Liberating Atlantis

"Well, fuck 'em!" shouted a housemaid with a whiskey bottle in her hand. "Fuck 'em in the heart, the stinking shitsacks!" She got a cheer, too.

"Easy to say," Frederick said when he could get a word in edgewise. "Not so easy to do. Way it looks to me is, we got two choices. We can slip away by ones and twos, going every which way. Some of us'll get free if we try that, odds are-some of us, but not everybody."

"We could go off to the woods and the swamps," a copperskin said. Runaway slaves of all colors scratched out livings in places where whites judged pursuit more trouble than it was worth.

"Well, we could try," Frederick said. "When they find out we killed the whites here, though, they'll come after us a lot harder'n they'd chase ordinary runaways. Or does anybody reckon I'm wrong?"

No one said anything. If slaves killed white people, other whites would hunt them down no matter what. Every slave understood that. It was one of the pillars on which slavery rested.

"So slipping away doesn't look so good," Frederick said. "Only other chance I see is, we gotta fight, and we gotta win."

"We got the guns, by God!" Davey's voice was as deep as Lorenzo's.

"Anybody figure there ain't some white folks around these parts who still need killing?" Lorenzo himself added.

No one left alive on the plantation believed that. "And when we liberate a plantation, what happens to the mudfaces and niggers who were slaves on it?" Frederick answered his own question before anyone else could: "I'll tell you what happens to 'em. They join our army-the Liberating Army, that's what we'll call it. And then we go on and we free up the next plantation down the road."

"And the slaves there, they turn into soldiers, too!" That was one of the housemaids who'd lost the draw to kill Mistress Clotilde. By the excited way she said it, the possibility hadn't occurred to her till that very moment. It probably hadn't. Frederick had never thought she was long on brains.

Excitement surged through the assembled slaves-no, through the newborn Liberating Army. They had rifle muskets and ammunition for several plantations' worth of slaves. After that… Well, Frederick couldn't imagine any plantation without firearms, both for hunting and for keeping two-legged property in line. Those weapons would arm more Negroes and copperskins.

And what happens when the Liberating Army goes up against the army of the United States of Atlantis? Frederick wondered. What do we do for ca

Well, he didn't have to worry about that, not yet. And, as long as he didn't have to, he didn't intend to. Borrowing trouble never did anybody any good. And, if you were a slave-even more, if you were a slave trying to rise up against white masters-you already had plenty of troubles, and didn't need to borrow any more.

"Where do we go first?" That was Davey: trust the cook to come up with a good, practical question.

Frederick had been chewing that over, too. "Way it looks to me is, first place we ought to set free is Benjamin Barker's," he answered. "It's close, and he doesn't treat his slaves real well, so they'll be ready to swing our way, and-"

"And his wife, that Veronique, she's an even nastier cunt than Mistress Clotilde, an' that's really sayin' somethin'," interrupted the handmaid who'd just snuffed out Clotilde Barford's life.

From everything Frederick had seen and heard, she was right. He made himself nod. "She sure is," he said. "And that's one more reason the slaves on the Barker plantation will see things our way." They'd better, or this will be one of the shortest uprisings in a history that's seen a lot of short ones. He looked around. "Anybody got a better idea?"

The people who really counted were Lorenzo and Davey. If either of them thought the Liberating Army should pick a different direction, Frederick would have to listen carefully. He might have to change his mind.

They both paused thoughtfully, considering. At last, almost in unison, their heads went up and down. "Benjamin Barker deserves whatever happens to him," Davey said in the tones of a judge passing sentence.

"He does," Lorenzo agreed. And so it was decided.

They took the rifle muskets out of their crates. Then they had to figure out how to use the percussion caps that came with the cartridges: all of the firearms on the plantation were flintlocks. But several slaves had heard about the percussion system, and had a notion of how to fit the thin copper caps over the nipple on each musket.

Some of the field hands used beat-up old shotguns of their own to kill varmints and hunt small game. The fancy new muskets impressed them enormously. "See, the thing of it is, a flintlock'll misfire maybe one time in five," Lorenzo explained to Frederick. "And even when it doesn't, there's always that wait while the sparks set off the priming powder and the priming powder starts the main charge, so you miss what you were aiming at 'cause it's not there no more."

"Not like that with these guns," Frederick said. His shoulder was sore from a rifle musket's fierce kick. "Soon as you pull the trigger and the hammer comes down-bang!" His ears were still ringing, too.

"I hope to shit, it's not like that!" Lorenzo said enthusiastically. "We're go

"That's right." Frederick saw the need, but he wasn't so eager. The color of his skin reminded him of the white blood that flowed in his veins. So did the thick beard that rasped under his fingers every time he rubbed his chin.

Lorenzo pressed ahead: "How are we go

"Think so, do you?" Frederick's voice was dry. "Looks to me like they'll figure it out pretty damned quick any which way."

Lorenzo gri

"Well…" Frederick didn't need long to think that over. "No."

And so they went cross-country-all but the precious rifle muskets they weren't using themselves and the even more precious ammunition. Those rolled down the road, guarded by slaves with eight-shooters taken from dead Atlantean cavalrymen. The Negroes and copperskins slapped paint on the wagons before setting out, so no one who saw them would think of the United States of Atlantis.

One of the slaves who took the lead wagon down the road pulled a black felt hat of Henry Barford's low on his forehead, so the brim was barely above his eyes. It was the perfect touch, especially since he was also smoking one of the dead master's cheroots. If he didn't look like a teamster, Frederick had never seen anybody who did.

"They'll get there ahead of us," Davey said in worried tones as the rest of the Liberating Army started tramping from one big house to the other.

Frederick shook his head. "Don't think so. Hope not, anyways. I told 'em to hold up by the side of the road a couple of times. White folks going by won't think anything of that. You know how they always go on about how lazy niggers and mudfaces are."

"Oh, hell, yes-usually while they're pilin' more work on our heads," Davey said. "Then they get mad on account of we don't finish as fast as they want." He muttered something under his breath; the look in his eyes went as dark as his skin. After a few seconds, though, his face cleared. He set a hand on Frederick's shoulder. "That's good, the way you set it up. Seems like you got a notion of what's likely to happen next. Fellow who's ru

"Yeah, I know. Right now, main thing I'm tryin' for is not to do anything out-and-out stupid," Frederick answered. Sooner or later, he would do something stupid, too. You couldn't help it, any more than you could help needing to piss every so often. He just hoped his mistakes wouldn't be too bad and wouldn't hurt the Liberating Army too much.