Fiddlehead

by Cherie Priest

Page 19

 

  The men shook hands, and retreated to the warmest seats in the room. Gideon again cocked his feet toward the fire and finally answered, “It’s hard to say. They started with guns and dynamite, and neither one worked out for them. I can only assume they’ll move on to something more subtle next. Knives or potions. ”

  “They could always go the opposite way, and reach for larger guns. ”

  “Maybe,” Gideon agreed. “But I suspect that I’ve been targeted by someone more cautious and cunning. Brute force isn’t her style, unless she’s playing political games. ”

  “And that’s not what you’re caught up in? A political game?”

  Now that someone else said it aloud, it was silly to insist otherwise. “All right, then it’s a political game. There’s always the chance that I’m wrong, so let’s call it a hunch and hope for the best. ”

  Douglass said, “I’d like to think that the ‘best’ would imply that you were destined for a long, happy life, with no interference from dynamite or politics. What’s going on, Gideon? What can I do for you? It’s been … oh, six months since I saw you last. Should I assume you’ve had your nose buried in that Fiddlehead project all this time?”

  “Yes. And the Fiddlehead is why they want me dead. ”

  “On that ominous note…” Douglass raised a finger to indicate that the maid had returned with coffee for Gideon, and tea for her employer. He told her to leave the tray behind, so that they could serve themselves at their leisure. When she was gone he selected two cubes of sugar, and took up the question he’d left dangling before her arrival. “Now, why don’t you tell me who ‘they’ are. The mysterious ‘they,’ who you’ve used a feminine pronoun to describe—so I am terribly curious, if you don’t mind me saying so. ”

  Over the next half hour, Gideon told him everything, starting with Abraham Lincoln and the Confederate spy Belle Boyd working for the Pinkertons, and moving right along to the Fiddlehead’s conclusions, Katharine Haymes, and the tenuous connection between her company’s war crimes and the walking plague. It felt good to lay it out on the table, even if the table wasn’t his own, and didn’t belong to his usual benefactor. If anything, being forced to tell it all from start to finish, to someone who hadn’t heard it yet and wasn’t familiar with all the details, gave his brain room to sort through the particulars and see the connections better himself.

  When he’d exhausted the subject from several angles, he held his still-full, now-cooled cup of coffee untouched in his right hand as he waited for a response.

  “I must say,” Douglass began slowly, “it sounds like a very fine mess. ”

  “It’s not the first time people have wanted to kill me,” Gideon noted. “I refuse to be cowed. ”

  But Douglass was less firm on the matter. “Perhaps you should be cowed by it, a little if not a lot. And I’m not perfectly confident that they’d prefer you dead. It’d be smarter to discredit you. If I were you, I’d be more worried about that. ”

  Taken aback, Gideon set his coffee down too hard. It rattled, and all the small spoons quivered on the silver tray. “You think I should back down? Hide? Run back to Lincoln with my tail between my legs, until he gives me permission to speak?”

  “No one can make that decision for you, but there’s good reason to consider a more cautious stance than the one you’re taking right now. When you left Tennessee, you risked no one but yourself and your family. If everything you’ve said about your machine and its calculations is true, then you’re gambling much more these days when you put yourself at risk. Upon your message could rest the fate of two nations, millions of people—including yourself and your family, a fact I wish to underscore. Let it not be said that I fruitlessly urged you on a path toward altruism. ”

  “I give the world the fruits of my labor. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but you don’t do so from a sense of duty. You do it because you prefer an audience, and because the more people respect your results, the more grant money you acquire in order to produce more results. You will change the world, Gideon Bardsley. Whether you give a damn about it or not. ”

  “I’m trying to save it. They won’t let me save it. ”

  “They, they, they. Another ‘they’ for you to blame. ” Douglass shook his head. “You’re so single-minded at times. Think broader. Think in another direction. That’s your forte, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know what I’m thinking toward, not anymore. And what does it matter right now? No one will deign to hear me until Wednesday. ”

  “Deign to hear you, yes—you say that like it’s the easiest thing on earth to waltz into Congress and make people listen. Lincoln pulled strings and called favors to put you on that podium next week, so it’s a pity you begrudge him the delay. He’s working for you, not against you. But since he can’t help you the way you want, right this moment,” Douglass continued, “you beat your head against the wall because you think your only path is blocked. But it isn’t. Lincoln’s right about taking time to craft your message, but he’s wrong that you’ll have to wait until Wednesday to have it heard. ”

  Gideon’s unhappy fugue flickered, but he did not straighten up from his position in the chair. “How so?”

