Ghosts of Time

by Steve White

  “As we all know,” Jason continued, “I and Alexandre led a Special Ops mission to Richmond in April, 1865, in response to a message drop from Pauline Da Cunha, whose research expedition—including you, Carlos—had turned up evidence of Transhumanist activity. By the time I arrived—or, for convenience, let’s say Jason Mk I arrived—on April 1, she had investigated further and determined the exact nature of the threat by means of the detection feature of her brain implant. This expedited my investigation, and we destroyed the nanobot cache in the course of the following night, and departed on April 3. Afterwards, with the threat seemingly removed, Pauline saw no need to monitor that function of her implant for the remainder of her stay.

  “After her retrieval—I was off-world at the time, en route to and from Hesperia, before our expedition to the seventeenth century Caribbean—Pauline was of course debriefed, and her implant’s records downloaded. But, again, there was no sense of urgency about reviewing them. And there had been some sort of malfunction after April 3 that resulted in their being fuzzy. So they just sat until after I had returned from the Caribbean expedition on which Pauline was killed.” Jason said this last expressionlessly, not meeting Mondrago’s eyes, for Dabney and Novak were still not privy to the details. “But there were some bothersome anomalies amid the fuzziness, which finally led to an in-depth examination while I was again off-world. It turned out that on April 4 the detector had revealed the existence of a cache of nanobots which had been emplaced earlier than the one we destroyed … and which hadn’t been there before.”

  There was dead silence, and not just from Novak, to whom this was new. None of them had to have the implications spelled out. It was the sort of contingency everyone knew was possible but preferred not to think about.

  “Evidently,” Jason resumed, “after April 3, surviving Transhumanists informed their uptime superiors, either by message drop or on their retrieval or both. And a second expedition was sent back—or will be, since for all we know it will come from our future. Our own expedition under ‘Jason Mk II’ to counter it was intended to remain until April 5, since we know the second cache in Richmond existed on April 4 and therefore the Observer Effect precludes our destroying it before that date. Basil, as you’ve undoubtedly learned from Rumor Central by now, all of us except Angus Aiken were captured and held prisoner under circumstances resulting in our unprecedented premature retrieval. So there was no ‘Jason Mk II’ in Richmond in early April after all. Angus, however, is still in 1865.” (Everyone understood that his use of the present tense referred to the “linear present.” It was one of the accommodations the language had to make to time travel.) “And he will remain until the scheduled retrieval date, slightly before which he is to meet us in Richmond. Thanks to him, an additional nanobot cache was destroyed in the Blue Ridge Mountains.”

  Novak gestured for attention. “Commander, something else Rumor Central is handing out is that Aiken did it with the help of some kind of secret organization drawn from the enslaved segment of that era’s North American population—and that this organization somehow knows about, and is opposed to, the Transhumanist underground. How can this be?”

  “The organization to which you’re referring is called the Order of the Three-Legged Horse, after a legend from Jamaica, where it originated. The answer to your question is that it was founded in the seventeenth century by a Transhumanist renegade—I won’t say ‘defector,’ because she had no great opinion of our side either—whose acquaintance we had made. The real mystery was that the Order’s leader Gracchus was expecting us, thanks to a letter some unknown party had written in the late seventeenth century, predicting our advent in detail. The letter also stated that it was important that I, personally, go back to the letter-writer’s era.” Jason smiled at Novak’s expression. “Yes, this is the part that’s been kept seriously under wraps. Shortly after our return, Alexandre and I, accompanied by Dr. Chantal Frey, went to 1692 Jamaica as instructed. The results were inconclusive.” Jason left it at that. “So for now, at least, we have to file away Gracchus’s letter under the heading of ‘unexplained’ and concentrate on our immediate objective, which is the destruction of the Transhumanists’ second nanobot cache in Richmond.

