Ghosts of Time

by Steve White

  The reorganization of the Rangers as the 43rd Virginia Cavalry regiment had become official on January 9, with the still convalescent Mosby as a full colonel. Due to some bureaucratic snag, Chapman’s and Richards’ promotions had still not been authorized. But they continued to command their battalions as captains. Richards, operating in the Valley almost as freely as in upper Fauquier County, had excellent intelligence of Sheridan’s moves, and knew of the new weakness. He had crossed the Shenandoah River and slipped past Reno to this spot, a mile and a half east of the now undefended Duffield’s Depot. And now the Rangers whooped it up as they ransacked the derailed freight train.

  “Lookee here!” someone yelled. “Canned food! This one here reads ‘oysters’.” The watering of the Rangers’ mouths was almost audible.

  “And here!” someone else called out. “Coffee beans! Millions of ’em.”

  “If only Colonel Mosby were here!” cried Richards. “You know how he loves his coffee.” Amid the laughter and cheers of the Rangers, he curveted his horse in the light of the burning coals that had spilled from the wrecked locomotive. He was superbly turned out as usual (his men loved to relate the story that once, when Union troops had taken his uniform while he had hidden in a secret room of a house where he was boarding, he had collected some men, pursued the Yankees, routed them, and recovered his finery), and with his feathered hat he might almost have been Mosby himself. The resemblance ran deeper. He had assimilated the colonel’s methods so thoroughly that the Union high command often mistook him for Mosby; the word “clone” might have occurred to them if it had existed. At this moment, on his rearing horse, waving his hat, he embodied the mythos of the “Rebel Raider”—the last flourish of the Cavalier that the world would ever see.

  More and more, despite everything, Aiken found himself regretting its passing. Grant and Sherman and Sheridan were forerunners of the next century, when Winston Churchill would say, “War, which used to be cruel and magnificent, has now become cruel and squalid.” Aiken knew he was seeing it in the last few months it could still occasionally be magnificent.

  Richards turned to him, face flushed. “We’ll have to call this the ‘Coffee Raid.’ Like the ‘Greenback Raid’ last October, just two or three miles west of here, when we captured the strongbox containing the payroll of Sheridan’s army.”

  “Sheridan’s troops must not have been amused.”

  “Neither was Sheridan. He’s not a man noted for taking misfortune philosophically.” Richards was, Aiken suspected, understating matters considerably. “It is, I know sinful to take as much pleasure as I do in causing him distress.” Richards’ expression grew grimmer. “It was even more of a pleasure to outwit Reno tonight, if only because I understand he’s an associate of Custer.”

  “Custer?” Aiken thought the name was somehow vaguely familiar.

  “George Armstrong Custer.” Richards grew grim indeed. “He’s one of Sheridan’s right-hand men, and the cold-blooded butcher who last September executed six of our men he had captured. I don’t know how much you heard about that. Colonel Mosby was forced to retaliate, lest more of our men be so treated. In early November, at Rectortown, he assembled men of Custer’s we had captured and held a lottery to select seven of them to be hanged.”

  “I’ve heard some mention of it,” said Aiken, remembering Gracchus.

  “No one’s heart was really in it. And in the end, we only hanged three of them. Four escaped, which the colonel told me actually pleased him, for they took the word back to Sheridan. Afterwards, he wrote to Sheridan and proposed that such things cease on both sides. And in fact there have been no further executions of prisoners. So, however disagreeable the business was, it was necessary to prevent further barbarities.” Richards’ expression turned compassionate. “So even if Captain Landrieu and his men have fallen into the hands of the Yankees, and even if the Yankees regard them as Partisan Rangers despite their membership in a regular cavalry unit, there is every reason to hope that they have received the treatment due to prisoners of war.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Aiken knew Richards was trying to encourage him, after two weeks in the valley and Fauquier County just over the Blue Ridge from it, during which there had been no contact by “Captain Landrieu.” But Richards, who meant well, hadn’t mentioned the appalling conditions under which prisoners of war lived in this era. For the same reason, he hadn’t mentioned the obvious alternative, which was that “Captain Landrieu” lay dead in a ditch somewhere in the valley.

