Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century)

by Priest, Cherie

  As predicted, the crawler’s bed wouldn’t go high enough to let the bomb drop of its own accord, so all the men climbed in behind it. Maria stayed on the ground at their insistence—partly for all the usual thickheaded reasons, she was sure; but partly because space was limited, and there was only room for the strongest bodies.

  The men braced themselves and pressed their feet against the bomb, and while Maria crossed her fingers and prayed, they shoved with all their might, rocking the big device back and forth like Thomson had rocked the crawler itself to get it moving.

  They strained, swore, sweated, and pushed. The grade of the crawler’s bed was so steep that Maria tried not to worry about what would happen if they just toppled right in after it.

  Finally, Maynard wiggled.

  It creaked back and forth, just moving by inches at first. Hardly noticeable at all. Then it rocked. Then it rolled, tumbled, dropped.

  And fell.

  Right into the cave, careening with the weight of a city’s dead, crashing through the earth and settling down somewhere below, farther than any of them could see when they scrambled after it to stare into the hole.

  “Where is it?” Frankum asked, leaning over so far that Maria was tempted, for one nasty second, to give him a shove. The pirate soul she harbored within her corset objected to her decency, but now was not the time or the place. Like she’d told the captain, they had to play fair. After all, they were not alone. Soon, the world would be watching. And someone had to save it.

  The captain said, “No idea. Too dark. Anyone have a light?”

  “Just the lantern on the crawler, and I can’t pry that off without my tools,” Thomson told them.

  Echoing up from below, the sound of failing machinery grew louder as it bounced and rose off the rocks.

  Behind them they heard the telltale clomp and clatter of a horse’s hooves. Maria guessed that it was Evans with the dynamite, and it was indeed him, carrying a promising pack on his back.

  “Hurry up with that!” the captain yelled, and Evans did his level best.

  He yanked the horse to a sliding stop and dropped off the saddle to his feet, tossing the pack to the captain. “Wire it up, sir! I’ve got the line and pump in the saddlebags.”

  The captain went to work immediately, with Frankum lending a useful hand—for once in his life, Maria added disparagingly in her head. But it was his life, too; his, and theirs, and everyone else’s. So he planted the sticks, threaded the wire, and ran with the rest of them back to the far side of the crawler—where Evans had already secured the horse, as far from the trouble as he could put the poor animal.

  The captain paused while he checked the settings and connections on the pump, then set it on the ground.

  Evans turned his nose to the air. “Sir … do you smell that?”

  He did. He must be able to—Maria could smell it, even though her nose was so cold she couldn’t feel it when she wiped it with the back of her scraped-up hands.

  It was a toxic smell: rotten eggs and ruin, sharp death and troubled sleep. It stank of chemicals and poison, and it grew stronger while they sat there, mulling it over and wondering what could possibly smell that way?

  The captain shook it off first, that numbing, stupefying creep of confusion and curiosity.

  He shoved the plunger. A jolt went down the wire, along the ground, and into the hole.

  And the earth exploded.

  Twenty-one

  The night ticked by in seconds, in minutes. In bullets, fired one-two-three from the woods and answered one-two-three from inside the house. It was not a stalemate, not exactly. From a second-floor window—the window almost directly above Abraham Lincoln in his library—Gideon watched the other men amass, and he knew that this relative peace could not hope to last the night. More men had joined the siege crew outside, and now they numbered fifteen by the scientist’s count … though, given the gloom outside, it was always possible that he’d missed a couple.

  He always built some wiggle room into all his assessments and plans—not because he didn’t value precision, but because the universe was sometimes imprecise, and prone to hiding things.

  He released the edge of the curtain and retreated to the hallway, pausing to duck into the Lincolns’ bedroom and peer out through the window beside a tall wardrobe. Outside it was nearly as dark as inside. He thought he saw motion, maybe a flash of a man running quickly from cover to cover, or maybe only a shift of moonlight on something smaller below. The night was full of raccoons and rabbits, after all.

