Opening Atlantis

by Harry Turtledove

  “They probably do,” Victor answered with a sigh. “But if they get caught, French officers will punish them. They use the same laws of war we do.”

  “Laws of war.” As before when he heard that phrase, Blaise was bemused. “You white people plenty smart, but sometimes I think you crazy, too.”

  “Maybe we are. But if we’re all crazy the same way, it evens out,” Victor Radcliff said.

  Some of the French were crazy in a different way: crazy enough to try to fight back against half a regiment’s worth of men. They paid for their folly. Victor made a point of ensuring that they wound up dead. He also made a point—though a quieter one—of looking the other way when his men took their women in among the trees.

  “Maybe you not so crazy after all,” Blaise remarked.

  “Maybe not,” Victor said with a sigh. “Or maybe the extent to which I am a beast marks the extent to which I am a sane man.”

  The Negro frowned. “Don’t understand that.”

  “Don’t trouble your head about it.” Radcliff set a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not sure I understand it, either. I’m not sure I want to understand it.”

  His raiders pushed east and south, in the direction of the ocean. He didn’t expect to wash his hands in the Atlantic. Pretty soon, the French would scrape together enough militiamen to bar his way. The farther east the English went, the more towns and villages they ran into. And towns and villages had lots of men in them. Men with muskets hastily pressed into service didn’t make the best soldiers. But Victor was uneasily aware his own men had been amateurs not long before. If you lived through a couple of skirmishes, you got an idea of what needed doing.

  Again, Blaise had his own idea of what needed doing. “Should say all niggers here free, M’sieu Victor. Copperskins, too. You get more fighters. And the French settlers, they can’t do a thing without those people.”

  He was bound to be right about that. Slowly, Victor said, “I have no orders to do any such thing.”

  “Why you need orders?” Blaise demanded.

  “If we win this war, I think England will take away the French settlements in Atlantis,” Victor said. “Maybe the Spanish settlements, too.”

  “And so?” Blaise cared nothing for that. “Most niggers and copperskins are free in English lands now.”

  “Slavery makes no money up in the north. The crops won’t support it,” Victor replied. “Things are different here. How can you raise cotton or indigo or rice or even pipeweed without plantations? How can you have plantations without slaves?”

  Blaise looked at him—looked through him, really. “We don’t use money in Africa. Maybe we lucky. You put money ahead of free?”

  “If all the slaves down here are suddenly freed, everyone in these parts is liable to starve, Negroes and Terranovans and whites alike,” Victor said.

  “Pay people to work the farms,” Blaise said. “They do it, I bet.”

  “It could be,” Victor admitted. “Say it is.”

  “Then everybody free!” Blaise exclaimed.

  “Maybe. Or maybe everyone is free to starve. Paying workers costs more than keeping slaves. If there is no profit, the plantations go to ruin,” Victor said.

  Blaise was a shrewd man, no two ways about it. “Make people who buy from them pay more,” he said.

  “And all the plantations in Terranova will undersell us, so we go to the dogs just the same. They grow cotton and rice and indigo in India, too, and I hear they will grow pipeweed there soon,” Radcliff said.

  “I hear about Terranova,” Blaise said. “Where is this India place?”

  “Beyond Terranova and an ocean—on the far side of the world.”

  “More world than ever I think,” the Negro said. “Terranova, yes, I hear some about it—copperskins’ talk, you know. They use slaves in this India place?”

  “I have no idea.” Victor Radcliff had never worried about it. All he knew about India was that it was supposed to be rich, and it had tigers and elephants. He’d seen a tiger once, in a zoological garden some high-minded cousin had set up in Hanover. It looked hungry. It looked angry, too, prowling its too-small cage and lashing its tail.

  But Blaise persisted: “If they don’t use slaves, how you say we need slaves?”

  “All I said was, I don’t have the authority to free slaves,” Victor answered. “Politicians have to do that sort of thing; soldiers can’t. I can tell slaves to run off—that’s a measure of war. Freeing them is more than I can do.”

