McKEAN: “And I, sir, wish to assure you in the most
unequivocal of terms possible that the judiciary power is more than equal to the task of quelling and punishing these riots. The overhasty employment of military force, at this period, would be as bad as anything the rioters have done—as well as being equally unconstitutional and illegal:”
HAMILTON: “A pox on constitutionality! I’ll not waste time
rehearsing the celebrated causes of western discontent. They are endless, nor will they vanish overnight. Like faithless lovers, they have slighted our caresses, and for that reason, I agree with our President, insisting that the crisis be met by an immediate resort to arms!”
DALLAS: (Spreading his hands) “I would comment only
that in the opinion of Judge Alexander Addi-
son of Pittsburgh, force will promote resistance to what inevitably must be taken as an attempt to dragoon the people into submission.”
HAMILTON: “Addison? Why, that horrible man is himself
one of the most insidious promoters of opposition! Do not look at me that way! My draft report to our President contains many particulars of Judge Addison’s seditious conduct.”
I’ll bet you’re wondering how the hell we got hold of that recording. Father of his Country, and so on. It’s a long story. I’ll get around to it—within limits of plausible deniability.
Washington had called the meeting at his residence on Philadelphia’s Market Street just before news of the previous day’s rebel march through Pittsburgh had reached the capital. Besides the President, most of the bigwigs from the federal government and Pennsylvania were present, including those who did all that talking, plus Secretary of State Edmund Randolph and Secretary of War Harry Knox. In addition to the governor, chief justice, and state secretary representing the Keystone State, its Attorney General, Jared Ingersoll, sat in.
And never said a word.
A paratronic conference with Ooloorie had resulted in the decision, disagreeable to all, that, now the Rebellion was well underway, one of us ought to shift attention to the other end and keep tabs on what the badguys were up to. The local badguys. Lucy and Ed had ransacked Coal Hill without finding a trace of Edna. I suspected one of them jiggered the straws, but couldn’t prove it. At that, it saved me the long march with the troops.
So it began with another unforgettable Pittsburgh evening. The night was dark and the moon was yellow—I’m not even going to consider what came tumbling down, on account of the location. I was against it, but there was only one way a stranger in that crowd could get any privacy.
In the shadowy darkness, a wary hand on the butt of the pistol I’d swapped Ed the rifle for, I stumbled through an alley cluttered with what would someday be expensive antiques—right now, they were just somebody’s garbage—trying to find the tiny shack I’d called my own a few days before. The alley didn’t look at all the same at night. Nothing seemed familiar. The galvanized steel garbage can hadn’t been invented, nor the telephone pole, nor the automobile from which abandoned hulks and piles of threadbare tires are fashioned. In short, the typical American alley hadn’t yet been elevated to the art-form it would later become.
I was lost. Either side of me, beyond buttoned-up houses and storefronts, bedlam reigned as a townlet of one thousand tried to find room for five times that number. True, the strangers had brought their own tents and bedrolls. It was surface-area to stretch them out on that presented a problem. In a one-horse town, even sleeping in the manger was out.
Somewhere a tomcat yodeled the Indian love-call. I took a whiff. The cool of the evening had subdued its homey aroma a trifle, but there it was, the rustic phone booth where I’d earlier conferred with Ooloorie.
I crept up, wary that some desperate soul might have hit on it as a place to sleep.
Empty. I latched the crescent-pierced door behind me, reflecting that, without the flies, it just wasn’t the same place. I keyed my sleeve-buttons. “Kirk to Enterprise, beam me up.”
A point of hellish blue hung in the darkness. “handling, you will make bad jokes upon your deathbed." The point dilated, staying painful to look at on the edges. I stepped through into San Francisco of the twenty-second century, and the Emperor Norton University.
Surrounding me on every side was complicated machinery, humming with pent-up power. AH four walls of the white-tiled room were transparent, one a breathtaking cityscape—the Golden Gate had never been constructed here, but the broad, hovercraft-carpeted sea-lane taking its place was still filled with spume-spraying fireflies, preserved, like the cable-cars, as part of the historic atmosphere.
