"If you've ever had any trouble with the word, you hide it marvelously well." Newton shook his head. "I will steer clear of gibes, as I do hope for a serious answer from you. My question is this: if so many capable officers and men leave the Atlantean army, how shall we defend ourselves against some foreign foe?"

"Does foreign war loom on the horizon? If so, against whom?" Stafford asked, adding, "I must confess, the portents have escaped my notice."

"You are being deliberately difficult." Newton sounded severe.

"You are being deliberately hypothetical," Stafford retorted.

"Am I? It could be, but I think not," Newton said. "The army depends on professional soldiers of large experience. If a number of them suddenly leave and must be replaced with less seasoned men, how can it fail to suffer a loss of efficiency-to say nothing of effectiveness?"

"You will not allow the army to be used to reestablish order in the southern states," Stafford said. "This being so, how can it surprise you that soldiers would sooner do what they see as their duty even without army auspices than sit idly by with the blessings of the Ministry of War?"

"Their conception of duty is defective," Newton said.

"I do not for a moment agree with you. But even supposing you are right, so what?" Stafford said.

Leland Newton frowned-scowled, in fact. "I did beg you for the courtesy of a serious response."

"Serious? Sir, I am serious to the point of solemnity," Stafford said. "You must bear something in mind: that your opponents are as much in earnest as you yourself. Their sense of duty may seem defective to you, but it does not seem so to them. They hold to it with as much devotion as you cling to the deluded idea of nigger equality. I know you believe in that, but I am damned if I know how."

He wondered whether Newton would laugh in his face. The other Consul had a firm faith in his own beliefs, and faith every bit as firm that his foes' beliefs were only delusions. After hearing Stafford out, he looked almost comically surprised. "Well, well!" he said, and then, "Upon my soul!"

"Meaning what exactly?" Stafford's voice was dry.

"You really mean what you say," the other Consul blurted.

"I should hope so. I am in the habit of it. Anyone looking at my career would be hard-pressed to doubt it. If you do, I hope I may take the liberty of asking why," Stafford said.

He was surprised in turn when his colleague actually blushed. "I always assumed you were in the habit of saying what your constituents wanted to hear, as most politicians are," Newton said. "That any man of sense could believe some of the things you have said…"

"I am going to say something now that you had best believe: I find your views every bit as repugnant as you find mine. Note, however, that I do not do you the discourtesy of thinking you hypocritical," Stafford said. "I think you are every bit as misguided as you declare yourself to be."

"Thank you… I suppose," Newton said. "Since you then prefer to be judged a knave rather than a fool-"

"No," Stafford broke in sharply. "Someone who thinks you are wrong is not a knave on account of that. He is only someone who thinks you are wrong. Recognizing the difference-not necessarily liking it, but recognizing it-is important."

"Will you tell me you do not think me a knave?" Newton demanded.

Jeremiah Stafford hesitated before answering, which he seldom did. "Personally? No. You have the courage of your convictions," he said at last. "In what you are doing to my section of Atlantis, the effect, intentional or not, is knavish."

"This is my view of your effect on Atlantis as a whole," Consul Newton said.

"Why not say, of slavery's effect? That is what you mean, eh?"

"No. Slavery is altogether knavish, while you are not. Yet you support the infamy nonetheless. Can you not see that this makes you worse, not better?"

Stafford started to tell him he did not find slavery infamous. To Stafford, true infamy was the idea that Negroes and copperskins could presume to be equals. But Consul Newton didn't wait for explanation. Like a banderillero in a bullfight down in Gernika (something Consul Stafford did find infamous, but also something he lacked the power to root out), Leland Newton planted a barb and walked away before his victim could gore him on account of it.

Senator Hiram Radcliffe came from the state of Penzance, north of Croydon. As the English Penzance, its namesake, lay close by Land's End, so the Atlantean town that gave the state its name wasn't far from North Cape, where ocean finally won the battle against land. Penzance held hardly any copperskins or Negroes. Penzance didn't hold all that many whites, and the ones it did hold were of an uncommonly independent streak. To say they didn't approve of chattel slavery would have been putting it mildly.

And so Consul Newton thought he would be glad to see Senator Radcliffe. He had no idea from which branch of the founding clan the Senator sprang; only a genealogist could keep them all straight. That didn't matter, anyway.

Whichever branch Hiram Radcliffe sprang from, he looked nothing like the most famous modern member. Where Victor Radcliff had been tall and lean, his distant cousin had a short, well-upholstered frame and some of the most ornate whiskers the Consul had ever seen: his muttonchops grew into his mustache, but he shaved his chin-or rather, chins.

"Consul, what do you propose to do about the slave rising?" Senator Radcliffe asked, at the same time sending up clouds of pungent smoke from his pipe.

"Why, just what I have been doing," Newton answered. "I propose to keep the Atlantean government from pulling the southern states' chestnuts out of the fire for them." The image had traveled across the sea from England. The only chestnuts growing in Atlantis were a few ornamentals, likewise imported. The land had none native to it, nor any other broad-leafed trees.

More smoke came up from Radcliffe's pipe. "That's what I thought," he said, and then, amplifying, "That's what I was afraid of."

"Afraid of?" Leland Newton didn't dig a finger into his ear to try to make it work better, but he caught himself barely in time to stop the motion. "Why do you say that?"

"On account of it's true," Radcliffe answered. "Yes, the slaves have their grievances. Lord knows I understand that. But it's still a damned uprising, Consul. They're burning and ravishing and killing. New Marseille doesn't seem able to put 'em down, and brush-fires are breaking out in some of the other southern states."

"That is the point of the business, is it not?" Newton said. "The rebels are being as moderate as their circumstances permit. Even accounts from their foes-the only accounts we have, remember-admit as much. They seem to aim to set up a colored republic of their own."

"And what will they do with the white folks caught inside it?" Radcliffe asked. "Treat them the way they've been treated themselves, for all these years? That's how it looks right now."

"What if it is?" Consul Newton returned. "Can you deny the justice in such a turn of fate?"

"You can't make your own cause just by murdering or tormenting folks on the other side."

"Even when they've been doing the same to you since time out of mind?"

"Even then," Hiram Radcliffe said stubbornly. "One reason I want a national army down there is to get between the rebels and the militias trying to do unto them. If the uprising stops, maybe we can get around to talking sensibly about what made it start in the first place."

"Good luck! Meaning no disrespect, sir, but you will need it," Newton said. "Expecting a southern white to talk sensibly about slavery is like expecting the sun to rise in the west. You may if you so desire, but you will be doomed to disappointment."