The Legend of Indian Stream

by Steven Landry

  “You are the most confounding woman I’ve ever met! We’ve never even been on a date, and now you assume we’re going to get married?”

  “We’ve been on a date, as you put it, for six months! More than enough time to get to know one another. I think you love me. I know I love you, and I know my father likes and respects you. What more is there, besides, you know, making sure we’re compatible in the sack?”

  “You’re not serious?” he asked incredulously.

  “Yeah, I’m serious, and horny as hell.” She pushed him down onto the bed.

  * * *

  Jake was no virgin. He’d bedded a few working girls during his time in the Army and afterward, but he’d never experienced anything like what happened over the next two hours. The other women he’d slept with had treated sex as a job. Jennifer, clearly no virgin either, had a sexual appetite to rival King Henry the Eighth. She boldly told him what she wanted him to do and how to do it, while taking liberties with his own person that he’d only seen described in European novels. She pinched, bit, scratched, licked, and sucked, and encouraged him to do the same.

  When they finally collapsed in exhaustion, Jake was happier than he’d ever been. “I guess we got that settled.” He nuzzled her neck. “Still want to marry me?”

  “Yes, my love. As soon as we can arrange travel to the Republic. Most of my friends are there.”

  “But that’ll take months,” Jake answered.

  “Not the way we travel,” Jennifer said. “At least not after we get the runway completed.”

  “What’s a runway?” Jake asked.

  “That’s the subject of the day, although I suppose you should ask Dad for my hand in marriage first.”

  They got dressed and headed back to the office. Jake was terrified that Dwight would figure out what they had been up to for the last two hours, but Jennifer told him not to worry. Sexual mores were quite different in the Republic than in the United States. She was a grown woman and a Captain in the ISRM, free to choose her own sexual partners, unless and until she got hitched. Her father wouldn’t be thrilled, but he wasn’t likely to shoot Jake, either.

  Dwight frowned and looked at his watch when they returned to his office, but said nothing. Jake walked up to Dwight and said with great formality, “Lieutenant Colonel Carver, I request your blessing to marry your daughter Jennifer.”

  “You have it, and welcome to the family… assuming she said yes?”

  “I did,” Jennifer answered. “And I want a big wedding at St. Bridget’s Church, and a reception at the Hotel LeClerc!”

  “Ouch,” said her father. “And I suppose you want half these ruffians there as well?”

  “Of course. Do ’em a bit of good to get some culture and see the Republic, I think.”

  “I guess that’s true. But that means you’ll have to wait until the runway is built.”

  Jake again asked what a runway was.

  Dwight turned to the new map on the wall. “A runway is a one-to-three-mile-long, straight, flat stretch of wide roadway.” Pointing to a long straight line on the map, he continued, “It’s used by flying machines called airplanes to land and take off, similar to the way you see ducks land and take off on a pond. We’re going to build one in the southeast cornah, along with sheds to park the airplanes and conduct maintenance.”

  Over the next six hours Jake learned a whole new vocabulary, and saw his first PowerPoint™ presentation. Jennifer and Dwight took turns briefing him on the requirements for the ISRM’s western training facility, which included small arms, artillery and tank gunnery ranges; mounted and dismounted tactical maneuver boxes; an airfield; barracks and mess halls for twelve hundred soldiers; housing for a two-hundred-person support staff; and supporting infrastructure.

  Finally they broke for the day and headed to the mess hall, where Jake and Jennifer announced their engagement to loud cheers, and several “it’s about time” comments. Dwight broke out a case of Champagne and everyone toasted the happy couple.

  Jake was a little tipsy as he escorted Jennifer back to her cabin. At the door, he bent to kiss her, but she dragged him into the cabin and over to her bed. Damn, he thought awhile later, it’s going to fall off at this rate.

  Curled up unnoticed by the fire amongst Jennifer’s four huge dogs, Peta watched and learned.

  34 - ANNA

  Omaha, Nebraska Territory, USA, Wednesday, May 14, 1856

  Anna was dozing in her favorite rocking chair. Baby Allen was asleep in his cradle. Paul had retired early. Across the room, Miriam looked up from her needlepoint.

