Clockwork Souls

by Phyllis Irene Radford

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  Weapon of Mass Destruction

  Irene Radford

  “I am dying, General Pemberton.” Jules de Chingé choked around a cough. He sat higher, bending forward from his chaise longue in front of the window overlooking the Mississippi. The cramping in his lungs and the pressure that filled his chest caused yet another spasm. It wracked his frame; his entire body tried to turn itself inside out. The blood on his handkerchief told him it partially succeeded.

  “So the doctors tell me,” the Confederate officer replied. He stood tall and erect. His spine, schooled by four years at West Point, would not bend in a hurricane wind, even if he had bent his loyalties from the Union to the Confederacy after marrying a Virginia woman.

  “Then the doctors must also tell you that I have not the weeks left to design and supervise the building of your magnificent gun.” The physics of such a marvelous cannon—for a moment the prospect allured him with all the old intellectual force. But no. He must not think of such things. The battle for his life was lost; he had made his peace with God.

  De Chingé turned his gaze away from the white asylum walls to gaze out on the Mississippi as it chugged and churned its way south toward his beloved New Orleans. At least he would not live to see how the Union army and navy had besmirched his natal city when they invaded. Uncouth Union soldiers had no respect for grace and dignity personified in the loveliest city in the world. They hadn’t left it to recover either. For the Union used the city as a launching point to win this other war. They rolled northward from New Orleans and southward along the Mississippi as relentless as the river.

  Only Vicksburg, the Gibraltar of the West, stood in their way.

  “I know that the Union offered you a great deal of money to design a weapon that would bring about a swifter end to the war,” Pemberton said, maintaining his unyielding pose.

  “Then you must also know that I declined the honor. I have not the time left to live and enjoy their money. Nor have I heirs to provide for.” Although there was one quadroon demimondaine who deserved the price of her freedom. He would like to bequeath something to the lovely Mathilde.

  “I do not have money to offer you,” Pemberton said, almost apologetically. “What I can offer you is life.”

  De Chingé lifted an eyebrow, mocking the man’s audacity. “So you claim the prerogative of God! Sir, the best doctors in the world can’t cure my rotting lungs.”

  “No, sir. But we have purchased an automaton from Lovelace and Babbage. A very lifelike automaton with the face of one of our fallen enlisted men. He was maimed, dying in a great deal of pain. And he was our best forward observer. We decided the war needed his particular skills of observation and his ability to draw those observations with pen and ink with amazing detail. We commissioned the automaton to look exactly like him. Unfortunately his mind was damaged at birth. He could not accept the new body. He died anyway. The empty body awaits only one procedure to activate it.”

  “Non, absolument, non. C’est impossible. C’est le blasphème!” But there was the puzzle of perfecting the aim of a massive weapon, the calculations of recoil, the balance of trajectory and size of a shell . . .

  “It is possible” Pemberton said with some urgency. “Lord Byron proved in the summer of ’16 that the soul is measurable, quantifiable, and transferable. Our scientists have built an electric modulated transference engine as outlined by Dr. John Polidari. The automaton will accommodate your genius. All we need is your consent.” Pemberton leaned forward, the light of fanatic zeal blazing in his eyes. “We can rid you forever of your consumption. Your genius can live forever.”

  “Lovelace and Babbage, eh? They do build magnificent machines. I have used their unique codex system in some of my designs.” De Chingé sighed and wished he hadn’t. His lungs immediately rebelled against the influx of too much air. He coughed long and hard, again and again, until he could not breathe. A sharp pain ripped through his torso. He’d cracked another rib with his spasm. Ah, well, he had not much longer to endure the indignity of dying.

  “And if I do not consent, General? I have seen my death in the sputum that stains my handkerchief. I have made my peace with God.” I have so many more puzzles to solve. Each as unique and wonderful as a beautiful woman. If I take the automatic body, I can continue the puzzles, but I will have to give up my Mathilde, give up every beautiful woman.

