by John Barnes
The sun was getting higher now, and there was more noise of people getting to work. Probably the biggest factory in Boston, even in this altered timeline, didn’t have a hundred workers in it at a time; typically people were working in little shops of three or six, a master, a journeyman or two, and a couple of apprentices. As I drew nearer to Boston Neck, I could hear more noise in general—the bank of the Charles River had some wharves and a lot of small businesses going there.
After a bit there was a fork in the road, with Boylston Street going off toward town, to my left, and Charles Street continuing near the river, to my right. The transponder tracker obstinately pointed right up the middle of the fork.
I shrugged and decided so far Charles Street had been lucky for me, so I took the turn to the right. This meant coming into some of the new “industrial” part of the town, the part that had been built up from the new technologies that Rey Luc had introduced; to my eye, it didn’t look industrial at all, with its many small barnlike structures and individual workshops, but it was in fact one of the biggest manufacturing areas on Earth in this timeline.
I noted that there was a shop that built “Engines of all Kinds” and another for “Electricks”; there would have been no such thing in Boston in my timeline, so at least I could see that Luc’s handiwork wasn’t completely undone.
I heard a big, slow “chuffing” noise, and saw puffs of smoke rising from the direction of the river. Pretty clearly someone was starting up one of those engines; since Luc didn’t seem to be going anywhere, (triangulating off past readings from the transponder tracker hidden in my sleeve, I found that he seemed to be in just one place less than a mile away), I decided to get a slightly better look at this timeline and see how things were coming along. I walked away from the signal of Luc’s transmitter a little, but it was now strong enough so that I didn’t worry about it going out, and went to get a look down by the river.
The belches of smoke had consolidated into a gray-black stream, and they were coming from a paddle wheeler. That also told me that things were still on track here. In my timeline there hadn’t been much in the way of steamboats on the rivers until well after the War of 1812; here, they had arrived seventy years early.
As I came down toward the wharf, I saw that it was a tugboat—the engine was huge in proportion to the boat, and it had the kind of snub prow they have to have—with the paddle wheels on the side. But it didn’t look much like anything out of Mark Twain; Greek Revival and Victorian gingerbread had not yet hit the design world here, if it ever would. Rather it was boxy and flat-sided, painted deep red (the cheap color in those days), and looked like nothing so much as a large shack on top of a capsized barge, with the engine and its stack of wood sitting behind the shack, and two big crude paddle wheels on each side of the ship, so close together that their vanes almost meshed. It wasn’t graceful, but it looked powerful.
There was a crowd of about sixty people around the foot of the gangway leading up to the tug, and after checking to make sure that I hadn’t lost Rey Luc yet (he seemed to be staying in one place), I moved into an alley and worked my way cautiously forward. A Customs officer is likely to be recognized around a waterfront, but I was wondering what could possibly draw a crowd to the departure of a tugboat in a busy harbor. For that matter, why had I heard so little noise from Boston Harbor the day before? I’d been close enough so that I should have heard more shipping or seen some masts moving—
I crept closer, staying in the shadows, doing my best to look like a preacher or teacher that was just wandering in from idle curiosity …
The tug captain—at least he had a coat and hat that I thought made him look like the captain—came to the head of the gangway and was promptly pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables. He ran back into the shack, and two of his men—big, ugly, dumb-looking guys—came out with muskets. The crowd started to back away, and the captain came back out, and proclaimed loudly, “I takes no sides! No sides at all! I just takes pay to move what people pays to have moved, and I follas the law!”
There were hoots of derision, but nobody threw anything, so he seemed to gather his courage. “And besides, I’m commanded by the Royal Navy, anyway! Now, I’m goin’ out to bring in the Terror, and that’s that!”
There was more hooting, but he stormed inside, and the crew started to bring up the gangplank.
Terror is a not uncommon name for a warship; this didn’t sound good at all. It looked like, if I hadn’t been so busy running for my life (and being mistaken for my double, who seemed to be a murdering nut, among other things) just possibly I’d have found out that things were falling apart all over. Luc was going to have some explaining to do, anyway.
I checked the transponder and saw that if I followed the street I was on now—a sign on the Brown Dog Inn said it was Hollis Street—I should pass very close to Luc. I walked down the lane, doing my best to look the part of a wandering preacher or something of the kind, facing the now-risen sun. It was getting warm, I’d had no breakfast, and the smell of sausage frying from the inn had made the thought of some kind of lunch urgent.
A half mile later, as I was nearing the harbor again, I checked the tracker and found I’d passed him; since I had checked it just two hundred yards before, pretty clearly he was somewhere very near, though the signal was faint. The only significant building there—assuming he wasn’t hiding in a storage shed or warehouse—seemed to be a big, new church that sat in a block to itself at Hollis and Orange. I approached it, checked the tracker … no, Luc was somewhere to the side—
It was a shock, but obvious. He was in the churchyard, which meant unless he’d been working as a gravedigger all morning, he was dead. It took me about five minutes to find the grave; he’d Anglicized his name to Raymond Luc, but it was clearly him. Moreover, he’d been killed in 1771, according to the stone, “shot down in anger/O passerby, let not your Jealousie rule you!”
