Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

Liberating Atlantis — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Liberating Atlantis" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...108

Table of Contents

ALSO BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE

The Daimon in Worlds That Werent
Ruled Britannia
In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Days of Infamy
End of the Beginning
Opening Atlantis
The United States of Atlantis

BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE WRITING AS DAN CHERNENKO

The Chernagor Pirates
The Bastard King
The Scepters Return

BOOK I

I

If not for the floorboard that came up at one end, it might all have happened differently. Or it might never have happened at all. How do you measure might-have-beens? Frederick Radcliff never found an answer to that, and the question was in his mind much of the time. Hed never known a slave in whose mind that question had not taken root and flourished.

Frederick Radcliff was a slave himself: a house slave on Henry and Clotilde Barfords plantation, thirty miles outside of New Marseille. He was of middle height, but uncommonly broad through the shoulders. By his complexion, he was somewhere between griffe and mulattohe had more than a quarter white blood in him, but less than half.

He never used his surname where the master and mistress could hear him do it. Legally, the surname didnt belong to him. Legally, nothing belonged to any black or copperskinned slave in the United States of Atlantis. Legally, the whites (and the occasional free blacks and copperskins) who owned them also owned everything that was theirs.

Regardless of what might be legally true, plenty of slaves claimed descent from Radcliffs or Radcliffes. The great white clan, descendants of the English fisherman whod founded the first settlement in Atlantis, had flourished mightily in the four hundred years since. Henry Barford claimed a Radcliffe connection on his mothers side. (Clotilde, ne Delvoie, claimed a Kersauzon connection on her mothers side. The descendants of the Breton fisherman whod led Edward Radcliffe to Atlantis, but whod settled here after him, had also done well for themselves.) The Radcliffs and Radcliffes (and, indeed, the Kersauzons) had been fruitful and multiplied. And they hadnt been shy about lying down with slave women to do it.

After four centuries in Atlantis, some of Edward Radcliffes descendants had flourished more mightily than others, of course. There were Radcliff and Radcliffe drunkards in the gutters of towns all over the USA. There were Radcliff and Radcliffe butchers and bakers and candlestick makersand farmers, always farmers. There were Radcliff and Radcliffe doctors and lawyers and preachers. And there were Radcliff and Radcliffe leaders, as there had always been in Atlantis. More than a quarter of the Consuls whod headed the United States of Atlantis since the War for Freedom were Radcliffs or Radcliffes, and quite a few others had the blood without the name.

Victor Radcliff had commanded the Atlantean Assemblys army in the war against England. After the war was won, he became one of the two First Consuls. (Isaac Fenner, the other, was descended from a crewman on Edward Radcliffes fishing boat.) Every Atlantean schoolboy knew the First Consuls names as well as he knew his own. So did Frederick Radcliff, although slaves, to put it mildly, were not encouraged to acquire an education.

And Frederick Radcliff had a stronger reason to remember the First Consuls names, or at least one of them, than a schoolboys fear of the masters switch.

Victor Radcliff was his grandfather.

So his mother had told him, over and over again. The story was that Victor Radcliff had come down into southern Atlantis to join up with the Marquis de la Fayettes French army, and that Fredericks grandmothers owner lent her to the general so he wouldnt have to sleep in a cold bed. Nine months later, his father was born.

Frederick didnt remember his father. Nicholas Radcliff had died when he was three years old. Hed stepped on a rusty nail outside, and lockjaw set inso Fredericks mother said. Shed been a house slave, too, and taught Frederick what he needed to know so he wouldnt have to go out to the fields and work under the hot sun and the overseers lash.

He knew he lived pretty soft... for a slave. He was friends with the cooksalso slavesso he got plenty to eat. Maybe he didnt dine quite so well as the master and mistress and their children (now married and out on their own), but he knew how the field hands envied his rations. He slept in a bed one of the masters sons had used before him. His bedclothes were ones the white folks had almost but not quite worn out. All that use only made the linen softer. No, not bad at all... for a slave.

But if his grandmother had been white...

No wheedling cooks then. No hand-me-downsno stuff other people didnt want any more, or didnt need. No swallowing his pride to keep from angering people who could do anything they wanted with him, including putting him up for sale like a horse or an anvil. If he were the white grandson of one of the First Consuls of the United States of Atlantis, he would be a rich man. He would be an educated man. People would respect him, admire him, because of who his grandfather was. He might be getting ready to stand for Consul himself. He might already have served a two-year term. Instead...

Instead, he had a meeting with that floorboard. He was never the same afterwards. Neither were the United States of Atlantis.

Henry Barford didnt have many friends. He would hunt with his sons or other neighboring planters every now and then. He would drink with them every now and then, too. Frederick had learned just how much brandy to pour into his coffee the morning after one of those drinking parties. A shot and a half was about right to take the edge off the pain in the masters hair.

Clotilde, now, was social butterfly, not social caterpillar. She was always clattering off in the carriage to visit the neighbor ladies. They gathered to sew or read books together, to stuff themselves with fried chicken or starberry pie, to pour down barrel-tree-rum punch (they didnt drink as hard as their husbands, but there werent many teetotalers among them), and, always, to gossip.

And, when Clotilde wasnt clattering off to visit the neighbor ladies, they were clattering in to visit her. Frederick supposed she made a good guest. He knew she made a good hostess. She was as plump as a pillow and as friendly as a puppyto her equals, anyhow. She wasnt especially hard on the house slaves... not so long as everything went well.

Sometimes only a few neighbor ladies visited the plantation. Three or four times a year, though, Clotilde would invite everybody from miles around. If you were doing well for yourself, you were expected to show off a bit, or more than a bit.

Whenever one of those grand convocations came along, Henry Barford would take a jug and either secrete himself away in an upstairs bedroom or go pay a call on the overseer. The next morning, Frederick would make a point of correcting his coffee.

It was a sultry, sticky summers day. People who knew said the weather in the southeast, on the other side of the Green Ridge Mountains, was even worse. But this was bad enough for all ordinary use.

Frederick woke with the bedclothes sticking to him. In weather like this, he slept bare but for drawers. Helen, his woman, had on only a thin cotton shift. A slave preacher had made a marriage ceremony for the two of themmore than half a lifetime ago nowbut it had no force of law. The Barfords could sell or give away either one of them any time they chose.

Next page

1234567...108

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Liberating Atlantis»

Look at similar books to Liberating Atlantis. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Harry Turtledove

Alternate Generals

Harry Turtledove

Fallout

Harry Turtledove

Joe Steele

Harry Turtledove

Last Orders

Harry Turtledove

Two Fronts

Harry Turtledove

Justinian

Harry Turtledove

Breakthroughs

Harry Turtledove

United States of Atlantis

Harry Turtledove

Opening Atlantis

Harry Turtledove

Fox and Empire

Harry Turtledove

Wisdom of the Fox

Harry Turtledove

Atlantis and Other Places

Discussion, reviews of the book Liberating Atlantis and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.