efforts. Having learned of them, he is doubtless doing everything in his power to thwart them."

"How wicked of him! No wonder you went out, then, Jeremiah," Annabelle said, and something behind Stafford's breastbone unknotted. Whatever she had thought, she believed him now. She went on, "What can you do to stop him from disrupting things?"

That question cut to the quick. "I don't know yet," Consul Stafford admitted. "But knowing we have a problem is bound to give us our best chance of keeping it from getting worse."

Before his wife could answer, a clock that had been quietly ticking on a side table chimed the hour: two in the morning. Annabelle yawned. "Come to bed," she said. "Whatever your best chance may be, you can't do anything about it till the sun comes up."

Stafford feared the nighttime might prove better. Some of the deeds that wanted doing would be dark. She was right about tonight, though-and her yawn was contagious. "Sleep," he said longingly.

Things looked less bleary in the morning, if not necessarily better. Stafford primed his pump with several cups of strong, sugared coffee. Men from north of the Stour were more likely to drink tea. Leland Newton did, as Stafford had seen. The Consul from Cosquer thought he got the edge on his colleague in the morning.

Whether he could keep it might be another story. Consul Newton was up and doing ahead of him. Instead of ignoring him, as Newton often did, the other Consul made a point of buttonholing him. "I have a question for you, sir: one concerning the safety of the nation," Newton said.

"I have had a good many questions of that sort for you lately, sir," Stafford answered. "You seem less than less than willing to answer them, however. But let it be as you wish for now-how can I say no?"

"If you've ever had any trouble with the word, you hide it marvelously well." Newton shook his head. "I will steer clear of gibes, as I do hope for a serious answer from you. My question is this: if so many capable officers and men leave the Atlantean army, how shall we defend ourselves against some foreign foe?"

"Does foreign war loom on the horizon? If so, against whom?" Stafford asked, adding, "I must confess, the portents have escaped my notice."

"You are being deliberately difficult." Newton sounded severe.

"You are being deliberately hypothetical," Stafford retorted.

"Am I? It could be, but I think not," Newton said. "The army depends on professional soldiers of large experience. If a number of them suddenly leave and must be replaced with less seasoned men, how can it fail to suffer a loss of efficiency-to say nothing of effectiveness?"

"You will not allow the army to be used to reestablish order in the southern states," Stafford said. "This being so, how can it surprise you that soldiers would sooner do what they see as their duty even without army auspices than sit idly by with the blessings of the Ministry of War?"

"Their conception of duty is defective," Newton said.

"I do not for a moment agree with you. But even supposing you are right, so what?" Stafford said.

Leland Newton frowned-scowled, in fact. "I did beg you for the courtesy of a serious response."

"Serious? Sir, I am serious to the point of solemnity," Stafford said. "You must bear something in mind: that your opponents are as much in earnest as you yourself. Their sense of duty may seem defective to you, but it does not seem so to them. They hold to it with as much devotion as you cling to the deluded idea of nigger equality. I know you believe in that, but I am damned if I know how."

He wondered whether Newton would laugh in his face. The other Consul had a firm faith in his own beliefs, and faith every bit as firm that his foes' beliefs were only delusions. After hearing Stafford out, he looked almost comically surprised. "Well, well!" he said, and then, "Upon my soul!"

"Meaning what exactly?" Stafford's voice was dry.

"You really mean what you say," the other Consul blurted.

"I should hope so. I am in the habit of it. Anyone looking at my career would be hard-pressed to doubt it. If you do, I hope I may take the liberty of asking why," Stafford said.

He was surprised in turn when his colleague actually blushed. "I always assumed you were in the habit of saying what your constituents wanted to hear, as most politicians are," Newton said. "That any man of sense could believe some of the things you have said…"

"I am going to say something now that you had best believe: I find your views every bit as repugnant as you find mine. Note, however, that I do not do you the discourtesy of thinking you hypocritical," Stafford said. "I think you are every bit as misguided as you declare yourself to be."

"Thank you… I suppose," Newton said. "Since you then prefer to be judged a knave rather than a fool-"

"No," Stafford broke in sharply. "Someone who thinks you are wrong is not a knave on account of that. He is only someone who thinks you are wrong. Recognizing the difference-not necessarily liking it, but recognizing it-is important."

