Chapter 15
Hiding Mr. Cooper
Billy and Tim decided that someone ought to go tell Julie they’d be meeting at her house instead of Billy’s that night and explain recent events to her. Since Billy wasn’t allowed out of the house, that meant Tim found himself walking through the streets of Washington DC toward sunset that evening.
Tim lived on Georgia Avenue, and the route he took over to Julie’s house on Second Street took him past Pennsylvania Avenue and the President’s House. This was the first time that Tim had passed the President’s House during daylight, except in his own time. Even though it was smaller than it would be, the building was still quite impressive.
As Tim was passing the building, he let his mind wander to the man who was occupying that house in this year, 1854. Franklin Pierce had been a Brigadier General in the Mexican-American War in 1848 and rode to the White House largely on popularity gained by helping to win this war. He was from the North, but he was a Democrat and had no sympathy for abolitionists, believing that they didn’t have the best interests of the nation at heart.
The repeated realization that he was traipsing the streets of Washington DC in 1854 was almost enough to make Tim forget his current problems. But not quite.
When he got to Julie’s house, he used the knocker to bang on the door. Julie opened it, looking a little frazzled. First, she looked puzzled as to who could be knocking at her door, then worried and concerned once she recognized it was Tim and saw his facial expression.
“What’s the problem?” Julie asked.
Tim looked over his shoulder. “Can I come in, first?”
“Of course,” Julie said, and opened the door wider.
Once Julie closed the door behind him, Tim said, “Billy has been compromised. He’s at my boarding house right now. On the bright side, he’s discovered one of the Emperors’ mind-control experiments. On the not-so-bright side, if he’s found, he’ll be killed.”
Julie whistled. “That’s quite a lot of news. And all I’ve done today was compile a list of congressmen that this Macphearson woman knew so that I can have them over for tea and cookies or something soon. Well, that and visit Rose”
Tim rolled his eyes. “Well, we can’t all nearly get ourselves killed on the same day.”
“You’re so wise,” Julie returned sarcastically.
“Anyway, we decided we’ll have him stay over here with you, since you seem like you have some space,” Tim said.
“I think we could squeeze him in, yes,” said Julie, after putting her finger to her chin and pretending to do some mental calculations.
“So him and I will come back around 10 this evening. We think it’s best to move him under cover of darkness. We’ll have our next meeting then,” Tim said. He paused for a second. “Well, that’s all I had to say… So I’ll see you tonight then?”
Tim began to turn toward the door. “Wait a second!” Julie protested. “You walked all this way. Why don’t you stick around for a minute? I can make you some tea…”
So Tim and Julie had tea. Since there was no need to worry about eavesdroppers, they had a relaxed conversation in which they didn’t even have to care what century their slang came from.
They talked about random stuff, including how the tea tasted and what was the best hot beverage. They eventually agreed on hot chocolate, although Julie insisted that the proper name for it was “cocoa”. Then, they talked about everything from how weird it was to look at themselves in the mirror with their disguises on to whether it was weirder to sleep in a house full of people you didn’t know, like Tim was doing, or to sleep all alone in a giant house like Julie had been doing.
Every time there was a pause or silence, Tim wondered whether he should bring up their conversation from the first day in the bunker, about whether they were dating or not. But each time, he’d hesitate for just long enough that Julie would come up with another topic of conversation. By the time he left, Tim decided that he made the right decision not asking her. Maybe it was best just to leave things up in the air for now.
Billy and Tim arrived together at the house later that night.
“So, basically, we have one of the mind-controlled minions identified, but we don’t know how many others there are,” Billy said, after he had finished summarizing the events that day from his point of view for Julie’s benefit.
“But what about the mind-control machine? Do you figure we ought to go after the one we’ve already discovered right now?” Julie wondered.
“I don’t think so,” Billy said. “First of all, Fuller knows I’m on to him, so chances aren’t great that he’s even going to keep it there after today. Since I saw it at night, I think he has to use it then, but that doesn’t mean he has to stay in my inn. I bet he will keep going to Congress, though, so Tim could tail him after tomorrow’s session, or Monday’s, if we haven’t gotten the information another way by then.”
Tim didn’t want to arouse Fuller’s suspicion before he had to. The Emperors might well have told him through the mind-control machine to be on the lookout for more than one person who might try to sabotage the Emperors’ plan, and now he should be on high alert. After Tim told them he’d do it on Monday, they read Rose’s letter that Julie had picked up that day.
It was a fun letter, because it was from Rose, but wasn’t particularly informative at all to their goal of finding however many other controlled congressmen there were. The highlights included the fact that she had gone horseback riding that day, as part of her general education as a well-to-do American young lady and had decided that she rather enjoyed it, especially when she wasn’t doing it in the exercise room of a super-sized survival shelter. Besides that, her nine-year-old brother Jonathan had apparently developed quite a fondness for scaring her six-year-old brother Randall, and had actually resorted to jumping out from underneath Randall’s bed late the previous night. Long story short, this had caused a crying Randall to insist once again on sleeping in his big sister’s bed. Rose allowed this, but only after he changed his pajamas, which he had unfortunately wet in his panic. Rose had made it her own personal mission to figure out how to get back at Jonathan on Randall’s behalf without using violence, even though that option was sorely tempting.