  Knowing this did not prevent him from assuming the worst.

  Leaving the window, he carefully walked back to the hallway, where there was almost no light to give him guidance. He worked from memory, from the map in his head of a house he’d visited dozens of times before, though he’d rarely seen these private chambers upstairs, where the aging couple spent their quieter days.

  At the end of the hall was an oversized dumbwaiter—or that’s what Gideon had jokingly called the thing when he and Wellers had installed it together last June. It was a closet with a floor built on a lift, an elevator large enough to hold Lincoln and his chair, and perhaps one other person. The structure of the house would permit nothing larger, unless Mary could have been persuaded to give up part of the kitchen pantry. And as it turned out, she could not.

  The last room on the left before the elevator was the guest room. Gideon peered through the narrow slit in the curtains, but saw nothing he didn’t already know. Men in the woods. Shadowed figures, distinguished mostly by their movement—and occasionally by a glimmer of brass buttons, the hardware on a gun, or the glint of a spyglass lens.

  The hints of spyglass worried him.

  He could not tell if the glass was only for observation, or if it was affixed to the barrel of a weapon. Gideon fervently hoped that none of the new recruits were sharpshooters, but he couldn’t count on it; he couldn’t count on anything, not tonight. So he remained wary of any seams in the cloak of darkness they’d forced upon the house. He’d turned off all the gaslights and electric lights, and forbidden any torches—electric or otherwise. Any light within would tell the men without where they were, and offer up a target. It might be a vague target, but it’d be a direction in which to shoot.

  Two more rooms to check—and then he was done, and the second story was clear. Back down the stairs he traveled, announcing himself with incautious footsteps, and then calling softly, “Mr. Grant? The upstairs is as tight as I can make it.”

  “Good,” came the reply by the front door. But it sounded distracted.

  Gideon kept his back to the wall until he reached the president; then he slid down into a sitting position beside him. “They’re collecting more men.”

  “I know. And we’re not.”

  “They know.”

  “It’s only a matter of time, now,” Grant said, low and quiet, “until they come inside.”

  “We can hold them off a while longer, put on a show for another hour or two.”

  Grant nodded, scratching his salt-and-pepper beard. “I don’t suppose that big brain of yours has come up with any plans, has it?”

  Only stalling tactics, but he offered them anyway. “We need to spread out. Put Polly and Mary upstairs, at opposite ends. Let them play sharpshooter, or at least make a lot of noise. By sound alone it’s hard to tell a couple of shooters from half a dozen or more. With them taking the second story and us on the first, we can mount a satisfactory defense that may look like a much better one. And, besides, it gets the women upstairs, where they’ll be marginally safer.”

  “Any thoughts how we might send a message?”

  “A few. None of them good. We can’t spare a runner right now, and even if we could, we’d be sending someone on a suicide mission … which is why you wouldn’t let Polly go in the first place,” he said, giving a voice to something he’d suspected. Grant didn’t contradict him, so he continued. “Wellers is willing to make a dash for it, but he’d never make it.
Mary would have the best chance; she’s a little old lady, and a well-known one at that … but I don’t suppose that’s on the table.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Grant said fast. Then, after a pause, “She’d do it if we asked her, though. We’ll work around it.”

  “The cellar is a fortifiable position of a kind, but it’s a dangerous one. Only two ways in or out, but, once in, we’d never be able to mount any kind of response. It should be considered, but only as a last option. Not least of all because we’d have to carry Mr. Lincoln down those steps.”

  “Doesn’t he have an elevator?”

  “Yes, but it only goes between the first and second floors. Structural issues prevented us from sending it any lower or higher.”

  “Higher?” Grant’s eyebrow lifted.

  “There’s an attic, but it won’t be of any use to us. Just another place to get ourselves stuck. And the cellar is more defensible. I think.”

  “I think you’re right.” He sighed. “It’s a damn shame we don’t have that machine of yours here and handy, isn’t it? We could just ask it what to do, and it’d tell us.”

