United States of Atlantis

Chapter 9

Victor Radcliff admired his splendid new sword. The blade was chased with silver, the hilt wrapped in gold wire. The Atlantean Assembly had given it to him in thanks for his winter campaign that-briefly-brought the rebels back to the sea.

Blaise admired the weapon, too. "You going to fight with that?" he asked.

"I can if I have to," Victor said. "They gave it to me as an honor, though, and because it's worth something."

How much that last would matter was anyone's guess. Yes, if things went wrong he might be able to eat for several months on what he got from selling the sword. But, if things went wrong, odds were the English would catch him, try him for treason, and hang him. What price fancy sword then?

Blaise changed the subject: "Not going to snow any more, is it?"

"I don't think so," Victor answered. "Can't be sure, not here, but I don't think so." The west coast of Atlantis, warmed by the Bay Stream (Custis Cawthorne had christened the current in the Hesperian Gulf), already knew springtime. The lands on the east side of the Green Ridge Mountains had a harsher climate.

"By God, I hope it isn't!" The Negro shivered dramatically. "I never knew there was such a thing as cold weather, not like you get here." He shivered again. "The language I grew up talking, the language I talk with Stella, has no word for snow or ice or hail or sleet or blizzard or anything like that. In Africa, we didn't know there were such things. Frost? Frostbite? No, we never heard of them."

"Spring seems better after winter," Victor said. Blaise, who'd grown up in endless summer, looked unconvinced. Victor tried again: "And winter has its advantages. Do you like apples?" He knew Blaise did.

"What if I should?" Blaise asked cautiously.

"Apple trees will grow where there's no frost. They'll flower, but they won't bear fruit. They need the frost for that. So do pears."

Blaise considered. "If I had to give up apples or give up snow, I would give up snow," he said. "What about you?"

"Well… maybe."' Victor had seen lands without snow. It rarely fell on Avalon, and never on New Marseille. But he didn't hate cold weather the way Blaise did. "Depends on what you're used to, I suppose. I wouldn't want it hot and sticky all the time-I know that."

"Neither would I. It should be hot and dry sometimes," Blaise said. "One or the other was all I knew till I came here."

"Before long, it will be hot and sticky again," Victor said. The Negro nodded and smiled in anticipation.

They could talk about the weather forever without doing anything about it. One of the reasons to talk about the weather was that you couldn't do anything about it. Before long, Victor would have to decide what he could do about the English invaders. Even now, they might be trying to decide what to do about him.

He stepped out of his tent. Blaise followed. Everything was green, but then everything in Atlantis was green the year around unless covered in snow or imported from Europe or Terranova. Fruit trees and ornamentals did lose their leaves. Along with rhymes and songs, they let Atlanteans imagine what winters were like across the sea.

Greencoats marched and countermarched. They would probably never grow as smooth in their evolutions as the professionals they faced, but they were ever so much better than they had been.

A robin perched in a pine burst into song. Englishmen said Atlantean robins behaved and sang just like the blackbirds they knew back home. Atlantis had birds the people here called blackbirds, but they weren't much like Atlantean robins-or the smaller, redder-breasted birds that went by the same name in England, or even English blackbirds. It could get confusing.

The war could get confusing, too. Both sides had got some unpleasant surprises the first year. Victor hadn't imagined King George's government would send so many men to Atlantis, or that they would secure the coast from Croydon down to New Hastings. And General Howe hadn't looked for the kind of resistance the Atlanteans had put up. So deserters assured Victor, anyhow.

He wondered what Atlantean deserters told the English general. That Atlantean paper money lost value by the day? That morale went up and down for no visible reason? That equipment left a lot to be desired? All true-every word of it.

But if the deserters told Howe the Atlantean army didn't want to fight, he had to know they were liars. They couldn't match the redcoats' skills or their stoicism, but they didn't lack for spirit.

And how were the English soldiers' spirits these days? Victor's best measure of that was also what he learned from deserters. If what the Englishmen who came into the Atlanteans' lines said was true, their countrymen were surprised and unhappy the war had gone on this long. Before they crossed the ocean, their officers told them they would put down the rebellion in weeks if not days.

Radcliff discounted some of what he heard from them. They had to be discontented, or they wouldn't have deserted in the first place And they wouldn't have been human if they didn't tell their captors what they thought the Atlanteans wanted to hear.

