by Mike Resnick
“What do they propose to do once they get there?” asked Silva suspiciously.
“They propose to tell the American press that Teddy Roosevelt—who is, in all immodesty, the most popular and influential American of the past half century—is under military attack by the Belgian government. His brave little force is standing firm, but he can’t hold out much longer without help, and if he should die while trying to free the citizens of the Congo from the yoke of Belgian tyranny, he wants America to know that he died at the hands of King Albert, who, I believe, has more than enough problems in Europe without adding this to his burden.”
“You are mad!” exclaimed Silva. “Do you really think anyone will care what happens here?”
“That is probably just what the Mahdi said to Chinese Gordon at the fall of Khartoum,” said Roosevelt easily. “Read your history books and you’ll see what happened when the British people learned of his death.”
“You are bluffing!”
“You are welcome to think so,” replied Roosevelt calmly. “But in two months’ time, 50,000 Americans will be standing in line to fight at my side in the Congo—and if you kill me, you can multiply that number by one hundred, and most of them will want to take the battle right to Belgium.”
“This is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard!” exclaimed Silva.
Roosevelt reached into a pocket of his hunting jacket and pulled out a thick, official-looking document he had written the previous day.
“It’s all here in black and white, Mr. Silva. I suggest that you deliver it to your superior as quickly as possible, because he’ll want to send it on to Belgium, and I know how long these things take.” He paused. “We’d like you out of the Congo in six months, so you can see that there’s no time to waste.”
“We are going nowhere!”
Roosevelt sighed deeply. “I’m afraid you are up against an historic inevitability,” he said. “You have 20 armed men. I have 47, not counting myself. It would be suicidal for you to attack us here and now, and by the time you return from Stanleyville, I’ll have a force of more than 30,000 Mangbetu plus a number of other tribes, who will not be denied their independence any longer.”
“My men are a trained military force,” said Silva. “Yours are a ragtag band of outcasts and poachers.”
“But good shots,” said Roosevelt with a confident grin. He paused again and the grin vanished. “Besides, if you succeed in killing me, you’ll be the man who precipitated a war with the United States. Are you quite certain you want that responsibility?”
Silva was silent for a moment. Finally he spoke.
“I will return to Stanleyville,” he announced. “But I will be back. This I promise you.”
“We won’t be here,” answered Roosevelt.
“Where will you be?”
“I have no idea—but I have every intention of remaining alive until news of what’s happening here gets back to America.” Roosevelt paused and smiled. “The Congo is a large country, Mr. Silva. I plan to make many more friends here while awaiting Belgium’s decision.”
Silva got abruptly to his feet. “With this paper,” he said, holding up the document, “you have signed not only your own death warrant, but the death warrant of every man who follows you.”
Boyes laughed from his position halfway down the table. “Do you know how many death warrants have been issued on me? I’ll just add this one to my collection.” He paused, amused. “I’ve never had one written in French before.”
“You are both mad!” snapped Silva, stalking off toward his men.
Roosevelt watched the assistant governor mount his horse and gallop off, followed by his twenty soldiers.
“I suppose we should have invited him to stay for dinner,” he remarked pleasantly.
“You don’t really think this is going to work, do you?” asked Boyes.
“Certainly.”
“It’s a lot of fancy talk, but it boils down to the fact that we’re still only 53 men,” said Boyes. “You’ll never get the natives to go to war with the Belgians. They haven’t any guns, and even if they did, we can’t prepare them to fight a modern war in just six months’ time.”
“John, you know Africa and you know hunting,” answered Roosevelt seriously, “but I know politics and I know history. The Congo is an embarrassment to the Belgians; Leopold wasted so much money here that his own government took it away from him two years ago. Furthermore, Europe is heading hell-for-leather for a war such as it has never seen before. The last thing they need is a battle with America over a piece of territory they didn’t really want to begin with.”
“They must want it or they wouldn’t be here,” said Boyes stubbornly.