  “Have you truly accepted an end to your work, and of you? I know that the magnificence of a Lovelace and Babbage machine must tempt you, sexless though the machines are. What man readily goes to his death when he has an opportunity to live? When there is so much more work to do?”

  “Lovelace and Babbage I trust. Polidari I do not. His machine worked once. He has never managed to repeat the experiment with success. What if your grand experiment fails?” If the body was so life like as to be an exact replica of one particular man, could the body fool the lovely Mathilde? Would he have time to take leave in New Orleans to find out? Once the weapon was built of course.

  “Then you die a few weeks earlier without the long, drawn-out pain of fighting for air while your lungs collapse inch by inch and your body leaks blood drop by drop.”

  “The possibility of more unique and wonderful puzzles do entice . . .” With gingerly care De Chingé drew a breath.

  “Steady, Sergeant. Keep the balloon steady,” Captain Thaddeus Hyatt-Forsythe whispered.

  “As steady as the wind allows. Can’t afford to light the engine or spread the aerolons,” Nichols replied, grizzled and the most trustworthy balloon pilot in Grant’s army.

  Tad dropped a magnifying lens over his night vision goggles. The ectomorphic gel in the frames cast a greenish glow to the cautious dance of human figures around the flare and hiss of a massive steam engine below him. Heat from the living bodies glowed brighter than the river and the inert barge. The firebox powering the boiler showed bright enough to block details without even extreme magnification.

  “Lower, Sergeant Nichols. Take the balloon one hundred feet lower,” he ordered.

  “Aye, sir. But that’s as low as we dare go. That’s barely beyond rifle range.” Nichols adjusted the flaps on the black painted balloon envelope. They drifted lower and further east on the wind, prisoners of the wind’s whims, on this chill night in early April.

  “That’s a mighty big firebox,” Nichols said, leaning over the balloon’s basket. “What they need that much steam for?”

  “That’s what we’re here to find out.” Tad added another lens over his goggles.

  Details of men hauling ammunition toward the inferno on the Mississippi River’s surface jumped forward while darkness pressed against his peripheral vision. He hated the sense of viewing the world through a tunnel. That was the price of finding out what devilish plot the Rebs concocted aboard that bloody big barge.

  One hundred yards square if it was an inch. High gunnels kept the rain-swollen current from splashing their machinery. He’d been watching the barge’s construction and the machine atop it for months, sometimes from the hilltops around Vicksburg, as often as he could from the balloon’s heights. He liked this new design that allowed aerolons to spread out and guide them in wide tacks against the wind to return to their original position.

  Throughout the long winter, General Grant had launched seven separate attacks upon the fortified cliffs of Vicksburg and been repulsed each time. All the while, the enemy had constructed something in secret behind protective tarpaulin walls. Only the constant glow of a coal fire and the hiss of a steam engine leaked through. Tad had seen pipes taken on board to fill a boiler directly from the river. Shortly thereafter, on a calm day perfect for ballooning, he’d heard the hiss of steam.

  Last night the tents came down, revealing a swivel turret reminiscent of the ironclad Monitor and a cannon barrel nearly as long as the barge was square. Tonight the Rebs hoisted a dozen twenty-four-inch shells aboard the barge from smaller, ironclad gunships. A single shell strained the cargo net. Thre
e men steadied each shell and carried it to the growing stack at the turret’s base.

  The craft was still moored on the river’s eastern bank. When deployed, it would block the entire channel.

  And if the cannon hit where it was aimed, it would kill everything within a quarter mile and tear up the land to bedrock. Who could conceive of such a devilish weapon?

  Tad removed his goggles and handed them to his Sergeant. Nichols strapped the instrument on his head and peered at the scene below. “Holy Christ! Look at the size of that thing.”

  “I did,” Tad replied. He drew a small notebook and pencil stub from his kit, sketching the weapon’s shape and proportions. He’d grown used to the accuracy of his drawings. Grant had promised him another promotion if he sketched the right details to destroy the thing. On a fresh page, he began the calculations. “At a thirty-seven-degree elevation with a pound of gunpowder per shell, the gun can fire a shell three miles. At least.” Sweat broke out on his back and brow.

