L Neil Smith - [North American Confederacy 06]

by The Gallatin Divergence (epub)

  “Beg pardon, Monsieur Bear, for startling you...” I goggled: with his other hand, he offered me a steaming mug of coffee. “... but I came, mon ami, to inquire, since you have taken it upon yourself to guard my life, will you not at least come in where it is warm and dry—” He held the canopy over my waterlogged brains. I took a deep, grateful gulp of the near-boiling liquid. “—and tell me why the hell you are doing it?"

  Oil lamps flickered, casting grotesque shadows on canvas. Somebody was going to have to loosen up the stake-ropes when—and if—the weather brightened, or this place was going to tear itself in half.

  I poured another cup of coffee, felt at the cuffs of my long woolen underwear to see if it was drying on the line we’d suspended between two poles, checked the buckskins, too, hung to prevent frontier sanfori-zation, further from the fire, near the entrance. Bone-weary, I lowered myself onto a folding Army cot I hadn’t known had been invented already—by the Romans, My skinsuit was doing a nice job of warming me up under the colorful trading blanket that concealed it. Given time, it would leach fatigue-acids out of my sore muscles. It was even managing to correct my fluid balance, so the pressure on my bladder had eased for the moment.

  Security was provided by my Heller Effect Kentucky, wiped spotless and leaning against the cot-frame with a dry charge of pan-powder. My host favored a brace of horse-pistols, backed up by the good offices of an enormous Negro sitting just inside the doorflap with what must have been a two-gauge shotgun lying across his lap. The servant, introduced as Cato, assisted me in lowering the coffee-level again. Already we’d had sizzling bacon, hardtack with bacon gravy, and something reminiscent of chutney. After the chill outside, this was paradise. If Ed wanted to sleep in, that was his bad luck.

  The boss held a hand up, palm out, when I offered to warm up his cup, too. I shook my head and grinned, at the brevity of my tenure as an inconspicuous bodyguard.

  Unlike most Presidents, Gallatin hadn’t changed the course of history by being stupid. Of course, he wasn’t President yet; maybe that made a difference. Whatever the reason, he’d caught me by surprise out there in the rain—the drizzle had become a downpour, so the guy whose life I was supposed to be preserving had probably saved mine. As we talked, he continued surprising me.

  “Mais oui, to be certain, I have followed your progress and that of your companions—your friend who looks like you, the lady who is not your mother, and the fellow with the violoncello who has the wrong German accent to be Pennsylvania Deutsch—since you arrived in Washington County.”

  What was I supposed to say? I glanced at where my watch should have been—Ed was getting later and later—and made the appropriate reply, none at all.

  Gallatin smiled. “Deception is the order of the day. You are not the only dissembling strangers here, my friend.” He leaned back, stretching a knickered leg. His knee-britches ended not with stockings and silver-buckled slippers, but at the stitch-rolled edges of a pair of heavy boots. Brushing aside his many-buttoned coat, he fished in a vest pocket, extracting a wad of paper. “Have you seen these handbills distributed among our battalions to lubricate the entrance of the Committee of Twenty-one?”

  It was hard to tell if he’d intended it. There always seemed to be a Gallic twinkle in his eye that gave away his ancestry long before his Jacques Cousteau accent did. I liked his choice of metaphor. The Pittsburgh expedition had left the city about ten the previous morning, in the racket of fife and drum that accompanied everything around here. By the time they’d arrived at Braddock’s Field two hours later, handbills or not, they’d managed to make the opposite kind of stir they’d hoped for.

  “We ‘rebels’ are not fooled.” Gallatin lit a long clay pipe. Cato had a pipe of his own. I dug out a dampened cigar. “An acquaintance informs me that Monsieur Brackenridge, this ... this lawyer who imagines himself among the literati, already sketches our historic gathering for a book he plans to write...”

  If I was supposed to say something here, I didn’t know what, so I kept my mouth shut and concentrated on controlling a bladder that was demanding attention again.