I stood by that four-year-old grave and sighed. Well, first part of the job was done; a team could come out here and quietly remove Luc’s body and return it to his family, if in his home timeline that was a religious duty or a matter of honor. But clearly he wasn’t going to be a lot of help in the matter of getting the timeline back on track.
And even though I’d turned one timeline around before—not many rookie Crux Ops had had that experience—the major thought running through my head was that whatever was wrong, I was just one guy, probably wanted by the authorities, no friends, not enough money to get out of town on, hungry, tired …
A hand fell on my shoulder, and a voice said, “Good friend of yours?”
The voice had something a little like a Southern drawl about it, and a bit like a clipped British accent, and the timbre of the voice was like gravel rattling in the throat. I’d heard one human voice like that before, though not with quite that accent, and that had been in another timeline … the hand that gripped me was firm and strong, too, and the man it belonged too seemed to be over six feet tall. There was one funny instant, just as the martial artist decided for me that spinning and kicking would be uncalled for, when I thought it was the man whose voice it sounded like—George Patton.
I turned and stared for half an instant; the jaw, bunched with pain from bad teeth, was the same, but the face was a young, vigorous forty-three, not the old man one sees on the dollar bill. “George Washington,” I said directly.
-7-
“Mark Strang,” he said. “Are you of the faction of Perikles, or that of Hannibal?”
“Perikles,” I said, and the light went on.
No one in ATN is really sure, but we think the Closers were descended from Carthaginians; for one thing, they seem to worship Moloch, the great god of Carthage. Perikles, of course, was the great Athenian; Hannibal the great Carthaginian.
And if Washington was asking me that, it was because my double really was me—from some other timeline where (god, what disgusting thought) I must have become a Closer agent.
I wanted to call
him “General,” but in this timeline he certainly wasn’t, so instead I said, “I’m very pleased to meet you, sir.”
You could see the resemblance to Patton, and that was no great surprise—a lot of the old Virginia military families were heavily intermarried. I wondered, distractedly, if there would be a Patton in this timeline. Washington was taller and thinner, his face more finely formed, and of course his hair was still dark. But the characteristic heavy jowls and wide-set, piercing eyes were pure Virginia aristocrat.
He nodded and extended a hand. “You’ll pardon my asking a few questions,” he said. “What did Dr. Franklin learn from Dr. Luke?”
“The principle that an electric field is always at right angles to a magnetic field.”
“How was King Frederick cured of his abscess?”
“With penicillin, I believe. Otherwise, he’d have died in 1751.”
Washington nodded slowly. “I think we need to get you somewhere where we can’t be observed, sir, and following that I might suggest a bath, a change of clothes, a disguise, and some food. In whatever order seems best.”
We walked up Orange Street in silence; I knew from casual reading that Washington wasn’t much of a talker, so I didn’t worry about it. He’d taken care of most of what I was really worried about, and I certainly didn’t expect him to entertain me on top of that.
“You might keep your head slightly bowed and appear to be striving for the salvation of my soul,” Washington added. “That would make you very unlike the other Mark Strang, I should think.”
“Quite agreed,” I said, bending my head farther. “Have we far to go?”
“I have quarters in Essex Street,” he said. “There, that looks a bit more parsonly.”
I nodded. “I seem to have dropped into nothing I expected; our last report from poor Luc was apparently shortly before he died.”
“Then you’re not aware, for example, that you shot him?”
“I—oh, my, uh, double. The Customs Collector.”
“That one. It was in a duel, very shortly after Mark Strang arrived here. I was not present at the time, but I knew Luc from many years’ acquaintance. It was a matter of honor, a challenge, a duel … and a death. A most peculiar matter, for Mr. Luc was known to be very passionate about taking care of his health, you see … that alone made it strange that he should engage in a duel. The claim that he had seduced the sister of Mr. Strang was, of course, stranger still; he’d always been an honorable man. There were those of us … those who had been deeply in Mr. Luc’s confidence, deeply enough to know who he really was and where he really came from, felt something might have gone deeply wrong. Adams in particular was concerned, and wrote to me and the others at once.”
“I see,” I said. At that moment a cart came around a corner and passed us; as it was going by I added, “But of course in Leviticus the matter is far less clear, and surely you must agree with me—” the cart passed out of earshot. “This is John Adams?”
“That question alone marks you as our man. His useless cousin Sam is a passionate Son, I’m afraid. They’re so taken with the idea of running a nation that they can no longer see how much of our wealth comes from our life in the Empire. Anyone who could confuse Sam and John is not from this time …” He sighed, very slightly. “As I understand it, these agents of … other times, other histories?”
“We call them timelines.”
“Thank you. These agents of other timelines arrive with a list of people known to be important, but apparently not any idea of why they will be important. Your name was on such a list, but as an agent for the, er, friendly faction, not for those other sorts. Mr. Luc apparently was beginning to fear that his health might fail, and if it should do so, that we might be left without support.”
That was pretty much what I would have expected; Special Agents generally get a station in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, and then stay there until they the or retire. They’re guys who change the world—that’s their mission—but they do it as peacefully as they can, with ideas and teaching and information, and they stay with that world, often, until they the there. What they get from home is an update to their orders every six months, and—if they stop sending or call for help—a Crux Op to rescue or avenge them.
