by David Luchuk
“Sango Bodagris.”
The woman fell to her knees. In her place, a tiny slave girl stepped forward to face me. This was the high priest of their hoodoo cult.
I am not fool enough to say that dark spirits pressed on me at that moment. I am no believer. But I was intimidated. That little girl scared me. She shook her open palms. I think she was casting a spell.
I responded in kind. This was my moment. As she conjured spirits against me, I reached behind and lifted Webster’s body into the air with the gauntlet. Hoodoos prize one thing above all else. To them, mastery over the dead is the highest power a human can achieve. I held Webster. I showed them. This is what I brought to the fight.
Only Harris recognized my display as a stalling tactic. He knew I was no mystic. Harris climbed the side of the crane and aimed his pistol square in the operator’s face. The crane stopped with a jolt. The annex swayed in limbo.
A glance from the little girl is all it took to get it moving again. The operator did not want to get shot in the face. Whatever the high priestess held in store for betrayers must have been worse. Harris screamed at him to stop but the annex continued to rise. If Harris had been a proper fighting soldier, he would have shot the man without a thought. He was not a solider. He was a border guard.
“Shoot him in the shoulder,” I yelled.
Harris fired. The crane bucked and the annex dropped back. With that, men from the docks opened fire again. The last of Harris’ troops dropped. He would not last much longer.
No one fired at me. They were too afraid of the dead. I did not wait to see how long my luck would last. Holding Webster as a shield, I ran to the crane. Harris took cover behind me. The only safe place for us was on top of the annex.
I put Webster down and used the gauntlet to toss Harris. He spun into cables hanging from the crane then crashed onto the roof. With Webster over my shoulder, I climbed the scaffold to join him.
I could see all the way to the harbor. Slaves shipped in barges from Shreveport were now headed out to open sea. It did not make sense. The boats were headed north. They would be snared by Lincoln’s blockade for sure. It was typical southern hoodoo craziness.
Two of the boats shoving off from the Wilmington harbor did not carry any slaves. The only items loaded onto those ships were furnaces. Twenty sets of turbines came from the smelting plants and lumber yards. There may have been more.
“What now?” Harris asked.
Gunmen formed lines below. We were not as safe as I hoped. Bullets sliced the lip of the annex. Once shooters got their bearings, we would be cut down. They were already pushing us back.
“Inside,” I said.
One last idea came to mind. It made me feel awful but I could not see any other way to stall the gunfire. I lifted Webster’s body and, holding it at arm’s length, I walked to the edge. From the ground, all they saw was Webster. The shooting stopped instantly. The crowd gaped at the dead man, dripping gore.
I let go. Webster tipped over the side. The sight of him falling sent people into a screeching panic. His body turned as it dropped. Those glassy eyes looked back at me one last time.
Godspeed, Timothy Webster.
I used the gauntlet to tear a hole in the annex roof. A smell of incense wafted up through the opening. Harris was the first to jump down. I heard a woman scream inside then a dull thud and crash. I followed. My feet landed on soft carpet. The interior looked like the den of a small apartment.
Kate Warne stood in front of me, clenching a baton. She looked about ready to knock my head off. Two men were unconscious on the floor beside her. One was Harris. I did not recognize the other.
“Stark?”
“Darling, your husband is arrived.”
* * *
Repository Note:
I thought it would be harder to hand my whole life over to police. I braced myself for probing questions, embarrassing admissions and so on. I thought there would be layers to peel back. Instead, it was a simple matter of signing a few papers and writing down a couple of passwords. With that, everything they wanted to know about me came spilling out, easy as cracking an egg.
It’s better this way, I guess. I can’t concentrate anymore. After I got the call from the hospital, I spent the better part of a day locked in my bedroom sobbing and hating myself. One of my people died. He was my intern. He opened the bomb, thinking it would be helpful to sort my mail. The explosion cracked his skull. Doctors tried to bring the swelling down in his brain. I can't think about it.
The death changed things for police. It shifted the bombing into a new category. Now they’re asking for access to confidential personnel records from the Library; anyone who ever touched the Pinkerton archive. I refused but Hirsch told me the request was just a courtesy. Cops could just get a warrant. All they wanted were new leads and connections. No one was being accused. I believed him. Still, I made them get the damned warrant.
The investigation isn’t getting anywhere. Rather, it just keeps circling back to the same place, over and over. Who was the man in New Carthage? How did he come to possess those Pinkerton records and why share them with us? I didn’t have those answers. I never even met him face to face.
Hirsch told me they wanted more. Could I remember anything else? He seemed embarrassed to be pressing me so hard. I asked what was going on. Hirsch told me police intercepted a letter. It was addressed to me and came from New Carthage. The cops had kept it from me and even opened it without my consent. The letter was from him and it had to do with the bombing.
