I make a sweeping arc with my hand, for practice, without releasing the ball.
I found out at Floyd’s funeral that Fives is some kind of handball game. Nothing to do with bats. But Floyd wanted me to have it, anyway. For me it’s become a kind of softball.
Cocking my arm back, I swing forward and throw it — a nice, easy, underhand pitch — across the water.
It lands at the Lakota kid’s feet on the far riverbank. He doesn’t know what to do. Black Buffalo looks at the ball, back at me, and then at his son. This time, he nods. The Partisan turns away in a huff.
The kid sets down his bow and arrow and picks up Floyd’s ball like I hoped he would. He looks at me, and I mime the throwing gesture. He gets it, and without even practicing, throws the ball over the river, back to me.
We do that one more time. Though after I throw the ball to the Lakota side, I make another deliberate show of picking up a damp piece of willow tree driftwood and holding it aloft.
The Lakota kid is puzzled, but he throws the ball back again.
And now, as the ball comes flying toward me, I swing, make contact, and hit the ball toward the boy and the Lakotas. It falls a little short, landing with a plop in the water near their feet.
Some of them scatter. An arrow whizzes by overhead. One of the Corps is about to shoot back, and I think, how ridiculous, I’ve ruined everything by taking an at-bat. Clark is screaming “No!” and so is Black Buffalo — you can tell, without a translator — but no one else fires, and the kid runs over to where ball rolls by the riverbank. He picks it up again, and turns to look at me…
…and seems to be smiling.
“What game is that?” Black Buffalo asks.
I’m so excited, I don’t wait for the translator and answer, “Baseball!”
Clark and Lewis both give quizzical looks at my evident understanding of Lakota.
“And if this is September,” I tell Black Buffalo, “it’s just about time for the playoffs.”
The Lakota translator is giving me a quizzical look, too. He’s never heard anything like that from any of the fur traders.
I see that the Lakota kid is picking up a stick, too. He stands, holding it the way I held mine, but not before tossing the ball back over the water to me.
I guess he’s ready for an at-bat.
Men on both sides are lowering their weapons.
It looks like the Corps of Discovery will make it through the day and off of Good Humor Island.
And if that means I’ve messed with history a little, it feels all right.
Chapter Twelve
Thea: Monticello
May 1804
We follow Jefferson outside, going back up Mulberry Row.
Sadness…
Eyes watch us. There are a few nods, but fewer smiles.
Jefferson occasionally nods back at a slave or two, but doesn’t stop to make conversation.
…sore…. tired…
I don’t know who’s talking…
No, I do know. No one is talking. The lingo-spot is not only translating words now, but feelings. But which feelings? Maybe…the strongest ones?
If this ability should grow, I may well go mad.
And as mother might have observed, going mad will not help me think clearly about my situation.
The slave cabins are opposite the extensive, and apparently experimental, gardens that Jefferson keeps. Orange light from a setting sun plays over the flowers, trees, and vines there. Looking at them, smelling them, I could almost imagine myself back in the gardens in Alexandria.
Almost.
We’re back at the front entrance to the house quickly enough. “Come with me, girl,” Sally says, and takes me upstairs.
I noticed she didn’t look too closely at the slaves on Mulberry Row, either. She doesn’t quite belong there, but she doesn’t quite belong here, in Jefferson’s house, as a full family member.
Like me, she is caught between worlds.
Two of Jefferson’s granddaughters run by, giggling as they see me. Jefferson’s grown daughter, Patsy, is here with her family — I don’t think I’ve counted all the young ones yet. There are around six or so. I don’t know how they can move so fast in such garments, though, with all the bows and sashes around their waists.
Even the men, those who aren’t slaves, seem to wear numerous layers of clothing.
But to be a child is to move fast, no matter what your clothing, so off the children go, perhaps to look at some of the antlers on the wall. This is a busy house, which also reminds me of Alexandria and the library. Something was always happening there. Guests were forever arriving. Back when I was a child.
And if I’m not quite a child now, but not yet grown into the sort of woman Mother was… then what am I? Who am I?
Honoré stomps by on his way to the kitchen, holding a basket full of peas he’s brought in from outside. “And I still have to make ice cream for tout les petits Jeffersons!” he yells to no one in particular.
“We’ll go up here and wait in the cabinet room.”
I follow Sally up the stairs, into what must be Jefferson’s study.
Like Mother’s, it is strewn with papers and scientific implements of every sort. There is a kind of paddle hanging on the wall. There is a plate of oranges on his desk. The scented fruit reminds me of home. I wonder if he has any lemons.
There’s an apparatus on his desk that seems designed for making scrolls. There are sheets of parchment in it, but I’m not sure how it works. Most peculiar of all, though, are several large bones set out on tables, trails of dirt and debris around them.
I believe these may be some of the bones Jefferson brought back from the trip where we found Eli.
Where I found him, only to lose
Miss.
—him again.
Who said miss?
