United States of Atlantis a-2 Read online

  "No. She wants us to go her way, and she aims to drag us along if we don't care to follow on our own," Isaac Fenner said. "Is that what you have in mind for Atlantis till the end of time, Radcliff? Is that why your forefathers first took folk away from the greedy kings and nobles on the other side of the sea?"

  There were days when Victor Radcliff wished he sprang from a less illustrious family. This was one of those days. People expected things from him because of who his forefathers were. He could have done without the compliment, if it was one.

  "England is the greatest kingdom in Europe. England is the richest empire in the world," he said. "Even if she runs short of her own soldiers, she can buy poor men from the German princes to do her fighting for her. We are… what we are. Can we fight her and hope to win?"

  "Can we bend the knee to her and look at ourselves in the glass afterwards?" Matthew Radcliffe returned. "You are our best hope, coz, but you are not our only hope. We aim to fight with you or without you."

  "Chances with you are better than without you, though," du Guesclin said.

  "They are," Abednego Higgins agreed. "We need a general we can all respect. If anybody in Atlantis fills the bill, you're the man."

  I've never been a general. The protest died before Victor let it out. What Atlantean had? He'd led a good-sized force of soldiers in the field, which put him one up on almost everyone else who opposed England.

  "You gentlemen are mad," he said: one last protest. Uncle Bobby stood up from his chair to bow. "We are, sir. We are," he agreed. "But it's a grand madness. Will you join us in it?"

  Victor looked around. He'd been comfortable here ever since coming home from the war against France and Spain. He'd wanted to live out the rest of his days as a gentleman farmer, not as a man of war. But, if Atlantis called on him, what could he do but answer the call?

  He sighed. "Join you I will. I note that it was our idea, not mine. May none of us ever have cause to regret it."

  "Oh, I expect we will, sooner or later-probably sooner." Abednego Higgins was a man of melancholy temperament. Victor wasn't, or not especially, but he suspected the same thing.

  But then all five men from the Atlantean Assembly crowded around him, pumping his hand and slapping his back and telling him what a lion, what a hero, he was. If he'd believed a quarter of what they told him, he would have been sure he could run every redcoat out of Atlantis by day after tomorrow at the latest. Fortunately-or, odds were, unfortunately-he knew better.

  News from the east came slowly. That was one of the reasons Victor Radcliff had settled where he did. More often than not, he was happier not knowing. His livelihood didn't depend on hearing things before other people could.

  If he was going to take up the sword again, though… "Must you do this?" Margaret asked. She hadn't wanted him going off to fight the French Atlanteans and their overseas reinforcements, either, and they weren't even married then.

  "If I don't, someone else will-and worse," he said. "The set-dements are going to rise up against England. No, they've already risen up, and they won't quiet down till they win or till they're too beaten to fight any more. The redcoats have pulled out of New Hastings."

  The redcoats had pulled out of New Hastings more than two weeks before. He'd only just got the news. That was one of the reasons he needed to travel east. Farming might not depend on the latest news. War did.

  "What difference does it make to you whether King George orders Atlantis about or we make our own mistakes?" his wife demanded.

  "I don't want anyone across the sea telling me how many pounds I owe on this farm," Victor said. "If some Englishman can do that, he can take it away from me, too."

  "So can a honker from New Hastings," Meg retorted. Properly speaking, only people from New Hastings (and perhaps Bredestown) were honkers. Englishmen were in the habit of using the name for-or against-anybody from Atlantis.

  "At least I have some say in what those people decide," Victor said. "London won't pay attention to me. London never pays attention to Atlantis, not unless someone else is trying to take it away… or unless Parliament decides it needs to squeeze money from us."

  "Whether London takes it or we do, the money's gone," Margaret said.

  Victor grunted. "I should like some choice in where it goes. London will use it to pay fat, sweating soldiers to tyrannize over us. Whereas if we spend it ourselves, we'll-"

  "Use it to pay fat, sweating soldiers to keep England from tyrannizing us," his wife broke in.