  “I have reason the first time,” Blaise said, which showed he still knew more French than English. “White people are crazy.”

  Despite cold rain and mud, French regulars marched in perfectly dressed ranks and columns, just like English redcoats. And, as the French settlers had maneuvered the redcoats into a trap, so the English settlers tried to return the disfavor. Their fort had fallen, but they sniped at the French from whatever cover they could find. And they refused to fight fixed battles.

  “What ridiculous excuse for warfare is this?” Montcalm-Gozon demanded indignantly.

  “It is what I warned you to expect,” Roland Kersauzon replied. “They fear your men would win in any stand-up fight—”

  “As we would,” the commander from the mother country broke in. “Oh, no doubt, Monsieur,” Roland said politely. He didn’t want to argue with the nobleman. That didn’t necessarily mean he thought Montcalm-Gozon was right. His settlers had shocked the English redcoats. Maybe the English settlers could do the same to French regulars.

  “As I said before, this is curious country,” Montcalm-Gozon remarked. “Where it is settled, it seems European enough. Where people do not dwell, though, the plants and animals are quite different. Now and then you will see a familiar tree or bush or animal living amongst the native oddities, but only now and then.”

  “In my grandfather’s day, I am told, you would never have seen such a thing. Settlements then were smaller and stuck closer to the coast,” Roland said. “Since those days, we have brought in more plants and animals that suit us. Deer and foxes roam the forests now. Rats and mice infest our homes and barns. Cats hunt them—and whatever else they can find. Dogs run wild, too. So do chickens and our ducks and Terranovan turkeys.”

  “So you believe the native productions will vanish?” Montcalm-Gozon asked. “A pity to see sameness imposed on the world.”

  “I am, I hope, a modern man, your Excellency,” Kersauzon said. “If that which comes from Europe or from Terranova serves our needs better than Atlantis’ native productions, why should we not have it? In the early days here, men feared to go outdoors, because red-crested eagles might slam into them from behind and chew at their kidneys as the vulture chewed at Prometheus’ liver. Now those flying monsters are few and far between, and I confess I miss them not a pin.” He remembered how horrified he’d been when an eagle attacked one of his settlers.

  “Once, lions hunted in Greece. Not so long ago, wolves prowled everywhere in France,” Montcalm-Gozon said. “Now the lions are gone, the wolves grown scarce. I agree: this is better. But will the innocuous go by the wayside along with the dangerous? That, I believe, would be unfortunate.”

  “It could be so,” Roland said. “Will you eat beef or mutton at supper tonight?”

  “Either will do,” the Frenchman replied. “Why do you ask?”

  “The cattle and sheep are imports, too. So are the horses we ride,” Roland said.

  “As you observed, they are useful.” Before Montcalm-Gozon could go on, several muskets barked from the—mostly native—woods. A French regular yelled. A profane lieutenant ordered a troop of men to go after the ambushers, and not to come back without the degenerates’ tripes on their bayonets. The soldiers charged in amongst the trees.

  “They won’t catch them,” Roland predicted mournfully.

  “And why are you so sure? They are excellent men,” the marquis said.

  “They are excellent men standing in a battle line and beating down another battle li
ne,” Roland Kersauzon answered. “Unless some of them were poachers or robbers before they put on the uniform, what do they know about chasing woodsmen through the forest?”

  Montcalm-Gozon only shrugged. “What do these Atlantean rats know about getting chased by Frenchmen?”

  They knew enough to get away. The regulars came out of the woods without any enemy soldiers, alive or dead, in their grasp and with hangdog expressions on their faces. Their worst casualty was a sprained ankle. Two of them supported the man, who proved to have tripped over a root. The injured soldier went into a casualty wagon, along with the regulars the English settlers had shot. The interrupted march resumed.

  “Not a good business,” Montcalm-Gozon grumbled.

  “Certainly not, Monsieur.” Roland could hardly disagree with that. Adding I told you so would have been rude. A slightly superior manner conveyed the message just as well: they were both French, after all.