"Will you tell me you do not think me a knave?" Newton demanded.

Jeremiah Stafford hesitated before answering, which he seldom did. "Personally? No. You have the courage of your convictions," he said at last. "In what you are doing to my section of Atlantis, the effect, intentional or not, is knavish."

"This is my view of your effect on Atlantis as a whole," Consul Newton said.

"Why not say, of slavery's effect? That is what you mean, eh?"

"No. Slavery is altogether knavish, while you are not. Yet you support the infamy nonetheless. Can you not see that this makes you worse, not better?"

Stafford started to tell him he did not find slavery infamous. To Stafford, true infamy was the idea that Negroes and copperskins could presume to be equals. But Consul Newton didn't wait for explanation. Like a banderillero in a bullfight down in Gernika (something Consul Stafford did find infamous, but also something he lacked the power to root out), Leland Newton planted a barb and walked away before his victim could gore him on account of it.

Senator Hiram Radcliffe came from the state of Penzance, north of Croydon. As the English Penzance, its namesake, lay close by Land's End, so the Atlantean town that gave the state its name wasn't far from North Cape, where ocean finally won the battle against land. Penzance held hardly any copperskins or Negroes. Penzance didn't hold all that many whites, and the ones it did hold were of an uncommonly independent streak. To say they didn't approve of chattel slavery would have been putting it mildly.

And so Consul Newton thought he would be glad to see Senator Radcliffe. He had no idea from which branch of the founding clan the Senator sprang; only a genealogist could keep them all straight. That didn't matter, anyway.

Whichever branch Hiram Radcliffe sprang from, he looked nothing like the most famous modern member. Where Victor Radcliff had been tall and lean, his distant cousin had a short, well-upholstered frame and some of the most ornate whiskers the Consul had ever seen: his muttonchops grew into his mustache, but he shaved his chin-or rather, chins.

"Consul, what do you propose to do about the slave rising?" Senator Radcliffe asked, at the same time sending up clouds of pungent smoke from his pipe.

"Why, just what I have been doing," Newton answered. "I propose to keep the Atlantean government from pulling the southern states' chestnuts out of the fire for them." The image had traveled across the sea from England. The only chestnuts growing in Atlantis were a few ornamentals, likewise imported. The land had none native to it, nor any other broad-leafed trees.

More smoke came up from Radcliffe's pipe. "That's what I thought," he said, and then, amplifying, "That's what I was afraid of."

"Afraid of?" Leland Newton didn't dig a finger into his ear to try to make it work better, but he caught himself barely in time to stop the motion. "Why do you say that?"

"On account of it's true," Radcliffe answered. "Yes, the slaves have their grievances. Lord knows I understand that. But it's still a damned uprising, Consul. They're burning and ravishing and killing. New Marseille doesn't seem able to put 'em down, and brush-fires are breaking out in some of the other southern states."

"That is the point of the business, is it not?" Newton said. "The rebels are being as moderate as their circumstances permit. Even accounts from their foes-the only accounts we have, remember-admit as much. They seem to aim to set up a colored republic of their own."

"And what will they do with the white folks caught inside it?" Radcliffe asked. "Treat them the way they've been treated themselves, for all these years? That's how it looks right now."

"What if it is?" Consul Newton returned. "Can you deny the justice in such a turn of fate?"

"You can't make your own cause just by murdering or tormenting folks on the other side."

"Even when they've been doing the same to you since time out of mind?"

"Even then," Hiram Radcliffe said stubbornly. "One reason I want a national army down there is to get between the rebels and the militias trying to do unto them. If the uprising stops, maybe we can get around to talking sensibly about what made it start in the first place."

"Good luck! Meaning no disrespect, sir, but you will need it," Newton said. "Expecting a southern white to talk sensibly about slavery is like expecting the sun to rise in the west. You may if you so desire, but you will be doomed to disappointment."

"D'you suppose the copperskins and Negroes are any more likely to?" Radcliffe said. "Seems to me they're just the other side of the same coin."

"Would you not say they have two or three hundred years' worth of pent-up spleen to vent?" Newton asked.

"I would. I would indeed. But if they keep venting it, they will make the white southerners decide the only way to stop them is to kill them all. And if they set about it, how do you propose to stop 'em?"