  He stared at her. Such sarcastic gibes were usually his province. He couldn't even tell her she was wrong, because she was much too likely to be right If Atlantis was to cast off the mother country's yoke, it would need to assume the trappings of other nations. He said the most he felt he could say: "They'll be our soldiers, not redcoats or those German barbarians from Brunswick and Hesse and God knows where."

  "Oh, hurrah," Meg said. "Do you think they'll come cheaper on account of that?" He didn't answer, mostly because he thought no such thing. Understanding as much, Meg gave him a knowing nod. "I see."

  "What would you have me do?" Victor asked. "Tell the gentlemen of the Atlantean Assembly that I've changed my mind and will not fight for them? They will carry on regardless, the only difference being the greater likelihood of their defeat and our subjection."

  "I would have you-" Margaret Radcliff broke off, tears filling her eyes. "What I would have you do doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what Atlantis would have you do. Atlantis would have you carry on till you catch a musket ball in your teeth, and then proclaim you a fallen hero to rally more fools to the cause."

  Again, she was much too likely to know what she was talking "j about. As patiently and calmly as he could, Victor said, "I don't intend to get shot, Meg."

  "Who does?" she retorted. "But the graveyards fill up even so. Died for his country, much too young, the tombstones say. I want you to live for your country."

  "If you think I want anything else, you are very much mistaken," Victor said. "But Atlantis is my country. Shall I pretend I have not got one, or that I care not who rules here?"

  "No-o-o," Meg said slowly, in a way that could mean nothing but yes. Then she sighed a wintry sigh. "It may be necessary, Victor, but that makes it no easier for me."

  "I'm sorry. By God, I am sorry. I wish England weren't doing any of this. I'd like nothing better than to live here in peace and bring in my crops every fall," Victor said. "But life gives what it gives, not what you like."

  He wished he could talk about passing the land down to their children. To say anything along those lines, though, would only dredge up pain older and deeper than any about his marching off to war. Losing children young was hard on men, but harder on the women who bore them.

  They both knew how the argument would end. He would leave the farm and lead whatever armies the Atlantean Assembly scraped together against the ferocious professionals from the mother country. He'd served with those professionals in the war against the French Atlanteans and France and Spain. He knew their virtue, their unflinching courage, their skill. Fighting alongside such men was a pleasure. Fighting against them would be anything but.

  He rode out the next morning. Meg saw him off, biting her lip and blinking against more tears. Blaise's wife seemed no more enthusiastic about his military venture.

  Once out of reach of the farmhouse, Victor asked, "Did you have fun getting ready to go on your way?"

  "Fun?" Blaise rolled his eyes. "I don't know if I would call it that. Stella wanted me to stay right where I was. You know how women are."

  "I have some idea, anyhow," Victor said. "I'd better, after all these years. But the thing needs trying. I don't believe anyone can do it better than I can, and you will help me a great deal. Even with you, I do not know if it can be done. I do know it would be harder without you."

  "I thank you," Blaise said. "I tried to explain this to Stella. 'He needs someone to take care of him,' I said. 'No one can do that better than I c
an,' I told her. She did not want to listen to me. Not even when I talked about freeing the colored folk down in the old French settlements did she want to hear me."

  Victor Radcliff grunted uneasily. Freedom from England for the white man was one thing. Freedom from the white man for the black was something else again. One thing at a time, Victor thought, and rode on.

  Chapter 3

  Hastings struck Victor as old. The first English settlement in Atlantis had more than three hundred years of history behind it now. Next to London or Paris, Rome or Athens, that was but the blink of an eye. Next to anywhere else on this side of the Atlantic, it seemed as one with the Pyramids and the Sphinx.

  The church and some of the buildings nearby dated from the fifteenth century. The church had originally been Catholic, of course. How could it have been anything else, dating as it did from before the Reformation? Anglicanism and sterner Protestant sects predominated in Atlantis these days, but not to the extent they did on the other side of the ocean. England had needed many years to take a firm grip on these settlements. Now, wanting to make it firmer yet, she had a war on her hands.