  Another rider came up with more news of devastation from the south. Montcalm-Gozon heard him out, stony-faced. Roland tried to match the noble’s dispassion, but it wasn’t easy. To the man from across the sea, the plantations destroyed and the people killed or dispossessed were only pieces on the board. To Roland, the estates belonged to kinsmen and friends and acquaintances. The losses were personal.

  “It could be, your Excellency, that I might have to detach my native soldiers to pursue this marauding salaud of a Radcliff,” he said.

  “That would disturb the primary goal of this campaign, which is to seize Freetown,” Montcalm-Gozon said with a frown.

  “Ensuring that the French settlements in Atlantis are not destroyed is also an important goal, n’est-ce pas?” Kersauzon returned.

  “Feh.” The French general raised a hand. “The English attempt a nuisance raid, nothing more. If we weaken our striking force to contain them, we play into their hands.”

  He had a point, and Roland knew it. Nevertheless, he quoted Matthew: “‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’”

  Montcalm-Gozon aimed an unfriendly look his way. “I have to think of this struggle as part of one that goes on all over the world. We fight England in Europe, and in India, and in Terranova, as well as on these shores.”

  “France fights England all over the world,” Roland Kersauzon said. “I fight England here. I have to think of what is best and what is worst for the French settlements in Atlantis.”

  “What is best for them is what is best for France,” the marquis insisted.

  “Not necessarily,” Roland replied. Now they aimed glares at each other. Montcalm-Gozon looked ready to aim a pistol at Roland as well. The Atlantean did not want to fight the French commander, and not only because he had no idea what would happen in a duel. Even if he won a duel against Montcalm-Gozon, he lost. So it seemed to him, at any rate.

  In icy tones, Montcalm-Gozon said, “You had better explain yourself.”

  “If we take Freetown, you win a grand and glorious victory for France,” Kersauzon said. “Then, very likely, you and your regulars sail away. If the English destroy everything we’ve built up farther south, what good does your grand and glorious victory do us?”

  “They cannot,” the French nobleman said, but with an uncertain edge to his voice.

  “If my soldiers accompany yours, marching away from the enemy invasion, what the devil will stop them?” Roland asked.

  “You are a difficult man.”

  “Only to my enemies…Monsieur.” Roland bowed in the saddle.

  “Will half your men suffice to deal with these raiders?” Montcalm-Gozon inquired after a sour sigh.

  They spent the next twenty minutes haggling, as if Roland were trying to squeeze a few extra sous from the nobleman at the fish market. Montcalm-Gozon finally consented to let Roland have two-thirds of the soldiers he thought his by right anyway. Kersauzon wanted more—he wanted all of them. But he took as many men as he could without pistols at dawn. As you got older, you learned that sometimes you had to be satisfied with less than everything you wanted from life.

  Roland’s men burst into cheers when he told them that most of them would be heading south. They knew as much as he did about what was going on down there—rumors spread like wildfire. He wondered how long it would have been before they started deserting. Not very, unless he didn’t know them. He said nothing to Montcalm-Gozon about the cheers. The young marquis wasn’t deaf. He could hear them, and draw his own conclusions.

  What those conclusions were, he didn’t discuss with Roland. And Kersauzon didn’t ask him, either.

  Messages took their own sweet time traveling from the English and local forces in front of Freetown and Victor Radcliff’s raiders. He was on his own down in the French settlements. By the time he got news and reacted to it, it was badly out of date. And so he didn’t worry—too much—when he heard that the locals and redcoats had fallen back into Freetown. What good did worry do?

  The English lieutenant-colonel in charge of the defense had energy. Remembering another of Victor’s suggestions, he sent a schooner full of men—mostly Atlanteans—down the coast to land behind the French force and waylay the supply wagons coming up to it. For a little while, his letters boasted of the havoc that little band was wreaking. A fine piratical band, he called them, perhaps not knowing that Victor’s branch of the broad and spreading Radcliff(e) tree found nothing fine in piracy.