Still, he did think they were having a harder time than they'd expected. He wanted them to go on having a hard time. If they had a hard enough time for long enough, they would give up and go home.

Or they might decide they weren't doing enough and send in more soldiers. As far as Victor knew, the mother country was righting nowhere else at the moment. England had more men than Atlantis. She could raise more troops-if she had the will.

And if she stayed untroubled elsewhere. Victor wondered how Thomas Paine was doing among the English settlements of northeastern Terranova. If those towns and their hinterlands also rose in rebellion, King George's ministers wouldn't be able to focus all their attention on-and send all their redcoats to-Atlantis.

If Paine had turned the Terranovan settlements all topsy-turvy, word of it hadn't come back to Atlantis. Victor shook his head after that thought crossed his mind. Word of whatever Paine was doing hadn't reached him. That wasn't necessarily the same as the other. News crossed the Green Ridge Mountains only slowly. And, if Terranova did have trouble, word of it might have reached English officers in Croydon or Hanover or New Hastings without spreading any farther. Those officers certainly wouldn't want him to find out.

He pulled a small notebook and pencil from a waistcoat pocket. More spies in cities-Paine? he scribbled. One of these days, if and as he found the time, he would do something about that or tell off someone else to do something about it.

He started to put the notebook away, then caught himself. He jotted another line: Copperskins around Atlantis? He'd heard next to nothing since sending his hundred men against the Terranovan savages the English had landed south of Avalon to harry the west coast.

If anyone on this side of the mountains knew more about that than he did, it was his distant cousin, Matthew Radcliffe. Victor sent a rider off to the Atlantean Assembly with a letter for him.

The man came back a few days later with a letter from Matthew. My dear General-I regret to state I can tell you nothing certain, the Assemblyman wrote. Only rumor has reached me: or rather, conflicting rumors. I have heard that our men have routed the Terranovan

barbarians. Contrariwise, I have also heard that the copperskins have

slaughtered every Atlantean soldier sent against them, afterwards denuding the corpses of hair and virile members as souvenirs of their triumph. Where the truth falls will, I doubt not, emerge, but has yet to do so. I remain, very respectfully, your most obedient servant. His signature followed.

"Drat!" Victor folded the letter as if washing his hands of it.

"Is the news bad, General?" Like any messenger, the fellow who'd brought the letter wanted to be absolved of its contents.

"Bad?" Victor considered. He had to shake his head. "No. The principal news is that there is no sure news, and that is bad-or, at least, I wished it to be otherwise."

"What can you do about it?" the man asked.

Victor Radcliff considered again. He could go himself to investigate… if he didn't mind entrusting command in the vital eastern regions to someone else. He could send someone he trusted to see what was going on around Avalon… if he didn't mind depriving himself of that man's services for some weeks. Or he could simply wait to see which rumors proved true.

Had any of the rumors Matthew Radcliffe cited been that the Royal Navy was about to try to seize Avalon, he would have dispatched someone on the instant to investigate. As things were… With a sigh and a shrug, he answered, "I believe I shall await developments, both in the west and here. I do not think I'll need to wait long in either case."

Salty pork sausage, hard bread, and coffee enlivened with barrel-tree brandy-not the worst breakfast Victor Radcliff had ever had. As far as he remembered, his worst breakfast was some raw pine nuts and a roasted ground katydid. The flightless bugs grew as big as mice. You could eat them if you got hungry enough, and Victor had.

Atlantis hadn't had any rats or mice till they crossed the Atlantic with the first settlers. Now they were as common in towns and in farms as they were back in England. Away from human settlement, the pale green katydids still prevailed.

As he had more than once before, Victor wondered why Atlantis had no native viviparous quadrupeds but bats. England and Europe did; so did Terranova. Yet Atlantis, which lay between them in the middle of the ocean, didn't. It was as if God had arranged a special creation here.

Many of His former productions were far scarcer than they had been when Edward Radcliffe came ashore in 1452. Englishmen who felt unfriendly called Atlanteans honkers. Yet the great flightless birds were extinct in settled country east of the Green Ridge Mountains. They were rare anywhere east of the mountains, and growing scarce in the wilder west, too.

The same held true for the great red-crested eagles that had preyed on them-and that also didn't mind preying on people and sheep. Atlantis used the red-crested eagle to difference its flag from England's, but the bird itself was seldom seen these days.