  “He will say—” The former Harvard professor, economist, historian, philosopher, linguist, ethnographer, future Secretary of the Treasury (in another universe), future President (in this one), laughed. “—that we ignorant frontiersmen ‘... discussed our grievances in the half-mute, half-profane language of the common man... ’ ”

  I shook my head. “He thinks himself one of the aristocracy.”

  “A new aristocracy,” Gallatin replied, “of lawyers.” He changed his mind about the coffee, poured out the last drops. “Have we no more to drink, then, Cato?” The black man didn’t take his eyes off the crack between the tent-flaps. “I’ll hafta go for more water, Mr. Gallatin. Should I do that?”

  Gallatin looked at me. “Sir, thus far you have evaded my questioning, but you shall not Cato’s. Is it safe for him to go for water?”

  I grinned—getting to be a habit in Gallatin’s presence. “For him, maybe. Not for you. Go ahead, Cato, we’ve got enough hardware to protect us a few minutes.”

  Gallatin slapped his thigh. “Now that I have got it started, the remainder of this conversation should prove enlightening. Hurry, Cato, your opinion will be solicited.” Shouldering canvas aside, Cato ducked into the deluge, enameled coffeepot in one hand, monster shotgun in the other. Gallatin puckered his eyebrows at me. “Well, monsieur?”

  I gave him the edited version, leaving out the twenty-second century, time-travel, laser pistols. Ed, Lucy, and I believed he was the man to straighten this mess out. Also, we knew the opposition agreed and were inclined to do something ugly about it. I made short work of it; shorn of futuristic trappings, there wasn’t much to tell. I was also worrying about my partner— and the coffee having its way with me. I wished Cato would get back and keep an eye on his boss so I could take a walk.

  Gallatin gave me an odd look now and again, especially in the blue-penciled areas. “Secretary Hamilton I do not like. Nor his policies. This he knows—I was elected to the national legislature, then expelled by his, how you say, cronies? On a technicality—my length of residence.”

  I nodded. There’d been something of a public scandal.

  “Now you say I must assume leadership of an insurrection! Mon dieu! They were right, in their way, to exclude me. I am a stranger to these shores, having come but nine years ago. I did not fight the Revolution, though I admire those who did—it is why I came. I do not know the country, its civilization well enough— things puzzle me...”

  “They puzzle everybody, Mr. Gallatin.” I relit my cigar; it was still damp and kept going out. “What things puzzle you?”

  “Well, for example...” He rummaged in his baggage, found a well-worn book. “The words of Thomas Jefferson: if government prove unsatisfactory, it ought to be replaced—by ‘new guards for our future security’—because it has not been operating by ‘the unanimous consent of the governed.’” He pronounced that last with three syllables.

  “Sure,” I agreed, “the Declaration of Independence. What puzzles you about that?”

  He held the book out. “Look here.” It was written in German, published in Geneva. Gallatin handled all four languages of his native country, plus what Lucy would call a passle of others. “If it were not for that one little word... I have been given a new home, wel-corned by people who built this country. But I am, how you say, nagged by that one little word...”

  Two syllables that time: nag-ged. I thought I knew what he meant. Better to let him reason it out himself. If I was right, this wasn’t a moment to mess with. “Which one is that?”

  “‘Unanimous’—‘... the unanimous consent of the governed.’ Hamilton swears it is meaningless rhetoric. Jefferson maintains it is up to the Congress who ratified it. I know the word. This encampment is evidence unanimity does not exist, at least where taxes are concerned.”

  “Sounds like a legal matter to me. What do the lawyers say?”

&
nbsp; “That my concerns are frivolous. Impractical. Nothing could ever be accomplished by the State under such restraints.” He frowned. “Perhaps that is the very reason for its inclusion!”

  I laughed. “It precludes the tyranny imposed by Philadelphia!”

  “Monsieur, the lawyers I know locally are from Pittsburgh. They come, they tour our camp, they lie about commitment to our cause. This evening, having failed to convince anyone, on the excuse that they have brought no food, they decide to return home.” He laughed this time. “A fearful Brackenridge talked them out of this transparent confession. He thinks we intend destruction of the town—some few rebels wish it, out of envy for civic prosperity—having estimated our strength, the committee would now go home to fortify against the onslaught.”

