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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You hope," Helen said.

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

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?"