  “What was that?” Miriam asked.

  “What was what?” Anna awoke from the comfortable lull of the warm room.

  “I heard a sound I’ve never heard before,” Miriam answered, “but only for a second. Sort of a whopping sound.” Anna got to her feet and went to look out the window. As she reached for the latch, she heard a knock at the front door. She grabbed the Glock and told Miriam to grab the baby then go upstairs and wake Paul, while pointing to the back staircase. Once Miriam and baby Allen were heading up, Anna stepped into the foyer and opened the door.

  “Hi Mom,” said Jake.

  “Jake!” She flew into his embrace and squeezed as hard as she could. “Mein Sohn, I’m so glad to see you!”

  “Okay, Mom, I’m happy to see you too, but you’re going to break my ribs,” he protested. She released him, then turned and hollered back into the house.

  “Paul, you’re brother’s here!”

  Allen greeted this interruption of his peaceful sleep by erupting in a full throated bawl.

  “And that would be your new nephew, Allen. Come in, come in.” Then she noticed the two young women standing behind him. “Oh!”

  Jake turned to introduce his companions.

  “Mom, this is my fiancée Jennifer and her ward Peta.” Anna moved to embrace her son’s fiancée. Jennifer, who was wearing a military flight suit, was eyeing Anna warily. She realized she still had the Glock in her hand. Scheisse.

  To make matters worse, when Paul came bounding down the stairs, he was carrying one of the Uzis. If Jennifer was from the Republic, she’d surely recognize that the weapons were decidedly out of place.

  “Entschuldigung. Sorry.” She stuffed the pistol into a pocket of her apron before hugging Jennifer, then Peta. Paul had set the Uzi down, then literally tackled his brother. The two of them were rolling on the ground, laughing.

  Miriam arrived with Allen tucked against her shoulder. Anna introduced her to Jennifer and Peta.

  “Come on inside,” she said after another round of hugs. “Those two will be along when they’re done acting like seven-year-olds.”

  Fu Ming had already started laying out a tea service when they arrived in the kitchen. More introductions were made. Jake and Paul ambled in with their arms around each other, both covered in dirt, with straw sticking out of their hair. Jake happily introduced his brother to Jennifer and Peta.

  “Mom, you’ll never believe it. Jake says they flew down here! In a flying machine called an Osprey, like the bird.”

  She could believe it, alright. And she didn’t like it a bit.

  “We had to wait to come up to the house while Jake changed his clothes. Threw up all over himself.” It was the first words Peta had said, besides “hello”.

  “Brat,” Jake exclaimed. Peta stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Anyway, I wanted to deliver this in person, and see my new nephew.” Jake handed Anna a very fancy envelope. She opened the invitation to her son’s wedding at St. Bridget’s Church in the Republic of Indian Stream. She stopped breathing. Trap! the Stasi spy in her shouted. It has to be a trap. The Stasi and KGB had taught her not to believe in coincidences, and this one seemed implausible at best. Trap or no trap, she wasn’t going to miss her son’s wedding. The Republic clearly knew where she was. The question was, did they know who she was.

  She wondered whether to bring Paul and Miriam along as well. Paul wouldn’t’ want to
miss his brother’s wedding, and Miriam could be useful. Despite her young age, the girl had proven herself to be very steady under pressure. The wedding wasn’t until September. Anna had time to prepare. There was much more to do than just find the right dress.

  ”The Republic is a long way from here. It’ll take weeks to get there by train,” Anna said.

  “Can we fly?” Paul asked, excitement in his voice.

  “Actually, yes,” Jennifer said. “At least part of the way. We were thinking that you could take the early September supply boat from Omaha to Happy Valley Ranch, then fly with us from there to the Republic. The boat trip takes about a week each way, and you’d be in the Republic for about ten days, so you’d be gone almost a month. Can you be away that long?”

  “I’m sure Fu Ming can handle things here on her own. It’ll give the poor girl a break from us…” If she was walking into a trap, it wouldn’t matter how long she was going for. If they really didn’t know who she was, it would give her a chance to scout out the place.