  He also hadn’t mentioned the other alternative—that Commander Thanou and the others had been captured by the Transhumanists—for the simple reason that he couldn’t imagine it.

  I’d better face it, Aiken told himself. I’m stuck here on my own until April 5.

  And whatever Gracchus might say, he thought, looking around at Richards and the other Rangers, there aren’t many better men to be stuck with.

  For long stretches, time ceased to have any meaning for Jason, or for any of them.

  Stoneman had meant what he said about his long absences, during which they were left in the care of the goon-caste guards, fed inadequate rations and otherwise left to their own devices (and their own gradually accumulating excreta) in the inadequately heated room. Jason put them all on a regular schedule of exercises, partly for the obvious reasons of health (including the fact that it helped combat the inescapable, merciless chill) but mostly to give a certain structure to their lives. But they couldn’t exercise constantly, especially in their weakened state. The rest of the time they had no barriers against the mind-destroying boredom.

  Ideas for escape naturally consumed their thoughts. But Stoneman never took more than two of his subordinates with him in his absences; there were always at least three guards, and their untiring vigilance and careful procedures never left open any realistic possibility of a breakout.

  At one point, during one of those absences, Nesbit cracked and started pounding uselessly against the heavy boards that prevented all but a little sunlight from seeping into the room. That merely brought in the goons, one of whom gave him a dispassionate beating while the two others held revolvers on Jason and the rest. The tedium resumed, varied only by Nesbit’s moans.

  Jason couldn’t help feeling guilty because his implant gave him a distraction the others lacked. He could keep track of Angus Aiken’s movements—unnaturally slow, of course—as the young Service man moved back and forth in Fauquier County and the valley, passing tantalizingly near this very spot when he ascended Ashby’s Gap. As long as that little red dot was moving at all, he knew Aiken was still alive.

  He could also watch the optically projected digital clock tick down toward their retrieval, more rapidly than it should have in terms of the universe outside this cabin.

  “Well,” Mondrago once remarked, “now we know why we never encountered ourselves—this current version of ourselves, if you know what I mean—when we were in Richmond in April, 1865.”

  “Right,” Jason had nodded dully. “We won’t be in this time then, like we’re supposed to be. We’ll have been retrieved.” He didn’t add prematurely. That was a realization that never left any of them.

  The dreary, empty time dragged on and on. Jason found himself actually looking forward to Stoneman’s presence, simply because it would be something new.

  The Transhumanists’ very basic portable mind-probe equipment could only operate upon one subject at a time. Stoneman started with Jason, who had a pretty good idea why, and as he was led out of confinement into the outer room and tied into a heavy chair, he taunted Stoneman about it.

  “Aren’t you worried that we’ll all go poof and vanish without warning before you can get your information, much less wipe our minds? Remember, you don’t know when we’re scheduled for retrieval.”

  “No, I don’t,” the Transhumanist admitted as he attached electrodes to Jason’s head. “And I lack the equipment for actually reviewing the mind probe’s recording media—that will have to wait un
til we return to our own time. But I’m not unduly concerned. Our analysis of the Authority’s operational practices—very predictable, in the case of such a hidebound organization—suggests that your stay in this era should last several months. This will give us ample time to extract the information we want. And, as I’ve already indicated, the mindwipe is a very brief process.” He completed his work, and a thought seemed to occur to him.

  “We have a limited supply of advanced explosive devices here,” He explained, gesturing toward a small packing case in a corner, “but unfortunately we have no facilities for surgical implantation of them, or for triggering them to explode immediately following retrieval from temporal displacement. Otherwise we could send you back to the Authority as a living booby trap, resulting in a damaged displacer stage covered with a substance resembling chunky tomato paste—a denouement which you could contemplate as you awaited retrieval, watching the clock tick down.” Stoneman nodded like a man making a note to himself. “Yes. I must suggest the idea to my superiors, for expeditions on which we anticipate encountering and possibly capturing Temporal Service personnel. But now … to business!” He held a pneumospray hypo to Jason’s arm and injected him. “For this very rudimentary field-model mind probe to function, it is better if the subject is in a semiconscious state and therefore incapable of mental resistance. So the process will unfortunately be painless.”