  Onslaught and a half. Estimates of the gathering varied, I knew, from Gallatin’s of fifteen hundred— half again the population of Pittsburgh itself—to Wilkins’s of five or six thousand. He may have been right, with a military man’s experience at sizing up the enemy. It was impossible to tell, between weather and disorder. Brackenridge, seeing Tom the Tinker under every bed, put the number at seven thousand. I was glad I didn’t dream his dreams.

  Gallatin ruminated, while I wondered where the hell Ed was—and if Cato was ever coming back. I’m suggestible where certain things are concerned, and the rain was driving me crazy.

  “Thank you, Monsieur Bear,” Gallatin said at last, “for your inestimable advice. I have made up my mind.” He patted a breast pocket. Paper crackled. I felt a thrill crawl down my spine. “I have drafted a proposal... now I shall offer it, first thing tomor—”

  There was a thump outside. The doorflaps were parted by a rolling projectile. Into our midst tumbled a ten-pound wooden powder keg, its quick-burning fuse down to the last two inches!

  17

  The Bombs of August

  I did the only thing I could. The fuse got put out. That’s all I’m going to say.

  Gathering weapons, Gallatin and I poked cautious heads outside. The downpour had become a torrent (if there’s a difference), with visibility down to about three feet. I tripped over something—or it tripped over me. “Unghh!”

  “Edward William Bear, I presume,” said the mud-covered lump, “fancy meeting you here.”

  “Edward William Bear yourself,” I answered, also coated with liquid topsoil. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this—where the bloody hell have you been?”

  He raised an unrecognizable face toward me and hissed. “What the Congress do you mean where have / been? You called and told me to meet you at Bradford’s tent, so I—”

  "Edna.” We said it together.

  Gallatin bent over us, pistol in one hand, umbrella in the other, his second gun ruining the waistband of his tailored knee-trousers. “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” He waved his arms. “I implore you! Cato should have been back long ago! Please help me look for him.”

  In the end, it was Lucy who found him, after Ed contacted her and Ochskahrt via implant. The bunch of us were bumbling through the tent-clotted field. When we responded to her angry paratronic shout, it came from down by the river. Cato lay on the muddy stream-bank, his undischarged shotgun beside him. No sign of the coffeepot, it had been replaced by a stainless-steel knife. Protruding from his back.

  “Don’t move him!” Lucy still shouted, to be heard over the rain. “I dunno how, but he’s alive!” She bent over, did things with the pockets of her suit, then placed a hand around the handle of the weapon. There wasn’t any blade showing.

  Gallatin stepped forward. “Don’t—”

  I took his arm. “Trust her, sir. She knows what she’s doing.”

  With a grunt, she drew the knife out, placed something over the wound, laid a hand on Cato’s forehead, closed her eyes. It must have looked like faith-healing.

  “Okay.” She stood, gestured to the rest of us for help. “We can move him now—but easy!”

  “What a peculiar knife,” Gallatin observed. Someone had to cover us while we were encumbered. The honor had gone to him and Lucy. Ed took Cato’s shoulders, and Ochskahrt and I took his feet.

  Gallatin had accepted the weapon from Lucy, looking it over as he strode beside us, one eye on the landscape. Its metal handle consisted of two parallel hollow bars hinge-pinned to the blade-base, each with a row of decorative holes. A latch at the pommel kept the bars together. Lucy took it, snicked the latch off with her little finger, gave the whole contraption a graceful circular flip. The swiveling five-inch blade seemed to vanish, tucked away between the handle-halves. She brushed the latch shut on a thigh to keep it closed.

  “A balisong,” I told the future President. Lucy had surprised me. Butterfly daggers were a kind of con-cealable defense the gun-happy Confederacy hadn’t found necessary to invent. “They won’t be introduced in America until—”

  ‘‘Win!"

  I craned around to return Ed’s glare. “What do you want?”

  “Your help. Watch where you’re going. Let’s get Cato inside.” Ochskahrt chose that moment to slip and fall, face-first, making it three Abominable Mudmen.

