Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century) (18 page)

“This—not the war—is the crisis of our time.

“For quite some time, this plague progressed quietly, taking primarily soldiers in its grip, because soldiers were the primary consumers of the substance which is believed to cause the disease: a common, inexpensive drug sometimes called saffron, which is smoked or otherwise inhaled. But increasingly, unaccountably, the situation has worsened to such an extent that thousands are dying by the day—either by drug use and subsequent sickness, or through the cannibalistic assaults that follow. Our troops are being decimated, and the Confederate troops are similarly burdened.

“But this must not be considered a purely military matter. The walking plague is now escaping the uniformed ranks and spilling into civilian society, taking not merely those soldiers who contaminate their bodies with the drug, but also those who struggle to live in the midst of this never-ending war.

“The war must end, and it must end immediately. If it does not, this creeping horror will consume the continent beyond salvation by 1886. Figures in the rest of the world are more uncertain, but rest assured this is not merely a problem of North and South. This is a problem of which the planet must be made aware, and the U.S. must lead by example. The threat is a scientific fact, measurable by advanced calculating engines created by the nation’s top scientists.”

Gideon paused there, and looked up at Nelson Wellers. “I don’t understand why I can’t just name myself.
I’m
the top scientist. It’s
my
machine.” He fondly, almost wistfully imagined the Fiddlehead as it’d been before the sabotage—all bright keys and jaunty levers, chewing up numbers and possibilities, offering its direct, complex answers on a roll of paper. Cryptic only to others. Never to him.

“That you are, and that it is. But most people don’t know your name, and those who do might be … disinclined to take your warnings as seriously as you’d like them to be received.”

The wistfulness melted, and he glared across Lincoln’s library in the doctor’s direction. “Because I’m a negro.”

The physician shrugged and shook his head. “It doesn’t help, but that’s not the whole of it. Don’t look at me that way. You’ve taken great pains to remain more or less anonymous. Well, congratulations. No one knows who you are. Your campaign has been a
roaring
success.”

Gideon glared some more, but didn’t argue. He returned his attention to the handwritten draft before him, and continued reading aloud, his last review before heading off to the papers. “The Union is aware of these scientists and their devices, and President Grant has been advised on the matter.” He looked up again. “Bit of an exaggeration, isn’t it?”

Wellers shrugged again. “Lincoln said he talked to him. Even if he didn’t, or even if their conversation skirted around the issue … the president will surely want an audience with you when your letter goes public. You can brief him then.”

“To explain myself, yes. I expect you’re right—and perhaps it’s an underhanded means of gaining an audience, but it will almost certainly work. Very well. That part stays.”

He picked up where he’d left off. “President Stephens has been informed of the dire situation as well. Though details are not available to the author of this letter, this devastation allegedly affects Southern troops at a rate twice that of Northern ones.”

Wellers held up a finger to interrupt. “You made that part up, yes?”

“More or less. There’s always a chance that the problem isn’t any worse down South, but since virtually all problems
are,
it’s a safe enough guess. I can’t offer up the Fiddlehead’s figures because the incoming stream was incomplete. The results are speculative, by the machine’s own admission, but within a calculated margin of error.”

Wellers chuckled softly. “You talk about that thing like it has a mind of its own.”

“It does,” Gideon assured him. “It has mine, only better. And besides, I see no good reason to tell the South that their problems aren’t as bad as ours. Let them think they’re taking the brunt of it, assuming we can get this message to go public down there.” He set his papers atop his knee. With more earnestness than he usually felt or showed, he asked, “Do you really think this sounds all right? It feels odd. It doesn’t sound like me at all.”

His companion smiled. “I thought that was the point.”

“Don’t be a jackass.”

Wellers’s smile grew even bigger. “Go on, keep reading. It’s hard for me to judge the document as a whole when you keep stopping like this.”

“You’re judging it?”

“You asked for my opinion, so yes. I’m taking great relish in judging it, because you so rarely care what I think.”

Gideon tried to frown, but couldn’t muster it. “I don’t
care
what you think. I want to
know
what you think. It’s not the same thing.”

