L Neil Smith - [North American Confederacy 06]

by The Gallatin Divergence (epub)

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 last several days had been interesting—like the Chinese curse. In Philadelphia, Washington and Hamilton had prevailed, sending General Light-Horse Harry Lee of Revolutionary fame—ancestor of the fellow who’d wind up leading gray-clad rebels of a different Confederacy—along with fifteen thousand troops in the approximate direction of the dissidents, with instructions to shoot everybody who wouldn’t surrender and hang everybody who did. Meanwhile, the buckskin army roiled across the Commonwealth, without regard to formal strategy or tactics, but in full, foolish confidence the antirepublican “enemy” would be swept away, if not by force of arms, then by Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and Gallatin’s logical extension of it.

  The advance elements met in the vicinity of Harrisburg. I wasn’t there to enjoy the confrontation in person. By the time Lee’s forces and the greater rebel army arrived, I’d already been playing spook-games with Washington and company for a couple of thrill-packed weeks. To be honest, there wasn’t much to see. Both sides knew what was about to happen. When the occasion came to pass, somebody hiding behind a nice thick tree waved a white flag.

  It was answered by another.

  The two flag-wavers met, deep in Penn’s Woods, exchanging greetings from their respective leaders. “The General,” offered an elderly unshaven junior officer with soiled tunic and tarnished uniform-buttons, “would be pleased to reacquaint himself with Dr. Gallatin, at a place of mutual convenience.” By his outfit, he was a member of a Virginia regiment, dirty and tired from his long march to the front, just as the rebels were.

  Gallatin’s leather-stockinged envoy chuckled. “I am charged, sir, to convey the same message to your commander. These are weighty matters, not to be negotiated lightly. Would you care to step over where we can discuss affairs over a tumbler of what this war is all about?” The unkempt, trail-weary lieutenant laughed. The reluctant warriors shambled through a carpet of last year’s leaves toward a pair of bulging saddlebags lying at the base of a tree. The bags were opened. Likewise the gurgling flasks inside. A pause. Another pause.

  A question from the officer, wiping his lips: was his opposite number authorized to arrange the time and place in Gallatin’s behalf? As he spoke, he displayed signs of dicomfiture, making the rebel representative peer into the woods around them and worry for a moment about the proximity of his pistol.

  “Yes, I have that gentleman’s warrant and personal confidence. May I inquire as to why you are so ill at ease? Is it the whiskey?” The rebel envoy moved his fingers in a sign known to himself and certain others. Not Masonic. “I assure you,” he continued, “I am here by myself, as agreed—nor would I be so impolitic as to ask whether you have also complied with the arrangement.”

  “Be damned!” exclaimed the stubble-faced officer, returning the sign before he stripped off the faded tunic he was wearing. “This crude deception was not of my creation, and I have bloody well wearied of it! I’m Harry Lee, son, the Devil himself! Now let us decide upon the time and place for this parlay in open fellowship and candor!”

  Ed Bear guffawed. As per Gallatin’s instructions, he unrolled a fresh copy of the Covenant—intended for conveyance to the general.

  “What have you here, son, a request for terms?” Ed laughed again. Pulling at the flask, the general skimmed the document, then reread it, making humph-ing noises. When he laid the parchment on a knee and

  took another draft of whiskey, he was silent for a while then said, “The proprietor of Morris House has been explicit, boy—come back with my shield or on it— that damned Illuminatist and his West Indies bastard!” He rose, thrust the parchment in his belt, picked up the abandoned tunic, and swung it over his shoulder. Behind him, the horses shied. “I shall bloody well do neither! Tell Gallatin our convocation should commence immediately—this place will do as well as any— but, tell him, on different terms than stated.”

  Ed tensed. “Oh?”

  “Oh, indeed! Brother, be good enough as to inquire of him what military rank he would afford if I committed to his rebellion. He has a cause here in this seditious paper-scrap I would spend my life defending.” With that, the general flung himself over the saddle and galloped out of sight. Gallatin had made his second important conversion, and, like the first, wasn’t even there at the time.

  The day, and everybody’s shoe-leather, wore on.

