Washington's Dirigible (The Timeline Wars, 2)

by John Barnes

  I was also a little surprised at how much everyone drank; there were several kinds of hard liquor and a number of thick red wines available, and most of them were drinking mixtures of those, usually with some sugar and some hot water stirred in. I tried one of those myself and ended up sipping it for the rest of the evening. The mixture didn’t seem to hit any of the other men nearly as hard.

  After we’d all finished, and tea had been set out, Washington began the meeting by explaining, “To some extent it was pure chance I was here, for I am due back in Virginia in the fall, and after that I’ve some business in London; with the new steamships one may much more safely undertake a winter voyage, you know. But as for how we knew to watch for you, that’s easily explained; your counterpart from the—did you say Closers?”

  “That’s them, the Closers,” I said.

  “Ah. Well, your Closer counterpart has been a very unpleasant fellow in many regards, but undeniably he has been popular, at least among the more drastically Tory crowd.”

  It took me a long moment to realize that in this timeline Tories and Loyalists were not the same thing; the King in London was a Whig, Parliament was Whig, and the Tories were thus the rightwing opposition to King George, not his staunchest supporters as in my timeline.

  “Popular and inflamma-Tory,” Young said, and there was a mild groan from everyone at the table. “He’s made himself the darling of young men that I suppose you would call intellectual macaronis—the sort who change their ideas for exactly the reason other young men change their coats, to make themselves conspicuous and give them an importance they would not otherwise have. And like any true macaronis, they are, of course, given to calling attention to themselves by adopting what is most extreme. So where a more sensible young fellow would simply wear a wig rtiat was too high, a hat that was too small, shoes that pinched his feet, and buckles and buttons big enough to weigh down a sail, these fellows around Strang have been vying to see who can be more Royalist than the King and more Imperialist than a tax collector. They’ve brawled in the streets dozens of times with the Sons of Liberty, and they’ve organized the King’s Own Undertakers, as they call themselves, to kidnap and murder Whigs.”

  I shuddered a little. “All that around someone who looks just like me. No wonder the Sons of Liberty were so quick to take a shot at me.”

  “They’re just as bad a lot,” Warren said, morosely. Later I was to realize he did almost everything morosely. Though he was a gentle and kind man, he seemed to expect the worst in every situation. “The Sons have a good sixty murders to their credit, if that’s the word. It’s gotten so that the Common is deserted in the morning, because people are afraid to see who may have been butchered and left there ‘as an example’ by either the Sons of Liberty or the King’s Own Undertakers. There’ve been many rumors that there are Redcoat officers working with the King’s Own, and I rather suspect it’s true; certainly the Mark Strang we’ve all come to know and loathe is at the heart of it.”

  Cooper was nodding vigorous agreement. “But no one would have thought him mad, and what he did in Bishop’s Alley yesterday was madder than anything we’ve seen, even poor old James Otis included.”

  I knew that Otis had suffered from insanity after being a major Patriot leader in my timeline; I must have looked puzzled because Adams explained, “It’s that damned new explosive; we don’t know if Luc introduced it through one of his many front organizations and covers, or if Strang brought it in, or perhaps it was actually discovered by one of our own chemists. It’s a niter of glycerin mixed with a special white clay—”

  “Dynamite,” I said.

  “Yes, I think that’s the name it’s sold under. A lump the size of a loaf of bread goes off like a barrel of common gunpowder; a small box of it can level a fair-sized house. And that’s just how poor old Otis died—he was carrying a box of it into a tavern, and it’s quite touchy stuff and this had gotten old enough to sweat out some of its niter. It destroyed the tavern and killed a dozen soldiers and Royal agents, and it also left almost nothing of Otis.” Adams stared off into space. “It’s a bad thing, you know. When you had to haul in whole barrels of powder to make something like that happen—well, then it was hard to do. With this stuff a bomb might be made and concealed anywhere, and both factions are beginning to use them in just that way.” He sighed. “Otis and I were friends, you know. Without that accursed dynamite, he might be mad as a March hare and confined somewhere, but he would at least be alive.”

  There was a long silence at that. The candles that flickered and danced made no sound, and the dark April night outside, though it had been threatening rain as I came down to supper, held no hint of wind or rain.

  “You see,” Cooper said finally, “we’re all more than a little disheartened, or we have been. In a bit over thirty years the world came along very far very fast. And though the information brought by Mr. Luc was what made it possible, we ourselves have done the work; Rey Luc showed us how to do things and how they might fit together into a scheme, but it was our work and our effort that brought us to understand them, and it was our further work that made them become real. We know of his influence in many places—it was he who got the King out of Bute’s keeping and got Franklin appointed his tutor … and though George has prospects of being as fine a King as ever good old England’s ever had, no one will deny that he’s a little slow at times, especially when it comes to the more abstract sort of thinking, or that he is remarkably easy to lead. Mr. Luc brought out the best in him, partly by his personal contact and mainly by letting the young Prince come over here and see what sort of country he had.”

  “I’m surprised,” I said, “that the King hasn’t acted more to abate this crisis.”