  “That’s not how it works.”

  “No?”

  Since the president seemed genuinely curious, Gideon told him, in brief. “The Fiddlehead collects information, and sorts out the possible results into levels of probability. It can tell you what’s likely to occur, but if you prefer a different outcome, it’s your responsibility to find another path.”

  “Ah. Sounds complicated.”

  “Of course it’s complicated. If it wasn’t, you’d already have one in every parlor. But,” Gideon added more warmly, afraid he’d been too cold, which wasn’t called for, “it’s a useful kind of complicated. Just not useful to us, personally, right now.”

  Outside, they heard men scrambling back and forth, their boots scraping the gravel or whispering through the grass. The wind that had hidden their movements before had all but died, and now the night was a quiet place, and the Lincoln house was listening.

  Grant shifted his shoulders and scooted over to the other window, keeping his back to the door and his head below window level. “I think they need another good warning, don’t you?”

  Gideon checked his gun. It was fully loaded. “I’ve got enough bullets to say something loud.”

  “Good. On the count of three…”

  They fired together, not in perfect time, and with less than perfect aim … but the scuttling noises of men coming closer retreated into a scramble of running and ducking as they went back toward the trees. Then, from the east wing, Nelson Wellers fired off a rapid series of four shots, one after the other, so fast that they must’ve been aimed at something.

  Gideon stiffened and his knees locked, then he dropped down to the floor and retreated toward the stairs on hands and knees.

  Two more shots, and then Nelson either had to reload or grab another gun. He’d taken a second gun—they all had—and now he was using that one, too; Gideon could hear its deafening patter from the other side of the house. It wasn’t the sound of a man giving a warning, it was the violent bass of self-defense.

  “Gideon!” Grant called with a sharp, quiet bark that penetrated the distance between them, but not by much.

  Gideon paused long enough to look back at Grant, crouched beneath the window with one foot propped on the fallen clock and both hands holding his gun in a ready position: a general turned king, not done fighting even though he’d been told he didn’t need to worry about guarding the castle he’d been given. A thin wash of watery light from the dying fireplace painted him gold and threw a smattering of shadows across his craggy face. He looked older than his years.

  But not finished yet.

  A louder blast rocked against the door, something harder and bigger than a handgun—something more like a shotgun, Gideon thought wildly. The door shuddered, and the clock that barred it rocked but did not fall. Then a second blast much like the first took out the window in the trestle above Grant’s head. He ducked away from the falling glass as the blanket swung out—then settled again, full of holes.

  “Buckshot, that’s all it is!” the president said, waving Gideon away. “A big gun, though—sounds like a punt gun. Don’t worry, I’ve got it. Go on, help Wellers. I’ll take care of this!”

  A third blast hit the door again, shattering the lock and shaking the whole portal as Grant slipped past it to the other window. From there, he peered through the edge of the curtain, and carefully—even slowly, thanks to the distraction—took aim and fired.

  A loud grunt and a moan, and then the clamor of something heavy being dropped. Close. Very close. Closer than they’d realized. But Gideon knew about punt guns, and he knew you had to be close to make one count.

  “Go!” Grant said again, and this time the scientist didn’t argue.

  He stood when he reached the hall and was safe from wandering bullets, only to run smack into Mary. He grabbed her by the shoulders, and before she could speak, he said, “Upstairs with you! I’ll send Polly, too, and both of you should run from window to window, and fire at anything that moves. Don’t let yourself be seen, understand?”

  “Dr. Bardsley?” Polly squeaked from behind him.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Yes…”

  “Then go, both of you. Get up there and stay there, and don’t come down until we give the all clear. Run!”

  He released Mary’s shoulders and tried not to worry at how frail they felt beneath his fingers, and how small a woman she really was.

  Down the other hall he ran—away from Lincoln, which he didn’t like, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once. For now, no one was shooting down the corridor they were in, so he’d have to pick and choose.

