Liberating Atlantis

"Drop those guns this minute, or it'll go even harder for you than it would otherwise!" the planter bellowed.

Frederick almost started to lay down his rifle musket. The habit of obedience to whites-especially to whites who gave orders in a loud voice-was deeply ingrained in him, as it was in all Atlantean slaves. One of Barker's men send back an answer: "We don't got to listen to you no more! You're go

"That's what you think, Ivanhoe!" Barker yelled. He raised the longarm he carried to his shoulder. The gun roared. Ivanhoe screeched and fell over, clutching his side.

"Give it to him!" Frederick said urgently. All the slaves turned their rifle muskets on Barker and his son. The guns stuttered out a ragged volley. The younger Barker clapped both hands to his breast, as if he were in a stage melodrama. But the blood on the front of his shirt was real. As the overseer had before him, he fell facedown in the dirt.

Somehow, all the bullets in the volley missed Benjamin Barker, the man at whom they were aimed. He reloaded with almost superhuman speed and fired again. This time, he hit one of his own copperskins. Unlike Ivanhoe, the second slave didn't make a sound. He simply crumpled, shot through the head.

More bullets flew at Benjamin Barker. These didn't bite, either. As slaves went, Frederick wasn't superstitious. He had more education-and more sense-than most bondsmen. But even he wondered if the planter didn't have a snakeskin or a rabbit's foot in his pocket.

Shaking his fist, Barker turned and ran back toward the big house. Another volley pursued him. Yet again, every shot missed. If that wasn't unca

He also couldn't imagine letting the planter get away. That would be… whatever was worse than a disaster. About as bad, say, as tripping over a floorboard that had come loose. Maybe even worse.

"Come on!" he said. "We've got to do for him!"

"How?" a copperskin asked. "If bullets won't-"

"If bullets won't, we'll burn down the God-damned big house," Frederick said savagely. "I don't want to do that, on account of the smoke'll draw a crowd where we don't need one, but I will if I got to. We ain't go

His determination pulled the rest of the slaves after him. He realized it didn't have to be a white man giving orders in a loud voice. Anyone would do, as long as he sounded sure of himself. Being right plainly wasn't essential, or slaves would have stopped obeying masters hundreds of years ago. Being-or seeming-sure just as plainly was.

Benjamin Barker got inside. He fired at the oncoming Liberating Army, and dropped a second copperskin. A moment later, another gun spoke from upstairs. Veronique Barker didn't aim to sit around and let herself get slaughtered-or suffer the proverbial fate worse than death. Frederick didn't think she hit anybody, but she was making the effort.

"I need five or six men to come into the house with me," Frederick said. "The rest can go on shootin', make the white folks keep their heads down."

"I'm with you," Lorenzo said at once.

"Me, too," Davey said. "Got to finish that fucker."

Frederick soon had his volunteers. As the rest of the Liberating Army banged away, they rushed toward the front door. Benjamin Barker appeared in a window like an angry ghost. He fired and vanished again. The bullet cracked past Frederick's head, much too close for comfort. Involuntarily, he ducked. He hoped that wouldn't make his comrades think him a coward. Whether it did or not, he couldn't help it.

His shoulder hit the door. "Oof!" he said, and bounced off. He might have known it would be locked.

"Here-I'll settle it." Lorenzo fired two shots from a captured revolver into the lock. Then he rammed it with his shoulder. He fell down as it flew open.

Davey sprang over him and dashed into the big house. He took a shotgun blast full in the chest, and sank without a sound. Benjamin Barker howled laughter. "Thought it would be easy, did you?" He fired again, this time with a pistol. A copperskin beside Frederick screeched and clutched his leg.

Frederick had never thought it would be easy. If slave uprisings were easy, one of them would have succeeded before this. But he thought it might be possible. And one of the things that would make it possible was killing planters who got in the way.

He shot Benjamin Barker in the neck. Barker gobbled like a turkey. He clapped a hand to the bleeding wound. Why doesn't he fall over? Frederick wondered. But the answer to that was only too obvious. Because you only grazed him, that's why.

He ran forward. Sure as the devil, Barker wasn't badly hurt. He pulled a knife off his belt-no, a razor, the edge glittering even in the dimness inside the big house-and slashed at Frederick.

But a razor in a desperate man's right arm couldn't match the reach of an eighteen-inch bayonet at the end of a five-foot rifle musket. What Frederick had was a spear, and he used it so. He stuck Barker in the chest. The bayonet grated off a rib before sinking deep.

That finishes him, Frederick thought. But it didn't. Benjamin Barker went right on fighting. Killing a man wasn't so easy as it looked: it was a horrible, messy business. Frederick stuck the planter again and again, and still almost got his own throat slashed. Only when Lorenzo brought his pistol up against the back of Barker's head and pulled the trigger did the white man quit struggling.

"Whew!" Frederick said. "That man had no quit in him." Barker was still thrashing on the floor, but he plainly wouldn't get up again.

"Who cares?" Lorenzo answered. "Long as you can make him quit, that's all that counts."

Another shot rang out from upstairs. If Veronique had fired on the invaders from the landing, she could have done a lot of harm. Frederick looked around to make sure his surviving companions were all right. Then he said, "We better find out what that was all about."

Cautiously, they climbed the stairs. The door to the Barkers' bedroom stood open. Veronique Barker lay on the bed, the muzzle of a pistol still in her mouth. The back of her head was a red ruin that soaked into the bedclothes.

Lorenzo grunted when he saw the corpse. "Huh," he said. "She must've known what she had comin'. I never stuck it into a white woman before, but I sure would have. Serve her right, you know-pay her back for all the shit she done piled on her slaves."

Frederick hadn't wanted the Liberating Army to do things like that. What would Helen have said had he joined in the gang rape of the planter's wife? Would she have screamed at him, or would she also have thought Veronique Barker got what was coming to her? Frederick didn't know, and he wasn't altogether sorry not to find out.

"One way or the other, she's done for now," he said. "This whole plantation's done for. Let's drag the bodies out of the house, let the Barkers' slaves know they're free for sure."

Veronique Barker's corpse left a trail of gore down the stairs. Her blood and Benjamin's stained the rugs on the floor of their front room. Frederick pushed the bodies off the front porch with his foot. They rolled bonelessly down the stairs and came to rest in the dirt.

"See?" Frederick said. "They're really and truly dead. We done killed 'em. They won't ever trouble you any more."

The Barkers' slaves stared at the corpses with terrible avidity. Frederick hadn't particularly hated the Barfords-he'd just hated being anyone's piece of property. Things were different here: how very different, he didn't realize till the newly freed Negroes and copperskins surged forward and took their own vengeance on the bodies.

It wasn't pretty. They kicked them and beat them and hacked at them with gardening tools. A couple of men undid their flies and pissed on the bodies. The rest of the Barkers' slaves-no, the new recruits to the Liberating Army-whooped and cheered. They hung the corpses up by their heels. Veronique Barker's skirts fell down over her head. That drew more whoops, and some lewd jokes.