  Then the English officer’s tone changed. I have not heard from the men sent south for some little while, he wrote, and fear they may have suffered a misfortune. God grant I be wrong.

  Further despatches showed only too clearly that he wasn’t wrong. Something final had happened to the raiders. Victor did worry about them, though he led far more men than the English officer had committed to the secondary raid.

  “They shouldn’t have been snuffed out like that,” he told Blaise. “They were too large a band to be extinguished like a candle with a brass lid over it.”

  “Maybe they run into more men,” the Negro said. “Maybe more men run into they.”

  “‘Them,’” Radcliff corrected absently. “But with all the French fighting men up near Freetown…” His voice trailed off.

  “What you thinking?” Blaise asked.

  Victor didn’t like any of what he was thinking. He heard what the French were doing up in English territory. Of course the enemy would hear what he was doing farther south in Atlantis. And this was their native land, just as the English settlements had spawned his raiders. If Roland Kersauzon decided not to sit back and let Victor’s men ravage plantations down here…If, marching south, he’d brushed aside that schooner’s worth of harassers…

  “I’m thinking we may have more difficulties ahead of us than I looked for a little while ago,” Victor answered.

  Blaise frowned. “What you say?”

  From a man who’d made his first acquaintance with the English language not long before, the question was reasonable. “French soldiers may be moving against us.” Forced to simplify his own thoughts, Victor got a lot into a few words.

  “Ah.” Blaise understood him this time. “What we do?”

  “Good question,” Radcliff replied. He wished he had a good answer, simple or complex. He gave the truth, as best he could see it: “I don’t know yet. Have to find out how many Frenchmen are moving. Can we fight them? Do we have to run? What then?”

  “War here harder than war in Africa,” Blaise said. “More things to think on.”

  Of course. We’re civilized, was Victor Radcliff’s first smug thought. But how civilized was war, no matter how you fought it? Not very, not so far as he could see. “We’ll do the best we can, that’s all,” he said.

  They went on. At the first plantation where the locals didn’t flee fast enough, he stole horses to add to the handful he already had. He sent riders out ahead of his main body, to make sure no suddenly returning French settlers surprised him. All the scouts he chose spoke fluent French. They could—and
would—claim they were refugees if anybody wondered what they were doing riding around the countryside.

  One of them winked at him before setting out. “If I find me a tavernkeeper’s pretty little daughter, I may settle down right where I do,” the man said. “In that case, you’ll never see me again.”

  A military commander of the official—and officious—sort would have thrown a fit. Victor only laughed and said, “Do as you please, Herbert. But if we find the tavern, you’d best believe we’ll burn it down.”

  “God curse you English dogs to the most fiery pits of hell,” Herbert said hotly—his French was fluent indeed. Victor Radcliff laughed again, slapped him on the back, and sent him on his way.

  In the back country, roads had been narrow, rutted tracks through the trees. Some of them probably started as honker trails. Victor knew that was so here and there in the English settlements. As his men pushed into more settled terrain, the roads got wider. The trees were cut back from either side. The ruts remained. If anything, they got deeper and muddier from greater use.

  Parrots with yellow and orange faces squawked at the advancing settlers. Blaise said, “Parrots in Africa, too. These not just like, but close. Make me think of home across sea.”

  “More of them here than farther north, though they come up there, too,” Victor said.

  “C’est curieux,” Blaise remarked, and then, remembering his English, “Strange. Yes, strange. So many things here, there not same. But parrots in this place and in that place.” He smiled, coming up with the right word: “In both places. Why?”

  “Well, there are parrots in Terranova, too,” Victor Radcliff said, “especially in the hot southern parts. Maybe that has something to do with it.” And maybe it doesn’t, he thought. Europe and northern Terranova shared many plants and animals or had similar forms where nothing remotely like them existed in Atlantis. Natural philosophers had spilled barrels of ink trying to explain why. As far as Victor knew, none of them had come close to a satisfactory solution. If they couldn’t agree about why so much of Atlantis’ flora and fauna was so peculiar, he wasn’t likely to find the answer on his own.