Oil thrushes, though less drastically reduced than honkers or eagles, were less common than they had been. Few eastern farmers found enough of them to render them down for lamp oil. The first settlers' tales said that had been a common practice.

Along with people, the oil thrushes had to worry about foxes and cats and wild dogs these days. Even in the woods, there were more and more mice. Oak and ash and elm and nut trees grew in the woods, too, while deer roamed where honkers had.

Taken all in all, Atlantis became more like Europe year by year. Victor resolved that it wouldn't come to resemble Europe in one way: it wouldn't supinely submit to rule from a tyrannical king. If General Howe didn't understand that…

"General! Oh, General!"

When somebody called for him like that, Victor knew the news wouldn't be good. He wished he'd poured more brandy into the coffee. He still could… but no. He gulped a last mouthful of sausage. For a second, it didn't want to go down; he felt like a small snake engulfing a large frog.

Then it headed south and he stepped out of his tent. "I'm here," he called. "What is it?"

"Well, General, now we know how come the redcoats ain't come after us even with the weather getting good and everything," the courier replied. He'd dismounted and was rubbing his blowing horse.

"Perhaps you do. If so, you have the advantage of me," Victor said. "If you would be so good as to share your enlightenment…"

"Sure will." The man went on rubbing down the horse. "There you go, boy… The redcoats… Well, the truth of it is, most of the bastards in New Hastings climbed into ships and sailed away."

"Sailed away where?" Victor demanded. "To Hanover? To Croydon? Back to England?" If it was back to England, they'd won the war… hadn't they?

"Nope. None of them places," the courier said. "Word is, the ships they were on sailed south."

"South? To Freetown? To the settlements we took away from France?"

"General, I'm mighty sorry, but I don't know the answer to that," the man replied. "I don't believe anybody does, except the damned Englishmen-and they didn't tell anybody."

"Too bad!" Victor Radcliff said. More often than not, somebody blabbed to a whore or a saloonkeeper or a friend. Maybe someone had, but the courier hadn't got wind of it. Then something else occurred to Victor: "How big a garrison did they leave behind?"

"Not too big," the courier said. "And if we try and take New Hastings away from them, what happens wherever they are heading farther south?"

That question had claws as sharp as those of any red-crested eagle. "Are they taking the war into the old French settlements? If they seize tight hold of those, can they move up against us the way Kersauzon did?" Do I want to find out? He knew he didn't.

"General, how in blazes am I supposed to know that?" The man who'd brought the news sounded reproachful.

Victor couldn't blame him. He didn't know the answer himself. He only knew England had widened the war, and he'd have to find some way to respond. He muttered under his breath. One more thing he didn't know was how the still largely French population of the southern settlements would react when English and English Atlantean armies started marching and countermarching down there.

Many French Atlanteans resented England for taking their settlements away from King Louis and bestowing them on King George. But they also resented English Atlanteans for swarming down into their lands and grabbing with both hands after the conquest. And, of course, settlers from England and France had been rivals here since the long-vanished days of Edward Radcliffe and Francois Kersauzon.

Other related questions bubbled up in Victor's mind. How much would the whites-French and English alike-in the southern settlements resent the redcoats if General Howe tried to weaken slavery down there? How much help would he get from the enslaved Negroes and copperskins in the south if he did?

And what would France do when a large English army started traipsing through lands that had been French less than a generation before? Maybe nothing, but maybe not, too. Even though France had lost settlements in Atlantis, in Terranova, and in India, she'd recovered from the late war remarkably well. If she wanted to resent English incursions, she could.

Or am I letting hope run away from reality? Victor wondered. He couldn't judge what France was likely to do. He could think of three men from the Atlantean Assembly who knew more about that than he did: Isaac Fenner, Custis Cawthorne, and Michel du Guesclin.

The courier said, "You look like you just had a good idea, General."

"Do I?" Victor Radcliff shrugged. "Well, I can hope so, anyway."

Deliberating in a three-hundred-year-old church in a town of respectable size, the Atlantean Assembly made people who saw it in action think of the English Parliament that had treated Atlantis so shabbily.

Deliberating in a chamber that was half a tavern's common room and half a tent run up alongside to give more space, in a hamlet with the illustrious appellation of Honker's Mill, the Assembly seemed oddly diminished. The men were no less eloquent, the issues they debated no less urgent. But their setting made them seem no more than farmers gathered together to grumble about the way life was treating them.

