Braxton nodded in agreement.
“Well, it’s out of our hands now,” he said.
“Which reminds me,” Laurie said, his face brightening again. “How did you end up here? Not an ill-advised rescue attempt, I hope.”
Braxton laughed. It felt good, like a forgotten keepsake happened upon. He was sure he hadn’t laughed like that since Parkersburg. He told Laurie his story about being sent to destroy the bridge and Sherman’s idea of capturing the Gray train. How he hadn’t known for sure if Sergeant Young and the other men had managed to rendezvous with Sherman until the confrontation with the Rebel officer on the train.
“I hadn’t heard about that,” Laurie said, motioning Braxton to sit on the exam table. “News gets here, but it comes by way of everywhere else first.” He took off Braxton’s shoe and examined his ankle, twisting it in several directions until Braxton grunted in pain.
“Well, the Reb doctor was right,” he said. “It’s just a sprain, and pretty well healed. It’ll probably be tender for a few more days.”
When Braxton leaned down to put his boot on the curtain parted and the man from the desk outside stepped in.
“Begging your pardon, doctor,” he said in a quiet voice. “But they just brought in a new prisoner with a wound. Shot in the leg two days ago.”
Laurie’s smile vanished.
“How bad?” he asked.
The man shook his head. “Gangrene,” he said. “I could smell it when they brought him in.”
Laurie sighed and nodded. To Braxton, it looked like a great weight had just descended on his friend.
“Set up the table and unlock the ether cabinet, please. I’ll be there in a minute.”
The prison officer nodded and withdrew.
“Duty calls,” Laurie said, turning back to Braxton. “I’ll let Colonel Wainwright know that you’re fit.”
He stuck out his hand and Braxton shook it.
“I can always fake an injury to get back here and see you,” Braxton said.
“Don’t bother,” he said. “I’m usually at breakfast. I’ll see you then.”
Laurie held the curtain open for Braxton and they passed out into the infirmary again. This time a Union colonel occupied the gruesome table under the oil lamp. The prison officer had torn open the man’s pant leg and Braxton could see a small wound in his thigh. It didn’t look like much, but a steady trickle of blood oozed from it and ran down his pale leg, blending in with the dark surface of the table.
Next to the man a tall cart had been drawn up with gleaming instruments set out on a bloody rag. Braxton had only a momentary glimpse of those before he turned away, sickened.
Laurie had been right. The war had gone on too long. There was too much loss, too much death. Braxton remembered how he’d felt when he thought Laurie had been killed, and how much joy he experienced to find Laurie alive and well. He didn’t think he could take it if he lost him again.
Braxton blinked as he stepped outside into the bright afternoon sun. As the guard led him back to his cell, he silently prayed that Pinkerton and his engineers would find something of use in that Gray train. Something that would bring the war to a quick end.
Back in his cell, Braxton just sat on his pallet and stared at nothing. The happiness he felt that Laurie lived was tempered by the weight he saw on his friend’s shoulders. For them the war was over. Other men would fight and die and there wasn’t anything he could do to help or hinder. He wanted to help, to put his mind and skills to work finding a way to stop the dragons, a way to beat the Grays. A way to end the war.
He sat, staring at nothing until the guard appeared with his noonday meal of stew and corn pone. When he finished, Braxton found himself staring at the strange man-Tok. He’d left it sitting in the corner behind the door, and as he looked at it now, it appeared for all the world to be staring back at him.
“All right,” he said, standing up. His muscles protested from having been in one position for so long, and pins and needles assaulted his foot as blood ran back into it.
Braxton stretched and limped around in a circle a few times to get his heart going, then he knelt down in front of the broken Tok.
“Well, my strange friend,” he said to it. “Let’s see if we can’t figure out what you are.”
He opened the shirt and ran his hand over the cold surface of the Tok’s chest plate. It had been shaped to resemble a man’s chest and abdomen with a square door that opened out to reveal its inner workings. A bolt operated by a flat key held the door closed. Braxton hadn’t had time to look for a bit of scrap that could substitute for the key, but he realized as he looked at it that he might not have to.