  I’d known Ed for decades. No two individuals were ever closer. Sitting in my loft, with a hint of injury in my tone, I asked about the meeting with General Lee. “Okay, brother, what was the funny-business with the fingers?”

  “Funny business?” Even a hundred miles away, I could tell his innocence was phony.

  “Funny business—you’ve been in a secret lodge all the time I’ve known you and never mentioned it? I thought things like that were for the badguys.”

  I felt him shake his head. “It wouldn’t be secret if I told. I can’t say more, Win, except... well, most ancient lodges were founded in defense of liberty. It’s just that most of them have forgotten. I happen to belong to one that hasn’t.”

  And that was that.

  Fortuitously—or not, as Gallatin might have insisted—the converted General Lee tended to the military details after that, without asking Gallatin, or being asked to undertake the task. The same day he met with the philosopher, he gathered his troops about him, read them the Covenant, asked for volunteers to join him in defecting, and sent everybody else home. Those who would go.

  One would never go anywhere again. Hearing the first words of the Covenant, he brandished a cutlass-pistol, shouting this was the Devil’s work, the end of civilization as we know it, and rushed his commander. The general stood his ground while those around him reacted. There wasn’t enough left of the assassin to identify.

  The rebel forces, now twelve thousand stronger, and drawing in greater numbers as they passed through the countryside, were becoming more than an army. They were a nation on the march. I watched from my loft as the horde swarmed into the capital, twenty-, thirty-, fifty-thousand strong, unopposed, triumphant, as if it were an ancient Roman procession. Into the heart of the city they marched, me following without much hope of finding Ed and Lucy in the throng, telecommunications or not. A hundred thousand footsteps rattled the buildings. Philadelphia stood weeping and cheering at the curb-sides, waving hats and handkerchiefs, holding children aloft so they could tell their children what they’d witnessed this day. Many added their own numbers to the still-swelling mob that overflowed the thoroughfares at every intersection.

  Since I knew where they were going, and many of them didn’t, I arranged to get there first, recording everything for Ooloorie, following suggestions from the cetacean about camera-angles and lighting. I needed the company, even hers. The government’s-eye-view I was getting of the oncoming numbers had even me a bit scared.

  At the crest of this human tsunami, Gallatin strode to the portal of Washington’s official residence. The crowd hung back, respectful or afraid, as the scholar stepped forward, raised the only weapon he was carrying—his walking-stick—and pounded on the door of the Market Street mansion. There was no immediate answer.

  Inside, clinging to military muskets they were afraid to use, the inhabitants cowered at the windows. Hamilton, their real leader, would never be seen again in North America. Gallatin rapped a second time. I’ll give this to George: The door swung aside and there, shirt-sleeved, alone, and looking like somebody’s maiden aunt in his snowy pageboy, he greeted h
is rival like an invited guest. Extending a hand, he beckoned Gallatin inside.

  “Don’tcha do it, Bertie!" yelled a voice I recognized. I signed off with the twenty-second century, began working across the front of the mob to Lucy. On the porch, the dissident leader stood a while, conversing. Washington nodded, accepted his coat from an unseen aide, stepped onto the walk with Gallatin.

  The crowd fell silent. “My friends, the President and I are in agreement. There is but one way to settle this without a bloodbath.”

  Washington nodded. “Dr. Gallatin and I shall decide the issue between ourselves. Tell me, who will supply the pistols?”

  In the confused frenzy that followed, I caught up to Lucy. I had to get back in touch with Ooloorie. This was the old lady’s doing. I’d heard her declare it was the only way to fight a war—“macho a macho." In my absence, she’d worked on Gallatin. Ed hadn’t been any moderating influence. The son of a bitch agreed with her. Grabbing Lucy’s shoulder with my left hand, I used my right to key the buttons on my sleeve.

  “Ooloorie, we’ve got a problem—hold still, god-damnit, Lucy. We’ve got to talk!” She whirled, tears of patriotic joy or something streaming down her wrinkled face. She tried yelling, but there was too much crowd noise. Ed and Ochskahrt were beside her.