“And Douglass and Lincoln are away right now, so you’ll settle for me. I’m still flattered to be third place to such company.”

“I’m not trying to put you in their company, Nelson. If—”

Now he laughed outright. “No! No, you can’t take it back now—you’ve flattered me, and you’re just going to have to live with it.”

Gideon gave up and grinned back. “Fine. You’ve been complimented. Don’t get so goddamn excited about it.”

“I’ll try to contain myself. But do go on—finish it up. Let’s hear your closing. The paper offices will shut down in another hour or two, and if you want to get this into tomorrow’s edition, we need to be on our way.”

Gideon cleared his throat and picked up the papers again. He scanned the last few lines and began afresh. “In Washington, D.C., luminaries such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass are calling for an immediate cease-fire in order to discuss the pressing threat which all of us face. In Richmond, the renowned hospital manager Captain Sally Louisa Tompkins is aware of the situation and has made efforts to rouse the CSA’s own Congress, to limited success. For make no mistake: There are those who wish the war to continue.

“Though it may sound ridiculous, inhumane, or impossible, there is money to be made in a war—huge money, for people without ethics or sentiment. These people have always existed, and they will always stand in the way of peace, for they are powerful. But we are more powerful still.

“Now is the time to call for action. Rally your representatives, petition your governors, and refuse to stand by in the face of indifference. Silence is not our friend, and it will not protect us. Only through public inspection and open discourse can we combat this problem, and we must do it together—Northerner and Southerner, white and colored, Indian and Texian, blue and gray. We are all human, and all living, breathing men. We must act accordingly, lest our entire species be eradicated from the face of the earth.”

After a pause, Wellers nodded and gave a round of formal, steady applause. “I like it. And that is a fierce climax indeed, at the end of an impassioned call to arms.”

“I wouldn’t call it impassioned.”

“You don’t have to, because I just did. You’ve written a fine piece of propaganda. Let us hope it works as well as it ought to, if only to get people talking.”

Gideon sighed hard with frustration. “We need for people to do more than
talk.
”

“Yes, but this is a start.”

“It’ll have to be a
quick
start,” he grumbled. “The Fiddlehead suggests wrapping up the war immediately—preferably years ago. We’re given a window of six months to instigate a complete turnaround in hostilities, and to engender absolute cooperation between the states.”

“Six months? When you put it like that, it sounds impossible.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment, but then Gideon agreed. “You’re right. It sounds impossible. And it might
be
impossible, but if we don’t try, we’re doomed for certain. It’s this or nothing, until and unless someone else comes up with a better plan.”

Nelson Wellers rose from his seat and stretched, cracking his back and straightening his waistcoat. “I don’t imagine any better plan forthcoming. You’re our last, best hope. I pray that isn’t too much pressure.”

“Not at all. Do you think I should’ve mentioned Haymes and her project? I left her out because I couldn’t tell if it would help or hurt.”

“When in doubt, leave it out.”

“Very funny,” Gideon sighed, fiddling with the papers as if he couldn’t yet bear to part with them.

“A little funny; surely no more than that. But I do mean it: You’re right, and there are too many ways her interference could be viewed. The Southerners don’t like her, but they think she’s useful. The North might want to use her research for themselves. She’s somewhere in the mix, but it’s hard to say what she really wants, or means to do. It was the right decision, leaving her out for now.”

“Then I suppose it’s finished.”

Nelson nodded. “Good. Then give it here, and I’ll take it to the
Washington Star-News.
”

Gideon stood up and shook his head, folding the missive and slipping it into his vest. “No. It’s my editorial, and I’ll run the errands to see it in print. But you’re welcome to come with me. If anything, I expect you’re duty-bound to do so.”

Wellers made an unhappy little grunt, but admitted, “Yes. I promised I’d keep an eye on you.”

“If you must,” Gideon surrendered, and grabbed his grandfather’s coat.

