“He?” Harriet said, raising an eyebrow.
“Stepton possesses limited artificial intelligence,” Dr. Carver said. “He thinks at the same level as a six year old.”
“And as far as getting stepped on…” Mary snickered. “He’s big, yeah, but not big enough to step on nobody. I would beat his a…”
Stepton’s legs expanded, tripling his height in less than 5 seconds.
“Uh, oh,” Mary croaked.
“Lawd!” Harriet said, shaking her head.
“Maybe I ain’t ready,” Mary said. “I feel a bit played out. I probably need to go take a nap for a while.”
Stepton struck. His right fist slammed into Mary like a battering ram into a castle door.
Dr. Carver snapped his head over his shoulder. After a moment, he frowned. “Where is Mary? I expected to see her soaring off in the distance, that punch was so powerful.”
Harriet nodded toward Stepton. “There she is.”
Stepton was bent deeply at the waist, his right arm extended forward as if he was trying to catch himself from falling. Before him, with her fingers burrowed into his iron fist, crumpling it like it was paper, stood Mary.
“Good Goddess!” Dr. Carver gasped.
Harriet snickered.
Stepton’s left fist flew out from his wrist. A thick, iron chain unraveled from within his forearm. The wrecking ball sped toward Mary’s head.
Still gripping Stepton’s right fist, Mary leapt high into the air.
Stepton’s left fist hammered into the earth, beating a crater into the soft dirt.
Mary snapped her arms upward as she descended, yanking Stepton off his feet.
She torqued her hips, turning in the air.
Stepton sailed over her head.
Mary landed with a loud thud. She snapped her arms downward, pulling Stepton’s fist toward the ground.
Stepton’s back crashed into the ground. The automaton vomited a torrent of bolts, gears and pieces of wire.
Mary released Stepton’s fist.
Stepton lay still.
Mary sauntered toward Harriet and Dr. Carver.
Dr. Carver clapped his hands. “Well done!”
Mary shrugged. “I’m back, baby!”
“Come with me,” Dr. Carver said. “We need to run some tests.”
“Okay,” Mary said. “But I tell you right now, Doc, I feel fine. I…”
Mary’s eyelids fluttered rapidly.
Harriet waved her hands before Mary’s face. “Mary?”
Mary snapped to attention. She brought the fingertips of her right hand to the corner of her eyebrow.
“I, Mary Fields-Adam Swan-Hank Dobbins-Mary Fields, do hereby swear that I will bear true and faithful allegiance to the President – Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Freedonia,” Mary said, her eyelids flickering faster and faster. “And that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Government of Freedonia as by law established, and that I will serve in the Armed Forces of Freedonia and go wherever ordered by air, land, or sea and that I will observe and obey all commands of the Government of Freedonia as by law established and of any officer set over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. This, I swear before God and the Ancestors.”
Harriet snapped her head toward Dr. Carver. “Dr. Carver, what’s wrong?”
“As I told you earlier, the Carver Mushrooms share information with each other,” Dr. Carver replied. “Normally, when a colony of absorbs a lifeform, they cut off communication with other colonies and communicate exclusively within their community. Mary’s incredible level of physical exertion – probably in tandem with her gifts – most likely strained her cells’ regulation of the neural network established by the Carver mushrooms. She must be connected to the consciousnesses of the soldiers who are now one with MAHO.”
“How do we fix it?” Harriet asked.
“She will probably return to normal once she recovers from the strain of her encounter with Stepton. At any rate, we need to run some tests. I also need to check on the MAHO soldiers. Please, take Mary to the laboratory and return her to her tub. I will return shortly.”
Mary, still at attention, did not say anything else, but her eyelids continued to flicker at light speed. Harriet tossed Mary over her shoulder and then jogged to the laboratory.
“Lawd,” she said looking skyward. “Protect yo’ daughter, Mary. She bear yo’ mother’s name, so I know you partial to her, Lawd. Caleb will be here soon and I need Mary at my side if we gon’ win this thing. Amen!”
