Naturally, he defended what he'd done. "You would have signed that paper, too, if you were there," he told anyone who would listen. But nobody wanted to listen to him. That was a big part of the problem.

Supporters of slavery organized marches through the streets of New Hastings. The marchers made the city almost unlivable with drums and horns during the day. At night, they used their noisemakers and carried torches as well. Stafford feared they would burn down the capital over his head.

He didn't think his fears were misplaced. Whenever the marchers came upon a copperskin or a Negro, they beat him with an inch of his life. Colored men in New Hastings were free, not slaves. That worried the marchers not a cent's worth. If anything, it only inflamed them more.

New Hastings had no real police force. As far as Consul Stafford knew, London was the only city that did. The few watchmen on the city payroll here were no match for the marchers-or for the marchers' white foes, who waded into them whenever the odds seemed decent. They weren't content with clouting one another over the head with placards. Knives came out. So did pistols.

And so did soldiers. Stafford never found out who gave the order. Afterwards, no one seemed to want to admit it. But hard-looking men in gray uniforms who carried bayoneted rifle muskets appeared on street corners at sunup one morning. When the antiliberation marchers disobeyed their orders in any particular, they opened fire without warning.

That probably wouldn't have worked in a southern city like Cosquer or Nouveau Redon or Gernika. It would have stirred up more trouble than it put down. But it served its purpose in New Hastings. The marchers rapidly discovered they didn't have enough popular backing to take on the soldiers. Making the discovery cost them more casualties. Order returned to the capital.

Order failed to return to the Senate floor. Stafford and Newton had presided over tempestuous sessions before. Those were as nothing compared to what the Consuls met now. Shaking his fist at Stafford, a Senator from Gernika cried, "You've changed!"

"Indeed," Stafford replied. "No matter what the honorable gentleman may believe, it is not against the rules of this house."

He might as well have saved his breath. "You've changed!" the Senator repeated, as if it were forbidden in the sterner books of the Bible. "We haven't, and we aren't about to."

"Fools never do," Stafford said.

That, of course, only poured oil on the fire. Several Senators screamed abuse at him in English, French, and Spanish.

Bang! Bang! Consul Newton plied the gavel with might and main. "The honorable gentlemen are out of order," he said-you could sound all the more insulting when you were exquisitely polite. "They would do well to remember to look toward the future, not the past."

Take your heads out of the sand, Stafford translated to himself. Did ostriches really stick their heads in the sand? He had no idea. He'd never seen an ostrich. They were supposed to be pretty stupid, just like honkers. He'd never seen a honker, either, even though they were Atlantean birds. As far as he knew, nobody'd seen any honkers since Audubon found some to paint… which probably meant backwoodsmen had shot and eaten the last few survivors.

Back around the time when the United States of Atlantis freed themselves from England, there'd been proposals to set land aside as a preserve for Atlantis' native creatures. Nothing ever came of those proposals-no state cared to give up land from which it might one day draw taxes. It was probably too late for honkers now, anyhow. It might not be for some other creatures…

But even if it wasn't, Consul Stafford had more urgent things to worry about at the moment. "My colleague is right," he said-a sentence that hadn't crossed his lips very often before the failed campaign to put down the slave insurrection. "We may not like going forward, but we have no other choice-not unless you would rather spend the rest of your lives fighting a war we are unlikely to win, and one that will not bring us the benefits we seek even if we should win."

"If you hadn't buggered up the fight against the niggers, you'd sing a different tune now," a Senator from Nouveau Redon said.

"You wouldn't go along with everything the Croydon man says," another southern Senator added.

"We did the best we could," Stafford answered. "We faced danger together, and we made the agreement with Frederick Radcliff together, too."

"And you get the blame together!" shouted the Senator from Nouveau Redon.

"The credit, you mean," Leland Newton said. "History will justify us. It always justifies people who believe in progress."

Did it? Stafford had his doubts. But the way his former friends howled made him have doubts about his doubts, too.

XXIV

The clerk of the Senate eyed Frederick Radcliff with as much warmth as he would have given a cucumber slug in his salad. "Do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" he droned.

"I do," Frederick said.

"Are you aware that perjury is a felony punishable by fine or imprisonment or both?"

"I wasn't, but I am now," Frederick answered. A couple of Senators chuckled. A few more smiled. All of them were northern men. The dignitaries from south of the Stour seemed affronted that a Negro should testify before them at all. Well, too damned bad, Frederick thought.

As for the clerk, he was impervious. All he said was, "State your name for the record."

"I am Frederick Radcliff," Frederick said. That probably affronted the southern Senators all over again. A Negro with any surname would have been bad enough. A Negro with the most prominent surname in Atlantis was more than twice as bad. A Negro grandson of the famous First Consul was much more than twice as bad.

Even the clerk's eyes said as much. If he wasn't from a slaveholding state himself, Frederick would have been mightily surprised. But all that came out of his mouth was, "You may be seated."

Frederick sat in the witness' chair. The angle at which it was turned let him see the two Consuls on their dais as well as the Senators on the floor of the chamber. Consul Newton said, "For the record, you are the man who was styled Tribune of the Free Republic of Atlantis, are you not?"

"That's right," Frederick replied.

"Treason!" three Senators shouted at the same time.

"No such thing," Frederick said, though that wasn't a question. "Was it treason when my grandfather rose up against England?" My grandfather. If they didn't care for that, too damned bad again.

"It would have been treason, if Victor Radcliff and the Atlantean army had lost," Newton said.

"And it would have been treason if you and your army had lost, too." By the way Consul Stafford sounded, he was still sorry it hadn't been.

"But we didn't, and so it ain't-isn't." Frederick corrected himself. Quite a few Senators would think of him as a dumb nigger no matter what he did, but he didn't want to give them extra ammunition.

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason." Newton seemed to be quoting something. By the ring of it, it was old-fashioned. Shakespeare? Frederick had read some, but didn't remember seeing it there.

"If you say that about my grandfather, you can say it about me. If you don't, saying it about me isn't fair," he said.

"I'm not saying it about anyone, because, by the terms of the agreement we signed, there is no such thing as the Free Republic of Atlantis any more. The slave insurrection is over and done with-isn't that right?" Newton said.

"Yes, sir, long as the rest of the agreement gets carried out," Frederick answered. "Long as the slaves get freed, and we get the same rights in law as any other Atlanteans."