  “Ooloorie?” No response. With a cold feeling of doom clutching my insides, I tried an alternate frequency, then another, with the same unsatisfying results. “Ooloorie! Come in! I’ve got to—I can’t hear you, Lucy, wait—Ooloorie?”

  No answer. Nor would there ever be. My party had been cosmically disconnected. The line was dead, and so were we, stranded in the primitive past. Washington and Gallatin had never fought a duel, not in my universe, not in Lucy’s.

  We’d destroyed the future.

  22

  An Ochskahrt in the Works

  “Gentlemen, ready your weapons!”

  Far away, a drumroll of thunder lumbered through the mountains. There was a loud double clack! as two scrolled cocking-pieces were hauled back by their owners till they locked on their respective sears. Silence filled the otherwise empty street.

  “At my word, you will step forward,” said the referee, some anti-Federalist judge who’d been satisfactory to both parties. “I caution you not to turn, or aim your weapons until you have been commanded to do so!” No one doubted that he meant it: under his judicial cloak he had a modest pistol of his own, double-barreled, twice the size of the antagonists’, its unrifled bore stuffed full of powder and carpet nails. “Gentlemen,” continued the referee, “since you have refused to reconsider, then upon my signal—and upon my signal alone—you will then level your weapons at one another and discharge them.”

  In a sense, Gallatin, founder-to-be of the North American Confederacy, faced his arch-rival—not just in politics, but now, it seemed, in metaphysics, as well. President and General George “Father of his Country” Washington towered behind the philosopher in the gloomy thoroughfare, the small of his aristocratic back planted against the stooped shoulder blades of the other, the muzzles of their pistols pointing to the dark and violent sky. In just moments, each would take a walk— ten paces, that was all—and only one was coming back.

  It hadn’t taken long for arrangements to be made. Composed of battle-scarred and horror-hardened veterans of the recent British unpleasantness—even a few survivors of the French and Indian War (Washington was one of those)—the crowd gathered around Morris House had endorsed the notion of their leaders doing the ducking and flinching for a change. Many had the stumps, hooks, and eye-patches to prove it might have been a good idea a generation earlier. They cleared a space on the pavement. A damp breeze rose, whipping wigs and coattails.

  Dueling wouldn’t become generally disapproved in my own world for another decade, due to public outrage over a similar exercise between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. It had never been outlawed in the Confederacy. Cursory reading of history and literature had never quite gotten me over how little most individuals of this period regarded their own lives—

  Washington had once written that he found the sensation of bullets whining over his head “charming.” And they elected him President.

  But what surprised me now was that the participants, every combatant, on every side, no matter what they stood to lose or gain, was content to let weighty affairs of principle—to tax or not to tax—rest on the almost random outcome of a smoothbore gunfight between a geriatric general and a gentle but determined schoolteacher.

  “Well, boys, we’re in for it now,” said a voice beside me, speaking of geriatric and determined. I nodded, a sour expression wrinkling my face to match the countenances of my companions. Somehow I knew Lucy wasn’t talking about the weather.

  Ed shook his head. “Edna had her way, after all, didn’t she?”

  He was right. Lucy, Ed—yes, even Ochskahrt— and I had come back to prevent just such a thing. Now we stood together, undefeated by our enemies, but beaten by the sheer, stupid force of events. The fact we were marooned in this century, lost forever to our own, wasn’t foremost on our minds. Not even mine. I think I’d come to prefer dying to putting things off anymore in the not-quite-death of stasis.

  I glanced down at the phony flintlock stretching my belt-leather. The complicated replica wouldn’t be of any use to an involuntary pioneer. I’d have to acquire something more authentic. It was growing darker by the moment, now. Lightning flashed, thunder followed.

  This whole preposterous disaster was our fault. We’d bloodied our hands further, negotiating as Gallatin’s back-ups. I’d fought a duel once, myself: my six-shot .4I against a customized Luger. A practical people, Americans have always handled these events in a manner disapproved by well-bred Europeans, selecting hardware, loads, and calibers more pragmatic than the expensive toys overcivilized Continentals preferred.

