The United States of Atlantis Read online

  Victor said the only thing he could: “I don’t know.” He blew out the candle he’d carried from the taproom. It was guttering towards an end anyhow. The landlord wasn’t about to waste a quarter of a farthing by giving a customer any more light than he absolutely had to. Darkness fell on the bedchamber like a cloak. Victor fell asleep before he found out whether the mattress held bedbugs—but not before Blaise, whose first snores he heard as darkness came down on them.

  By the time Victor and his colored companion got to Hanover, they were both scratching. One inn or another—or, more likely, one inn and another—had proved buggy. Victor was more resigned than surprised. Blaise was more apt to complain about big things than small ones.

  Hanover was a big thing, at least by Atlantean standards. With about 40,000 people, it claimed to be the largest city in Atlantis. Of course, so did New Hastings, farther south. And so did Freetown, south of New Hastings. Croydon, north of Hanover, also had its pretensions, though only locals took them seriously.

  Down in French Atlantis, Cosquer might have been half the size of the leading English settlement towns. Of course, most of the people who’d flocked there since the end of the war came from one English settlement or another. The same held true for the still smaller St. Denis, south of Cosquer, and for New Marseille, smaller yet, on the west coast of Atlantis. As for Avalon, north of New Marseille, it wasn’t a pirates’ nest any more, but it remained a law (or no law) unto itself. Nobody could say how many people lived there, which suited those who did just fine.

  None of Atlantis’ leading cities would have been anything more than a provincial town in England or on the Continent. Even Terranova to the west, settled later by Europeans, boasted larger human anthills than any here. Of course, the Spaniards, who dominated the richer parts of the western continent, built on the wreckage of what the copper-skinned natives had done before they arrived. Atlantis was different. Atlantis was a fresh start.

  Cross-topped spires dominated Hanover’s skyline. Churches here and farther north were Anglican or belonged to one of the sterner Protestant denominations. Officially, New Hastings and points south were also Anglican. Unofficially, Popery thrived there. The southerly English settlements in Atlantis were a lifetime older than the Reformation. Kings had always had trouble enforcing their will here. Sensible sovereigns didn’t try too hard. Victor’s mouth tightened. George III and his ministers seemed unwilling to stay sensible.

  Along with the spires, masts in the harbor reached for the sky. Some of them were as tall as any church steeple. Not only merchantmen lined the quays, but also English frigates and ships of the line. Redcoats garrisoned Hanover. The locals had, and did not enjoy, the privilege of paying for quartering them.

  When the travelers rode into town, more English soldiers were on the streets than Victor Radcliff remembered seeing since the war. Then, the redcoats and English Atlanteans fought side by side against France and Spain. They were comrades-in-arms. They were friends.

  The redcoats in Hanover neither looked nor acted like friends. Their faces were hard and closed. They carried bayoneted muskets, and stayed in groups. When they went by, locals called insults and curses after them—but only from behind, so the soldiers had a hard time figuring out who’d done it.

  Instead of going straight to his printer, Victor called at the house of Erasmus Radcliff, his second cousin once removed. The Discoverer’s family had flourished mightily in English Atlantis, and no doubt Radcliffs and Radcliffes and other kinsfolk with different surnames were busy helping to turn what had been French Atlantis upside down and inside out. Erasmus, these days, headed the trading firm William Radcliff had brought to prominence a hundred years before.

  He looked like a prosperous merchant: he wore a powdered wig, a velvet jacket the color of claret, and satin breeches. He had manicured hands, an exquisitely shaved face, and a gentleman’s paunch. His eyes were a color somewhere between blue, gray, and green, and as warm as the Atlantic off the northern reaches of Iceland.

  “Yes, it’s very bad,” he said as a servant with the map of Ireland on his face brought in ale and smoked pork for him and Victor—Blaise was taking his refreshments with the house staff. “I always think it can get no worse, and I always find myself mistaken.”

  “Hanover has not the feel of a garrisoned city, as it did when I was here year before last. It has the feel of an occupied city.” Victor raised his mug. “Your health, coz.”