  “We’ll be operating under Special Ops protocols, including the use of ‘controllable’ TRDs. We will arrive on the morning of April 2, 1865. Basil, you know from the basic historical orientation you’ve already received that this was the date on which the Confederates evacuated and burned the city. I can tell you from personal experience as ‘Jason Mk I’ that it was a harrowing night, which I don’t relish experiencing again. But the confusion should enable us to go about unnoticed locating the cache, especially inasmuch as we know it’s not far from the original one, on the island known as Belle Isle.”

  Jason activated the briefing room’s display screen, which showed a map of a short segment of the James River, at the fall line at the western edge of nineteenth-century Richmond. An oblong island lay near the south shore. “Carlos, would you take over the briefing at this point?”

  Dabney cleared his throat. “Belle Isle is a fifty-four acre island with a rocky spine. Before the war, it was home to the Old Dominion Iron and Nail Works, and was used as a recreation area for Richmonders. You will note,” he added, using a cursor to point to a railroad bridge connecting the island to the southern shore, at a sharp west-to-east angle, “the connection with the Richmond and Danville Railroad. This bridge became known among Union prisoners of war as the ‘bridge of sighs.’ For after the First Battle of Bull Run, when the Confederacy was swamped with more than anticipated numbers of prisoners, the Confederate government purchased the island and established a camp for enlisted prisoners on the north side of the island, in an area formerly used as a racecourse.”

  “‘Enlisted’ prisoners?” Novak queried.

  “The officers were housed in Libby Prison, in the city of Richmond, north of the river. Conditions there were notoriously bad, but were nothing compared to Belle Isle, where there was a rudimentary hospital for the prisoners, but no barracks—only a tent city. The prisoners baked in the summer and froze in the winter, and suffered disease epidemics and inadequate rations, although the number who actually died is disputed. And the encampment grew seriously overcrowded after the Union army’s frequent defeats. At one point, it held more than twice its theoretical three-thousand-man capacity.

  “The island was used for this purpose because of its security advantages—the whitewater rapids on the north side, where the camp was located, discouraged attempts to escape by swimming, although some prisoners became desperate enough to try it—and also for the ready railway access, as it was always intended primarily as a holding facility for prisoners to be transferred further south. By October, 1864 they had all been shipped out and the prison was abandoned.”

  Novak looked puzzled. “I don’t quite understand, then. Why don’t we materialize right there on the island after April 5, 1865, find the cache, and destroy it at our leisure?”

  Jason answered the question. “Two reasons, in ascending order of importance. First, the Transhumanists will be expecting us to do precisely that, and may plan to have a presence on the island then to prevent us. So we’d better show up earlier than they expect, and deal with them first. Secondly, Angus Aiken is under instructions to be in Richmond around the first of April, and I promised I’d meet him shortly thereafter. I also have reason to believe that Gracchus is going to be there, and we’ve learned how helpful he and his organization can be.” Although, the bothersome thought surfaced, only to be dismissed as not immediately relevant, I don’t know why he told me he was so determined to be in Richmond then.

  “Also,” Dabney put in, “even though the nail factory wasn’t reopened until after the war, we can’t be certain that the island was completely deserted on April 5.”

  “But, Commander,” Novak persisted, “if we arrive on April 2, won’t we overlap in time with Jason Mk I?”

  “Also Alexandre Mk I
,” Jason admitted. “And even more of an overlap with Carlos Mk I. Believe me, I’m all too well aware of that.” He had to smile, recalling the effort he’d had to expend to soothe Rutherford’s jitters. “But it can’t be helped. And remember, none of us in our ‘Mk I’ manifestations reported any weird encounters with ourselves, so we have the Observer Effect on our side. Something will prevent any such encounters.

  “Angus should be in Richmond by April 2, and I should be able to locate him. My computer implant will be set to pick up the tracking device in his TRD as well as the ones in you three’s. Also, in the course of Jason Mk II’s expedition, we located a potential safe house in the city—the Van Lew mansion. We probably won’t be using it, because it will be best if we can get back across the river before dawn on April 3, when the last bridge is destroyed. But if necessary, we will proceed to the mansion after our arrival, and Angus will probably do the same.”