  An Anglophile in everything but this, His Imperial Presidency insisted, to keep things even, that he, professional military man and experienced shootist, would stick with half the ornate dueling pair one of his flunkies trotted out in a fancy wooden gift-box. For all the general cared, Monsieur Gallatin could use anything short of a howitzer.

  It wasn’t much short. Wielding powder-flask, ball, and fire-hardened ramrod as if born to it, Lucy helped a sobbing, tear-blinded Cato to charge up Gallatin’s choice, one of the enormous horse-pistols he’d brought to Braddock’s Field. Not an easy task, filling the flash-pan. Not the way the wind was blowing. Ed, Ochskahrt, and I huddled around, trying to give the ordnance team protection. Unlike Washington’s genteel piece, Gallatin’s had crude but serviceable “iron” sights—a brass bead gleaming over the muzzle in the gathering twilight, a V-notch filed into a section of upturned strap where the breech-piece merged with the woodwork.

  In the windswept, cobbled street, dampening with the first tentative dashes of rain, Washington’s second opened the parqueted guncase a proprietary crack, allowing the general to make his selection. Ochskahrt beside me, I strode out through the lightning flashes to offer Gallatin’s weapon for inspection. Which is how the accident happened.

  Thunder roared! “Mr. Bear, Herr von Ochskahrt— look out!”

  I hadn’t noticed the loose paving block beneath our feet. Ochskahrt did—the hard way. His toe-tip caught the edge as he passed over it. “Oopsie-daisy—scheissel" Lightning flashed! He lurched. Hollering and flailing, he managed to convert a pratfall into a full-scale avalanche, tripping me so that I fell against the Federalist who, in a futile effort to regain his balance, threw the pistol box into the air. “Look out for the guns!” We were like a row of cursing dominoes. With a shout, the second stumbled against Washington, who, bringing the referee with him, joined us on the wet cobbling at a somewhat lower altitude. Under their newspapers and bedrolls, the crowd roared approval of the brief, unanticipated floor show, Lucy’s voice loudest of all. Gallatin remained standing. He looked down at a disheveled heap of men and guns. “Gentlemen,” said the Swiss financier. “If you have
introduced yourselves to one another...”

  That put an end to the formal officiation. There was an embarrassed pause as the audience regained control of itself. With an ill-tempered grunt, Washington heaved himself to his feet, seized a pistol from the broken case Ochskahrt had recovered, checked the pan, and muttered something about getting on with it.

  Taking his horse-pistol from where I’d dropped it, Gallatin nodded. That’s when the silence started. While

  Ochskahrt and I recovered our possessions and got out of the potential field of fire, rejoining Lucy at the curb as she wiped tears of tension-fueled laughter from her eyes, the disgruntled referee swiped imaginary mud off his cloak and began giving instructions. The party was about to start.

  “One!” The heavens opened themselves. In the downpour, the two men separated. Not wanting to distract anyone, I refrained from tidying up. I was covered with grit, my nose itched, and, as usual during affairs of gravity, I needed to go to the bathroom.

  “Two!” Four torrent-filled yards stretched between Gallatin and Washington. It seemed like forty. The duel I’d fought had been conducted indoors, under rules designed to overcome differences in skill between opponents. In this weather I wasn’t sure it mattered.

  “Three!” Lucy bit the stem of her pipe in two. She spat out broken pieces, then sheepishly glanced around. She needn’t have bothered. No one was watching her.

  “Four!” Ed was fidgeting, shifting weight from foot to foot. Well, he had my fingerprints, why not my bladder?

  “Five!” I felt a gentle tug on my sleeve, batted the wet, intrusive hand away. The combatants were halfway to the ends of the muddy killing-ground, a soggy ten yards between them. Each carried his flintlock muzzle-upward, pan close to his chest, a hand covering the bore, Washington striding along as if on sunny parade, Gallatin just walking.

  “Six!” There was that tug again, insistent. Rainwater streaming down the polished contours of his skull, Ochskahrt was pleading with me through his steamed-up glasses, an expression of distress distorting his features into unrecognizability. Maybe he needed to go to the bathroom, too.