New Hastings was a city. Honker's Mill would never be anything but a village. The honkers that had helped name it were long gone. The stream that powered the gristmill was too small to float anything more than a rowboat. The road that crossed the stream went from nowhere to nowhere. As far as Victor was concerned, it went through nowhere traversing Honker's Mill.

Isaac Fenner had got word of General Howe's movement south before Victor brought it. That encouraged Victor; the Assembly needed to know what was going on if it was to make sensible decisions. To have a chance to make sensible decisions, anyhow, Victor thought cynically. Even knowing what was going on, some Atlantean Assemblymen hadn't the vaguest idea what to do about it.

But Fenner wasn't of that ilk. The clever redhead from Bredestown nodded when Victor told him what was on his mind. "General Howe doesn't expect his move to stir up the French- else he'd not have done it," Fenner said. "Of course, that doesn't necessarily prove he's right."

"What can we do to help make him wrong?" Victor asked. "If we fight with France on our side, we're much better off than we are fighting alone."

"We've already done some of what we need. We've stayed in the field against England," Isaac Fenner answered. "We've shown we're an army, not a rabble that melts away when things turn sour. Your winter raids went a long way toward proving that: we didn't vote you your fancy sword for nothing."

"I'm glad to hear it." Victor touched the gold-wrapped hilt for a moment. "The French will have heard of this, then?"

"Rely on it," Fenner told him. "Even though they no longer have settlements here, they are well informed as to what transpires in these parts. And they will also know of Howe's incursion."

"Capital! This being so, how do we cast the incursion in the worst light possible?" Victor asked.

Isaac Fenner smiled at the way he phrased the question. "I know the very man to do it, provided we can get him to France. You will, I daresay, be better able to judge the likelihood of that than I."

"And this nonpareil would be…?" Victor asked.

"Why, Master Cawthorne, of course." Fenner seemed disappointed he couldn't see that for himself. "Imagine Custis in Paris. A man should not have to enjoy himself so much, even for the sake of his country."

Victor chuckled. "Yes, I can see how he might have a good time there. The other question is, how will the French receive him? If he is but one more English Atlantean to them, I judge him to be of greater value here."

"Oh, no, General, no." Fenner shook his head. "If any of us has a reputation in Paris, Custis is the man, in part for his printing, in part for his dabbling in natural philosophy, and in part because they reckon him a delightful curmudgeon, if you can imagine such an abnormous hybrid."

"Well, then, to Paris with him," Victor said. "He may lose some dignity coming to France in a fishing shallop or a shallow-draught smuggler, but I expect he'll be able to make up for that."

"I should be astounded if you were mistaken." Isaac Fenner smiled again, this time in a distinctly lickerish way. "The pretty women of Paris will greet him with open arms-and, I shouldn't wonder, with open legs as well."

Victor Radcliff sighed. "You remind me how long I've been away from Meg."

"We are all having to do without companionship, or to make do." By the way Fenner said it, he hadn't always slept alone. Since Victor hadn't, either, he couldn't very well reproach the other man. But he did miss his wife. Relief was not the same thing as satisfaction. Fenner went on, "If a fourth part of what I hear is true, General Howe has made do quite well. I shouldn't wonder if he's sailing south not least because he's gone through all the willing women of New Hastings."

"He does have that reputation," Victor agreed. "So did General Braddock, and deservedly so. I will say, that had no part in Braddock's failure and death south of Freetown. And General Howe has fought better than I wish he would have, regardless of his lechery."

"A pity," Fenner said, and Victor nodded. The Assemblyman from Bredestown went on, "I have heard he left behind only a very small garrison. Is that also your understanding?"

"Not a large one, certainly," Victor replied. "As we shall move south after him come what may, I assure you I purpose investigating the situation in New Hastings. If we can recapture it, that will mark a heavy blow against England-far heavier than when we reclaimed Weymouth during the winter."

"New Hastings is and always has been Atlantis' cradle of freedom," Fenner said seriously. "For it to groan no more under the spurred boot of tyranny would be wonderful. I should greatly appreciate anything you can do toward that end, I assure you."