Roosevelt shook his head. “They just didn’t want anyone else to have it. When Africa was divided among the great powers in 1885, Belgium would have lost face if it hadn’t insisted on its right to colonize the Congo, but it’s been an expensive investment that has been a financial drain and a political embarrassment for more than two decades.” He paused. “And what I said about General Gordon was true. He refused to leave Khartoum, and his death eventually forced the British government to take over the Sudan when the public demanded that they avenge him.” Suddenly Roosevelt grinned. “A lot more people voted for me than ever even heard of Gordon. Believe me, John, the Belgian government will bluster and threaten for a month or two, and then they’ll start negotiating.”
“Well, it all sounds logical,” said Boyes. “But I still can’t believe that a force of 53 men can take over an entire country. It’s just not possible.”
“Once and for all, John, we are not a force of 53 men,” said Roosevelt. “We are a potential force of a million outraged Americans.”
“So you keep saying. But still—”
“John, I trust you implicitly when we’re stalking an elephant or a lion. Try to have an equal degree of trust in me when we’re doing what I do best.”
“I wish I could,” said Boyes. “But it just can’t be this easy.”
On December 3, 1910, five months and 27 days later after receiving Roosevelt’s demands, the Belgian government officially relinquished all claims to the Congo, and began withdrawing their nationals.
VIII.
“Damn that Taft!”
Roosevelt crumpled the telegram, which had been delivered by runner from Stanleyville, in his massive hand and threw it to the ground. The sound of his angry, high-pitched voice combined with the violence of his gesture frightened a number of birds which had been searching for insects on the sprawling lawn, and they flew, squawking and screeching, to sanctuary in a cluster of nearby trees.
“Bad news, Mr. President?” asked Boyes.
They were staying at the house of M. Beauregard de Vincennes, a French plantation owner, some fifteen miles west of Stanleyville, on the shores of the Congo River. Three dozen of Roosevelt’s men were camped out on the grounds, while the remainder were alternately hunting ivory and preparing the Lulua and Baluba, two of the major tribes in the area, for visits from Roosevelt himself.
“The man has no gratitude, no gratitude at all!” snapped Roosevelt. “I gave him the Presidency, handed it to him as a gift, and now I’ve offered to give him a foothold in Africa as well, and he has the unmitigated gall to tell me that he can’t afford to send me the men and the money I’ve requested!”
“Is he sending anything at all?” asked Boyes.
“I requested ten thousand men, and he’s sending six hundred!” said Roosevelt furiously. “I told him I needed at least twenty million dollars to build roads and extend the railroad from Uganda, and he’s offering three million. Three million dollars for a country a third the size of the United States! Damn the man! J. P. Morgan may be a scoundrel and a brigand, but he would recognize an opportunity like this and pounce on it, I’ll guarantee you that!” He paused and suddenly nodded his head vigorously. “By God, that’s what I’ll do! I’ll wire Morgan this afternoon!”
“I thought he was you
r mortal enemy,” remarked Boyes. “At least, that’s the way it sounds whenever you mention him.”
“Nonsense!” said Roosevelt. “We were on different sides of the political fence, but he’s a competent man, which is more than I can say for the idiot sitting in the White House.” Roosevelt grinned. “And he loves railroads. Yes, I’ll wire him this afternoon.”
“Are we refusing President Taft’s offer, then?”
“Certainly not. We need all the manpower and money we can get. I’ll wire our acceptance, and send off some telegrams to a few sympathetic newspaper publishers telling them what short shrift we’re getting from Washington. I can’t put any more pressure on Taft from here, but perhaps they can.” Roosevelt shook his head sadly. “It serves me right for putting a fool in the White House. I tell you, John, if I didn’t have a job to do right here, I’d go back to the States and take the nomination away from him in 1912. The man doesn’t deserve to run a second time.”