  Soldiers' encampments dotted the fields outside of town. The men in them wore whatever they would have worn at home. They carried whatever muskets they happened to own. None but a few veterans of the fight against French Atlantis had the faintest conception of military discipline. But they were there-till the terms for which they'd enlisted ran out, anyhow.

  And they were enthusiastic. They cheered Victor whenever he flags: some showed honkers, others fierce red-crested eagles. Real honkers and the eagles that preyed on them-and on men-were rare almost to extinction in this long-settled part of Atlantis. They were growing scarcer everywhere, from what Victor had heard.

  That was the least of his worries. Turning enthusiastic militia-* men into real soldiers was a bigger one. Keeping those militiamen fed well enough to fight might have been a bigger one yet. And dealing with the Atlantean Assembly towered over all of the others.

  It was, Victor supposed, as close to a native government as Atlantis had. But it wasn't very close. Atlanteans had never liked being governed; that was one of the reasons they or their ancestors came to Atlantis in the first place. It was one of the reasons they fought England now. And it was one of the reasons the Assembly was what it was and wasn't anything more.

  It couldn't tax. It could ask the settlements for money to support it and what it did, but couldn't compel them to give it any. It decided things by two-thirds majority vote. If fewer than two-thirds of the settlements voted in favor of any measure, it failed. If two-thirds or more did vote for it, it passed-but still wasn't binding on the settlements whose delegations voted no. It wasn't quite the Polish liberum veto-but it wasn't far removed, either.

  With an organization like that, the Atlantean settlements seriously proposed to beat the greatest empire the world had seen since Roman days. That struck Victor as madness-a glorious madness, maybe, but madness even so.

  It struck Blaise the same way. "You know the English, they are going to fight," he said when he and Victor got settled into their room at an inn not far from the old redwood church.

  "Well, yes," Victor agreed, splashing water from the basin onto his hands and face. Whiskers rasped under his chin. He hadn't shaved coming down from his farm. Unless he was going to grow a beard-something only frontiersmen did in Atlantis-he needed to take care of that. He went on, "We wouldn't have come here if they were just going to sail away."

  "But this Atlantean Assembly… This militia…" Blaise's African accent made the words sound faintly ridiculous. By the way he shook his head, that was the least of how he felt about them. "They are a joke. If they had to decide to go to the privy, they would shit themselves halfway there."

  Victor snorted, not because he thought the Negro was wrong but because he thought Blaise was right. "They're what Atlantis has," he said.

  "I know," Blaise replied. "This is what worries me. Maybe you should go home and not tell the English you were ever here."

  "Too late for that," Victor Radcliff said. "We are going to fight them. The way things are, we cannot avoid fighting them. We have a better chance if I do what I can than if I don't. I had to explain all this to my wife before we set out."

  "I know," Blaise said again. "I had to explain to my wife, too. I know what England has. Now I see what we have. I think I was a fool." He didn't say he thought Victor was a fool; that would have been rude. Whether he thought it or not was a different question,

  "No one is keeping you here against your will. You were a slave in French Atlantis. You are no man's slave now-certainly not mine," Victor said. "If you do not care to be here, you may leave. You may surrender to the English and tell them everything you know. Chances are they'll make you an officer if you do."

  "Thank you, but no," Blaise replied with dignity. "Atlantis is my land, too, now. I do not want to leave it. My roots here are not as old as yours, but they are firm. I want to make this place better if lean."

  Victor Radcliff held out his hand. "In that we are certainly agreed." Blaise clasped hands with him.

  The Atlantean Assembly met in the church, it being the building in New Hastings best suited to containing their number. On Sundays, most of the Assemblymen worshiped there. Some few, from New Hastings and points south, were of the Romish persuasion, and found other ways and places to commune with God as they saw fit. And from Croydon in the north came Benjamin Benveniste, the Assembly's one and only Jew.