CHAPTER seventeen
September 24, 1870
The world had always been a cruel place for Captain Barnabus Sneed. His scars were many and deep. Growing up, his teachers and parents had labeled him a problem child, emotionally disturbed and even, at one point, a lunatic.
Wanting desperately to fit in somewhere, young Barnabus volunteered for the United States Navy. The military taught Captain Sneed how to pour the burdens of his soul into the killing of other men – Black men, especially. With each death of a Freedonian or New Haitian he wreaked in the Reunion War on behalf of God and country, he peeled back a layer of scar tissue and felt a sense of hope that he might one day become a man others could respect, if not love, maybe even a man who could learn to love himself.
Now, he was a Captain in charge of securing New York Harbor.
Tonight was a special night. Every full moon, in a tradition he had started during the Reunion War, Captain Sneed did two things: First, he tossed fresh flowers into the Atlantic Ocean in honor of his fallen comrades. Then he read his latest poems to the waters and the winds.
Writing poetry helped him deal with all his pent-up emotions. It had helped him through his roughest times: the loss of his dog, Jessup – his only friend – when he was nine, all the hell he had gone through in the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum and the rocky period that followed when he turned sixteen and ventured out on his own.
Captain Sneed sat in his steam-powered carriage, gazing at the water, eager to share his work with the Seamen who had fought so bravely at his side. As he climbed out of his car, he noticed a large ripples upon the surface of the ocean.
“The fish have come to honor you, too, my brothers,” he said.
This quiet spot, on the farthest end of the dock, was always empty. The Seamen under his charge knew that this was ‘Captain Sneed’s Spot’. He patrolled it; he secured it. And no one questioned it. Captain Sneed, after all, enjoyed killing and many a Seaman believed his enjoyment didn’t just stop at killing Freedonians and New Haitians.
Captain Sneed called this spot “Realm of the Fallen.”
His father had actually taken him here once – long before the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum; long before the Reunion War – because the fishing was good. He taught Captain Sneed how to work a rod and reel, gut a fish with a knife, skin it and flay it. Captain Sneed was good with a blade and took a secret delight in gutting fish. That was the best day of Captain Sneed’s childhood, before the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum.
Captain Sneed walked to the water’s edge with his journal. The moon’s glow cast his shadow across the ocean’s glassy surface.
“Greetings, my brothers!” He said. “I have some new poems for you.”
He opened his journal, feeling the worn leather cover against his palms. The oversized book, filled with hundreds of pages of his handwriting and drawings, was a memoir of his inner world from childhood to now. The stiff, heavily inked pages crinkled as he turned them, and that sound always made him feel a sense of nostalgia.
The book had been a gift from his mother on his ninth birthday – one of his parents’ attempts to see where their child fit in; to make him like other “normal” children. Across these pages he had written countless poems and short stories and had drawn things he wanted to one day own or become.
The last fifty-five pages were filled with his love poems, some so sappy he felt embarrassed to read them. Most of his poems were musi
ngs, amateurish and base, but every now and then he wrote something he was proud of. The only ones who had ever heard any of his writings were Jessup, his fallen comrades and the ocean.
Captain Sneed held the big book open like a preacher about to give a sermon, only his congregation was the fish and the reeds and the dark water.
“I’ve been seeing Jennifer around the docks more and more. Today she gave me a gift and kissed me on the cheek. The way she acts around me sometimes, I…I think I might actually have a shot with her.”
He felt his heart expand just thinking about her. He blushed as he read on.
“Her beauty has awakened something in me that I have never felt for anyone. I cannot stop writing about her. I have written at least a dozen new
poems. They are all about her. This first one is still a work in progress. The beats are not quite right, but this is what I have written thus far.”
He read the poem aloud:
“Her eyes? Fireflies.
Flames in her caress,
We embrace, we smile,
Cannons in our chests.
Time’s first gentle touch,
Feathers along our flesh.
Nobody is around us,
We whisper, touch, undress.
Butterflies in our minds,
Spreading wings together.
Taking flight in purple skies,
Evaporating like hot weather.”
The sound of hands clapping startled Captain Sneed.