  He upped his damage estimate to a square mile. The crater alone would be almost half that.

  “Can’t aim anything that big,” Nichols grunted. “Can’t shoot at anything closer than half a mile. That’s why they’ve got all them little boats flitting around it, protection from attack closer in.”

  “And they are all blocking the river so Admiral Porter can’t get his flotilla down to the crossing. Without that flotilla Grant can’t cross the river and attack Vicksburg from the vulnerable south.”

  Tad took back his goggles to survey the monster again. He dropped a third lens over the previous two, further decreasing his peripheral in favor of picking out faces and uniforms. The glow from the firebox gave him plenty of light, overriding the ectomorphic gel. One man stood out from the others by his very stillness. An officer, by the cut of his gray uniform, bent over an opening in the turret. He straightened and turned to issue an order to the enlisted man beside him. The distance and engine noise stole his words. Tad had no device to magnify sounds as the goggles did sight.

  For five long heartbeats, he gasped for breath, unable to believe the sight before him. The officer who controlled the delicate mechanism inside the gun was none other than Tad’s brother Nate. Eleven months younger than Tad and a near-mirror image.

  Corporal Nathanial Hyatt-Forsythe had been reported missing after the battle of Shiloh. The letter of condolence to Tad’s mother in Richmond said they thought Nate had been blown to bits by a Union mortar. There wasn’t enough of a body left to identify. Or bury.

  So how did his dismembered brother, the boy who couldn’t sit still for more than five seconds, except when drawing the exact details of a bird in flight or a flower facing the sun, hadn’t learned to read until he was nearly twelve, the young man who had never had an original thought but took orders well, doggedly completing each task before he could do anything else, become this officer in charge of an experimental weapon of mass destruction?

  The physics of the thing would task him to the point of violent rage and frustration.

  “Take us up, Nichols. I’ve got to report to Colonel Jeremiah Inglis.”

  Jules de Chingé heard the faint buzz of conversation above him. Crisp words without a southern lilt and drawl. He stepped over the rails that would guide and limit the recoil of his weapon and into the shadows outside the circle of heat and light blasting from the firebox. With hands cupped around his mechanical eyes, he searched for the source.

  A three-second flare from a burner revealed the outline of a black observation balloon and two figures inside the basket.

  “Corporal, your rifle, if you please.”

  “Yes, sir, Colonel Hyatt-Forsythe.”

  De Chingé cringed a little at the new name the Confederate Army had given him along with a new body. The General Staff did not want the world to know who truly designed and activated the weapon. He liked his old name. But he reveled in the strength, accuracy, and enhanced senses in this automatic body that now housed his mind.

  Such a relief to be free from the need to eat and sleep, or to cough. An immortal body that would allow him to design and build forever.

  He held out his hand and felt the reassuring slap of metal. Then he brought the gun to bear, pleased that he knew his body would compensate for any imperfection in his training. One blink and the men in the balloon jumped into sharper focus. Two blinks and his mechanical eyes found details a normal eye could not discern. He saw sergeant’s chevrons on a sleeve and captain’s bars on a collar.

  His hearing sensors closed down a fraction of a second before he pulled the trigger. A muffled explosion and a miniature cloud of acrid smoke. The rifle recoiled but he barely felt the slam of a wooden butt into his shoulder. He tossed the weapon aside. By then the smoke had cleared and he saw a dark stain blossom across a uniformed chest.

  “You will not interfere with my invention!” he snarled at his unknown enemies. “My creation must live! As I live. Corporal, another rifle. Now.”

  A second weapon snapped into his hand even as someone withdrew the spent rifle and began reloading. He didn’t care who saw to his needs, only that they were met. With the pilot out of the way, he aimed for the balloon envelope. A broader target—he didn’t need as careful aim. But he took the extra second to make sure the black silk had not drifted too far east. The upper winds must be stronger than those closer to the river. Coldly he calculated the new distance and fired. When his hearing returned five pulses later, he heard the warning hiss of air leaking. He thought he saw a distinct sag in the envelope.