  That was the last Jason heard as the drug took hold and robbed him of his will, if not of his soul.

  It was now January 30, and Dolly Richards was once again leading them into the Valley.

  The wags claimed the raid was to celebrate his promotion to major, which was finally official as of this date. Richards of course denied it, although he had, characteristically, had the one star of his new rank sewn onto his collars for the occasion. Thirty rangers had rendezvoused at Bloomfield, a tiny hamlet just east of the Blue Ridge and halfway between the turnpikes leading west to Ashby’s Gap and Snicker’s Gap. Avoiding the massive forces—two cavalry divisions and strong infantry support—that he’d learned Sheridan currently had concentrated around Winchester, Richards led them north toward their old stamping ground: the B&O track between Harper’s Ferry and Martinsburg.

  One more train to rob, Angus Aiken had thought, an obscure quote bubbling up in his mind.

  But now he lay on the roadbed at midnight, watching a Union mounted patrol passing along the tracks. Another had done the same half an hour earlier.

  “So,” muttered Richards, who like his mentor Mosby believed in doing his own scouting, “they’re really patrolling this stretch of rail line now.”

  “Not to mention the infantry details we saw encamped along the line,” said Aiken, trying to keep his teeth from chattering in the cold.

  “I reckon us derailing their trains along here got a mite tiresome,” opined Hern (nobody seemed to know his first name), the other Ranger Richards had brought along. He expelled an eloquent squirt of tobacco juice to emphasize his point.

  “All right. Let’s get back.” Richards led the way as they scrambled down the embankment and scuttled into the woods to the clearing where the Rangers were waiting, standing around holding their horses’ heads. There was also a civilian, accompanied by a pair of blacks and talking animatedly to Bartlett Bolling, one of Richards’ most trusted men. At their approach, Bolling walked up to the major.

  “Sir, this man—a sympathizer I know well—tells me there’s a small Yankee cavalry camp near here—he can lead us there—and that they’re not being any too watchful.”

  “All right. The railway is too well guarded. We’re going to change our plan and hit that camp—we could use some horses. Let me talk to this man.” Richards and Bolling strode off, leaving Aiken to reclaim his horse. As he untied the animal from a tree, he heard a voice—unmistakably one of the blacks’—behind him.

  “Don’t y’all remember dis darkie, Massa?”

  “What?” said Aiken irritably, in a tone he had over the weeks, unavoidably picked up from the men among whom he’d lived. But then recognition of that voice hit him, and he whirled around and stared into the dark face of Gracchus.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “What are you doing here?” Aiken demanded in a low voice, motioning Gracchus into the trees surrounding the clearing. The other Rangers, crowding around Richards and the civilian informer, didn’t notice as they slipped into the darkness. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I’ve got ways of finding things out.” The minstrel show dialect was now in abeyance. “I knew Mosby’s men were raiding up here, so I had a pretty good idea I’d find you.” Was it just his imagination, Aiken wondered, or was there was an undertone of disapproval in Gracchus’s voice?

  “But why are you looking for me?” Eagerness awoke in Aiken. “Is it news of Commander Thanou?”

  “No. Sorry, but there’s no word of him and the others. I came for you because I need your help—and it’s something your duty binds you to help me with.” Gracchus suddenly seemed tense, in the way of a man discussing things that lay beyond his understanding but not beyond his fear. “It happened that one of my men, from the Order, was down near Ashby’s Gap. He recognized some Transhumanists—we don’t have your means, but we know the signs. He tracked them. He discovered what he thinks is a cache of nanobots, whatever those are.”

  Aiken stared at him. “How could he know?”