“That is the most beautiful piece of shut-the-hell-up I ever heard,” a man’s voice echoed off the water, followed by laughter.
Captain Sneed turned to see Caleb, standing several yards away.
“Who in the hell are you?” Captain Sneed spat, drawing his cutlass from the scabbard that bounced on his thigh.
“You? You mean ‘we’?”
Caleb nodded toward something behind Captain Sneed.
The Captain turned back toward the ocean. Before him, in the moonlit ocean, loomed the Geobukseon.
****
On the docks, the ocean watched in silence as Captain Sneed crawled across the boardwalk, dragging his wounded legs. A withered ghul’s finger, separated from its owner, jutted from the back of one thigh. Moonlight glinted off the exposed bone of Captain Sneed’s hip. Hair, caked with blood and dirt, clung to his face as he clawed his way toward the water. He spotted one of the Seamen under his command, or what was left of him, floating face down near the shore. Hugging his butchered torso, Captain Sneed wailed, an animal cry that echoed across the ocean.
A flock of ducks, startled out of there slumber, took flight, quacking in protest.
Behind Captain Sneed stood Caleb. Then Colin and Connor joined appeared, their clothes covered in dark stains. The Ghul King and the twins sauntered up the boardwalk toward the Captain.
Captain Sneed rolled off the boardwalk, landing in the mud near the shore. He struggled onto all fours and then scrambled toward the water. Upon reaching the shore, Sneed dove into the ocean. He attempted to swim away, flailing his arms, but Connor and Colin waded in after him and brought him screaming back to shore. Caleb resumed torturing the man, breaking off another finger and then stabbing it into the side of Captain Sneed’s shoulder.
Captain Sneed whimpered; he no longer had the strength to scream. Besides, his men were dead; there was no one to help him.
“Who can help me get into Freedonia?”
“I told you…no one can,” Captain Sneed replied. “Not without breaking the truce of 1866.”
“Oh well,” Caleb said with a shrug. “I guess after I finish you off, I’ll find that Sweet little Jennifer you were goin’ on about in that little ditty of yours.”
“W-wait!” Captain Sneed cried. “There is one man who might be able to get you into Freedonia.
“Who might that be?” Caleb asked.
“Jeremiah Hamilton,” Captain Sneed replied. “They call him the ‘Prince of Darkness’.”
“And what makes you think he can get us into Freedonia?” Caleb said.
“Because he’s rich, powerful,” Captain Sneed said. “And a Negro.”
“Wait…this Hamilton fella is a smoke?” Caleb chuckled. “More like the Prince of Darkies, I reckon.”
Connor and Colin laughed.
Caleb squatted down beside Captain Sneed. “Well, since you were kind enough to give us the name of this smoke, Hamilton, who just might be our ticket into Darky Town, we won’t hurt your beloved Jennifer…”
“Thank you,” Captain Sneed sighed.
Caleb stood and then pressed the heel of his boot into Captain Sneed’s jaw. “But you? Oh, we gon’ hurt you enough for the both of y’all!”
At dawn, Captain Sneed’s screams finally ended. The ocean watched in silence as Caleb and the twins pranced around his corpse. The rest of the Ghul Army swarmed out of the turtle ship and joined their King in the macabre dance under the light of the full moon.
CHAPTER eighteen
September 25, 1870
For as many years as anyone in the city could remember, Jeremiah G. Hamilton had been a broker of Wall Street. Every morning, his steam-powered carriage could be seen putt-putting from his mansion in Brooklyn, down past the street vendors with their apples and cheese, standing ankle-deep in horse manure and onward to 18 Broad Street, between the corners of Wall Street and Exchange Place, in the Financial District of lower Manhattan.
Some mornings, Hamilton – the only Black millionaire in New York – would pause at the tobacconist’s or the newsstand before entering the hallowed halls of the New York Stock Exchange.