  “No one’s more surprised than I,” Washington said. “For five years after his visit here, he and I corresponded frequently, and I think I may fairly say that we had become quite good friends. Indeed, Cooper, the one thing I would add is that whatever you may think of his brains, George the Third has a passionate desire to do the right thing and to know what the right thing is. I find it quite inexplicable, therefore, that in the past three or so years the King has stopped answering my letters, indeed communicates with no one in America despite all the many friends he has here, and even the London social crowd sees him only at public functions.” A thought struck me; I was about to speak when Washington raised a finger. “Alas, too, Mr. Strang, from what I have been able to learn there’s no possibility of a double’s being substituted—too many of our Whig friends have seen him closely enough, and he has recognized and acknowledged them sometimes with a word or two. I fear he is changed; there was a brief period, you know, of fits while he was over here—”

  “I had the honor of treating His Majesty at that time,” Young said, “and the fits he suffered, even if they should eventually devolve into full-blown madness, were in no way consistent with any such change in him. He might be in great anguish, and even suffer hallucinations, true, but his feelings for his friends, his affections, his opinions—these would be left untouched, if I am any judge. Moreover, if he were suffering such a condition, any hypothetical Tory captors he might have would not allow him in public, and further they would have every reason to apply to Parliament for a Regency, most especially because the Prince of Wales is still a child and thus by controlling the Regency they might control the kingdom. No, what exactly is going on is impossible to say from here. It’s a great pity that they didn’t make their move a year earlier, in my judgment.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because then Luc would have died in London, and his last report would have come from there. You’d have been dispatched there. I’m afraid you’re a good thirty-five hundred miles from where you need to be, Mr. Strang. We’ll have to get you aboard a ship somehow, and not from Boston—the port’s been closed by Royal order.”

  I looked from one face to the other, there in the wash of red light from the candles on the table, and all were nodding solemnly. It se
emed reasonable enough to me.

  “What’s my best way?” I asked.

  Adams shrugged. “The most common way seems good enough for the purpose—and I can’t think of any that would be faster. The port of Boston is closed, and so are most of the other port towns in Massachusetts and New England, but they are allowing coasters out of Providence, in Rhode Island, and from there you may easily get to New York, where we have many friends and the port is open. From New York to London, then, and good luck to you at every step.”

  “And Providence is only about forty-five miles,” I said. “With a little effort I can walk that in three days if I have to—”

  “Walk? Egad, sir. You are not the sort of maniac that Mr. Luc—I should say Dr. Luc—proved to be? Your whole timeline is not like that?” Young seemed to be peering right through me.

  “I’m not sure what sort of maniac that is, Dr. Young.”

  “Bah! The man believed that every pleasure of life—liquor, tobacco, a good wench—was a danger to the health, and moreover he wanted us to eat more vegetables, which are of course well-known for causing flux of the bowels, and to do this thing he called ‘exercising,’ when any fool can look and see that it is exactly those classes which do heavy physical labor which live for the shortest time. Begging your pardon, of course, Joseph,” Dr. Young said, turning to the slave who was bringing in a pot of hot, seasoned cider.

  “No pardon need be begged, sir,” Joseph said, and I noticed that his accent was not Southern at all, as one might have expected, but very similar to the New England accent I had been hearing here in Boston. “It’s well-known that when Master Washington freed us, he most likely added five years to all our lives.”

  Oh, well, judge not that ye be not judged, I reminded myself. I had assumed he was a slave because in my time Washington had kept slaves right up to his dying day.

  “Freedom is good for people,” Adams commented. “But before Young got off on his track of denouncing your medicine—I’m sure he’d have started on your morals and religion next, sir”—there was a lot of laughter at the table about that, and Dr. Young blushed slightly—“what he should have said is that one of the new traction engines is now plying a route from Jamaica Plain to Providence. The line would have been extended here by now if the Royal embargo had not been interpreted to mean that there must be no easy access to the other ports. So it’s just a short stage ride, and then an uncomfortable trip by traction train, and then ships all the way. Nothing to it but a bit of discomfort and the need for some patience. Certainly no need to walk like a peddler!”

  That seemed to take care of all the issues as far as they were concerned; they told me that I’d be stopping at the house of Gouverneur Morris, a young Whig in New York, for the time—anywhere from a day or so to two weeks—until I could book passage on a ship for London. They also assured me, repeatedly, that costs were covered, finally explaining that one of their sympathizers in the inn where I had first landed had quietly made off with most of the money from the trunk I arrived with. I wasn’t sure they were telling the truth—whoever claimed George Washington never told a lie, Warren was to tell me later, had never played cards with the man or watched him run for office—but it was plausible enough, and anyway I didn’t have much of any way to pay for anything myself.

  Dr. Warren had business in New York and would see me to Morris’s house; it all seemed to be arranged. I was in bed early that night, and up with the sun the next morning. At breakfast together, Washington and I mostly talked about camping and hiking—he was a passionate advocate of getting exploratory expeditions launched to the Rockies, and my descriptions of what was actually out west just whetted his appetite for it. “No doubt there will be time,” he said, “once all the current infernal nonsense is done with. I hope that by that time I will not be too old; my memories of the Ohio country when I was much younger are still fond ones, and I should like to have a chance to walk to the Pacific. And in your timeline—”

  “It was done in about 1806. Of course, you’ve already got dirigibles. It would be hard to fly east-to-west, with the wind against you, but still, if a dirigible can make it here from London without refueling, which you all say one is expected to do any day now, it ought to be able to make it from here to the mouth of the Columbia—and you could have a ship waiting for it there.”