If you help me, I'll help you. Isaac Fenner wasn't so crass as to come straight out and say that. He got the message across all the same

"I'll do what I can," Victor said. "I understand why you don't care to have the Atlantean Assemblymen continue meeting here in Honker's Mill."

"Oh, my dear fellow, you couldn't possibly! You haven't been here long enough. On brief exposure, this place is merely stifling Not until you've had to endure it for a while does it become truly stultifying. Boredom dies here… of boredom."

"Heh," Victor said, though he didn't think Fenner was joking. "I wonder what Cawthorne and du Guesclin think of Howe's incursion."

"In my opinion," Fenner said sagely, "they'll be against it."

And so they were. Michel du Guesclin couldn't have opposed it more vigorously had he rehearsed for a year. "Bad enough to have English Atlantean settlers on what was French soil," he said. "Worse to have so many English ruffians tramping through as if they owned the countryside."

"Urn… King George believes he does. He believes he has since the end of the last war" Victor pointed out.

Du Guesclin waved his words aside. "What can you expect from a German?" he said. "A blockhead, a stubborn blockhead- his Majesty the King of England is assuredly nothing more."

"Assuredly, his soldiers will arrest you for treason if they hear you saying such things," Victor reminded him.

"I doubt you shall inform on me," du Guesclin said, which was true.

"You believe, then, that the French settlers are more likely to resist the redcoats than to oppose an army mostly made up of English Atlanteans?" Victor said.

Michel du Guesclin nodded. "I do. I believe this to be especially probable if the soldiers from England show an inclination to interfere with the institution of servitude as it is practiced there."

"I see." That had already crossed Victor's mind. How much would Howe care? How much help would he get from the Negroes and copperskins in the southern settlements if he interfered with slavery? Those were questions easier to ask than to answer. Victor found another one of a similar sort, and asked it anyway: "What about the settlers from English Atlantis who moved south after the last war?"

Du Guesclin's shrug was peculiarly Gallic. "There, I fear, you would be better able to judge than I. Being one yourself, you will naturally have a better notion of the English Atlanteans' desires than I ever could. If I might venture to predict, however-"

"Please do," Victor broke in. "I highly value your opinion."

"Thank you. Very well, then. My guess is that some will favor the German dullard on the English throne while others will oppose him, as seems true here farther north. If General Howe should move against slavery, he will make more enemies than friends among the English Atlanteans. Many of them, after all, moved south in hopes of acquiring a plantation."

Did his lip curl ever so slightly? Victor Radcliff wouldn't have been surprised. The plantations English Atlanteans wanted to acquire would have been made by French Atlanteans who died during the last war, whether in battle or from disease. A lot of them would have left widows but no heirs. Not all those widows were too fussy to look down their noses at vigorous Atlanteans of English blood, either.

"One more question, if I may," Victor said. Du Guesclin regally inclined his head. He looked down his nose at English Atlanteans, though he tried not to show it most of the time. Victor went on, "How will France respond to this latest English move?"

"Frenchmen from France are proud they were not born in distant settlements. I must tell you. Monsieur le General, that I am equally proud I was not born in France," du Guesclin replied. "I do not know what goes on there, especially with this new young king. France will do whatever she does. It may prove wise or foolish. It will prove to be in what she imagines to be her interest. Custis Cawthorne, I suspect, would make a better-certainly a more dispassionate-judge than I."

"I was going to speak with him anyway," Victor said. "Thanks to your advice, I'll do it now."

It wasn't easy to live well in a place like Honker's Mill. Even the locals had trouble managing it. Oh, they mostly stayed dry and they seldom went hungry, but animals in the forest could match that. So could the inhabitants of backwoods towns all over Atlantis.

Even in Honker's Mill, Custis Cawthorne lived well. He smoked the mildest pipeweed. He ate the finest poultry and beef and mutton. He drank the smoothest barrel-tree rum, the best ale, the finest wine brought up-by whom? at whose large expense? not his, assuredly-from the south. He enjoyed the companionship of not one but two of the prettiest women for miles around.

"How do you do it?" Victor asked when one of those women- the younger, a buxom blonde-admitted him to Cawthorne's presence

"If you are going to live, you should live" Cawthorne declared. "It probably sounds better in Latin, but it's just as true in English. What can I have Betsy bring you? Don't be shy-I've got plenty."