Roosevelt ranted against the “fat fool” in the White House for another fifteen minutes, then retired to his room to draft his telegrams. When he emerged an hour later for lunch, he was once again his usual pleasant, vigorous, optimistic self. Boyes, Bill Buckley, Mickey Norton, Yank Rogers, and Deaf Banks were sitting at a table beneath an ancient tree, and all of them except Banks, who hadn’t heard the ex-President’s approach, stood up as he joined them.
“Please be seated, gentlemen,” said Roosevelt, pulling up a chair. “What’s on the menu for this afternoon?”
“Salad and cold guinea hen in some kind of sauce,” answered Norton. “Or that’s what Madame Vincennes told me, anyway.”
“I love guinea fowl,” enthused Roosevelt. “That will be just bully!” He paused. “Good people, Monsieur and Madame Vincennes. I’m delighted that they offered to be our hosts.” He paused. “This is much more pleasant than being cooped up in those airless little government buildings in Stanleyville.”
“I hear we got some bad news from your pal Bill Taft,” ventured Rogers.
“It’s all taken care of,” answered Roosevelt, confidently tapping the pocket that held his telegrams. “The men he’s sending will arrive during the rainy season, anyway—and by the time the rains are over, we’ll have more than enough manpower.” He looked around the table. “It’s time we considered some more immediate problems, gentlemen.”
“What problems did you have in mind, sir?” asked Buckley, as six black servants approached the table, bearing trays of salad and drinks.
“We’ve had this country for two months now,” answered Roosevelt. “It’s time we began doing something with it—besides decimating its elephant population, that is,” he added harshly.
“Well, we could decimate the Belgians that have stayed behind,” said Buckley with an amused smile. “Billy Pickering would like that.”
“I’m being serious, Mr. Buckley,” said Roosevelt, taking a small crust of bread from his plate and tossing it to a nearby starling, which immediately picked it up and pranced off with it. “What’s the purpose of making the Belgians leave if we don’t improve the lot of the inhabitants? Everywhere we’ve gone we’ve promised to bring the benefits of democracy to the Congo. I think it’s time we started delivering on that promise. The people deserve no less.”
“Boy!” said Norton to one of the servants. “This coffee’s cold. Go heat it up.”
The servant nodded, bowed, put the coffee pot back on the tray, and walked toward the kitchen building.
“I don’t know how you’re going to civilize them when they can’t remember from one day to the next that coffee’s suppose to be served hot and not warm,” said Norton. “And look at the way he’s loafing: it could be hot when he gets it and cold by the time he brings it here.”
“The natives don’t drink coffee, so it can hardly be considered important to them,” answered Roosevelt.
“They don’t vote, or hold trial by jury, either,” offered Buckley.
“Well, if we’re to introduce them to the amenities of civilization, I think that voting and jury trials come well ahead of coffee drinking, Mr. Buckley.”
“They can’t even read,” said Buckley. “How are you going to teach them to vote?”
“I plan to set up a public school system throughout the country,” said Roosevelt. “The Belgian missionaries made a start, but they were undermanned and under-financed. In my pocket is a telegram that will appear in more than a thousand American newspapers, an open appeal to teachers and missionaries to come to the Congo and help educate the populace.”
“That could take years, sir,” noted Boyes.
“Ten at the most,” answered Roosevelt confidently.
“How will you pay ’em, Teddy?” asked Rogers. “Hell, you can’t even pay us.”
“The missionaries will be paid by their churches, of course,” said Roosevelt. “As for the teachers, I suppose we’ll have to pay them with land initially.”
“That might not sit too well with the people whose land we’re giving away,” noted Rogers.
“Yank, if there’s one thing the Congo abounds in, besides insects and humidity, it’s land.”
“You say it’ll take ten years to educate them,” continued Rogers. “How will you hold elections in the meantime?”
“By voice,” answered Roosevelt. “Every man and woman will enter the polling place and state his or her preference. As a matter of fact, there will probably be a lot less vote fraud that way.”
“Did I hear you say that women are going to vote too, Teddy?” asked Yank Rogers.