  “Assuming,” Mondrago cautioned with unwelcome realism, “that he’ll still be alive.”

  “There’s always that,” Jason admitted reluctantly. “All sorts of things could happen to someone riding with Mosby’s Rangers.”

  Angus Aiken held his horse’s head, silently waiting with the other hundred and twenty-seven men in the wooded hollow a mile east of the village of Harmony, which in turn was two miles east of Purcellville, awaiting Mosby’s command.

  It was now March 22, and the harsh winter was past. Sheridan had departed the valley on February 27, handing command over to General Winfield Scott Hancock, a hero of Gettysburg but a man who did not understand counterinsurgency. He had gone into a static defensive posture, complete with frontier-like stockades, to protect the B&O Railroad, and only sent large, cumbersome patrols into Mosby’s Confederacy. Finally he had organized a massive circular hunt by eighteen hundred infantry, cavalry and artillery to trap Mosby’s two hundred men. While infantry detachments sealed Ashby’s Gap and Snicker’s Ferry against westward escape, and an additional force from Fairfax Court House performed the same function to the east, Custer’s protégé Marcus Reno had moved south from Harper’s Ferry with the main force of a thousand two days before. His ponderous advance had given Mosby plenty of warning. Now he was proceeding from Purcellville toward Leesburg in standard formation, with the infantry marching along the road and the cavalry paralleling its flanks. And Mosby was ready.

  As the flanking column of bluecoated cavalry appeared on the edge of Harmony in the distance, Mosby gave a hand signal. Lieutenant Jim Wiltshire acknowledged with equal silence, and led two dozen men of Company A, including Aiken, out of concealment and onto the road. They proceeded west, toward the advancing Federals—the 12th Pennsylvania Cavalry, Mosby’s sources had indicated.

  Presently, shouts could be heard from up ahead, followed by a thunder of hooves. The Yankees had taken the bait.

  “Back, boys!” yelled Wiltshire, wheeling his horse around.

  They fled back down the road, with the Northerners charging in pursuit.

  When they drew level with the strip of woods behind which the other hundred-odd Rangers waited under the command of Mosby and Lieutenant Alfred Glascock, they wheeled again, into the faces of their startled pursuers, and began to pour revolver fire into the head of the onrushing Union column, bringing down men and horses in a welter of confusion that caused the column to crumple up into a congested mass on the roadbed . At the same instant, Rebel yells erupted to the left as the Rangers waiting in ambush erupted from the trees, crashing into the flank of the jammed mass of Union cavalry, blazing away with their Colts at point-blank range.

  The Pennsylvanians held only momentarily before breaking, their only thought to disentangle themselves from the jam and get back to Harmony and take shelter behind an osage orange hedge where the infantry was deploying. As the pursuing Rangers reached the outskirts of town, fire from behind the hedgerow began to rake them, killing two and breaking the momentum of their charge. But that momentum carried some of them into the town even as Mosby was ordering a retirement.

  Aiken was one of them. He saw a Ranger shoot a Union trooper down on the front porch of a house. Some of the men seemed disposed to stop and loot. But then he heard Mosby’s shouted command.

  “Come on, men! Let’s skedaddle while we have the chance,” he yelled. The men came around, although he saw one pause to cut a ring-finger off a fallen man’s hand first. Most of them extricated themselves from Harmony and rejoined the withdrawing main body, which Mosby was leading south. The Federals showed no inclination to follow them.

  Aiken spurred his horse and drew abreast of Mosby as the latter was receiving a report from Lieutenant Glascock. “I make it nine Yankees killed, twelve wounded and thirteen prisoners. We also got fifteen horses.”