The other three transparencies—and, heaven help me, the ceiling—sloshed with salty water in which swam an equally salty silver-gray figure, armless, legless, half again as long as a man, with twice the advertised intelligence (compared to mine, at least) and a quarter of the sense of humor.
I was in an air tank, from her point of view. “Greetings, oceanling, get any herring pickled lately?”
The porpoise thrashed her tail. “There is nothing to be gained from surrealistic conversation, Edward William Bear. We have succeeded in determining arrival coordinates for eighteenth-century Philadelphia. I am feeding the values to the machinery by direct-wired mind-link to assure their accuracy.” Not belonging to a species with fingers, Ooloorie distrusted all machinery and its operators. She seldom left her clammy cloister for any reason—although a skinsuit would have made it easy—preferring the cerebral pursuit of science and mathematics.
A hissing, rustling noise caught my attention. I turned toward an empty comer of the room. Through the otherwise solid-looking floor, like toothpaste, rose a small stack of twenty-first-century information chips. “You cannot appear in ancient Philadelphia without advance intelligence,” Ooloorie told me. “Since you have no implant, we shall feed these data into your suit.”
I nodded, reluctant to rush affairs. This room was a nice place to be, compared to what I’d just left—or to the whole eighteenth century, for that matter. “Swell. When do I go back?”
“In approximately five minutes. We are new at this time-travel business. Insufficient calibratory accuracy. Otherwise, I would let you get a good night’s sleep and send you back to the minute you left Pittsburgh. Give me another decade, I shall be capable of such feats.” “But Ooloorie, dear,” I objected, inserting the information chips through a slot in my sleeve, “you haven’t got any feets.”
She roiled the water with her tail. “You try my patience, human. I have no obligation to tolerate such nonsense.” With an annoyed lash, the cetacean swam deeper into the misty distance.
“What’s wrong with you, a case of barnacles?” I’d
known the scientist more than a century. She’d never been the life of the party. “Or are you sore because you didn’t invent time-travel before Himschlag?” There was a long, silent pause, then she said, “Worse, landling, at least from where I stand.”
“Swim,” I corrected, then regretted it. “Sorry.” “Forgiven, Win—it is also the point that rankles me. That, and what you said about ‘feets.’ It is my daughter, Leelalee, do you know her?”
I recalled a long-ago letter from one of my own girls—maybe it was Koko Featherstone-Haugh—from the Tom Paine Maru. “A starship captain or something like that?”
“Something like that. She has spent the last several decades working among humans and simians. Now she has decided to help colonize a sea-planet recently discovered.”
“That’s bad, is it?”
“Leelalee has decided that she needs to grow a pair of hands.”
“Hmmmm.” I blinked. “Didn’t know they could do that. Still..
Across the room, adjustments began making themselves on the Broach machinery. I hated to see that. I was enjoying a microvacation in a century I understood. Ooloorie went on, “Genetic manipulation of somatic tissue. How would you feel if your daughters decided to join a religious cult. Or become Hamiltonians. Or grew a set of m
oose-antiers. Do not laugh— that is how it seems to me, Win. A porpoise needs a pair of hands—”
“Like a fish needs a bicycle,” I finished.
“Manipulatory organs are for less-gifted intelligences. Those better off should appreciate the pure cognition it affords them.”
I was used to Ooioorie’s offhand insults. That’s just the way she was. Now I heard bitterness in her tone. Professor Deejay Thorens had been like a daughter to the porpoise—yet she, too, had emigrated. Had it been to avoid being considered second-class offspring? I opened my mouth, but considering the lame excuse for commiseration I was about to offer, it was a good thing the scientist interrupted before I got started.
“I have reshipped the primary moebius coil, Edward William Bear. I am sorry that this apparatus is so clumsy. What Edna Janof did to Himschlag von Ochskahrt’s equipment left little available for reuse.”
“Just so long as it doesn’t dump me out in hyperspace—” I tapped the pistol in my belt. “—or back somewhere with the dinosaurs.”
“I’ve one more thing to show you.” Through the floor rose a naked scalp, followed by a red-rimmed pair of the angriest eyes I’ve ever seen. Below was a gag, and below that, as it rose to our level, a body in eighteenth-century clothing—except for the handcuffs, belly-chains, and leg-irons. If I’d learned my history right, it was none other than Pennsylvania State Attorney General Jared Ingersoll.
