"How's that, sir?" the graying English officer asked.
"When there are as many English settlers as French here, no one will want to use this place as a fortress."
"I hope not." The captain didn't sound convinced. Victor wondered why not. And then, all of a sudden, he stopped wondering-he knew. To this Englishman, settlers were settlers, and what blood they sprang from hardly mattered. They were all potential rebels, potential enemies.
Radcliff tried not to bristle in any obvious way. That would only have proved the captain's point for him. I'm as good a subject of King George as you are! Victor wanted to scream it. Screaming it wouldn't have done him any good, though. The captain would have thought he was protesting too much.
Of course, if this fellow and others like him despised settlers simply because they were settlers, wouldn't he make them despise him, too? The odds seemed good.
Blaise was thinking the same thing. "What can you do with such people?" he murmured…in French.
"I don't know," Victor replied in the same language.
"What is that jibber-jabber you're going back and forth in?" The English engineer aimed the question at Victor. "Did you learn this nigger's language so you could talk it without anybody knowing what you're saying?"
"No, you fool!" Victor exclaimed. "It's French! Don't you know French when you hear it?"
"I should hope not." The redcoat sounded proud of his own ignorance. "If it's not English, it's not worth learning."
"Didn't they ram Latin and Greek down your throat?" Victor asked, now taken by surprise.
"Not me." Again, the captain sounded proud. "I came up through the ranks, I did. I'm not one of those rich buggers who got to go to Oxbridge or Camford or one of those fancy places. I'm an officer on account of I'm bloody good at what I do. Don't need any damned foreign languages to know how to build a wall-or how to take one down, either."
"Good God!" Victor said. Some merchants in New Hastings and Hanover were as proud of what they didn't know as this fellow. Victor had always pitied them. The captain, on the other hand, frightened him. "How much do you know about Atlantis?"
"Not bloody much, and I don't care to find out more," the Englishman responded. "Damned place is full of Frenchies and niggers and copperskins. That's all I need to know, isn't it? King George has got to step on it with both feet, and I'm bloody proud to be the toe on one boot."
"I think we better get out of here, Monsieur, before I kill him," Blaise said through clenched teeth-still in French.
Also in French, Victor replied, "You would have to wait in line. I outrank you."
They walked away in a hurry. "That man…That man, he is more dangerous to Atlantis than Roland Kersauzon," Blaise spluttered. "To him, everyone here is a slave. Everyone! Not just me. I don't like when people think I am still slave, but I know why. I am black. In a white man's world, it happens. I understand, even if I don't like. But that man…" He paused again. "To him, you are slave, too. Everybody from Atlantis is slave, as far as he is concerned. Why?" He stopped, breathing hard.
"It's not England," Victor Radcliff said. "How can it be any good if it's not England?" He was joking, and then again he wasn't. If he didn't laugh, he'd burst into tears-or maybe grab the pistol on his belt.
"But you are from England, too," Blaise pointed out.
"Yes, I'm from England. But I'm not of England. My people haven't been of England for three hundred years," Victor said. "Our friend back there-"
"What friend?" the Negro broke in.
"That's what I mean," Victor said. "Our friend back there is of England. Anybody who's not of England is below the salt to him."
He had to explain below the salt to Blaise. Once the Negro understood, he asked, "What about King George? He is of England. Does he think Atlantis is below the salt, too?"
Telling Blaise that George was a third-generation German, and the first sovereign of his dynasty to be fluent in English, struck Victor as a waste of time. It also struck him as sure to confuse the black man. Besides, even though it was all true, Blaise had a perfectly good point. "He's my king, too. I have to hope he remembers that Atlantis and English Terranova and India and the rest of his realm matter as much as England does," Victor said.
"And if he forgets?" Blaise inquired.
Victor did the only thing he could do: he shrugged. He was hardly in a position to tell the King of England what to do, nor did he ever expect to be. "If he forgets…I'll just have to worry about it then."
The closer to Spanish Atlantis Blaise got, the more he muttered under his breath. At last, when Victor came right out and asked him what was on his mind, he explained why: "The French, they have slaves, but only a few really like to have slaves. The Spaniards, most of them like to have slaves."
"They have slaves because they enjoy owning other people, not just to get work out of them-is that what you mean?" Victor asked.
"Yes, sir. That's what I mean." Blaise nodded emphatically. "I still don't talk English so good, so I don't know how to say it right. But that is just exactly what I mean."
"Probably goes a long way towards explaining why the slave rising in Spanish Atlantis was-is-so bad," Victor said.
"Should give the blacks and copperskins guns, help them kill off the Spaniards," Blaise said. "They deserve it."
"We can't do that," Victor Radcliff replied. "The treaty we signed made us promise we wouldn't."
Blaise only looked at him. "And so?" Blaise didn't know much about treaties. He wouldn't have cared if he did. He only knew what he wanted, and how to go about getting it. Next to that, nothing else mattered.
"I can't do anything about it. People know me too well. It would get noticed, and the Spaniards would scream bloody murder. And under the treaty, they'd have a right to." Victor gave Blaise his most severe stare. "You can't do anything about it, either. You're my right-hand man, and people know it. You'd get blamed, and I'd get blamed, and England would get blamed. You can't-you hear me?"
"I hear you." The Negro looked mutinous.
"I'm sorry, Sergeant-by God, I am sorry-but that's an order," Victor said. "If you break it, I won't be able to help you, and I won't even try."
Blaise said something in his own language. Victor didn't ask him to translate. He didn't want to know. They didn't see eye to eye about this. They never would. Coming up to the border was something of a relief-at least it gave Victor something else to think about. Two Spanish soldiers stepped out of the customs post. They glowered at seeing a white man and a black together.
"What do you want?" one of them called in Spanish-flavored French.
"Do you speak English?" Victor answered in his own language.
"No, and I don't want to, either, por Dios." The soldier reverted to his native tongue. His comrade spat in the roadway. "What do you want?" the man asked again. He didn't raise his musket, but he looked as if he wanted to.
Victor wondered what would happen if he said who he was. His raid into Spanish Atlantis had touched off the slave rebellion that still sizzled. Would these Spaniards shoot at him to pay him back for what he'd done to their settlements? He decided he didn't want to find out.
"I am here following my king's orders," he said, which was at least indirectly true. "He wants to make sure that the border between his new realm and yours is quiet and safe and secure."
"Then he shouldn't send out a white man with a mallate," the Spaniard replied. "Nothing is quiet and safe and secure with mallates around."
Blaise said something incandescent in Spanish. Both soldiers at the border post started to raise their guns.
"Don't do that," Victor said, also in Spanish. "You insulted him first. And if you shoot us, you will start a war. Not only that, you will lose it. If you lose it, you will see English law in Spanish Atlantis. Do you want that?"
English law was much easier on slaves than Spanish law was. The border guards knew as much. They lowered the muskets with haste that would have been comical in a setting less grim. Victor Radcliff was lying through his teeth, and he knew it. If England kept slavery as it was in French Atlantis, she would do the same thing here.