  They settled around the big kitchen table and swapped stories. Anna explained why they’d had to abandon the homestead in Pennsylvania, and Jake told his family how he had met Dwight and Jennifer in St. Joseph, then gone with them to Happy Valley Ranch.

  “I met your father last winter,” Anna told Jennifer. “I hope he and your mother are well.”

  The young woman’s face turned somber. “Dad is fine. My mother passed away when I was little, so Dad had to raise me himself. Sort of turned me into a tomboy,” she indicated her flight suit.

  “I’m so sorry. How did she die?” Miriam asked.

  “She fell off a horse and broke her neck. You’re too young to remember that day in 1834 when everyone suddenly got dizzy and fell down. I was only seven.”

  Anna stared at Jennifer in horror. Is the universe really that small?

  “Mom, are you okay?” Paul asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She had, if ghosts were the shade of past wrongs. But if Jennifer knew that Anna was responsible for her mother’s death, she gave no sign of it.

  “Entschuldigung. That was a very bad day. Jake almost died in a fire caused by the event, whatever it was. And you remember Mr. Peterson, back in Mercersburg – he was paralyzed when he fell off a ladder.”

  “Lots of bad things happened,” Jennifer said. “Doc Flynn says it was the worse day they ever saw in the emergency department. Even worse than the day the Republic fought the Battle of Third Connecticut Lake against the British.”

  “Was your father in that battle?” Paul asked.

  “Sure was. He was the First Sergeant of the ISRM then.” Jennifer was clearly proud of her father.

  “ISRM?” Paul asked.

  “The Indian Stream Republican Militia. It was only a company-sized unit then. It’s much larger now. And about to get larger,” Jennifer nodded at Jake.

  “You’re joining the ISRM?” Anna was incredulous.

  “Yes I am,” Jake answered evenly. “It’s not open to debate.”

  “But…” Anna searched for words. “You swore allegiance to the United States when you joined the Army.”

  “In the long run we’ll be fighting on the same side. Only I’ll have much better weapons and tactics.”

  Mike’s suspicions about why the time-travelers in the Republic had chosen this time and place were confirmed. But that was little consolation. Her son was joining her enemy.

  “Fighting who?” Miriam was thoroughly confused by the conversation.

  “Dwight says there’s going to be a civil war between the slave states and Free states over slavery, and I believe him.”

  “That’s just silly,” Miriam replied. “America will never go to war with itself.”

  In a deliberate attempt to change the subject, she turned to Peta and asked, “And how did you come to be at Happy Valley Ranch?”

  Happily excluded from the conversation to this point, Peta had been playing peek-a-boo with her sock monkey, and baby Allen, who was giggling at the antics Peta was making Stocaí do to entertain the boy. Her story was even more depressing than Jennifer’s, so when she finished, Jake asked Paul and Anna to tell them about their cross-country trip from Pennsylvania to Omaha.

  Anna left out the attempted rape in the bathhouse, and the evening ended on a happy note.

  * * *

  The next morning, Peta said her goodbyes to the family, and Jennifer and Paul took her off to her new home at Riley Dry Goods and Implements. Anna had asked Jake to stay behind so they could catch up.

  “Before you start, I’m joining the ISRM and you’re not going to talk me out of it,” he told her.

  “Jake, Mein Sohn, listen to me. You’re putting us all in grave danger. They killed your father, for God’s sake!”

  Jake peered hard at her. “Are you still taking laudanum? It’s making you paranoid. Why would the Republic want to kill my father?”

  “Because they think he caused the event that killed Jennifer’s mother, and a lot of other people too!”

  “That’s ridiculous. Why would they think he caused a worldwide event like that?”

  “Because he confessed to it, and because he’d done it before.” Anna started to cry.

  “You’re not making any sense. What do you mean, he did it before? When?”

  “In 2028.” Your father was born in 1960, more than a hundred years from now. We met in 1986 in Germany when I was only twenty-two years old. Your father was an American soldier and I was a German spy. He was my target, but I fell I love with him, and he convinced me to go to work as a double agent, but I was found out and imprisoned. Forty-two years later he stole a time machine from the people that are running the Republic and rescued me, and we fled back in time to 1832. They caught him and killed him in 1834.”