“Obscenity!” cried Ooloorie. “The stasis-field has worn off—it was set for ten hours!”
I walked over to the prisoner. He glared up at me as I spoke. “My sympathies, buddy, I know how it feels to be Broach-napped.” Turning to Ooloorie, I asked, “What are you going to do with him now?”
The dolphin shuddered, “Misplace him somewhere, I suppose—the paradoxes...”
I shook my head. “Keep him on ice until this operation’s over. I’ve seen enough killing for a lifetime. Promise?”
“Landling, I cannot. We may need to appropriate more Hamiltonians to provide you with disguises. My mind has been preoccupied. All I can promise is to be more careful henceforward.”
The conversation didn’t interest Ingersoll. He strained against his bonds as I stepped toward the Broach aperture. The last I saw of him, as I instructed my suit to imitate his face, were those fear-maddened eyes.
21
The Times That Try Men’s Soles
AUGUST 23, 1794
Civilization’s in the eye of the beholder.
The City of Botherly Love looked like Pittsburgh to me, piled higher and deeper. What did I know? This cluster of antique colonial architecture was thirty times the size of the smaller, western town, was, in fact, the largest in the country. It had more streets, and more of them were cobbled. It had more houses, shops, horses, people...
One of them stopped me now and asked me for the time. I looked like I had it, in my Respectable Businessman disguise. Jared Ingersoll I’d sloughed on leaving Morris House. I faked extracting a pocket-watch I didn’t own, keeping my elbow close to my body. The ornate timepiece and chain were “painted” on, a dec-
orative feature my suit was generating. The inside of the same suit told me what time it was. The tall dark gentleman nodded and went on his way.
And... what had I been thinking about? Oh yeah— but not one traffic light did Philadelphia possess, nor fire hydrant, taco-stand or hamburger joint. No movie theaters, gay bars, or speedy car washes. And just try getting your nickel back from a pay phone.
The guy never suspected he was being tailed.
I gave the Secretary a block’s lead. I had a good idea where he was going, a big house in a neighborhood that had seen nobler times. He owned the place through a tangle of business connections. This was the fellow, after all, who’d invented Chase Manhattan. He went inside; I gave him a few minutes. I needed the time, too. At five foot seven and two hundred ten, shinnying drain pipes isn’t my idea of fun. Nobody in the carriage just pulling up would notice an irregular lump of brick jutting from the third floor of a run-down private residence.
Two minutes passed. Through the bedroom window, I watched Edna enter, throw off her cloak, hollering something toward a room next door. Behind a decorative screen, she began unfastening fastenings, flopping garments over the top. Underneath, she wore that same striped outfit with the leg-warmers, but it wouldn’t be like Braddock’s Field, this time. When I had a clear shot, I was going to coo! Edna for good.
From the next room, Hamilton emerged—and almost cost me my grip. He was dressed the way I’d first seen Lucy, back at Gary’s Bait & Trust: Merry Widow, black mesh stockings, button earrings, feather boa. “Ah, my little Edna,” he gushed. “You should not have taken advantage of my sensibilities to steal into my affections without consent.”
She wrinkled her nose. “What?”
“But,” he went on, “as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed. Hasten to give us pleasure which we shall relish.” He spread his arms, advancing a step. She backed up one. “But mind you, a lafrangaise, not a VamericaineShe retreated another pace, only to be blocked by a bureau. He seized her, clasped her to his bosom.
“Cold in my professions,” he nuzzled her, smearing makeup on her shoulder, “warm in friendships, I wish, by action rather than words, to convince you. I had another friend, once, a clever fellow. We knew each other’s sentiments, our views were the same. Alas, all men love egotism—adieu, God bless him—he’d more of the infirmities of human nature than others. We fought side by side to make America free. He could not quit his sword and struggle, hand in hand to make her happy.”
Struggling herself, for breathing-space, Edna wedged an arm between them. “I think I understand.” She nodded. She reached back to the bureau. There was a crack! as she brandished the carriage whip she’d laid there. “You’re a bad boy, Alex; you’ll have to be punished!”