  “And yours.” Erasmus Radcliff returned the compliment. They both drank. Victor praised the ale, which deserved it. Erasmus waved the praise aside. “You would know what occupation feels like, wouldn’t you, from your campaigns in the south? Well, by God, here we find ourselves on the wrong end of it. How dare the Crown treat us like so many Frenchmen?” His voice was soft and mild, which only made the indignation crackling in it more alarming.

  “We cost England money,” Victor answered. “In their way, King George’s ministers are merchants, too. They want to see a return on their investment.”

  “If they so badly want money of us, let them ask our parliaments for it,” his cousin said. “London has no more right to wring taxes from Hanover than Hanover has of taxing London: the difference being that we presume not, whereas London does.”

  “The other difference being that London can put soldiers into Hanover, whereas we cannot garrison London,” Victor said dryly. Erasmus Radcliff’s response to that was so comprehensive, so heartfelt, and so ingenious that Victor stored it away for future reference. But he asked a blunt question of his own: “Dislike it as you will, coz, but what do you propose to do about it?”

  Erasmus sent him a look filled with dislike—and with reluctant respect. “Damn all I can do about it, as we both know too well.”

  “Oh, indeed.” Victor Radcliff nodded. “And since we know it, what’s the point to so much fussing and fuming?”

  “Do you know of the newfangled steam-driven engines they’re using in England to pump water out of coal mines?” Erasmus asked. When Victor nodded, his cousin went on, “They have a valve that opens when the pressure from the steam inside grows too great. Absent this valve, the boiler itself would burst. All Atlantis curses England. By cursing, we harmlessly vent our steam. Did we not, this island might explode. Or will you tell me I’m mistaken?”

  “I’ll tell you you may be,” Victor replied. “For ‘all Atlantis’ does not curse England. Much of Hanover may, but Hanover, however loath you are to hear it, is not Atlantis. It never has been. Please God, may it never be. As things stand, most of Atlantis is content with England, or at least resigned to her. Were it otherwise, the explosion you speak of would have come long since.”

  His cousin seemed even less happy than he had a moment earlier. Erasmus, Victor judged, didn’t care to hear that Hanover and Atlantis weren’t synonymous. Few Hanoverians did. Pity, Victor thought, because it’s true whether they care to hear it or not.

  “That it has not come does not mean it will not come,” Erasmus said at last. “These valves can fail. These steam-driven engines can blow up. I have heard of several such misfortunes. And when they do . . . When they do, Victor, things are never the same afterwards for anyone who chances to stand in the way.”

  Victor eyed him. Was Erasmus hiding a message there? Victor laughed at himself for even wondering. If Erasmus was hiding a message, he was hiding it in plain sight.

  “Way! Make way there!” bawled the teamster atop the brewery wagon. He cracked his whip above the four big, strong horses hauling the cask-filled wain. Then he cracked it again, this time in front of the nose of a man who didn’t step aside fast enough to suit him.

  The man swore, but flattened himself against the side of a building nonetheless. He wore a knife on his belt—who didn’t?—but a man with a belt knife was even more disadvantaged against a bullwhip than against the rapiers some gentlemen still carried to mark their status. You had to be able to judge when picking a fight made sense and when it was only foolishness.


  Victor Radcliff had stepped to one side as soon as the teamster started shouting. The heavy wagon clattered past, iron tires banging and sparking on cobblestones. Puddles from the last rain lingered between the stones and in the holes where a few of them had come up. The wagon wheels splashed passersby, but not too badly.

  A sign hanging above a small shop creaked in the morning breeze. CUSTIS CAWTHORNE, PRINTING AND PERSUASIONS, the neatly painted letters proclaimed. The breeze carried the smells of sea and smoke and sewage: like any other town, Hanover dumped its waste into the closest river, for ultimate disposal in the ocean.

  Manuscript under his arm, Victor ducked inside. A bell over the door jangled. The shop was gloomy inside. It smelled of wood and paper and sweat and ink. A harassed-looking ’prentice fed sheets into a press, one after another. A printer worked the lever again and again. Another ’prentice stacked the newly printed broadsheets.