“Jefferson has an active mind,” Sally tells me. I realize I have been staring at the large animal bones. “Mostly that’s a good thing. It keeps him busy, keeps all that sadness of his at bay.” She shakes her head. “But sometimes it keeps him from paying attention to the things that are right in front of him. To the life he’s leading right now.”
“Sally, you say the worst things about me. It’s scarcely fair.”
“Yes, Jefferson, it’s scarcely fair.”
Jefferson has entered through a side door. He holds a large, musty volume in his hands, a “book” as scrolls are now called.
Even in this quick exchange, I can tell there’s a bond between these two, but I can’t make sense of it.
“If I believed in Providence, I would say that my continued delay in getting back to Washington is a penalty for having indulged secret travels in the first place. Except that I don’t mind the delay at all. However, I expect my political enemies in the Whig Party will not let it be forgotten.”
I nod toward Jefferson, just to be agreeable.
“Do you speak much English?” he asks me.
“Some bit,” I tell him. I’m surprised to hear myself say it.
“You appeared to understand it in the stables. You’ve taxed all the Greek and Latin out of me, though I enjoy the practice. It may save time if I can proceed in the common tongue. Is that all right?”
I nod again. I can’t tell him about the lingo-spot.
And then it occurs to me that by using English, he’s including Sally in the conversation, too.
He’s trusting her.
“I am always trying to save time. There never seems to be enough.” He pauses at the parchment machine. “For instance, this polygraph I invented. It allows a duplicate to be made of every letter I write. It works by putting a pen in a brace that copies every stroke I make with my own hand.”
The scribes in Alexandria could have used that. We would have had extra copies of all our scrolls and perhaps wouldn’t have lost them all in the fire.
“These bones,” Jefferson says, coming up to the table. “They save no time whatsoever, but I am fascinated by them. I cannot hel
p but wonder what sorts of mighty creatures lived here in America before us. I believe there may have been giants.”
He looks at me…
Tell me.
…to see what I know. He suspects something. “These bones, for example, come from a creature I’ve been calling the incognitum because I have yet to ascertain what species it is. Though, lately, I wonder if it might not be some kind of elephant. I recalled reading that Alexander the Great used elephants for military purposes, then went to find a volume about him that I had procured in Europe. It was richly illustrated, and I hoped the engravings might give me a basis to make a few renderings of our own prehistoric elephants.
“Alexander, of course, founded the great city of Alexandria. The original one, in Egypt. Our smaller, humbler settlement of the same name, here in Virginia, hopes to draw inspiration from its source and someday serve as a seat of learning.”
He is still looking at me.
Tell me.
“Jefferson, for this poor girl’s sake, come to your point.”
“Here is the section of the book on Alexandria.” He lets the volume fall open. I see a series of accurate engravings of the great legends of my city: Alexander’s arrival, its transformation to a great shipping port, the building of the library, the museum, and Pharos — the great lighthouse. That was the last place I saw my mother alive.
They’re all there in Jefferson’s book.
“And then there is this brief section about the great fire in Alexandria, and the destruction of its golden age.”
He flips the large, moldering pages.
In the engravings, I see the fire taking the library. I see the animals fleeing the zoo on the palace grounds, just as I remember them. I see K’lion.
“I noticed this lizard man in the illustration,” Jefferson says, tapping his finger on the pages. “And I do not recall ever seeing him there before. But there was an even bigger surprise waiting for me on the next page.”
He takes the bound parchment to reveal another engraving on the next page.
The mathematician and scholar Hypatia
stood accused of consorting with demons and
demigods, and this may have led to her
downfall.
The caption is the Gaul language, French, and Jefferson reads it in the original.
“Do you need me to—”
“No,” I tell him. I don’t need him to translate.
He just shakes his head.
The picture is of Mother. Mother talking to K’lion.
It never happened, but somehow the author of this book thinks it did. Somehow, a version of our story has made its way down through the ages.
“You mentioned Hypatia’s name during your restless sleep . You called her ‘Mother.’”
“Jefferson, this child’s clearly upset, she’s still weak. What are you—”
“I am beginning to wonder, Sally, if I’ve made a serious mistake letting that boy join the Corps of Discovery to capture the lizard man. I am beginning to wonder if the West may hold such mysteries that the entire country may come undone. And I certainly wonder how a bound and printed book is able to alter its very illustrations.”
Sally is getting upset.
“You need to leave this girl be, Tom!”
Jefferson’s eyes widen.
“Not everything that passes in front of your eyes is something to be used in an experiment or examined like some bug!”
Silence envelops the room. Even the transforming lingo-spot doesn’t try to fill it. Somehow, it understands that the silence is the very thing being said.
“Sally, my wife and four of my children are dead. Of my original family, only two daughters have survived. I do not need to be reminded of what things in life are authentic, and which are passing distractions. I do not need to be lectured on whether I am in some kind of flight —“
—from grief.
Jefferson doesn’t finish his sentence. But I know. He pauses again, and smoothes out his long coat.
“I am sorry, Sally.”
“I’m sorry, too, Tom.”