  “It’s indeed a thought,” Washington said. “If only I still had His Majesty’s ear! But oh, well, time enough for that when the world is back on track. Meanwhile if I’m not mistaken, here’s Warren with the trap.”

  As I tossed my bag in beside Warren’s, he commented, “I see that Washington also shops at Goodwife Pelster’s.” The two bags were identical on the outside; nothing could have told you that Warren’s contained tools for saving lives, and mine contained tools that could slaughter three thousand men.

  The drive down to the Jamaica Plain station was pleasant enough; Warren and I were alone on the road for a lot of it, for with the embargo and blockade the port was not busy, and thus there was much less land traffic to and from it, and most of what there was was not urgent. This early in the morning only a few farmers going into town to sell vegetables could be seen.

  From Boston Neck we could make out two of the British ironclads in the harbor, big ships with the new submerged screws instead of paddle wheels, and with turrets instead of banks of guns. They looked, to me, like kids’ crude pictures of warships, the kind of thing that second-grade boys like to draw, but it was just such ships a dozen years before that had put the whole main line of the French fleet on the bottom in less than an hour.

  It was a nice day again—and how often does that happen twice in a row in Massachusetts in April?—and the time went quickly. Warren, too, was interested in everything and had opinions about everything and everyone. He was one of the most highly regarded men in Massachusetts, part of the informal aristocracy of Charles Town, and though he knew everyone and everything about them, he didn’t so much judge people as enjoy them. It might sound dull to listen to a couple of hours of gossip and wit about people you didn’t know, unless it were really nasty and salacious stuff, Warren could not only entertain in just that way, but he could entertain while mostly talking about the good side, or at least about the minor vices. I had a feeling after a while that he just plain liked the human race, and that was why most of them were returning the favor by liking him.

  It was getting near lunchtime when we reached the traction-engine station. You could see it some distance away—if I had walked all the way out onto the Neck, I’d have seen the billows of smoke in the distance, and even eight miles off you could see the big smokestack.

  The traction line was sort of a compromise, a little something that Luc and a couple of cunning engineers—notably Boulton and Watt, whom he had found and recruited—had dreamed up because pretty clearly real railroads were going to take too long for the essential job of tying the colonies together and speeding up communications enough to hold the Empire together; Luc’s last plan had had the first locomotives available about ten years from now, but the first need for a mechanized road had been in getting forces from New York City to Ticonderoga during the Conquest War. Thus the “traction line” had been created as a temporary expedient.

  It worked a lot like a cable car, except that the cables ran overhead; every few miles there was a great big chugging multiple-cylinder reciprocating steam engine, with ten cylinders as big as wine barrels, a boiler the size of a house, and a transmission and gearing that took up a barn-sized building linking it to the running cables. Between these stations, there ran a set of wooden tracks, like railroad tracks but made of wood with just a tinplated iron top, and on the tracks were wagons and stagecoaches with iron-rimmed wheels. Because the engine didn’t have to drag itself along with cargo, it could be as big as needed, and because the gears could be made so big, they could be made of wood and didn’t have to be made to precise tolerances—both very important at a time when good-grade steel was made in small crucibles
and the best steels were literally worth their weight in gold.

  In another ten years, if Luc had lived, there’d have been Bessemer converters and a whole steel industry—the giant steam engines would make it possible to power the blowers that the converters needed—and in very little time after that there would have been a railroad from Savannah all the way to Nova Scotia. Lewis and Clark, in this timeline, would have been able to take the train to St. Louis before starting up the Missouri, probably in cars with aluminum doors and window frames, for even now Ben Franklin was hard at work on large generating plants.

  Well, we would get it back on track. Meanwhile, the ride was jerky, and there was a lot of soot from woodsmoke whenever we approached stations on the way to Providence. Splitting wood and not atoms is a smelly, dirty business; the air would get cleaner around here once they started getting decent Pennsylvania anthracite, and by the late 1800s they should have nukes and all the clean power they wanted, not to mention a bogey to help scare the Closers away (we think they’re terrified of nuclear energy because their home timeline was trashed by repeated nuclear wars; if so, it couldn’t have happened to a better bunch of guys).

  It was still daylight when we got to Providence, and there was more than enough time to get a decent meal at an inn—I was sort of figuring if I got a spare minute in this timeline I was going to introduce the idea of a restaurant with a menu, but the food was good enough—and then catch a night steamer, an elegant little paddle wheeler called the John Locke, to take us into New York, just about eleven hours away. Unfortunately the Locke didn’t have sleeper accommodations, and we wouldn’t get into the harbor until morning, but we had telegraphed ahead, Morris was expecting us early in the day, and, besides, there was nothing we needed to do the next day, and we’d be able to sleep then.