  Custis Cawthorne watched the work from behind the counter. “There’ll be a mistake somewhere,” the printer said mournfully. “There always is. Perfection, they say, is for the Lord alone. They don’t usually know what they’re talking about, but when it comes to printing I’m persuaded they have a point. . . . And how are you, your Radcliffishness?”

  “I thought I was pretty well, till I set eyes on you,” Victor replied.

  Cawthorne gave back a sepulchral smile. He was tall and thin and stooped, with a fringe of white hair clinging to the sides and back of a formidably domed skull. “You do me too much honor, sir,” he said. “Of course, when it comes to honor I hold with Falstaff, so any honor would be too much. Is that the latest effusion from your goose there under your arm?”

  “Maybe I should pluck you for quills next time—you seem prickly enough and to spare,” Victor said.

  “And here I was going to do you an honor.” Cawthorne stared reprovingly over the tops of his gold-rimmed spectacles. They were of a curious design he had devised himself. A horizontal line across each lens separated weaker and stronger magnifications, so he could read and see at a distance without changing pairs.

  “A likely story,” Victor said. “More likely, you were about to set some libel against me in type.”

  “Oh, any printer from Croydon down to the border of Spanish Atlantis could do that,” Custis Cawthorne said dismissively. “But no—I had something new and interesting and perhaps even important to tell you, and did you want to hear it? It is to laugh.”

  “Go ahead. Say your say,” Radcliff replied. He laughed at himself. “Why should I waste my time encouraging you? You’ll do as you please anyhow. You always do.”

  “ ‘Do what thou wilt’—there is the whole of the law. Or so said a wiser man than I.” Cawthorne might have been—probably was—the wisest man in Atlantis. By mentioning someone he reckoned wiser, he reminded his audience of that truth. “Because you make yourself so obnoxious, I ought not to tell you.”

  “Fais ce que voudrais,” said Victor, who also knew his Rabelais.

  He surprised the printer into laughter by knowing. To hear Custis Cawthorne guffaw, anyone would think him fat and jolly, not a somber-seeming beanpole. Victor didn’t know how he brought forth such a sound from that narrow chest, but he did.

  “I shall do exactly that,” the printer said after guffaws subsided to chuckles. “Hear me, then. When that indifferently written drivel of yours—”

  Victor bowed. “Your servant, sir. Plenty of rope for all the critics to hang themselves.” That was from Rabelais, too.

  “If you were my servant, I’d thump you the way you deserve. As things are, all of Atlantis has that privilege,” Cawthorne said. Before Victor could ask him what he meant, he went on, “Here is the honor I propose giving you: setting your work with the first font of type made on this side of the Atlantic. We not only speak English in Atlantis, we write it and we print it . . . with or without let or hindrance from the so-called mother country.”

  “So-called?” Victor raised an eyebrow. “Your ancestors did not come from England?”

  “There was a Cawthorne aboard the St. George, which you know as well as I,” the printer said. “But a proper mother knows when her offspring is grown and ready to set out on his own. She does not garrison soldiers on him to keep him from leaving home.”

  “If I were an Englishman, I would clap you in irons for that,” Victor said.

  “If you were an Englishman, I would despair of Atlantis,” Custis Cawthorne replied. “But since, by the favor of Providence, you are not, I still have some hope for us. And I also have some hope of turning your manuscript to print without too much butchery along the way. Multifarious as your flaws may be, you do write a tolerably neat hand.”

  “I hope you will not do yourself an injury, giving forth with such extravagant praise,” Victor said.

  “Nothing too serious, anyhow,” Cawthorne said. “And a good thing, too, for a visit to the sawbones is likelier to leave a man dead than improved.”

  He had a point. Doctors could set broken bones and repair dislocations. They could inoculate against smallpox—and, in Atlantis’ towns, they did so more and more often. That scourge still reared its hideous head, but less often than in years gone by. Doctors could give opium for pain, and could do something about diarrhea and constipation. Past that, a strong constitution gave you a better chance of staying healthy than all the doctors ever born.

  Victor doled out such praise as he could: “They do try.”

  “And much good it does them, or their sorely tried patients,” Cawthorne said.