  Wellers was reloading. He had to be, for the inside defense had fallen silent. And, yes: As Gideon flung himself down beside his friend, he saw through the window’s shattered edge that men were approaching.

  “Gideon! For God’s sake…” Wellers voice trailed off as his attention returned to his ammunition.

  The interlopers wore scarves over their faces like ordinary burglars or bandits. For some reason the mundanity of it all offended Gideon. You’d think people would have the good grace to dress up for an assassination.

  One man was nearly to the bushes. The fluffy things were half naked, courtesy of November, but they kept the house from being wholly open to the elements. Gideon flung the blanket aside and took aim, faster than Grant did, because he had less time: The man was right on him, close enough that he could see the fellow’s breath puffing out around his face in a foggy aura.

  He fired, and caught the man square in the chest.

  Even Mary couldn’t have missed him, he had come so near. Another man behind him swerved to avoid his compatriot’s body and began a sideways retreat, or revisal of strategy—but Wellers was on his feet now, and he fired, too.

  Gideon couldn’t see what he hit, but the second man went down, and both the scientist and the doctor dropped back to cover. Now it was Wellers’s turn to shoot while Gideon reloaded everything he had. When he was done, he covered his friend so he could do the same. It was a brutal give-and-take, a frantic cooperation that had to work for them both to stay alive.

  “You good?” Gideon asked.

  “Good as I’m going to get. You hear that?”

  Yes, he heard shots from the front of the house, and from the far end behind him as well. “Lincoln,” he murmured. “Stay here. I’ve got him.”

  “You’re not the one being paid to protect him,” Wellers objected, climbing to his feet and hugging the wall to make himself as small a target as possible.

  Another loud blast, similar to the one at the front door, shattered the window and blew the curtains halfway across the room. “More buckshot,” Gideon griped, which once again meant that someone was close.

  Wellers whipped his gun hand around to squeeze off three fast shots, two of which hit home.

  He ducked back as fire
was returned, but Gideon leaned out and shot again—mostly wanting to see what had happened. Yes, there was a dead man on the lawn right before the protective hedge. Yes, a shotgun with a snubbed, sawed-short nose was lying in the grass beside him, its hardware shimmering in the moonlight. The new mercenaries were better armed, or differently armed; it all depended on how you looked at it.

  In the trees, something moved. Two somethings.

  “Gideon, stay here—I have to reach Lincoln.”

  “Fine.”

  Gideon took out his frustration on the two men nearest, right as they stepped out of the woods. Faces covered. One with a handgun, one with another big fowling gun—a punt gun, Grant had called it, and Gideon had heard them called shotguns by cavalrymen. Whatever they were called, he knew they were a deadly mix of imprecision and power—bad enough at a distance, and terrifying at any nearer range.

  Wellers retreated in a crouched position. His shoes slid on the wood floor until they found the rug in the hall, and then he dashed.

  Gideon returned his attention to the window and saw … nothing this time.

  Nothing and no one, except the dead man on the ground … and, over there, another dead man. He heard footsteps running around the side of the house, someone retreating, or falling back to regroup. Someone making a run for another location, where the pickings were easier.

  “Goddammit!”

  He leaped to his feet and ran to the hall, shutting the door behind himself and locking it. For all that it wouldn’t stop a shotgun or a determined enough kick, the noise would give them a bit more warning.

  From upstairs, the ladies fired madly, wildly—too fast, Gideon thought. They’d burn through their ammunition too quickly at this rate. But there was nothing he could say to them now, nothing he could do to instruct or steady them; so he just listened to the violent bursts from the windows above him, and the sound of Polly’s fast little feet running from room to room, window to window, between exchanges.

  Next, he ran for Lincoln’s room.

  Past the front door, and past Grant, who was using the door for cover—standing now, rather than sitting behind the window sills—and aiming with a measured, frightening accuracy. Wasting no bullets. Giving as good as he was getting, and he was getting it pretty good.