"By 'everyone,' no doubt, the honorable gentleman means the entire population of Gernika except for whites, copperskins, and Negroes," Newton observed dryly.

"Yes. I mean, no!" Too late, the Conscript Father realized he'd stuck his foot in it. Not only did Consul Newton mock him from the dais, but jeers rose on the floor both from northern Senators and also from men who would normally have supported him. With a baleful stare, the Senator from Nouveau Redon shook his fist at Newton. "You tricked me!"

"It wasn't hard," Newton answered. "That may perhaps-only perhaps, note-indicate that the honorable gentleman was talking through his hat."

The honorable gentleman didn't believe he was doing any such thing. Somehow, Newton hadn't thought he would. The honorable gentleman tried to demonstrate he was doing no such thing by talking through his hat some more-at interminable length.

Interminable, at any rate, till Consul Stafford terminated the torrent of verbiage with several sharp raps of his gavel. "That will be quite enough of that. Quite a bit too much of that, in fact. The gentleman is out of order."

"By God, sir, I am not!" the Senator shouted furiously.

"I'm afraid you are," Stafford said, more in sorrow than in anger-for the time being, at any rate. "You are so far out of order that it would take a most superior watchmaker to pop off your back, tighten your mainspring, oil you up, and generally get you running again as you should."

"Watchmaker?" the Senator spluttered. "What nonsense are you spouting now? God-damned watchmaker? And you said I was talking through my hat?"

"No, he didn't. I did," Newton said. "And you were. And you are. And it looks like you'll keep right on doing it unless you sit down and shut up. So why don't you do that instead… sir?"

"Hear! Hear!" As the laughter had before, the cry rose from northern and southern Senators together. Outraged but even more downcast, the Senator from Nouveau Redon sank into his chair and resentfully fell silent.

Newton turned to Stafford. "Thank you, your Excellency."

The other Consul nodded back. "Thank you, your Excellency." They smiled at each other. Newton couldn't remember that happening up on the dais before the Slug Hollow agreement. However little Stafford might want them to, they found themselves on the same side now… and on the same side as Frederick Radcliff.

That would all fall apart if the Negro came to grief in Gernika. I should be down there helping him, Newton thought again. But, for the life of him, he didn't see what he could do to help. Frederick Radcliff's position and power might lie outside the Charter, but they were no less real for that.

They'd been camped west of St. Augustine for three days before a rebel slave showed himself. Lieutenant Braun had a bad case of the fidgets by then. Frederick Radcliff didn't. Far better than the white officer, he understood how leery of authority the insurrectionists were. He'd wondered whether any of them would appear at all, or whether they would melt off into the swamps and the barrel-tree thickets till he and the Atlantean soldiers went away.

But a copperskin did come out of the greenery. The flag of truce he carried had been hacked from a bedsheet. A planter's bedsheet, Frederick thought-the cloth was too white and too fine ever to have belonged to a slave.

"You really Frederick Radcliff?" the copperskin called to him, plainly not wanting to come any closer than he had to.

"I really am Frederick Radcliff," Frederick shouted back. "Who are you?"

"My friends call me Quince," the other man answered, pronouncing it in two syllables-keen-say-not like the name of the fruit. "It means 'fifteen' in Spanish."

"Why do they call you that?" Frederick asked, as he was obviously meant to do.

"Oh, maybe it's because that's how many white men I've done for," Quince said, eyeing the cavalrymen with Frederick. "Or maybe it's because-" He glanced down at himself with unmistakable male complacency. He wore baggy slave trousers, so it was impossible to be sure what he had in mind, but…

A trooper got the same idea Frederick did, and at the same time, too. Frederick was constrained by what he saw as diplomacy. The trooper wasn't, and hooted in derision. "Now tell me another one!" he bawled in Quince's direction. "My God-damned horse ain't that big!"

"Poor creature," Quince said. If he was joking, he joked with a straight face-or something. Frederick shook his own head like a man harassed by mosquitoes. At the moment, he wasn't that kind of man, but in Gernika he was liable to turn into that kind of man any second now. He had some gauzy netting to sleep in-and he had some bites.

"I don't care how you're hung," he told Quince. "Come on in and talk with us if you don't want to get hanged."

The trooper who'd doubted Quince's attributes groaned. Several other cavalrymen sent Frederick reproachful stares. Maybe they hadn't thought Negroes could make such bad puns. If they hadn't, it only proved they hadn't been around Negroes much.

As for Quince himself, he gaped at Frederick. Then he threw back his head and yipped. He sounded more like a fox barking at the moon than a man laughing, but the grin on his face declared that that was what he had to be. "Nobody told me you were a funny fellow," he said, walking toward Frederick and the troopers.

"Don't worry about it," Frederick answered. "Nobody told me I was, either." That drew more yips from Quince. Frederick went on, "Can you speak for all the slaves who've risen up in these parts?"

"If I can't, nobody can," Quince declared. The trouble was, maybe nobody could. As Frederick Radcliff had reason to know, insurrectionists lacked the Atlantean army's neat chain of command. The army relied on hundreds of years-thousands of years, some officers said-of military tradition. Every band of rebels made things up as it went along.

Lieutenant Braun's thoughts must have run along a similar track. "Can you for these slave rebels speak?" he demanded, as if he were contemplating seizing Quince for impersonating a spokesman rather than for any of the real crimes the copperskin must have committed. For all Frederick knew, the Dutchman was contemplating exactly that. He seemed a very… orderly officer.

But Quince nodded back at him. "I can. I do. I will," the copperskin said, an enumeration thorough enough to satisfy even Maximilian Braun. Casually, as if the matter were of no great importance but did need mentioning, Quince added, "Anything bad happens to me, it'll happen to you people, too-only slower." He walked into the encampment.

"Ja, ja." Lieutenant Braun sounded impatient, not afraid. Frederick admired his coolness, unsure he could imitate it himself. The Negro's eyes surveyed the ferns from which Quince had emerged. He saw no other fighters, which proved nothing. They would be out there.

A sergeant muttered something to one of the troopers. The man looked surprised, but nodded. He brought Quince a square of hardtack, some chewy army sausage that was about half salt, and a tin mug of coffee. "For now, we're friends," the soldier said. He sounded none too friendly, but sometimes actions spoke louder than words.

Quince eyed the food as if wondering if it was laced with rat poison. In his place, Frederick would have wondered-had wondered-the same thing. Trusting the men who'd bought and sold you didn't come easy for a slave in Atlantis. But the Gernikan rebel leader ate. He showed no great enthusiasm, but who could get enthusiastic about rations? After washing down the bite of hardtack with some coffee, he nodded back at the trooper who'd fed him. "For now," he agreed.

"Maybe for longer. I hope so," Frederick said. "You know about the Slug Hollow arrangements, the ones they're talking over now in New Hastings?"