I could never imagine the kind of day-to-day courage and self-reliance that must take.
“There’s no way of knowing exactly what will happen,” I explained. “Whenever they can, timelines will collapse back into each other, so to separate two timelines requires enormous changes. Even then it only works at a crux, one of the places where there’s a natural dividing point. And 1740-1780 is a large crux, so although there are many timelines out there where various of our people figure into the future history, so many different things could happen that it’s not possible to say what we will actually do here. It’s only after it’s all done and the crux is over that matters will begin to settle out.”
Washington nodded. “I am told this is confusing even to those of you who live with it all the time.” There was a clatter behind us, and I looked around to see group of women with baskets of live chickens in each hand; as they passed us Washington added, “So it’s your position, then, that anything in Deuteronomy that is not specifically reaffirmed in the New Testament cannot be binding upon a Christian?”
“That would seem to be the position of St. Paul,” I said, though I hadn’t the foggiest idea.
The women went by with the chickens, and we continued walking. “I’d have thought,” I said, “that you’d have been in Virginia at this time, near your home.”
Washington snorted. “I admit I was very tempted to retire completely after the Conquest War. I had entered a major, come out a colonel, started a world war when I was in my twenties … General Braddock’s drive through the Ohio country and all the way to Fort Detroit had made me famous, the land grants and the knighthood His Majesty King Frederick was pleased to bestow upon me had made me wealthy—I hired a splendid man named Boone to run matters out to the west for me—and between prestige and wealth, I could settle to do almost anything I wished. I had very nearly resolved to do so, but Mr. Luc seemed to feel there was some service I could be to the new king, and since we had gotten to be friends …”
“Of course,” I said.
“Not to mention it is very hard to say no to a sovereign who has made one a duke,” Washington added. “I don’t suppose that was in Mr. Luc’s reports?”
“No,” I said, “it wasn’t.”
Washington smiled. “I’ve been granted the Duchy of Kentucky. I don’t imagine I shall move there for ten years yet; Boone writes me that there is much to be done.”
Washington’s house in Boston turned out to be a decent wood-framed building with a couple of spare bedrooms and an honest-to-god bathroom; it turned out that Rey Luc had introduced the flush toilet and the shower to these folks, for which I was deeply grateful. I found myself immediately believing all the stories I’d heard of Washington’s consideration for his men, because once we were there, he immediately suggested that I ought to go down to the kitchen for a meal, and that “my servant will ready you a shower, sir, and a bed and a change of clothes. I think a few hours will not hurt the business of one who has all of time at his command, and you look in need of food, rest, and some cleanliness.”
The meal was wonderful—marred for me only by the fact that there was no coffee, for in this timeline there had been no resistance to tea. It was a great big slab of apple pie, a plate of scrambled eggs with ham, and a pork-and-vegetable pastry whose name I didn’t catch, all washed down with a lot of tea and a nice heavy breakfast porter. The person who served all that to me was a tall, handsome, black woman, who seemed amused at the company the duke was keeping and the quantity I ate; it took me a while to figure out that I was probably being waited on by a slave. Abolition was supposed to happen fairly soon in this timeline—though if the Closers took over, it never would.
The shower, too, was a lesson in how far this cen
tury had to go—a slave had had to pump the tank full and build a fire under it—but I was so grateful for it that I managed to overlook the gross incorrectness of the whole thing. When I got back, Porter or Carrie could lecture me about it.
Besides, I tipped the guy, and he seemed pleased to be thanked. It might not have been the peak of social justice, but it was a start; at least they didn’t seem badly mistreated, and I remembered from somewhere that in my timeline Washington had been a relatively decent master, making sure his slaves received an education and freeing them in his will.
I fell asleep in a clean, comfortable bed, woke up in a few hours hungry again, and got dressed rapidly. The new outfit didn’t have the special pocket between the shoulder blades for the SHARK, or the boot pocket for the NIF, so I ended up just wearing the .45 and tucking the more advanced weaponry into a little leather bag, like a doctor’s bag, they’d provided for the purpose.
The servant came in and summoned me down to supper; I found that besides George Washington, there were also John Adams, and two young doctors—Joseph Warren and Tom Young—present in the room. Adams was a tough-looking little guy, despite being from one of the best Boston families; Warren was tall and handsome, and Young a squarer-built, muscular guy. While we were sitting down, Samuel Cooper, a local minister, came in; like Adams and unlike the rest of us, he wore a white-powdered wig, which didn’t diminish his sharply etched strong features. Visually with a change of clothes any of them could have been a dockworker or cab driver, and they reminded me more of an American Resistance cell I had once known in Nazi-occupied San Francisco than they did of the stiff, posed paintings of Founding Fathers from my own timeline.
Dinner was a roast turkey, mashed potatoes, and corn bread; the available seasonings seemed to be salt and pepper. It occurred to me that this was before any of the waves of South European immigration, and therefore the diet was going to be pretty bland this trip out. Naturally no one noticed except me, and I was hungry enough to eat eagerly anyway.