In truth, he didn’t mind having Wellers assigned to his personal safety. Better the physician than the Confederate spy, after all—send that unreliable woman on some other errand. Wellers was preferable by far. For that matter, ever since Gideon’s talk with Frederick Douglass, he’d been increasingly worried, though no new violence had occurred. He had a plan now, and that was the problem. It was just the one plan, and if someone were to interfere with it, there was no backup waiting in the queue.

All offhanded responses to Wellers aside, the pressure was getting to him.

Together they left the Lincoln homestead and climbed into one of the former president’s personal carriages—a carriage with a ramp that lowered to the ground, so that his mechanical chair could be lifted aboard with minimal effort. Gideon liked these carriages; they were oversized to accommodate the bulky seat, and there was plenty of room to stretch out when its owner was not present.

The city was still brittle and bright with a sheen of ice, a half-present crust that made the world look damp and uncomfortable, too wet to be warm, and too warm to freeze.

Gideon sank into his coat and buried his chin in his scarf, watching small puffs of his own breath dampen the air and vanish. The streets scrolled past outside the window, and Nelson Wellers gazed out at his side of the avenue—both men watching for suspicious persons, or for any vehicles that might be following them. Nothing piqued their sense of alarm, but they still didn’t relax. Being out in the open required too much of their attention, and their previous good moods shifted into something less friendly and free, and far more wary.

They did not speak the rest of the way to the
Star-News.

The newspaper office was an impressive building—a monument to the freedom of the press, if you believed in such things, though Gideon tended not to. Regardless, he had to admit it was handsome, with Georgian columns over brick and wide stairs funneling visitors inside. Tasteful landscaping, and tidy walkways. It looked efficient and earnest.

Inside they found the office they needed, and an editor by the name of Sherwood Jones—a once-burly man whose impressive shape was beginning to sag. He was bald, and one of his prominent ears had a long-ago-healed tear in it; his nose looked like it’d been broken once or twice, and maybe a third time, a long time ago.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked, rising from his seat behind his desk and shaking both Gideon’s and Nelson’s hands. “A pair of doctors, ganging up on an old man. I hope I’m not dying or in need of some … scientific treatment. I hope you’ll pardon me, Bardsley, but I’ve never been too clear on what it is you do.”

“A little of everything.”

“Then my potential for peril is great indeed! Draw up a chair, fellows. What can I do for you today?”

“You can help us spread the word on a matter of national importance,” Gideon told him, and handed over the statement he’d so meticulously prepared. “You can publish the most important letter you’ll read this year.” Then he sat back with Nelson Wellers and waited as the editor read it, watching for the man’s eyes to widen, or for a gasp to escape his lips.

They were disappointed on both fronts. Sherwood Jones maintained a stony silence and stillness as he read. When he finished, he put the paper down on his desk, then folded his hands atop it. “So you want me to run this as an editorial?”

Wellers, a little surprised by Jones’s lack of surprise, made a guess at what he wanted. “That’s where you’ll have to run it, unless you could be persuaded to accompany it with an investigative piece.”

Gideon instinctively balked at his friend’s suggestion. “No, we don’t need … we shouldn’t have … No.”

“Why not?” asked the editor.

“Because the machine … There was an explosion,” he said vaguely. “The information is not reproducible at present, and the original paperwork is in safekeeping at the Lincoln estate. Attempts have already been made on my life, and there is some concern for the Lincolns’, as well.”

But the editor said, “If I understand what I’m reading, there’s concern for the whole damn continent. I understand your desire to protect the Lincolns, but isn’t getting the evidence out more important in this case? If you’re serious about this—”

“What do you mean,
if?
” Gideon asked, annoyed, and now somewhat inexplicably anxious. Something about being in this office, on the verge of going so very public. Something about making a shout like this—a shout to the whole world—and knowing that the world might not listen.

Wellers also went on the defensive. “Are you trying to say you don’t believe us?”

Sherwood Jones sighed and shook his head. “The awful thing is, I
do
believe you. Or, if nothing else, I think you’re on to something. It might not be such a big something; perhaps this is just another one of those things like typhoid or cholera or consumption that is making the rounds through the ranks these days. But I’m hearing about it more and more. Everybody’s hearing about it. We’re already running a piece or two a month on the subject.”