Hamilton threw himself to his knees, palms together in supplication. “You have disarmed my discontent, my dear, and by a single mark of attention made up the quarrel!” Tears of joy streamed down his face as he sobbed, “Your impatience is well placed. I confess my sins; my affection was alarmed, and my vanity piqued. Mistress, let friendship between us be more than a name. Be witness to the final consummation!” I’m broad-minded, but what they did then, I hadn’t even known was anatomically possible. I’m ashamed to admit that I forgot all about assassinating Edna. And I’ll never be able to look at a buttonhook again. When it was over, and they were getting dressed, I rested my flintlock on the upper casement, aligned the sights with Edna’s torso—
"Say, you, what are you doing, there?"
“GHAAA!” I let go of the casement, almost dropped the pistol, grabbed for the drain pipe. Bits of mortar crumbled into the alley below, where a man looked up, armed with a double-barreled shotgun. They heard him inside, too. I turned in time to see Edna fumbling through her clothing for her gun. Hamilton cowered in a comer, trying to cover his corset with his hands.
I fired. Smoke and flame spat through the shattered window. The ball—not the disintegrating type— smashed an oil lamp inches from the Secretary’s nose. He shrieked, “The rebels!” threw both arms in the air, and made a Hamilton-shaped hole in the bedroom door. No spare hand to cock the pistol with. Edna leveled her plasma piece at me. I dropped the flintlock, slapped buttons, stepped off the edge, my suit rigid as steel. I landed on the shotgunner, waited for my suit to relax, grabbed my pistol, and sprayed the window above with Heller radiation.
Hamilton ran out the door, still dressed in the Merry Widow, the rest of his clothes in his arms. I snatched up the shotgun, emptied both barrels as he passed. He hollered as the blast carried him headfirst into Edna’s carriage and the horses bolted, disappearing down the street. I sniffed at the shotgun muzzles, found white powder rimming each crown. Rock salt. The other guy was still alive. His wallet said his name was Liam Griswold, private watchman.
Brrrr.
N
obody was home by the time I’d collected my wits and broken in the front door. Returning through the Sunday-quiet byways of the miniature metropolis, I ducked into alleyways and shadowed niches several times for a change of paratronic identity, each successive alternation a step downward on the ladder of social desirability, from distinguished merchant to anonymous European ship-jumper trying to get underground and stay there.
Then home sweet home. In eighteenth-century Philadelphia, there wasn’t such a thing as taking a room. My consumer-preferences were at least two centuries unreasonable. I’d have been expected to share a bed with the Boston post-rider, a visiting squad of blue-coats and their camp-followers, and an entire family of Polish immigrants who’d never been sanitized for my protection or anybody else’s. Business quarters were a house of a different color. It wasn’t Holiday Inn; it wasn’t even Motel 6. My abode for the duration was an overpriced, rat-infested loft I’d taken over a warehouse for a month’s exorbitant advance—good thing damage deposits hadn’t been invented—on the seediest back street of an already seedy section of town. They threw in the dry rot, free.
There, musing over “the good old days” of the twenty-second century, I refueled with absent discontent on a day-old loaf of unleavened sawdust and a sausage that belonged in the raw materials bin of a shoe-repair emporium. I’d already transmitted the holos—at a dozen times the real rate taken by my suit—of the latest panicky Market Street get-together and Hamilton’s social engagement afterward. I finished by asking Lucy, Ed, and Ochskahrt at one end of the conference-call, and Ooloorie at the other, for comments.
What I got was a non sequitur: “Says here Pennsylvania’s the thirty-third largest state in what’s gonna be the Union, Winnie, not countin’ Quebec. But y’couldn’t prove it by the carbuncles on this volunteer’s backside. I’m gonna talk t’Gallatin about it—I think this here army’s marchin’ in circles!”
I said, “Don't they all, Lucy?” Ooloorie tried correcting Lucy’s geographical misconceptions. I didn’t try. Ms. Kropotkin may have been an accomplished individual in her universe, but her knowledge of my own often seemed sketchy.
The Gallatin Divergence Page 14