They also decided that they would put off Julie’s tea party plan to gather different congressmen there, at least for now. It seemed dangerous to have anyone in her house now that Billy would be hiding in a room there. Besides, they had seen earlier that day how someone being affected by the mind-control apparently reacted when they were cornered, so inviting potential candidates into her house didn’t seem quite so prudent anymore.
Walking home, Tim missed the time he’d gotten used to spending with Julie every night after the ten o’clock meeting. But, with all the walking and excitement he’d had that day, Tim was so tired that he fell asleep immediately when he went to bed.
With the long rest, Tim actually woke up a bit before his alarm the next morning, Friday, and got an early start on the day. Finding himself with some extra time on his hands, he bought a newspaper with a large cent he had in his pocket. Once he reached his now familiar desk in the House Chamber, he opened it up and began to browse through it, just for the sake of curiosity.
Aside from some information on the slow debate about the Kansas-Nebraska Act in the House, there was nothing of particular interest to him until he had reached past the front page and into the insides of the paper.
The headline announced, “Local Boarding-House Owner Reported Missing.” Skimming over the article, Tim noticed that although the disappearance was being considered suspicious because there had been damage done to Cooper’s bedroom door, there were no primary suspects, but investigations were underway.
When he read this, Tim’s jaw dropped. Somehow, none of them had considered the fact that Billy going missing was going to provoke suspicion. More importantly, until now, Tim hadn’t thought about the fact that there would be an investigation into the disappearance. Bu
t, currently, the last place that Billy had been seen was not at Cooper’s own Boarding House, but going up to Tim’s, or Sage’s, room at Miss Peinture’s Inn.
The last thing Tim, or the mission, needed was for anyone else to find out that Mr. Cooper and Russell Sage were connected in any way. As annoying as it was that they didn’t know who the other people having their minds controlled were, this had been balanced so far by the fact that the Emperors’ minions didn’t know who they were either.
Tim hadn’t missed any part of a congressional session yet, except for his bathroom breaks, but he now decided to break that trend. He got up and began walking quickly back toward his own boarding house. By the time he arrived, he had a bit of a stitch in his side, and his legs were aching. Still, he started searching for Miss Peinture just as soon as he got into the house.
When he found her, tidying up in the kitchen, he accosted her immediately.
“Were you the only one who saw my friend, Mr. Cooper, when he was here yesterday?” Tim asked.
Miss Peinture was surprised by the question. Tim figured this worked in his favor, since it meant she probably hadn’t already seen the article herself yet. He would be best off if he could spin the news as he told it to her.
After thinking for a moment, Peinture said, “Yes, I think so. He had been here for over an hour, but you were the first one to come back yesterday evening. I remember being relieved that I didn’t have to explain to any of the other guests why a panic-stricken looking man was sitting at my kitchen table.”
“Yes,” Tim said. “Well, Cooper and I resolved everything yesterday, but unfortunately, he had to go out of town for a bit.
Miss Peinture seemed justifiably puzzled. “Why would that matter to me?”
“Well, it doesn’t, that’s my point,” Tim said hurriedly. “Which means you’d have no reason to supply any information to anyone, even the police, about seeing him yesterday.”
Miss Peinture’s eyes narrowed, as if she was doing some mental math. “Wouldn’t have any reason not to, either,” she said measuredly.
Tim had thought about this. “I can give you five dollars today and five dollars in a week if you can keep quiet about it.” Tim hoped it wouldn’t be a problem after that. Maybe he wouldn’t even be there in a week to pay out the second five dollars. He had a good bit more than this in his desk upstairs, but he also knew that the ten dollars he was offering was worth a lot more in 1854 than in his own time.
Miss Peinture considered these numbers. “You’ve got yourself a deal,” she said. “Or you will have one anyway, once I see the money.”
“Just give me a moment, then,” Tim said. He bounded up the stairs and opened the drawer in his desk.
He counted out five dollars. Then, he thought for a moment and decided to grab the rest of the money. He realized that Miss Peinture had a key to his room. If she wasn’t above taking a bribe, she might not be above stealing all the cash, so he’d better leave it at Julie’s house.
He went back downstairs, where Miss Peinture was waiting for him. He’d brought down a three dollar note from one bank and two ones from other banks, so there wasn’t much counting to do. Miss Peinture smiled faintly and put the money in the pouch of her apron. “Of course, if I get approached personally by the police and they ask me anything specific, I’m not going to lie about it.”
Tim rolled his eyes slightly, wishing that five dollars would buy him a slightly better deal. But there shouldn’t be any reason that the police would pick Miss Peinture’s house to go to. Nothing about Mr. Cooper made it seem like he should have any contact with Russell Sage or Peinture, so there was really no reason to bicker. “Wouldn’t expect you to,” Tim sighed. “Just wouldn’t want you concerning the police with irrelevant information.”
“Call it what you like,” Miss Peinture said with a shrug.
Tim nodded and gave Miss Peinture a curt goodbye. He headed back to the House Chamber and found the session already in progress.