"They would do no such monstrous thing!" Newton exclaimed. But then he remembered his conversation with Consul Stafford. How monstrous would disposing of Negroes and copperskins seem to a man like that? Monstrous enough to keep him from trying it? Newton wished he could think so.

His face must have shown what was going through his mind, because Senator Radcliffe said, "Now you see what I'm driving at."

"Well, maybe I do," Newton said. "But keeping an army like that on anything close to an even keel won't be easy. You know the law as well as I do: one Consul commands one day, the other the next. Against a foreign foe, this is no great disadvantage, since both men would naturally work toward the same end. But where one aims to push while the other wants to pull…"

"Consul, if a Croydon man can't slicker some poor slob from Cosquer, he isn't worth the paper he's printed on," Hiram Radcliffe declared.

"Your confidence flatters me," Newton said dryly.

"It had better, your Excellency, on account of that's what I had in mind," the Senator from Penzance replied, not a bit abashed. "But you need to think about this whole business some more, and I'm not the only one who figures you do."

"I… see. And how large is your cabal?" Leland Newton's tone remained dry, which didn't mean he didn't mean the question. What kind of plotting had been going on behind his back?

"Large enough, by God," Radcliffe said, which conveyed strength without informing: no doubt exactly the effect he had in mind. He coughed a couple of times. "Large enough so that, if we have to vote with the southerners to get an army sent down there, the size of the majority on the resolution will make your eyes pop."

"It can be as big as a honker, for all I care," Consul Newton answered, doing his best not to show how much the warning-the threat?-shook him. Hiram Radcliffe was, or had been, on his side. Still trying to seem unconcerned, he went on, "The resolution can be unanimous, for all I care. If I disagree with it, it will not pass."

"You know what the history books say about Consuls who forbid measures just for the sake of forbidding," Radcliffe warned.

Newton did know. There had been a couple of Consuls like that in the early days of the United States of Atlantis. The horrible bad example they offered dissuaded later Atlantean leaders from imitating them. All the same, Newton said, "Let history judge me. I will do what I think is right."

"What's wrong with being able to ride down a road without worrying about whether you'll get robbed or murdered before you get where you're going?" Radcliffe asked.

"If since time out of mind you have been robbing and murdering the people who have finally risen in arms against you, maybe you deserve to worry," Newton said.

"Maybe." By the way Hiram Radcliffe said the word, he didn't believe it for a minute. He took the pipe out of his mouth to lick his lips. "I hate to say it, Consul, but you'd better worry that people don't finally rise in arms against you."

Newton had been in politics for many years. He didn't miss much. And he didn't miss the key phrase here. "In arms?" he echoed quietly.

Senator Radcliffe looked unhappy-he looked most unhappy-but he nodded. "In arms," he repeated.

"Well." Leland Newton made a steeple of his fingertips. "I never looked to be threatened with assassination-never so politely, anyhow." In the hurly-burly of the Senate chamber, anything could happen. But this wasn't like that. This spoke of dangers in a back alley in the middle of the night, or maybe of poisonous mushrooms garnishing a plate of boiled pork.

"I am not threatening you, Consul. I am trying to warn you," the Senator from Penzance said. "If you keep on with it, more and more people will want to put you out of the way. Surely you can see that?" He sounded as if he was pleading.

"I might have expected something like this from Senator Bainbridge or some other froth-at-the-mouth southerner," Newton said bitterly. "But… Et tu, Hiram?"

"Et ego," Radcliffe answered, proving he remembered at least some of the Latin he'd had drilled into him as a schoolboy. "Sometimes you need to have your friends tell you, because you don't take your foes seriously enough. We've got to do something down there, Leland. Doing nothing isn't enough any more."

"So you say."

Hiram Radcliffe nodded. "So I say." He heaved his bulk up from the chair in front of Newton's desk. "And now I won't take up any more of your time."

"Does Consul Stafford know you came here?" Newton asked.

"Not yet," Radcliffe said. "I hope I don't have to tell him. And if you publish abroad what's personal, private business I will damn you as a liar from here to Avalon."

"I assumed that," Newton said. Photographers had started capturing light. If only there were some way to capture sound as well!

"Figured you did, but even so… Good day to you, your Excellency." Radcliffe lumbered out of the office. Newton fought down the impulse to speed him on his way with a good kick in the breeches.