  “Good,” Mosby nodded. “We only lost two dead—the ones caught in that infantry volley—and five wounded. Another four were captured—they didn’t get out of the town in time.” He noticed Aiken. “There would have been more of those if it hadn’t been for you, Angus. Good work. And now,” he added, looking at the sky to the west, “Those clouds rolling in from over the mountains portend a rainstorm tonight. We’ll bivouac in southern Loudoun County. But after this, Reno is sure to be reinforced—probably tomorrow or the next day. So we’ll disperse further south, into Fauquier County. And,” he continued, turning to Aiken again, “it’s only a week before you need to be in Richmond. We’ll see about getting you there. But I may not see you again. If not, good luck.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Aiken met those extraordinary blue eyes, and felt a sense of impending loss. He also felt an almost uncontrollable urge to tell Mosby he was going to survive the war, and eventually be memorialized in countless ways. But of course he couldn’t.

  The rain was falling, and they had donned their rubber ponchos, when a rider trotted out of the stormy darkness, off to the side in thin woods. By now, Aiken could recognize Gracchus even in these conditions. He inconspicuously detached himself from the column—easy to do, given the Rangers’ informal marching order, especially at night—and approached the black man.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while,” he said, as softly as he could and still make himself heard over the rain.

  “I’ve been busy, trying to learn if there are any more caches.”

  “Are there?”

  “Not that I’ve been able to find out about. But … I know where the one in Richmond is.”

  Aiken was instantly alert. “You can’t come to Richmond with me. We’ll have to meet there. How will I find you?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll find you. And,” Gracchus added in a tone Aiken could not interpret, “I’ll definitely find Commander Thanou.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Now I see why they put the POW camp on the north side,” said Mondrago as he stepped gingerly from one wet boulder to another. “Too easy to get off the island here.”

  They had materialized—at dawn of April 2, as per standard procedures—in an out-of-the-way location south of the James River, as close to the Richmond & Danville railroad bridge as they had dared. But walking across the bridge to Belle Isle would have been too conspicuous even this early in the day. Fortunately, as Dabney had explained, getting across the relatively narrow strip of water separating the island from the south shore was a matter of fairly easy boulder-hopping as long as the water level wasn’t exceptionally high. Today it wasn’t. So they were working their way under the bridge, unnoticed, proceeding carefully in the early morning light and a dissipating fog.

  Only part of Jason’s mind was on the effort of keeping his footing. The rest contemplated the fact that he was about to witness the fall of Richmond a second time.

  Once had been more than enough.

  At least the weather was more comfortable than the winter conditions from which he had departed on his last excursion into 1865 Virginia. The fog burned off to reveal a somewhat hazy and humid day, but there was a slight breeze. That breeze muffled the sound of distant shelling to the south,
the direction of Petersburg. Richmonders had long become accustomed to such sounds from that direction. But this had been going on since just after midnight.

  Dabney had explained what that sound meant today. Yesterday, the Union armies had finally crumpled Lee’s right flank in the Battle of Five Forks, to the west. Grant, sensing his opportunity, had finally ordered a frontal assault on the Petersburg lines. Hundreds of guns had shelled the Rebel trenches unmercifully for hours. Then, at 4:45, with the fog still thick, the Union infantry had advanced in the predawn darkness and eighteen hours of continuous fighting had commenced.

  But as yet Richmond knew nothing of its onrushing doom, as it prepared for communion services on this Sunday morning. Not until 10:45 would the War Office receive Lee’s message that this time the Yankee juggernaut could not be stopped, that he was retreating westward in an effort to join Joe Johnston’s army in North Carolina, and that the Confederate government should evacuate its capital.

  Yes, Jason had seen all this before.

  Or, rather, I am seeing it all before, he thought with the sense of dizzying unreality that often accompanied time travel. For even as he splashed ashore on the southern side of Belle Isle, Jason Mk I was north of the James, in the city, where he had made contact with Pauline Da Cunha yesterday. And later today, amid the chaos of the Confederacy’s Gotterdammerung, that same Jason Mk I would come to this island after crossing the Mayo Bridge, making his way through Manchester, and crossing the Richmond & Danville railroad bridge that no one was bothering to watch. But he would never encounter himself, so Jason (Jason Mk III, as he decided he must think of himself, even though as Jason Mk II he had never made it to this point in spacetime) would surely be gone from Belle Isle by then.