  “He couldn’t be certain. But from descriptions that are part of the oral tradition handed down by our founder, he was pretty sure. I need for you to confirm it … and make sure we’ve really destroyed it.” Gracchus paused. “What are these things, anyway?”

  “They’re machines so tiny you can’t see them,” was the best Aiken could do.

  “Then how can they do any harm? And if you can’t see them, how did somebody make them in the first place?”

  “You’ll just have to take my word for it. They’re timed to become active on a certain date far in the future. And when they do, they can do all sorts of harm. They can … change things, on the molecular level—”

  “On the what?”

  “Never mind. They can change machines so they don’t work anymore. They can turn objects into dust, or goo—objects, or living things. Some of them can also …” How do you say, “Resequence the genetic code” to him? “They can turn people into something that isn’t human. Into monsters God never intended.”

  The whites of Gracchus’s eyes showed all around his irises, and when he spoke the Jamaican undertone in his speech was more pronounced. “Mon, you’re talking about magic. Evil magic.”

  “It’s not magic, but it is evil. More evil than you can possibly imagine.”

  “Then let’s get going!”

  At that moment, Richards stood up from the map, scratched in the dirt, that he had been studying by torchlight. “All right! Let’s mount up!”

  The Rangers hastened to obey, and Hern noticed Aiken. “C’mon, Angus!”

  “I can’t leave now, Gracchus,” Aiken whispered.

  “Can’t, or don’t want to?” Gracchus’s voice was cold.

  “Damn it, this is not the time!” Aiken forced his voice down. “Look, we’ll wait for an opportunity for me to slip away without it seeming like desertion.” Without giving Gracchus a chance to reply, he turned to Richards. “Sir, this nigger here says he can help guide us.”

  “Good.” Richards swung up into his saddle. “Have you got a horse, boy?” he asked Gracchus, who was clearly older than he was.

  “Yes, suh,” said Gracchus, mumbling sullenly as was expected of him, with a venomous sidelong glance at Aiken.

  “Then let’s ride!”

  It was a letter-perfect horse-stealing raid, up to a point.

  Approaching the bivouac site with their trademark silence, the Rangers sent men ahead who captured two unsuspecting pickets. At gunpoint, those men revealed the countersign the sentries were using. Richards then chose nine men to go into the encampment with him, while the othe
rs waited in the darkened woods to fall upon any possible pursuers.

  Aiken was one of the nine, to his annoyance, as he had thought Richards’ absence might afford him an opportunity to go missing in the night. Gracchus looked even more annoyed, but he was forced to admit that it wasn’t Aiken’s fault.

  “I’ll station myself somewhere along the tree-line, where I can cover you if I have to,” he whispered.

  “Cover me with what?” Aiken whispered back.

  “Give me your Sharps.”

  Aiken looked around nervously, making sure that no one was watching, then slid the breechloading carbine out of its long saddle-side holster and handed it to Gracchus. It was a weapon the Rangers used for fighting on foot, but it shouldn’t play a role tonight. He decided he’d worry later about explaining where it had gone. Gracchus slipped off into the darkness as Aiken took his place in the raiding party.

  Richards sent a few men ahead on foot, using the countersign to quietly capture several sentries in succession. Then he led the others, including Aiken, Bolling and Hern into the center of the bivouac, a long open area with canvas-roofed cabins lining one side and stables on the other. With soundless efficiency, they untied eight horses and began to lead them away.

  At that moment, a guard they had missed stepped around a corner at the far end of the row of cabins. He gaped for only a second before raising his carbine.

  “Surrender!” called Bolling, pointing his revolver. But the sentry fired first, yelling an alarm that died in a gurgle as Bolling shot him down.

  Pandemonium erupted as the Union troopers boiled from the cabins. The Rangers, captured horses and all, galloped down the thoroughfare with bloodcurdling yells, firing at the cabins and sending the Yankees scrambling back inside.

  All at once, Hern’s yell took on a different tone as his horse’s bit broke and he galloped past Richards, out of control. “For God’s sake, catch my mare or I’ll go to hell!” he shouted.