“They’re citizens of the Congo, aren’t they?”
“But they don’t even vote back home!”
“That’s going to change,” said Roosevelt firmly. “Our founding fathers were wrong not to give women the right to vote, and there’s no reason to make the same mistake here. They’re human beings, the same as us, and they deserve the same rights and privileges.” Suddenly he grinned. “I pity the man who has to tell my Alice that she can’t cast her vote at the polls. There won’t be enough of him left to bury!”
“You know, we could raise money with a hut tax,” suggested Buckley. “That’s what the British have done wherever they’ve had an African colony.”
“A hut tax?” asked Roosevelt.
Buckley nodded. “Tax every native ten or twenty shillings a year for each hut he erects. It not only raises money for the treasury, but it forces them to be something more than subsistence farmers, since they need money to pay the tax.”
Roosevelt shook his head adamantly. “We’re supposed to be freeing them, Mr. Buckley, not enslaving them.”
“Besides,” added Boyes, “it never worked that well in British East Africa. If they didn’t pay their hut tax, the government threw them into jail.” He turned to Roosevelt and smiled. “You know what the Kikuyu and Wakamba called the jail in Nairobi? The King Georgi Hoteli. It was the only place they knew of where they could get three square meals a day and a free roof over their heads.” He chuckled at the memory. “Once word of it got out, they were lining up to get thrown in jail.”
“Well, there will be no such attempt to exploit the natives of the Congo,” said Roosevelt. “We must always remember that this is their country and that our duty is to teach them the ways of democracy.”
“That may be easier said than done,” said Rogers.
“Why should you think so, Yank?” asked Roosevelt.
“Democracy’s a pretty alien concept to them,” answered Rogers. “It’s going to take some getting used to.”
“It was an alien concept to young Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, too,” said Roosevelt, “but they seem to have adapted to it readily enough. It’s never difficult to get used to freedom.”
“We ain’t talking freedom, Teddy,” said Rogers. “They were free for thousands of years before the Belgians showed up, but they ain’t never had a democracy. Their tribes are ruled by chiefs and witch doctors, not congressmen.”
“
And now that the Belgians are clearing out,” added Norton, “our biggest problem is going to be to stop them from killing each other long enough to get to the polls.”
“All of you keep predicting the most dire consequences,” said Roosevelt irritably, “and yet you ignore the enormous strides the American Negro has taken since the Emancipation Proclamation. I tell you, gentleman, that freedom has no color and democracy is not the special province of one race.”
Boyes smiled, and Buckley turned to him.
“What are you looking so amused about, John? You’ve been here long enough to know everything we’ve said is the truth.”
“You all think you’re discouraging Mr. Roosevelt, and that if you tell him enough stories about how savage the natives are, maybe you’ll convince him to join you long enough to kill every last elephant in the Congo and then go back to Nairobi.” Boyes paused. “But I know him a little better than you do, and if there’s one thing he can’t resist, it’s a challenge.” He turned to Roosevelt. “Am I right, sir?”
Roosevelt grinned back at him. “Absolutely, Mr. Boyes.” He looked around at his companions. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “I’ve heard enough doomsaying for one day. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.”
IX.
Roosevelt stared at his image in the full-length ornate gilt mirror that adorned the parlor of the state house at Stanleyville, and adjusted the tie of his morning suit.
“Good thing that little German tailor decided not to leave,” he remarked to Boyes, who was similarly clad, “or we’d be conducting matters of state in our safari clothes.”
“I’d be a damned sight more comfortable in them,” replied Boyes, checking his appearance in the mirror, and deciding that his hair needed more combing.
“Nonsense, John,” said Roosevelt. “We’ve got reporters and photographers from all over the world here.”
“Personally, I’d much rather face a charging elephant,” said Boyes, looking out the window. “I don’t like crowds.”
Roosevelt smiled. “I’d forgotten just how much I miss them.” He put on his top hat and walked to the door. “Well, we might as well begin.”