Being careful not to cut himself on the ragged edges of the hole, Braxton stuck his index finger inside the Tok and carefully felt around for the bar that held the door closed. After a moment, he located it and pushed it gently to one side. The bar was not meant to keep people out, simply to keep the door from opening spontaneously, and it slid to the side easily under Braxton’s probing finger.
With a click the door popped free from the chest plate.
Braxton withdrew his finger and gently pulled on the door. It opened stiffly, and, when Braxton finally got the Tok positioned so the sunlight would illuminate its inner cavity, he whistled.
The Union’s weapons developers were divided into three teams: those working on Toks, those working on tall guns, and those working on airships. Toks had been developed at Menlo Park in New Jersey. Braxton had seen some there when he visited once, but he was hardly an expert. Still, he knew the general principles. A Tok’s torso contained its mainspring, control drum, and the gears that switched power to its arms and legs.
This Tok bore almost no resemblance to that at all. Where the mainspring would normally have gone was a spherical brass chamber, like a pressure tank, but instead of having pipes and valves leading away from it, there were only wires. The wires ran to a device of some kind that sat at the heart of the Tok’s gear system.
There’s no spring or source of power. How does he move?
He reached in and tried to turn the gears, but they seemed wedged against a drive gear coming from the strange device attached to the brass ball.
For the first time in his life, Braxton had no idea how something worked. A burning desire descended upon him. He simply had to get this machine fixed.
While he wasn’t sure how it worked, he definitely knew why it wasn’t. A piece of shrapnel the size of his thumb had smashed through the gearing mechanism on the right side of the Tok, severed one of the wires from the brass sphere before embedding itself in the back plate. With a quick tug, Braxton pulled it free and cast it aside.
He began pulling out the twisted and broken gears, setting them carefully on the ground in a neat row, diagramming the order they came out. So far, nothing here seemed out of the ordinary and he suspected he would be able to find replacements by cannibalizing the other Toks for parts. He couldn’t remove the gear housing, or any gears from the other Toks, without tools. Tools he didn’t have and wasn’t likely to get any time soon.
Still, he could reconnect the broken wire; maybe that would reveal something about the strange tank at the heart of this Tok. Braxton didn’t know what these wires were for but they were mounted to the inside of the casing with glass insulators. He reached for it but stopped. Telegraph wires didn’t carry much current, but it was still possible to be shocked by them. He decided on caution.
He still had the wooden spoon the guard had brought him with last night’s stew. Moving slowly so as not to touch the metal housing of the Tok, Braxton pushed the wire so that it touched a metal support strut. As the wire drew close a white-hot spark of electricity jumped the gap with the sound of a gunshot and a blinding flash. Braxton blinked as purple dots swam in his vision. When they disappeared he saw a dark burn on the Tok’s metal casing and the pungent smell of brimstone rose from the cavity.
Braxton sat back on his pallet and stared at the burned end of the s
poon. Now he knew what powered the strange Tok, what had replaced its mainspring: the strange sphere held electricity. He had no idea how such a thing was possible, nor how it could move the Tok’s arms and legs, but he didn’t really have to know that to get it working again. Aside from the wire, the only damage was to the right side gearbox and that was something he could easily fix. If he could scrounge some tools.
His mind flashed back to the surgery, to the tray of instruments next to the bloody table. Laurie had tools, he needed them for his work. Maybe Laurie could get him what he would need. A screwdriver and a standard wrench would do it. Braxton resolved to ask him in the morning.
Contrary to his word, however, Laurie wasn’t at breakfast call the next morning, or the morning after that. Someone said they thought he’d been sent out into Richmond for some medical emergency. Someone else said he’d done something to get thrown in the tower, in the Castle’s solitary confinement cells, high up under the anti-airship cannon. No one seemed to know anything for certain.