—Diane Larimer, Chief Archivist, United States Library of Congress
* * *
Robert Pinkerton
December, 1861
Dr. Lowe brought the Protocol out of cloud cover and we coasted above rolling hills where the battle of Bull Run took place. Everywhere, remnants of that terrible fight were in plain view. Deep burrows carved into the earth by a Confederate trench cutter slashed and bisected the terrain. Those underground trenches allowed southern soldiers to march beneath, and emerge behind, Union lines. Northerners were caught off guard. Bull Run was a complete slaughter.
I looked down at iron footings where Confederate forces mounted the trench cutter. I had stood at that very spot after jumping from a dirigible owned by an Agency client, the PWB railway company. Fugitive outlaw William Hunt had conspired with PWB and New York Police Superintendent John Kennedy to supply the machine. Kate saved me from a vain attempt to destroy it, then she knocked an airship clean out of the sky to prevent Robert Anderson from joining the battle. For all those efforts, she was accused of treason and I was left with a shattered body.
Debris from Anderson’s airship was in view beneath me as well. It was one pile of rubble among many. What I could not see were bodies. So many men died yet every single body had been carried away. That added to the eeriness of the place. It is clear that something awful happened there but the real toll has been wiped clean.
I was scanning the hills, remembering that eventful and bitter day, when the PWB dirigible came into view. I was astounded. The whole idea seemed so impossible. Once I saw it up close, however, there was no room for doubt. That was the same dirigible I had flown to Bull Run. Its loading bay doors were still open. I had jumped from that platform down to the battlefield.
Before jumping, I used a switchbox device salvaged from the Golden Circle case to control the dirigible and hold it in position over Bull Run. That device had been extremely useful, able to process vast amounts of data and even make impromptu adjustments to minute calculations. We would never have prevented the assassination attempt against President Lincoln or uncovered the trench cutter without the switchbox. I gru
dgingly accepted that it would be destroyed along with the PWB dirigible.
Yet here it was. Dr. Lowe had the notion of testing a new weapon system by destroying the seemingly aimless dirigible. It was to be his target practice. I convinced him to board it instead so we could see what became of the switchbox.
That was an obvious problem. My surgeries were extreme. Dr. Lowe and his surgeons stitched bones in my face together with filament wire. Tendons near my elbow were extended with leather bands. These were too thick to be packed under my skin so were stretched over my forearm then connected to fingers on my hand. Fragments of a compacted shin were removed and reconfigured. Bits of steel were melted into the cracks like solder. When those doctors told me it would be weeks before I could walk, I believed them. Crossing from the Protocol to the PWB dirigible in midflight was beyond me.
Dr. Lowe took it as a challenge. He wanted me to accompany his engineers. As always, his solution to the problem was a piece of equipment that did not exist before he imagined it.
His craftsmen fitted me with a harness. My left leg was strong. That was all I could offer: one good leg. It was enough for the Protocol’s engineers. The harness held my arm steady. A wire cage covered half my face and supported my neck. A stiff brace locked my right leg in a bent position to keep it out of the way. These pieces fused together and provided a frame for a thick rubber pipe that snaked up the harness. Stubby ends poked out from the pipe every few inches. Jets of pressurized steam shot from those stubs. The contraption supported my weight and held me steady. I floated barely an inch off the floor. By swiping with one leg, I was able to move with frictionless ease.
The Protocol advanced. Its nine round modules encircled the PWB dirigible, which shifted position in flight as though trying to find a way of escaping. There was no one on board, and I left the switchbox with simple instructions to hold its position, yet it was plainly trying to improvise a path to get out.
Our boarding party swung into position aboard one of the Protocol’s rotating modules. No sooner did the momentum of the huge array bring us to a stop then a cable pulley started building the tension required to swing the module away again. Our window to disembark was narrow. I pushed with the ball of my foot. The harness carried me off. For a heartbeat, I was suspended over nothing, coasting between the Protocol and the dirigible. Before I knew enough to be afraid, I was on board.
My switchbox was still attached to the control panel but it did not look the way I remembered. Switches bore little resemblance to the neatly packed bundle I carried with me after my arrest in New York. The switchbox had morphed into something else. I was tempted to say that the device had evolved.
Overlapping layers of brass switches had come undone. They rolled out and spread over the control panel like a blanket, connecting at multiple junctures in completely new combinations. One of Dr. Lowe’s engineers swiped a hand across the surface. Switches rustled under her palm like feathers.
“What is this thing?”
“A counting device,” I answered.
“What is it counting?”
“Options for staying airborne at this location,” I said.
“That isn’t counting, Mr. Pinkerton. That is called thinking.”
When I had connected the switchbox initially, I set rough coordinates for Bull Run as a solution for the device to calculate. Whenever winds blew the dirigible off course or a change in terrain forced it to change direction, the switchbox adjusted. It was constantly searching for Bull Run as a kind of mathematical solution.