  Thanks to Gallatin’s solicitous concern, Cato’s innate toughness, and twenty-second-century first aid, the black man lived. It’s harder to kill with a knife than people expect—that’s why stabbing-murders are so grisly. You slide your Boy Scout folder into somebody’s gizzard, the victim keeps wiggling around yelling. One stab calls for another, and before you know it, you’re one of those seventy-four-wound killers people read about in the tabloids. Yech.

  Next morning dawned clear and bright. Leaving Cato to the care of Lucy, Gallatin met the joint chiefs of this Chinese fire drill with the declared object of forming yet another committee. I was sick of the word. This particular body of men entirely surrounded by bullshit would consist of three lucky souls elected by each volunteer battalion. Its purpose would be to adopt a plan of action for the day.

  For the day! Was this any way to run a revolution?

  Pittsburgh was represented by Wilkins, Captain John M’Masters, and Hugh Henry Brackenridge, who moved that the committee take itself some distance into the woods, “in order that they might be undisturbed in their deliberations.” A swell opening gambit, but it didn’t work. Soon as the committee-members began strolling across the field, a crowd of curious rank-and-file, sensing steamrollers in the wind, began to follow them. It got to be quite a parade.

  Once there, Edward Cook was elected chairman, requesting that nonmembers vamoose. Some few were polite enough to do so. Other, more cynical types soon took their place. Our “secret conference” wound up being held before a gallery of the most radical and suspicious curmudgeons in the camp. Lucy would have felt right at home. New battalions were arriving at Braddock’s Field every hour. Once plugged in, they’d send even more delegates—and peanut gallerites.

  Bradford opened by stating that the purpose, not of this committee meeting, but of the general mayhem out in the field was to identify and punish individuals friendly to the excise. This was news to those who’d showed up to do something about the excise itself. To provide examples, Bradford read the letters we’d taken and mentioned Major Isaac Craig, John Neville’s son-in-law, whom he accused of intending to open a tax-inspection office in his own house to replace the one closed down in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburghers denied it.

  Brackenridge’s turn arrived. He tried to divert the wrath of the insurgents from the Major by ridiculing him. The last time he’d run into Craig, he’d passed along a rumor (made up on the spot) that the rebels had found old cannon at the bottom of the river, left by Braddock, and were hauling them up to use on the fort. Brackenridge got some mileage describing the major’s panic, but not enough to change what was going on in the clearing.

  Bradford got impatient. “Enough of your droll stories, sir. I tell you, the people came out to do something, and something they must do. On that account, I suggest we dispose of the men under censure by taking each one up individually.”


  That suited everybody. Butler and Craig being army officers, their dismissal should be demanded of the Secretary of War. Gibson and Presley should be banished. And so on and so on. Ochskahrt sat on the ground across the clearing, cradling his beloved cello between his knees. Ed and I found a fallen log that wasn’t too damp, on the perimeter of the shifting ring of spectators, among a dozen riflemen leaning on their rifles, and listened. We looked at each other, shook our heads, and shrugged. We’d both had experience with politics. This didn’t look any different.

  As the high school forensics dragged on, I watched Ed get more and more restless. He stood, elbowed his way through the Daniel Boone impersonators, and strode forward. “Gentlemen, we ‘simple folk’ do not understand your counseling in secrecy. Do something speedily. Or we shall go and do something ourselves.” That got some attention—the delegates went into something resembling shock. Good heavens, if the battalions decided to march without official policy, there was no telling what might happen. Like when they reached Pittsburgh. You could see it written on Brack-enridge’s pudgy face.

  Moving to regain leadership, David Bradford opened his mouth. And closed it again. Gallatin had risen to speak.

  “My friends, I hesitate to criticize neighbors who offered refuge to a stranger on these shores. Thus I have been reluctant to participate in events that call us together.” There was muttering from the spectators. It sounded like more talk to them. “But the question has been asked. I must reply with all the frankness I can muster. To do less would be disservice to those good neighbors.”

  He looked at David Bradford. “Tom the Tinker’s men, my friends, have erred from the first, making enemies on every side through threats of what would happen should they comply with the excise or fail to join in rebellion.”