"Ale will do. I want to keep my head clear." Victor didn't say anything about whatever Cawthorne was drinking. He knew from experience that the printer wouldn't have listened to him if he had. Betsy smiled provocatively as she handed him the mug. With some regret, Victor declined to be provoked. He saluted Cawthorne. "Your health."

"And yours. God save the general!" Cawthorne could be provocative, too, even if less enjoyably than Betsy. After drinking, he inquired, "And what is the general's pleasure?"

"One of the things I desire to know is your view of the French view of the English incursion into the former French settlements there." Victor smiled at his own convoluted phrasing.

"I can't imagine that Paris will be delighted," Custis Cawthorne answered. "Nor is it in our interest that Paris should be."

Victor nodded. "Isaac Fenner said the same thing."

"Did he?" Cawthorne sounded less than pleased. "So I am doomed not to be original, then?"

Ignoring that, Victor went on, "He also said you were the right man to ensure that Paris was not delighted, and to incite the French against England if that be at all possible. How would you like to sail east and try your luck along those lines?"

"Fenner said I was the right one to go to France? Not himself?" Cawthorne asked. Victor nodded again. The printer let out a rasping chuckle. "Well, in that case I must beg his forgiveness for the unkind thoughts about him that just now went through my mind. Paris! I would be smuggled there, I suppose, disguised as salt cod or something else as tasty and odorous?"

"It's likely, I fear," Victor admitted. "We are not going to be able to challenge the Royal Navy on the high seas any time soon."

"So long as I make myself into a stench in the nostrils of King George, I shan't complain overmuch," Cawthorne said. "I doubt not that one of my ancestors was a fisherman. Precious few Atlanteans whose families have been here a while and can't claim that."

"I certainly can," Victor said.

"Radcliffe. Radcliffes." Custis Cawthorne pronounced the e that should have stayed silent. "If not for you people, we'd probably all be speaking Breton or French or Basque or something else no one in his right mind would care to speak."

"It could be." Victor hadn't much worried about that. "Get ready to leave Honker's Mill. Get ready to sail. I shall make arrangements to take you out of Atlantis by way of some port or another the English aren't watching too closely-maybe even New Hastings."

"New Hastings, eh? Do you think so?" Behind his spectacle lenses, Cawthorne's eyes were keen. "So you will be moving south after General Howe, will you? I thought as much. You can't just let him have the south, or we may never see it again."

"That did occur to me, yes," Victor said. "News travels fast. You and Isaac have both heard of Howe's move, while I wondered if I was bringing word of it here."

"News travels fast," Cawthorne agreed, a touch of smugness in his voice. It traveled fast when it came anywhere near him-not because he'd produced a newspaper but because he was who he was. Draining his mug of ale, he added, "I shall have to give Betsy and Lois something to remember me by."

"They aren't likely to forget you," Victor said.

"True," Cawthorne said, more than a touch of smugness surfacing now. "I hope I shan't forget them. French popsies are enough to make a man forget everything but his last name-and, if he's lucky, his wallet."

"I shall rely on your superior experience there," Victor told him.

"Get your hands on a French popsy, and I guarantee you a superior experience," Custis Cawthorne replied.

"Enough!" Victor said, laughing. He switched to French to ask, "Does your wit work in this language as well?"

"By God, I hope so." Custis Cawthorne had a better accent than Victor did. He actually sounded like a Parisian, where Victor talked like a French Atlantean settler, which would have left him seeming a back-country bumpkin if he ever had to present himself at Versailles.

He smiled at the unlikelihood of that. English Atlanteans sounded like bumpkins to the aristocrats commanding regiments of redcoats, too. Of course, so did most of the aristocrats' own soldiers, so things evened out.

Cawthorne's other… friend-Lois, yes: a statuesque brunette-grabbed Victor's sleeve as he was about to leave. "Are you going to take Custis away from us?" she demanded.

"Atlantis needs him," Victor said gravely.

Atlantis was not configured to do what she told it to do. As far as Victor knew, neither was anything else. "Betsy and me, we don't want him to go away," Lois said. "We never had fun like this before he came to Honker's Mill."

How did she mean that? Do I really want to know? Victor decided he didn't. "He can help bring France into the war against England," he said.

"So what?" Lois returned. "Why should the likes of us care one way or the other who wins?"

What difference would it make to her? Very little Victor could see. "Maybe your children will care," he said, and retreated with her laughter ringing in his ears.