Union Atlantic Page 0,76

what reason these days no one's particularly sure, beyond a few nostrums about not repeating ourselves. But that's not the tack I took. I was a little more opinionated than that. I had the temerity to suggest that certain developments in human society were better or more dangerous or more evil than others, and I'm not talking about your standard twentieth-century horrors, the ones they throw in for free. I'm talking about people like you. The despoilers. The patriots of capitalism. Given the ubiquity of your type these days, is it any surprise they forced me out?"

Doug took a breath to calm himself and said, "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you knew the Gammonds."

"Herb and Ginger?" she said. "Of course. They were lovely people. Have you bought their land as well, then?"

"No. When I was a kid I knew them. My mother used to clean their house."

"Is this some kind of joke?"

"No. I grew up in Alden."

"I see," she said, examining his face in earnest, considering this new fact. "I know what you see when you look at me. An old whatsit crying, 'Not in my backyard.' That's what you say to yourself about what I'm doing. A crone who wants her trees back. Which I do. But I have to take my stand where I can. You probably won't believe me when I say that it's not personal, but it isn't. I suppose I have allowed myself to think of you as a villain, but really it's not you I despise. For all I know you're a Democrat. It's just what you stand for that I can't abide. And I'm not so naive as to think that running you off that land will solve the bigger problem, but at least I will have done that.

"I wonder, Mr. Fanning. If you were to see a lone soldier fighting an army, what would you think of him? That he is a fool? Or that he simply believes in his cause?"

"Neither. I'd say he was going to lose."

"Right. Because that matters more than anything to you, doesn't it? Dominance. That's the childish pleasure you people can't get enough of. You get your fix dressed up in a suit, but it's no different than a drug. You're angry. And once the men like you start this war of theirs, people will die by the thousands to cure that feeling in them."

"In my experience, killing doesn't cure much."

She raised her head, turning her ear to listen to something over the din of the party. "Do you hear that?" she asked. "Do you hear barking?"

"You need to understand something," he said. "You haven't won anything. You just haven't lost yet."

"What have they done with them?" she cried, standing abruptly from the table, straining to hear some phantom noise. "Henry," she called out, bringing a halt to the table's conversation, the bankers and their wives staring at her in polite alarm. "Henry, where are they?"

RELEGATED to the children's table, Nate and the gang had waited what seemed an eternity before the fat-slathered pork and spareribs finally arrived. They set to gorging and in no time at all their plates were clean and cleared and peanut-butter parfait topped with American flags on toothpicks appeared in front of them.

"I can't take this music anymore," Jason said. "We need to get out of here." He rose without pushing back his chair, causing his knees to slam against the underside of the table and spill multiple water glasses before he fell again into his seat.

Eventually, they roused themselves and headed out through the broiling kitchen tent, past a swarm of short, dark people scraping half-eaten dinners into heaping garbage pails, the taller black waiters staring blankly at the tips of their cigarettes, as the head man popped the corks of the champagne. "On the trays!" he shouted, as the four of them slipped through an opening by barrels of melting ice.

"It's hotter than a jungle out here," Hal said.

Spotting a guard lounging at the gate in his shirtsleeves, they tacked rightward toward the trees in front of the house. That's when they heard growling and the rustling of chains. Jason jumped sideways, falling into a rose border.

"Dogs," Hal said.

Walking nearer, Nate recognized Wilkie and Sam. "Weird," he said. "They're my tutor's."

"That's deep. What do they teach you?"

Their bowls were empty and they looked up at Nate with sad, gaping eyes.

As the others drifted off, he untied their leashes and shooed the two of them up