  “Are you done insulting me and physicians?” Victor asked. “Can I make my escape and let you get back to reviling your ’prentices and journeymen?”

  “I do less of that than I like these days,” Custis Cawthorne answered. “Good workers are hard to find. Even bad workers are hard to find. The good ones would sooner set up for themselves, whilst the bad ones try to squeeze more money out of an honest man than they’re worth.”

  “Did some honest man tell you that?” Radcliff asked innocently.

  “Ah! A fellow who fancies himself a wit but overestimates by a factor of two,” the printer said. “You had better go, all right, before I thrash you in a transport of fury.”

  “I’m leaving—and quivering in my boots.” The bell rang again as Victor went out onto the street.

  Custis Cawthorne’s voice pursued him: “If you think you’re quivering now, where will you be in five years’ time?”

  On my farm, working and writing, Victor thought. I hope.

  “More brandy?” Erasmus Radcliff inquired.

  Victor was feeling what he’d already drunk, but he nodded anyway. His cousin poured for both of them with becoming liberality. “Your health,” Victor said, a little blurrily.

  “And yours.” Erasmus drank. “Whew! After the first swallow numbs your gullet, the rest doesn’t taste quite so much like turpentine.”

  “We don’t make it as well as they do in Europe,” Victor agreed. “But it will leave a man wobbly on his pegs, which is a large part of the point to the exercise. We can live with this.”

  “You can, perhaps,” Erasmus Radcliff said. “I find myself compelled to, which is not the same thing. If England treats us unjustly, our only recourse is to refuse intercourse with her, which keeps us from importing anything finer than this . . . firewater, I believe, is the term they use in Terranova. I could easily trade with France or Holland and once again have a source of fine brandy . . . save that the Royal Navy would impound or sink my ships if I presumed to try. This leaves me with nothing to do, nothing whatsoever.”

  “What do you want from me? I can’t change anything about it,” Victor said. “No one in London will listen to me, not to the extent of changing set policies because I ask it. The policy is to squeeze all the revenue England can from Atlantis. It is the same policy England uses wherever she rules.”

  “Yes, I know, but most places have to put up with it, because they needs must buy some large proportion of their necess
ities from the mother country,” his cousin replied. “That is no longer the case with us. We can subsist on our own, and England pushes us toward demonstrating the fact with every ill-advised tax she tries to ram down our throats.” He drained his glass and filled it again. He would be crapulent come morning. Now . . . Now he seemed determined. “What we have here may not always be as good, but we can make do with it.”

  “I suppose so.” Victor also drank more; he couldn’t let Erasmus get too far ahead of him. “Custis Cawthorne said he would print my latest from type cast here in Atlantis, not brought from England.”

  “Yet another example,” Erasmus agreed. He paused, then went on, “You do realize that, if my fellow settlers keep me from trading with England whilst the English prevent me from dealing with anyone else, I shall in due course commence to starve?”

  Victor Radcliff looked around the well-appointed office where they drank. Whale-oil lamps lit it almost as bright as day. Some strange and almost obscene fetish from the South Pacific shared pride of place in a cabinet of curiosities with a bejeweled elephant from India and the mineralized skull of a long-snouted creature from southern Terranova. None of those would have come easy or cheap. Neither would Erasmus’ desk, a triumph of marquetry in multicolored wood.

  “I concede the eventuality, coz, but it does not strike me as imminent,” Victor said.

  “Perhaps not. Then again, I am more fortunate than many in similar straits,” Erasmus replied. “Not everyone has so much to fall back on when times get hard.”

  No sooner were those words out of his mouth than someone started pounding on his front door. The octagonal window in the office rattled in its frame at the insistence of the blows. “That doesn’t sound good,” Victor said.

  “A knock in the nighttime is never good news,” his cousin said, and he could only nod.

  The pounding stopped as abruptly as it had begun. One of Erasmus’ servants brought a plainly dressed man who smelled strongly of horse into the office. “Mr. Mitchell, from Croydon,” the servant said. And so it was: Richard Mitchell was a leading goldsmith in the northern town, and a leading light in the struggle to turn Atlantis against the mother country. His pamphlet called Where Now? was banned wherever the English could seize it.