  Some people said he was the richest man in Atlantis. Others, more conservative, called him the richest man not a Radcliff or Radcliffe. Benveniste would always laugh and deny everything. Victor didn't know if the Jew was wealthier than some of his own merchant kinsmen. He was sure Benveniste had more money than he did himself.

  "What difference does it make?" Benveniste replied when another Assemblyman asked him just how rich he was. "The more I have, the more others think they can take from me. Wealth is a burden, nothing less."

  The other Assemblyman was from New Grinstead, a backwoods town with not much wealth and not much else. Wistfully, he said, "I'd be a donkey if it meant I could carry more."

  "Chasing money too hard will make an ass of anyone," Benjamin Benveniste said-a shot close to the center of the target.

  "Well, what does that make you?" the other Assemblyman said.

  Benveniste sent him a hooded glance. "A patriot, sir-if you will let me be."

  "We have room for everyone here," Custis Cawthorne said before the man from the backwoods could reply. "Why, look at me- they have even made room for a scurrilous printer. Next to that, what does it matter if you're Christian or Jew or Mahometan?"

  Plainly, several people thought it did matter. None of them felt like antagonizing Cawthorne, though-he could be as scurrilous! in oral debate as he was when setting type.

  "I am able to care for myself, Custis," Benveniste said.

  "I didn't do it for you." Cawthorne sounded surprised. "I did it for Atlantis."

  "Ah." The Jew nodded. "Well, that I have no trouble with."

  By easy stages, the debate drifted around toward formally appointing Victor Radcliff commander of the Atlantean forces in arms against the British Empire. Nothing the Atlantean Assembly did seemed to move very fast. When men from all the settlements came together to protest to the mother country, that was one thing. When they aimed to conduct a war against that mother country, it was liable to be something else again.

  Victor wondered if telling the Assemblymen as much would do any good. He decided it would only put their backs up. He would have to work with them for-how long? Till the war was over, one way or the other. If it was the other…

  "We have to win" Custis Cawthorne said. "If we lose, they will hang us pour encourager les autres. Do I say that correctly, Monsieur

  du Guesclin?"

  "If you mean it ironically, then yes," replied the man from what had been French Atlantis. "Otherwise, you would do better to say
pour deeourager les autres"

  "Getting my neck stretched would certainly discourage me," Cawthorne said, "but I was alluding to the eminent Voltaire's remarks about the reason why the English hanged Admiral Byng."

  Several Assemblymen smiled and nodded. So did Victor Radcliff, who admired Voltaire's trenchant wit. But a storm cloud passed across Michel du Guesclin's darkly handsome features. "Speak to me not of that man, if you would be so kind. He believes not in God nor in the holy Catholic Church."

  "Look around you, Monsieur" Cawthorne advised, not unkindly. "I will not speak of any man's belief in God save my own, and then only with reluctance, but you will find precious few of Romish opinions here in New Hastings."

  "Oh, I understand that. But you are Protestants from the cradle, and so I can partly forgive your views since you know no better," du Guesclin said with what was no doubt intended for magnanimity. "This thing of a Voltaire, however, knows and, knowing, rejects. For this he is far worse. God will have somewhat to say to him when he is called to account."

  "He may render unto God the things that are God's," Cawthorne said. "What we're engaged in doing here is ciphering out how not to render unto Caesar the things Caesar thinks are his." He turned and nodded to Victor. "How do we best go about that. General Radcliff?"

  How many men had gone from major to general while skipping all the ranks in between? Victor couldn't think of many. But Cawthorne's question would have perplexed a man who'd held every one of those ranks-Victor was sure of it. "I have no detailed answer for you, sir, not knowing what the enemy will attempt," he said. "In general, we should do our best to keep him from holding and occupying our leading towns, and not allow him to split Atlantis so he can defeat in detail our forces in the various parts."

  "As always, the Devil is in the detail." Cawthorne's eyes twinkled behind his spectacles, so that he looked like a skeleton pleased with itself. Several Atlantean Assemblymen groaned or flinched at the pun; those who'd missed it looked puzzled. Still smiling slightly, Cawthorne went on, "And they are now strongest at Hanover?"