"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.

XXII

Jeremiah Stafford was drunk. Even though Slug Hollow had that miserable wreck of a tavern, the place no longer held spirits or wine or beer. The insurrectionists-or maybe the locals, as they decamped-had made off with its stock in trade. Such impediments did not stop a determined man. Stafford had paid a cavalry sergeant half an eagle for a jug of barrel-tree rum, and proceeded to get outside of as much of it as he could.

It was harsh stuff. It burned all the way down. He would feel like death come morning, or maybe a little worse than that. Right this minute, he didn't care.

He did care that the cheap, fierce rum wasn't doing what he wanted it to do. Like so many men, he drank to forget. But he still remembered. The more he poured down, the more sharply he seemed to remember, too.

He'd told Leland Newton the slaves would have to be free. Worse, he'd been cold sober when he did it. I can take it back, he thought. Newton would never be able to prove the words had come out of his mouth. Prove it or not, though, they would both know. And it was true. It might be loathsome-it was loathsome! sweet Jesus, was it loathsome!-but it was true.

"They'll kill me," he mumbled as he staggered through Slug Hollow's narrow, fern-choked streets. "They'll murder me." No one had ever murdered a Consul of the United States of Atlantis. No one had even tried to assassinate one. There'd been brawls on the Senator floor, but that wasn't the same thing. No, not even close.

Of course, no Consul of the USA had ever tried to tell half his country that it couldn't go on the way it had for the past two hundred years and more. If-no, when-Stafford tried to do that, how many people would start loading their muskets?

How many people lived south of the Stour? How many of them weren't Negroes or copperskins? Stafford laughed raucously. An easy calculation, even for a drunk man: enough to make pretty sure one of them would get him. You couldn't stop a determined man. Stafford laughed some more. Frederick Radcliff, damn his black hide and blacker heart, sure had proved that.

"Radcliffs!" Stafford muttered. "Radcliffes!" He pronounced the e the second time. He laughed some more. He was part Radcliff himself. So was Newton. Few prominent people in Atlantis weren't. Few indeed-no matter what color they were!

Why couldn't Victor Radcliff have kept it in his trousers? Stafford took it out of his trousers and watered some of the ferns that had sprung up since Slug Hollow was abandoned. Or maybe the ferns had been here all along-in a pisspot hole in the ground like this one, who could say for sure? Come to that, who cared?

A big green katydid, long as one of his fingers, hopped away and disappeared under a rotting board. This was the back of beyond, all right. In most towns, mice and rats had supplanted the native Atlantean bugs. Not here, not yet. Maybe not for a long time, either. By all the signs, Slug Hollow was going back to the wilderness from which it had sprung.

Stafford veered around a corner. He stopped short-so short that he almost fell over. Someone else was promenading through the streets of Slug Hollow. The nerve of the fellow!

A second look told the Consul promenading wasn't the right word. The other man listed like a ship on a windswept sea. He was as drunk as Stafford was. He might have been drunker, if such a thing was possible.

Evidently it was, because he needed longer to notice Stafford than Stafford had to notice him. When he did, a sozzled grin slowly spread across his copperskinned face. "What are you doing here, you shun-son-of a bitch?" he asked.

"I could ashk-ask-you the same question, Lorenzo," Stafford said.

"I can come here," the insurrectionists' war leader replied. "Slug Hollow isn't yours."

"It isn't yours, either," Stafford said. "It doesn't belong to anybody any more."