Frustrated in his attempt to obtain tools, Braxton spent his time trying to figure a way to patch the broken wire. Using a small piece of broken metal, he managed to carefully unscrew the mounting for the broken end of the wire. Once he had it out, he wrapped it around a flat piece of steel he’d scrounged from a support strut. The sliver of steel had a hole at one end where a screw had passed through it, so if he could get the live wire through the hole, he could bend it around the bit of steel and it should make good contact.
The other end of the broken wire was more problematic. If he touched it with his hand or a piece of metal, it would complete a circuit and fry him. He needed a wooden handle for his metal shard. Using the shard like a wedge he split the handle of his wooden spoon about half way up the shaft. He added a toothpick he’d found in the yard, sliding it up the split until it functioned like a fulcrum and the end of the spoon became a clumsy, wooden plier.
Thus armed with the extended wire and the wooden pliers, Braxton reinstalled the wire into the housing. Working carefully, he grabbed the end of the live wire with his wooden pliers and twisted, bending the end into a small hook. From there it was relatively easy to thread the bent end into the hole in his makeshift patch. As soon as the wire touched the plate, the strange mechanism in the center of the gear box began to turn and whir. A jolt went through the left side of the Tok’s body, the side that was still connected by gears, and a small door popped open on its left arm.
Surprised, Braxton jumped back, falling painfully on a pile of the Tok’s broken compatriots. He lay on the bed of metal bits and salvaged gears for a long moment before moving, making sure that the newly reconnected Tok had no more surprises. After its initial bout of motion, however, it had lain still and seemingly inert.
Cautiously, Braxton got back to his feet and examined the new opening in the man-Tok’s left arm. Inside he could see a ring on the end of a metal rod and, underneath that, the unmistakable shapes of tools.
With a trembling hand, Braxton tapped the metal ring.
No shock.
He looped his fingertip through the ring and pulled. A tray inside the arm slid back toward the elbow and the ends of the tools were lifted out and up for easy access.
“You beautiful thing,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Whoever built you was a genius.”
Braxton removed the tools carefully, laying them out on the floor in the order he extracted them. First came a small, slender screwdriver. Next Braxton removed a standard wrench with openings on either end that looked like they would fit all the Tok’s bolts. After that he found some long nosed pliers and the flat tool for opening the chest plate. Last, and strangest of all, was a tightly spooled loop of heavy wire with spring-loaded clamps on each end. All of the tools had a soft coating of what felt like rubber on their ends, no doubt to insulate the user from the power of the lightning core. The clamps on the wire were also insulated, probably for use as a temporary patch for a broken wire.
“Too bad I didn’t have this earlier,” he said holding the spool of wire up to get a better look. He had to squint in the fading light and his heart sank. Soon it would be too dark to work.
Outside, he heard the scrape of the door down the hall as the guard brought the bowls of evening stew and corn pone to the prisoners. That meant he would be here next.
Braxton picked up the tools to replace them in the Tok’s hidden arm compartment but paused, thinking better of it. He had no idea how he’d gotten the compartment open and he might not be able to repeat it. He closed the hidden compartment and tucked the tools under the pile of clothes he’d taken off the Tok.
He just made it back to his pallet as the bolt was being pulled back and the guard came in. Curiously, this time there were two of them, and neither one carried a bowl.
“Gentlemen,” Braxton greeted them, not really sure what to make of this.
“Captain Wright,” his regular guard said. “You’ve been invited to dinner.”
Braxton got up and faced the guards. Unless he wanted to wear the man-Tok’s clothes, he had nothing else.
The guards escorted him from his cell and his regular guard continued down the line, handing out soup ladled out of a big pot on a trolley. Braxton followed the second guard out into the yard and passed the mess area where other guards were having their evening meal. Braxton had heard that prisoners weren’t allowed in the yard after dark, too many escape attempts.
“Where are we going?” he asked after they passed the mess area.
“Infirmary,” the guard grunted.