  Frederick Douglass sighed. “Son, Congress isn’t the only stage in the nation. It’s not even the largest, not by a far cry. You don’t have to start there, and you don’t have to stop there, either. You need the audience, as much as you want it. You need to shine a brilliant light into the shadows, and teach people that things are being hidden. The governors are buying things and paying for them with blood, without the knowledge—if not yet against the will—of the governed. ”

  “Ah. ” He understood. “You think I should go to the papers. ”

  “Not just ours, but up and down the coast—to Baltimore and Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, and Boston. For that matter…” he pulled out his notebook and began jotting things down. “If you have that Southern woman in your camp—infernal Cleopatra though she may be—she might be useful. Once we’ve written up your findings and made your case in a straightforward, compelling fashion, she might be able to place the editorial in the Richmond papers, or Atlanta. You never know, she might have contacts in Houston. The Texians are a tricky lot, but they don’t like being exterminated any more than anyone else. You might find a more willing audience there than you’d expect. ”

  It was a lot to consider, but Gideon considered it. “You’re right. I should bring the message to the people who would be most affected by it. I thought I should appeal to the authorities, but the authorities are very likely causing the problems in the first place. ”

  Douglass smiled like a proud tutor whose student has finally seen the light.

  “Which is why you can’t ignore them altogether. If you want to be heard, you can make yourself heard in the halls of government, it’s true—and you’ll have to take your case there eventually. But that case will be all the stronger when the masses stand behind it. Change happens two ways: from top to bottom, and the reverse. If one avenue is cut off, you must try the other. ”

  Eight

  “But Captain, what is it?” Maria asked.

  And as the laundry fell, the workwomen sorted, and the crank and grind of the generators and washers drowned out all but the very nearest noise, Captain Sally leaned in close. She said, “They’re notes, from a half-abandoned backwater on the West Coast, in the Washington Territory. They were written by one of my nurses. She’s been sending them every few weeks like clockwork—observations, suggestions, and prescriptions for dealing with a poisonous gas. ”

  Maria could hardly believe her ears. Was this the connection they’d all been seeking?

  Sally continued. “It occurs naturally out there, near a volcano called Rainier. This gas has destroyed one city already, and it’s destroyed countless soldiers here on the fronts, because it converts to a substance that’s sold as a
narcotic. There are a hundred names for it, and a hundred names for the men who become addicted. ”

  A loud shout pierced the workday commotion in the hot, disgusting incoming room, and Sally jerked to attention. Maria checked to make sure the satchel was fastened shut, and she slung it over her chest. “Was that Adam?” she asked. It was too loud to tell. Too many other things were going on around her.

  But Sally didn’t know. A second shout led to a third—and soon the laundry commotion began to wane as the laundresses became curious about what was happening outside.

  The captain took Maria by the shoulders. It felt like a funny gesture, coming from a smaller woman. “Now go to Washington, and raise some hell. ”

  Then a gunshot shook the basement, and the laundry women screamed. “Go!” Sally said more urgently. “Not the way we came. Take that side door—over there!”

  “But, Captain!”

  “Leave us,” she insisted. “Leave, and there’s nothing here for them to take!”

  Maria still had a thousand questions, but someone on the other side of the incoming door had a gun. She had one, too, but she also had something heavy to carry. She ran where Sally’d pointed her, dodging dirty laundry, sidestepping puddles, and almost forgetting the smell that surrounded her.

  Out the door she fled, into a narrow corridor without any windows—but there was a door at one end, so she raced for it and paused long enough to withdraw her Colt. She jammed the gun into the satchel so its handle was easily grabbable, and she opened the door.

  On the other side she found stairs going up, but also leading down. To some kind of subbasement or cellar, she assumed. Only a fool would go down farther, and probably wind up trapped there. No, she’d go up and take her chances.