From that moment until the lunch hour and again from one o’clock until six, Hamilton lived and breathed the exchange of foreign currencies. Under his adept hands, dollars became pounds sterling; rubles became marks; pesos, kroner; yen, francs. Whatever exotic combination was called for, Hamilton arranged with a smile, a kind word and a question about the countries which minted the currencies he passed under the barred window. Over years, he had built nations in his mind; continents. Every country that existed, he could name, along with its particular flavor of money, its great sights and monuments, its national cuisine.
On Wall Street, he was cleverer and more ruthless than most of his white peers. But as soon as Hamilton left his Wall Street office, he was not even a second-class citizen and subject to the racism that held sway on the streets.
At the deep brass call of the closing gong, he pulled the shutters closed again. From six until seven o’clock, he reconciled the books, filled out his reports, wiped his slate board clean with a wet rag, made certain he had chalk for the next day, drew his Colt 1848 Baby Dragoon Pistol from a pocket inside his satchel and slipped it into his waistcoat. He then stepped lively to his awaiting carriage, climbed in and sat back, formulating more strategies for making money, as his driver transported him home.
Hamilton’s estate was reputed to rival the Astor’s. His servants were numberless as ants; his personal fortune greater than some smaller nations. And New York feared him.
After the devastating Great Fire of 1835 in New York, Hamilton profited handsomely, taking pitiless advantage of several of the fire victims’ misfortunes to pocket some 5 million dollars. Had the authorities of New York known that it was Hamilton who started the fire, they would have hung him. But they had no clue; only his wife, Eliza and Hamilton, himself, knew. And neither of them was telling.
There was no way for anyone besides Hamilton himself to know which of the thousand stories and accusations that accumulated around him were true. There was no doubt that violence and sensuality and excess were the stuff of which his life was made. If his wealth, wits and a web of blackmail and extortion had not protected him, he would no doubt have been dead years before.
The steam-powered carriage sped toward the tall iron gate that surrounded Hamilton’s mansion. The gate’s double doors opened and the carriage continued up the road leading to the back of Hamilton’s home. The vehicle pulled into the garage.
Hamilton hopped out when it came to a stop. The engine sputtered, coughed and then fell silent.
Hamilton turned toward a hand-carved door of ivory at the rear of the garage. The door opened. Hamilton’s butler held its brass doorknob.
“Good evening, sir,” the butler said, his British accent not fully concealing his Fijian one.
“Good evening, Rasolo,” Hamilton said. “How are you?”
“Just dandy, sir,” Rasolo replied. “We have guests, sir.”
”Who?” Hamilton whispered. “How many?”
“Five, sir,” Rasolo said. “They are unfamiliar, sir.”
“Associates of Eliza?”
“No, sir.”
“Then, why in the hell are they in my house?”
“They were quite…insistent, sir.”
Hamilton drew his Baby Dragoon.
Rasolo placed a firm hand upon Hamilton’s forearm.
Hamilton glared at him.
Rasolo shook his head.
Hamilton slid the revolver back into his waistcoat. He then strutted down the hall and into his parlor.
Caleb, Connor, Colin, Captain Hunt and one of the Joseon Hwarang Warriors – a stocky man dressed in a uniform similar to his comrades, but colored pristine white – and Hamilton’s wife, Eliza, occupied the room. They sat in plush leather chairs and on a leather couch. Eliza sat beside Caleb, who grinned as Hamilton entered the parlor.
Eliza leapt from the couch, walked briskly to her husband and embraced him.
“Hello, dear,” she said. “These men have come to discuss a pressing matter with you. I would like to introduce you to Caleb Butler…umm…”
She glanced at Caleb. Caleb nodded. She continued. “King.”
Hamilton shifted his attention to Caleb.
Caleb rose and held his hand out toward Hamilton. Hamilton shook it.
“Might I ask, king of where?” Hamilton said.
“Everywhere,” Caleb replied.
Goosebumps erupted all over Hamilton’s flesh. He tried to snatch his hand out of Caleb’s grip, but the Ghul King held on, tightening his grip.
Caleb pulled Hamilton close and then wrapped his arm over Hamilton’s shoulders.
The Chronicles of Harriet Tubman- Freedonia Page 10