This brightened Braxton’s mood considerably. It could only be Laurie who wanted to see him, finally returned from wherever he’d gone. When they reached the infirmary, the guard led Braxton past the rows of cots, through to the curtained office area. The exam table had been pushed aside and a small table and two chairs had been laid out. Laurie sat at the table staring at an enormous plate of grits and some kind of diced meat in a heavy gravy. His eyes were heavy, his shoulders stooped, and his coat was in need of brushing.
“Braxton,” he said, his face lighting up with a smile. “Thank goodness, sit down. I’ve been waiting for you and I’m starving.”
Braxton sat and Laurie offered a brief prayer over their food. His father had been a devout Quaker and had taught Laurie the art of prayer. Braxton always let Laurie pray for them when the occasion arose.
Despite all the questions Braxton had, he held off while Laurie wolfed down his food like he hadn’t eaten all day. Braxton had to admit, the meat and grits were far superior to the stew and corn pone he usually got. A basket on the table contained real corn bread and there was even a small pot of butter.
“Being the camp doctor has its advantages,” Braxton said between grateful mouthfuls.
Laurie tried to laugh at that but had his spoon in his mouth.
“Don’t be fooled,” he said. “They only do this on days when I don’t get out to the mess.”
“When was the last time you saw the mess?”
Laurie raised his eyebrow and thought a moment.
“Day before yesterday,” he said.
“I wondered where you’d gone off to.”
“Some officer’s daughter in town shot herself while helping to clean his guns,” he said. “I took the bullet out, but it was dicey for a while. I had to stay with her. Finally got back this morning and had a list of sick men to treat. I’ve been on my feet since sun up.”
“Will the girl be okay?” Braxton asked.
Laurie shrugged and nodded. “She’ll have a limp, but she’ll live.”
Braxton felt good. The afternoon spent with the strange Tok and a good meal with his best friend made him positively giddy. After checking that the guard had gone, he started to explain his discovery, but Laurie leaned around him and looked hard at the curtain separating his office from the rest of the infirmary. Braxton bit back what he was going to say for fear the guard had returned.
“We need to talk,” he said in a hushed voi
ce.
“Too bad about the girl,” Braxton said in the same conversational tone he’d used earlier but his eyebrows shot up in concern.
“Bullet went through her thigh and nicked the artery,” Laurie said, then he lowered his voice again. “While I was sitting with the girl, I heard her father talking to someone downstairs. His voice carried up the chimney pipe. They think you’re here on some sort of mission.”
“A mission to get thrown in prison?” Braxton whispered, wondering what sense that would make.
Laurie shrugged. “All I know is what I heard. They’re bringing up some special officer to talk to you.”
Braxton didn’t like the sound of that. Most of the Rebel officers he’d met had been the epitome of the southern gentleman, but he had no illusions that the Rebs had men who knew how to extract information they might need.
“What should I do?”
Laurie checked the curtain again.
“Help yourself,” he said aloud, then leaned back in. “If you’re here to do something, you’d better do it fast. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Laurie,” Braxton said. “I swear to you I’m not here on any secret mission. You know me, my mom knew what I was giving her for Christmas every year. I’m incapable of keeping a secret.”
Laurie thought about that, then nodded. “True,” he said.
“You do have something they want, though,” he said after a moment’s thought. “You’re an engineer.”
Braxton hadn’t thought about that. It had been so long since his days in the gun works it seemed like another life. But Laurie was right, the Confederacy desperately needed engineering knowledge—knowledge he had.
“I’ve seen men who have been questioned,” Laurie went on in a hushed whisper. “It’s bad.”
The first prickling of real fear crawled down Braxton’s spine and he swallowed hard.
“What can I do?” he asked again.
Laurie leaned close and lowered his voice even more. “Give them what they want,” he said.
“What?” Braxton asked. He was stunned. How could Laurie even suggest such a thing? If the Rebs got their hands on tall guns, the war would be over in weeks.
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