“You really shouldn’t call me Tom.” Jefferson turns back to me and puts his hand on the leather box next to the excavated bones.
He flips the box open, and I see Eli’s cap inside.
“I need to know how this fits in to the puzzle. I need to know what the link is between you and the boy and the lizard man. I need to understand if there is an immediate danger confronting us. I am beginning to suspect that you are not this ‘Brassy’ who belongs to Governor Claiborne. But I’d like to know who else you might be.”
I don’t know enough about the history of Eli’s country — the United State, I believe it’s called — to know what is supposed to happen next in the years between the presiding of Jefferson and the invention of time displacement by Eli’s parents. I do not know how things turn out— if there are wars or not, whether the slaves stage a rebellion, and whether the leaders of this United State are always wise and just.
I do not know; but if I did, it wouldn’t matter.
It would appear that because Eli, K’lion and I have been loosed upon history, history itself is no longer quite fixed. Or to put it another way, since we can now travel into the past, the past therefore becomes as unpredictable… as the future.
“I am taking this cap with me to Washington tomorrow. I wish Ben Franklin were still here to look at it, to offer us theories about its electric properties. But I intend to have it examined, so its true nature may be discovered.” The look on his face softens. “I wish you no harm. No harm at all, Miss Whoever-You-Are. But what else is incognitum in America that I’m not being told about?”
Sally watches Jefferson and me. She’s waiting for an answer, too.
It never comes.
The door to the study bursts open, and Honoré is there with Patsy. They’re having an argument.
“Sir! Monsieur! S’il vous plait! Will you tell your daughter that macaroni and cheese do not belong together! That you regret having ever asked me to combine —”
“Father, I’m sorry for the interruption. I asked Honoré to make the dish the children are so fond of.”
“Honoré — Patsy and I felt that putting macaroni and cheese together makes a simple, satisfactory American dish, and I would ask that you keep experimenting with the different cheeses to find the best possible combination. Any dish that all of my grandchildren like equally well without complaint should command our respect. Now, is there some other reason you have chosen to violate the strict edicts about my not being interr—”
But the word interrupted is itself interrupted.
I have reached into the leather box and pulled out Eli’s cap. I can feel the tingle in my hands already.
There’s no other way. If the cap disappears, so does Eli’s ability to move through time with it. None of us might ever get back.
We would be stuck here, unmaking history.
“What—”
“I’m sorry,” I say, as Jefferson lunges for me.
As he fades from view, the world around me goes gray, then blue, then explodes in a frenzy of color, fog, and light.
If this is the Fifth Dimension now, it’s different.
Or maybe I am.
And then I realize, I have no idea where I’m headed.
Chapter Thirteen
Eli: Fort Mandan
December 1804
There’s one hour of warmth today — and I want to use it all. Of course “warmth” means anything less than about a million degrees below zero. It’s anything that lets you step outside for a few minutes without worrying that if your finger touches your cheek, it’ll be frozen there.
Not that your finger actually can touch your cheek, because cheeks and faces are bundled up in strips of cloth and your hands are usually wrapped up in these big smelly leather gloves that remind me more of baseball mitts.
I look like one of the zombie characters in a Barnstormers game now. Like a bundle of old clothes
that suddenly came to life.
But which life? I really don’t want to think about Barnstormers, or anything that reminds me of how my life was before.
Round and round our little fort I go, walking to keep warm, to keep distracted.
Since I’ve become tangled up in time, this place, this journey — this “now” — is the longest I’ve stayed in one spot. Or time. It’s been half a year now, traveling with the Corps of Discovery.
I cover myself with stinky buffalo hides. I eat meat and jerky and nuts and fish. And I live with a bunch of guys who think that if I took a sip of whiskey every once in awhile, it might help my growth.
They’re good men, and they’re brave, pretty much. Sometimes they’re silly and weird. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep traveling with them.
I have to find Clyne soon, and then we have to find Thea, and then we all have to get back home, to 2019, and get all this bad history sorted out.
I have an orange that I’m holding, deep in my pocket. It might be an orange freeze by now, but I know someone who’d like it, no matter what.
I had to trade my Christmas portion of brandy to get it, so it was well worth it. Lewis was handing out some fruits earlier that Jefferson had sent up river for a special occasion. He had originally handed the orange to Cruzatte.
“Another of Jefferson’s crop experiments evidently,” he said, trying to figure out what it was.
“A crop experiment will not inspire za muse!” Cruzatte said indignantly. So he was only too happy to trade.
I’d like to go across the frozen river to Mandan Village and show this orange to this shaman I keep hearing rumors about. North Wind, I think his name is. He’s the one who was supposed to have seen the same “lizard god” that the fur trader Banglees saw.
But I can’t just leave by myself, without permission from one of the captains. I’ve seen ’em actually whip guys for stuff like sneaking off.
So I keep tromping through the ice and blistery winds, somewhere in the Dakotas, trying not to get distracted by the two things I’d normally be thinking about today.
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