Today, the tide had begun to turn a little bit within the House. It was the first time when someone Tim knew was meant to vote for the bill in the original timeline actually got up and spoke against it.
David Stuart was a Democrat from Michigan, who voted for the bill in the original timeline. However, Tim watched as he got up and delivered an impassioned speech about how the solidarity of the Union was more important than petty debate over slavery. Tim had to keep himself from rolling his eyes at this. He had a pretty strong feeling that the nation’s more than three million slaves would disagree with Stuart’s characterization of the debate over their freedom as petty. Stuart continued by saying that the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 must be honored in the case of Kansas-Nebraska, although he hoped that these noble compromises would be kept up to date and perhaps revisited as new territories after Kansas and Nebraska became states.
Tim realized that if those in favor of compromise were making these sorts of speeches now, it was perhaps only a short amount of time before they would have gained enough traction to close debate and hasten a vote that would reject the Kansas-Nebraska Act and set events on a track leading toward the timeline the Emperors desired.
If they were going to stop the Emperors from succeeding, time was running out.
He also wondered what the chances were that Stuart himself was one of the original proposers of the plan, or if he was just someone that the Emperors’ mentally influenced drones had convinced to their side. He wasn’t sure that he could just outright ask him whether he was one of the initiators, though. By the end of the day, it was with a renewed sense of urgency that Tim decided to speak with one of his fellow New Yorkers as he left the Capitol.
Of course, first he had to decide which one to talk to. There were a lot of choices, since there were thirty-three Representatives from New York, more than from any other state, and twenty-one were Democrats. He’d learned a few of their names already, and there were a couple who seemed friendly enough to not mind talking to him on the way home from work. The first one he saw as he was exiting the Capitol that day was John Taylor.
Tim caught up to him with a few running steps and stopped him on the Capitol steps.
“Good evening Mr. Taylor,” Tim said. He mentally kicked himself for calling the man Mr. Taylor. There was no good reason for him to call a fellow congressman Mr. Taylor outside of the chamber, but he figured the sign of respect still worked. Besides, Taylor was still eight years Sage’s senior.
Taylor smiled politely at him and said. “Greetings, Sage. How goes it?”
“Fairly well,” Tim said. “But I can’t help but be worried about this bill we’ve been debating. It’s as if it’s tearing the state of New York apart.”
Taylor raised an eyebrow at him, and Tim was afraid that he’d gone too far. But then Taylor gave a more authentic smile and said, “Well said, my friend. I too have begun to have misgivings about the bill.”
“Oh, yes?” asked Tim, deciding that the least he could afford to say at this point, the better.
“Well, yes. I was in favor of it, originally, of course, just like most good Democrats would be. If you have a question about something, be it taxes or slavery, you ought to let the people decide, not the government. But tensions run so high on this issue, there could be bloodshed. Perhaps with Kansas and Nebraska, the government should arbitrate,” said Taylor.
“Well, it seems reasonable to me,” Tim agreed, cautiously. He didn’t want to spook Taylor if he was hesitant to share the information he had, or especially to corner him if he was one of the Emperors’ pawns. But, there was time pressure now that Billy had been exposed. Tim decided to push just a little bit. “Have you given any thought as to what that government arbitration should look like?”
“There’s a compromise being floated, as you probably know,” said Taylor, although he was clearly hedging. He looked around a bit. Tim wasn’t exactly sure where they were going. At this point he was basically following Taylor home. But there didn’t seem
to be any other congressmen within earshot, just some horse-drawn carriages rolling down the street beside them. There might have been some congressmen in those carriages, but Taylor seemed satisfied, because he said, “Well, I don’t think he’d mind me telling you. He warned me to be discreet, you see… But he shouldn’t mind, as you’re a fellow New Yorker. And I’ve always said you’re one of the more reasonable Whigs…”
Tim mentally thanked Russell Sage for whatever it was he had done to make this particular Democrat think he was a reasonable man. “I like to think that myself,” Tim said, with what he hoped was a winning smile.
“Theodoric Westbrook approached me earlier this week,” said Taylor, confidentially. “He suggested that we, as Democrats, could potentially back off on this issue, if we knew that it wouldn’t mean that the slavery question should always be decided by the government. There would have to be a clause in the compromise that the slavery issue should be decided for each state individually, usually by the people themselves, even if not in this instance.”
“I see,” Tim said, wanting to hear more and trying to keep his tone neutral while he was doing mental cartwheels over potentially having another name of one of the Emperors’ mind drones. It sounded like the specifics of the compromise were still up in the air, but it was generally the same thing they had read about back in the 21st century on their last visit.
“Yes, well, basically it’s like you said. We cannot have New York or the nation be divided by this issue. We need a strong and united America to take our place as one of the greatest nations of the world,” Taylor declared.
Tim knew this was exactly the Emperors’ plan, to bring the United States into global prominence decades before its time to speed the unification of the whole planet into their one world government.
Chapter 16
An Unexpected Visitor
Tim was glad not to run into Miss Peinture on his way up to his room that afternoon. He figured any further conversation with her would be at least slightly awkward because of the blackmail.
Fugitives of Time: Sequel to Emperors of Time Page 12