United States of Atlantis

He fed the goose grain. Before lowering its head to peck up the barley, it sent back a black, beady-eyed stare, as if to say, Well you took long enough. A mallard came over to try to filch some of the treat. The goose honked again, furiously, and flapped its wings. The mallard scuttled away.

"Any rum left in that flask?" Victor said suddenly.

Blaise shook it. It sloshed. Blaise handed it to him. He drank. After he swallowed, he coughed. "You all right?" Blaise asked.

"On account of the rum? Yes," Victor said. "Everything else? Everything else-is pretty rum." He wondered if the Negro knew that turn of phrase.

By the look on Blaise's face-half grin, half grimace-he did, and wished he didn't. But he nodded. "Can't live without women," he said, "and can't live with 'em, neither." To celebrate the pro-pounding of that great and profound truth, he and Victor made sure the flask didn't slosh any more.

A month went by, and then another week. Victor did not lay a hand on Meg in all that time. He did lay a hand on himself, several times. Doctors and preachers unanimously inveighed against the practice. Preachers called it the sin of Onan. Doctors said it sapped the body's vital energies. Victor didn't care. It kept him from wanting to haul off and clout Meg. It also might have kept him from jumping out a top-floor window and hoping he landed on his head.

He and his wife stayed polite to each other where anyone else could see or hear them. So did Blaise and Stella. If Blaise hadn't told him, Victor wouldn't have known anything was wrong between them. He hoped he and Meg showed an equally good facade.

The two of them had an extra mug of flip apiece with supper before they went upstairs on a hot, muggy summer evening. Meg lit the candle on her nightstand. "I hope you sleep well," Victor said as he put on his thi

He waited for her to scorch him. These past five weeks, she'd done it more often when they were alone than he could count. She started to say something. Whatever it was, she swallowed it before it got out. After a moment, she brought out something that had to be different: "Victor?"

Only his name; nothing more. No, something more-a tone of voice he hadn't heard from her in private since he'd come back from Croydon. "What is it?" he asked cautiously.

She looked at the candle flame, not at him. "Would you care to try?" she asked in return, her voice very low.

"Would I care to try what?" For a moment, Victor honestly didn't know what she was talking about. Then realization smote, and he felt like a fool. "Try that?" He was very glad his own voice didn't-quite-break in surprise. "Are you sure?"

"As sure as I need to be," Meg answered, which was less sure than Victor wanted her to be. She went on, "If we are going to braze this back together, we should begin again, not so?"

She made it sound about as romantic as using a prescription

from an apothecary. Victor didn't care how it sounded. "Yes!" he

said eagerly, and then, "Pray blow out the candle."

Meg surprised him by shaking her head. "If you see me, if you ca

Victor started to tell her he wouldn't do anything like that This time, he was the one who reconsidered. She wouldn't believe him- and why should she? So all he said was, "However you please."

They lay down together. Meg didn't flinch when he began to caress her, but she didn't move toward him or embrace him, either, the way she would have before she learned about Louise. She'd enjoyed his lovemaking… up until then. He'd always enjoyed hers, too. He hadn't strayed when she was close by. How astonishing was it that that turned out not to be good enough?

He went slowly and carefully, literally feeling his way along After a while, she did begin to kiss and caress him in return. He didn't pride himself on warming her up, and not just because they both would have been sweating even if they'd lain apart. She did it with the attitude of someone remembering she was supposed to, not with a kindled woman's wanton enthusiasm.

Afterwards, Victor asked, "Was it all right?"

"It was." Meg seemed surprised to admit even so much. "You… took considerable pains, and I noticed, and I thank you for it."

"It seemed the least I could do," Victor said. "Yes, it did," Meg agreed, which made him gnaw at the inside of his lower lip as she continued, "But how was I to know ahead

of time whether you would do even so little?"

"I love you," Victor said.

"I believe it-as long as I'm in sight When I'm not, you think that what I don't know won't hurt me, and so you please yourself," his wife said. "We've been over that ground before."

"We have indeed," said Victor, who didn't want to go over it again.

Meg overrode him: "But what you forget is, sometimes I find out what I didn't know, and then it does hurt. It hurts all the worse, in fact." She'd been having her say much more often than usual since learning of Louise-and Nicholas. She talked of going over the same ground. As things were, she held the moral high ground, and used it as adroitly as a professional soldier would have used the literal kind.

"I am sorry for the pain I caused you," Victor said. "I know not what more I can do to show you that-"

She didn't answer for a little while. Then, thoughtfully, she said, "After what just passed between us, I also know not what more you might do. You loved me as if you love me, if you take my meaning."

"I think so," Victor said, nodding. "Dare I ask if I be forgiven, then?"

"In part, surely-else you should not have touched me so," Meg said. "Altogether? Not yet. Not for some time, I fear. I shall find myself wondering about you, worrying about you, whenever you go more than an hour's ride from here. More than an hour's ride from me, I should say."

"Then I had better not go any farther than that, eh?" Victor said.

"An excellent notion." His wife blew out the candle at last.

The messenger wore the green coat of an Atlantean cavalryman. With a flourish suggesting he'd played in an amateur theatrical or two in his time, he handed Victor Radcliff a letter sealed with the Atlantean Assembly's red-crested eagle. "Congratulations, General!" he said in a loud, ringing voice that also made Victor guess he'd been on the stage.

"Er-thank you," Victor answered. "But for what?"

Still in those ringing tones, the man said, "Why, for being chosen one of the first two Consuls who will lead the United States of Atlantis now that no one can doubt our freedom from King George's wicked rule."

Ever since departing from Honker's Mill and returning to the much larger (and more euphonious) New Hastings, the Atlantean Assembly had argued about how the new nation should be run. Victor had followed the often-acrimonious wrangling from what he'd thought was a safe distance.

Taking as their model the Roman Republic, the Assemblymen had decided to let executive authority rest in the hands of two Consuls, each with the power to veto the other's actions. Roman Consuls served only one year at a time, though; their Atlantean counterparts would have two-year terms. The Assembly had also rechristened itself the Senate, even if hardly anyone used the new name yet. It would select the Consuls. Under the rules it had agreed upon, one man could serve up to three consecutive terms, and a total of five in his lifetime.

"Who shall my colleague be?" Victor asked. The letter was bound to tell him, but the messenger seemed well informed. And, if he didn't care for the answer he got, he had every intention of declining the Assembly's invitation (no, the Senate's, he reminded himself).

"Why, Isaac Fe