"Missionaries." For a moment, Victor chuckled at the other man's conceit. Then his gaze focused and grew more intense, like the sun's rays brought together into a point by a burning glass. "Missionaries," he said again, this time in an altogether different tone of voice.

"You've got some kind of scheme," Matthew said. "Tell me what it is."

Instead of answering him directly, Victor clapped on a hat and stuck his head out into the pouring rain. He spoke with Jack for a minute or two. The sentry let out a resigned sigh. Then he squelched off into the darkness.

"You have got some scheme." Matthew Radcliffe sounded half curious, half accusing.

"Who, me?" Victor, by contrast, did his best to seem innocence personified. By the look Matthew sent him, his best came nowhere close to good enough. The Assemblyman kept shooting questions at him. Victor ducked and dodged and finally said, "You'll find out soon, I hope." That also failed to leave Matthew Radcliffe serene.

In due course. Jack returned. Thanks to the rain's steady hiss, he almost got back to the tent by the time Victor made out his soggy footfalls. And he came closer yet before Victor-and Matthew-could hear that he wasn't alone.

"Who's he got with him?" Matthew asked. "Our very own Jesuit, panting to bring the heathen English settlers of Terranova to the true faith of freedom?"

Ignoring the sarcasm, Victor Radcliff nodded. "As a matter of fact, yes."

Right on cue, the tent flap opened. The man who stumbled inside didn't look like a Jesuit, or any other kind of missionary. He looked like a drowned rat-an angry drowned rat. "Whatever this is, couldn't it wait till the bloody morning?" he asked, his accent strongly English.

Matthew Radcliffe glanced toward Victor. "You have your own pet spy?" he inquired.

The newcomer glared at Matthew. "You have your own pet idiot?" he asked Victor.

"Matthew, let me present to you Master Thomas Paine," Victor said before things went beyond glances and glares. "Master Paine, this is Matthew Radcliffe, member of the Atlantean Assembly from Avalon. He-and all Atlantis-can use your persuasive abilities."

"What persuasive abilities?" Matthew Radcliffe looked unpersuaded.

So did Paine. "What does he need from me that I can't give as a soldier? I did not come to Atlantis for any reason but to seek my own freedom and some way to make a tolerable living-which I could not do in the mother country."

"Tell him what's happened by Avalon, Matthew," Victor said, and his distant cousin did. Victor went on, "If we can stir England's Terranovan towns to rebellion, she won't be able to do things like this to us again, and she will have to divide her attention, fighting two wars at once."

Matthew still seemed dubious. "Meaning no disrespect to Master Paine, but why should he be able to rouse England's settlements on the far side of the Gulf when we've had no luck at it up till now?"

"Because he is the best speaker-and especially the best writer-who backs our cause," Victor answered. "You give me too much credit," Paine murmured. "I'd better not," Victor told him.

"Better than Uncle Bobby? Better than Isaac Fenner? Than Custis Cawthorne, for God's sake?" Matthew Radcliffe shook his head. "I don't believe it."

Victor took a rumpled, damp, poorly printed flyer from New Hastings out of a jacket pocket." 'Men are born, and always continue, free-in respect of their rights" he read. " 'The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural rights of man, and these are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression. The exercise of every man's natural rights has no other limits than those which are necessary to secure to every other man the tree exercise of the same rights. The law ought to prohibit only actions hurtful to society. What is not prohibited by the law should not be hindered; nor should any one be compelled to that which the law does not require.' " He looked up; reading by candlelight was a trial. "You will have heard that, I am sure. Who do you suppose wrote it?"

"Isn't it from Custis' pen? I always thought so," Matthew said.

Victor set a hand on Thomas Paine's wet shoulder. "Meet the author. If he can't set Terranova alight, no one will make it catch."

"Well… maybe," Matthew Radcliffe said.

"You want me to go to Terranova, General?" Paine sounded less than delighted at the prospect. "You want me to put aside everything I have in Atlantis, cross to Avalon and sail over the Hesperian Gulf?"

Matthew Radcliffe started to make apologetic noises. Victor cut him off. "Master Paine, you are at the moment a common soldier in the Atlantean army. What precisely is it you have to give up, pray tell?"

Thomas Paine opened his mouth to answer. Then he closed it again before a single word crossed his lips. He gave Victor a crooked grin instead. "Put it that way, General, and you've got a point."

"Can he really fire the Terranovans?" Matthew asked.

Victor Radcliff nudged Paine. "What was it you said about William the Conqueror, and about how little hereditary monarchy means? Better Matthew should hear it from you than from me-I wouldn't get it right."

"All I said was that a French bastard who landed with armed bandits and established himself as King of England against the consent of the natives was in plain terms a very paltry and rascally original." Paine quoted himself with obvious relish.

"You see?"

"victor said to Matthew. "All they have to do is listen to him even a little, and he's bound to infect them."

"You make me sound like the smallpox," Paine observed.

"No. You inoculate men with freedom-and there's no inoculation against you," Victor said. "As for Terranova, better to inoculate than never, by God."

Paine and Matthew Radcliffe both winced. The latter still seemed to need convincing. "Maybe…" he said again.

"Give him something else," Victor told Paine.

"Am I then auditioning for the stage?" Paine asked.

"For the most important stage of all: the stage of the world," Victor Radcliff replied.

That seemed to get home to the wet incendiary from England. His voice grew lower, deeper, and altogether more impressive as he said, "Call to mind the sentiments which nature has engraved in the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognized by all. For a nation to have liberty, it is enough that she knows liberty. And to be free, it is enough that she wills it."

"You see?" Victor said to Matthew once more. "He can do it!"

"And do you propose to command me to make Terranova free?" Thomas Paine asked. "I trust you note the irony involved?"

"I note it, yes," Victor answered. "But, having joined the Atlantean army, you do leave yourself open to command, you know."

"If you command me in any soldierly way, I will obey you," Paine said. "But if you command me to play the politico, do you not agree that that takes me out of the soldier's province?"

"Master Paine, you are a weapon of war, no less than a six-pounder," Victor Radcliff said. "I hope you can harm the enemy more than any mere cannon might, even one double-shotted with canister. Will you tell me I may not aim you and fire you where you will have the greatest effect?"

"We need you, Master Paine," Matthew Radcliffe added. "The general-and yourself-have persuaded me. If Terranova rises against King George, too, that all but guarantees the safety of Avalon and the rest of western Atlantis. It ensures that the redcoats cannot carry copperskins across the Hesperian Gulf to harry our western settlements."

Thomas Paine sneezed. "Bless you," Victor said.

Paine waved that aside. He rounded on Matthew. "They're carrying savages across the sea to assail us? I had not heard that."

"Nor had I, till he brought me word of it," Victor put in.