Free Liberating Atlantis by Harry Turtledove Page B

once they settled down to work. Part of him hoped the same thing: the part that had lived a quiet, pretty easy life all the way up into middle age. Well, his life wasn’t quiet or easy any more. By all the signs, it never would be again. And if it wouldn’t, why not act the way Sam-son had in the Philistines’ temple? What did you have to lose?
    He worked for a while, chopping and moving forward, chopping and moving forward. By now he had no trouble keeping up with the slaves working the rows of cotton to either side of him. He methodically weeded till Matthew came along to see how he was doing.
    “Going all right, Frederick?” the overseer asked.
    Frederick straightened and stretched, though he kept both hands on the hoe handle. “Not too bad, sir.”
    “Back easing up?”
    “A bit.” Frederick stretched again.
    Matthew nodded, more to himself than to the Negro in front of him. “Told you it would. Whippings are like that.”
    Yes, he thought of them as nothing more than a rather unpleasant part of plantation routine. And so they were—if you held the whip. If you were on the other end . . . Frederick’s hands tightened.
    Some of what was going through his mind must have shown on his face at last. “You don’t want to look at me that way,” Matthew warned. “You don’t want to look at me that way, by God!” He started to raise the switch, then seemed to realize it wouldn’t be enough. He dropped it and grabbed for his knife instead.
    Too late. Frederick swung the hoe in a deadly arc, an arc powered by a lifetime’s worth of smothered fury. Smothered no more. The heavy blade tore away half the overseer’s face. Blood gouted, astoundingly red in the bright sunshine. Matthew let out a gobbling shriek. The knife fell in the dirt as he clapped both hands to the ghastly wound.
    He tried to stagger away from Frederick. Frederick hit him again, this time from behind. The heavy hoe blade bit into Matthew’s skull. The overseer crumpled. He thrashed on the ground. Frederick hit him one more time. The thrashing slowed, then stopped. The white man’s blood soaked into the thirsty soil.
    The slaves working to either side of Frederick gaped at him in commingled astonishment, horror, and awe. “Lord Jesus!” one of them burst out. “What did you go and do that for?”
    “We’re all in trouble now!” the other one added. He stared at Matthew’s huddled corpse. “Big trouble, I mean.”
    “Not if we grab those guns in the wagons,” Frederick answered, more calmly than his drumming heart should have let him speak. “Not if we make all the white folks pay for what they’ve done to us.”
    Matthew’s dying cries made more Negroes and copperskins hurry over to see what was going on. They all eyed the overseer’s bloody corpse with the same look of disbelief, as if they’d never dreamt they might see such a thing. And yet how many of them would have wanted to slaughter him themselves?
    “They’re gonna kill you,” a copperskin said. A moment later, he mournfully added, “They’re gonna kill all of us.”
    “They will if we let ’em,” Frederick said. “So let’s not let ’em. Let’s do some killing of our own—as much as it takes till we’re free the way we’re supposed to be. The United States of Atlantis are so damned proud of their precious Proclamation of Liberty. But they reckon it stops with white folks. Don’t you think mudfaces and niggers deserve their share, too?”
    He waited, still clutching the gore-spattered hoe. Their other choice was to kill him now. If they did that, they might convince Henry Barford they hadn’t had anything to do with murdering Matthew. They might. Or the planter might decide they had had something to do with it, and were using Frederick’s death to cover their own guilt.
    Or Barford might be down with the yellow jack himself by now. The way things were going, nobody could guess anything he couldn’t see.
    “Do you want to stay slaves the rest of your