  “That’s just crazy!” Jake exclaimed. “Time travel is impossible. This is just some laudanum-induced fantasy of yours.”

  “Please, you have to listen to me,” she implored. “It’s time travel that causes the mass dizziness that killed Jennifer’s mother. Sooner or later they’ll figure out who I am, who your father was, and they’ll kill all of us!”

  “Enough of this. I’m marrying Jennifer and joining the ISRM, and that’s the end of it.”

  She tried to tell him about the temporal shock and the time portals, but she could see that Jake wasn’t buying it. Her history of drug abuse had destroyed her credibility.

  “Vergiss es. Never mind,” she finally said. “You be happy with your soldier girl. I’ll deal with this myself.” She stomped off to the barn.

  * * *

  Omaha, Nebraska Territory, USA, Wednesday, May 21, 1856

  The rest of Jake and Jennifer’s visit passed uneventfully, despite the growing tension between Jake and his mother. The couple left on a Happy Valley Ranch boat three days later. Despite the potentially catastrophic consequences of the girl’s romance with Jake, Anna found she rather liked Jennifer.

  The following Monday, Anna headed to Riley Dry Goods and Implements with a bundle of freshly made ladies’ dresses for sale on consignment. She had developed a good working relationship with Mrs. Riley, both for business purposes, and as a source of Happy Valley Ranch gossip.

  As she entered the store with Fu Ming, she overheard Peta telling a man that he couldn’t return a lantern he’d bought just because he’d dropped it and the glass had broken.

  The man turned away and Anna thought that was end of it, until his companion spoke up.

  “Half-breed bastard of a savage’s whore,” the man muttered as they walked away.

  Peta was on him in an instant, and she didn’t fight fair. Even Anna’s Stasi hand-to-hand combat instructor would have been impressed. By the time they managed to pull Peta off the unfortunate soul, he had lost an eye and would likely never father another child.

  Well, well. Perhaps this is an ally I can develop.

  35 - JAKE

  MH-60JEP Pave Hawk: a JEPS-powered, single-rotor, Combat Search and Rescue (
CSAR) helicopter capable of carrying four litter patients. Crewed by two pilots, two crew chiefs, two para-rescue jumpers, and one physician’s assistant, the aircraft carries life support equipment and medical supplies. A door-mounted M134 7.62mm Gatling Gun can provide suppressive fire during evacuation operations. Maximum speed is 294 kilometers per hour, cruise speed is 280 kilometers per hour. Glossary, An Illustrated History of the Republic, Helen O’Shea, Ed.

  Happy Valley Ranch, Nebraska Territory, USA, Wednesday, September 3, 1856

  As Jennifer had predicted, the rest of the Happy Valley Ranch employees were either happy to be working for the ISRM, or ambivalent about it. Either way, no one quit or ran off to tell the Federal government about the site.

  Progress on the training facility took a leap forward as soon as the airfield had a usable runway, and aircraft carrying BLE employees began to arrive. Work on the training facilities was well underway when his mother and Paul’s family arrived on the September supply boat. Paul and Miriam were very impressed with the ranch; Anna not so much.

  Jake didn’t understand his mother’s attitude, or any of the things she’d said that morning back in April. But she was here, and that was what mattered.

  The wedding party and most of the Happy Valley ranch hands travelled to the Republic for the big wedding on two C-2JEP Greyhounds, the first flight many of them had ever taken. Jake could hear several people praying as they boarded the plane, and he joined them, even though it wasn’t his first flying experience. As the Greyhound’s JEP-powered engines revved up the praying got louder, and louder still as the plane rolled down the runway. Then they were in the air.

  “Lord have Mercy!” Ruby, who was seated opposite Jake, was as white as a black person could be. Jennifer told Jake he was turning green, and handed him an airsick bag.

  “Wowee, we’re flying like a bird!” Harlan Wasser, seated further down the aisle was apparently enjoying the ride. Jake estimated that about half the men and women embraced it as a new and exciting experience. The other half were scared shitless, Jake included. He threw up several times during the flight. He couldn’t believe that Jennifer had spent most of her adult life flying around in a helicopter.