  “Another rifle.” His hand remained empty. “Now, Corporal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  De Chingé snapped his fingers, activating a powerful magnet in his palm. The first rifle, now reloaded, returned to his hand without assistance. He did love the improvements that enhanced his work. A third shot and the observation balloon dropped rapidly, the envelope deflating at a dangerous rate.

  “Corporal, I suggest you alert Lieutenant Markham that he needs must capture our spy quickly. Before he has a chance to hide and escape. We cannot allow him to report news of our weapon to General Grant. And, I want the man alive and able to talk. So if he is injured from the fall, get to him fast, before he dies.”

  De Chingé returned to his ordering and reordering the gold codex cards he’d designed for his creation. He had reused the codices that came with his new body, only modifying them slightly for their new purpose. Lovelace and Babbage would not sell an automaton without the coded instructions for Christian behavior. They made the best machines with the most accurate and complex operating instructions built in. The late Lady Ada Lovelace did not want the transference of souls into her automatons. With the codex, her machines did not need a soul. Indeed, in her last years, she’d fought for making such transference illegal throughout Europe. The United States and the Confederate States had other problems and made no decision on the issue. De Chingé had a better use for the intricately punched cards. His mind embedded in the automaton worked better than artificial intelligence. With the cards, he had a gun that would soon think for itself and carry its burden of destruction. By then de Chingé would have moved on to the next enticing project, bending his genius to a new puzzle, a uniquely beautiful maze, like wooing a beautiful woman.

  Tad jumped clear of the balloon six feet above ground and rolled to his feet. Two seconds later the basket thunked to the ground beside him. The balloon dragged it a few feet before completing its collapse.

  “Good bye, Nichols. You served well and died in combat. I’ll inform your family of your regretful death, myself.” Saddened, he bowed his head in brief prayer.

  With his goggles in place, he ducked and ran a zigzag course from bush to tree across the meadow. The guns of Vicksburg above the bluffs seemed to point directly at him the entire time.

  Where to go? He had to return to headquarters to the northwest of the bluffs and across that bloody big river. He dropped the map lens over his goggles. Immediately a sketchy drawing of
landmarks jumped into view, lighted by that odd green glow from the goggle gel. A long chain of hash marks indicated a railroad just north of his position.

  Exposed. But in the remaining hours of darkness he had a chance to get to the bridge. He had a few rations in his kit in case dawn caught him still behind enemy lines and he had to take refuge in a ditch.

  As a precaution he ripped the two pages of drawings and calculations from his notebook, folded them small and stuffed them into his drawers, the last place captors would look for contraband.

  He dashed to the next shelter revealed by his goggles, a line of low shrubs, bordering one of the numerous creeks that drained into the Big Muddy.

  Just as he reached the first leafy willow, Tad heard an ominous rustle. The gentle breeze that had carried the balloon was above them. Down here at ground level, the air was still.

  Tad dug in his heels, slowing his headlong plunge into the bushes. Something tripped him, a root, a rock, a trap, something. He flailed for balance.

  A rifle butt caught him in the gut. Fierce pain doubled him over and robbed him of breath. He gagged and coughed, all his concentration centered on forcing his lungs to break free of paralysis and work again. His vision narrowed worse than four degrees of magnification on the goggles.

  “Straighten up, you damned Yankee spy,” a tenor voice drawled. Deep South, not the soft lilt of Virginia, or the western states’ twang.

  “I—cough—am in uniform. You can’t arrest me as a spy,” Tad choked out, coughing again as his words faded to a whisper. Unconsciously his tone drifted back to the gentle accent of northern Virginia rather than the clipped affectation to help him blend in with his own troops.

  “Traitor,” a Reb snarled. His accent sounded identical to Tad’s. He emphasized their common origin and opposite affiliation with a resounding slam of the weapon against the back of Tad’s head.

  He saw stars as the stunning blow sent knife-sharp pain over the top of his head to his eyes and down his spine.