In the weeks since, the device had refined its calculation. It added new inputs, starting with navigation controls then moving to the propulsion engine and steam chamber. The device took charge of every system on board. It unfolded itself to reach each of those controls. How did it know to do that?
The engineer lifted a corner of switches away from the panel. The dirigible bucked as the device recalculated then stabilized again.
“You’re going to hurt it,” I said.
The engineer gave me a skeptical look. She laid the corner back down. The sound of switches reconnecting was like coins jingling in a purse.
“Damage it,” I corrected myself.
Dr. Lowe’s team tried to detach the switchbox but the sequence of connections was too hard to understand. It was based on the device’s own trial and error. Some connections led nowhere. Others were so critical that cutting them threatened to knock us out of the sky. I hovered behind, pleading with them to be careful. In the end, engineers decided that the switchbox could not be removed.
Calipers and pincers were put away. Crow bars and flame torches were brought in. If they could not remove the switchbox from the control panel, they could remove the control panel from the dirigible. Dr. Lowe asked me to return to the Protocol in case the extraction failed. His team could not save me as well as themselves.
I felt nervous, floating in my harness next to the professor, watching a warehouse module swing down to envelope the PWB dirigible. I did not want to lose that switchbox device again. Engineers struggled to keep the smaller aircraft afloat long enough to complete the extraction. Cables strained and the pulley system lifted the warehouse module away. As it rose, the PWB dirigible fell out of control and crashed in the hills at Bull Run. Dr. Lowe and I waited for a message from his team. I was delighted when the news came.
“The equipment is intact. We are transferring it to the laboratory.”
By the time I arrived, Dr. Lowe’s people were already at work. There was no telling whether the switchbox could be reassembled in its original form. I doubted it. The shape did not matter. All I wanted was for the device to retain its function. No, that was not the right word. Papa might use that sort of word. Function was not the issue. I wanted the device to retain its character.
I spent hours in the lab. I wanted to help but mostly got in the way. While I busied myself with scientists trying to make sense of the switchbox, Dr. Lowe guided the Protocol away from Bull Run and toward the canal route.
As President Lincoln had requested, we were looking for signs of rebel encampments, or sabotage, or anything to suggest that transporting slaves to Washington along that route might pose a threat. Dr. Lowe predicted we would find nothing. That is what we found.
When we reached the coast, the Protocol rose to a higher altitude and we headed out to sea. The professor wanted to see the flotilla of slave ships for himself. I was busy trying to help free the switchbox from the control panel and so barely noticed when Dr. Lowe welcomed a visitor to the Protocol. If my attention had not been distracted, everything might have turned out differently.
Word was sent down to the workshop that Dr. Lowe and his guest wanted to see me in the control module. It took me a while to make my way over to meet them. As I waited for the array to align so I could move between modules, it struck me as odd that the visitor had been able to board so quickly. How did this person know where to find us? Was this not a secret mission on behalf of the President?
These questions troubled me more as I got closer to the control module and saw that a military airship was docked to the exterior housing behind the Protocol array. Someone had come up from behind, docked and boarded without alerting the crew inside. It was a Union vessel, equipped with a custom brace to connect with the Protocol.
My sense of mild concern disappeared when I reached the control deck. It was replaced by outright panic when I saw Major Robert Anderson standing next to Dr. Lowe.
Injuries he suffered at Fort Sumter made it difficult for Anderson to shift his head. Skin and muscles around his neck were fused into the same thick callous that made his face an expressionless mask. He turned his whol
e body to look at me.
Dr. Lowe recorded our exchange. Given what has happened since, we both felt obliged to preserve it as an official record.
“I am pleased to meet you, Detective. In a sense, this is our second meeting. If I understand correctly, you and I both attacked the rebels at Bull Run at almost the same time.”
“Dr. Lowe, call security!”
“Robert, please. Major Anderson is my guest. The President granted him command of the USS Cumberland after Fort Sumter was destroyed. He is testing steam technologies that may end this war. His use of sound transmitters underwater has proven very promising.”
“This is the most wanted criminal in America! He betrayed the Union and stole the Cumberland before murdering every living soul at Chesapeake Bay.”
“Nonsense. Major Anderson, please explain to Robert that you did no such thing.”
“The boy is right, Thaddeus. If your airship ever landed, you would read as much in the newspapers.”
“This is an outrage, sir. What do you mean boarding my vessel under these false pretenses? I demand that you disembark.”
“I will, Dr. Lowe. There is no need for hysterics. I have a message to deliver. That is all. I would like Robert to pass it on to his father.”
“I am not one of your recruits, Anderson.”
“But you are a loyal northerner. You would rather see the United States survive this war, would you not?”
“Do not play on my patriotism. You are a traitor!”
“That may be. But rebels who desert their posts trade everything they know for a place in my ranks. I know what the southern radicals are up to. We have to sink that flotilla of slave ships then move all our forces up to New York.”
“Every slave in the flotilla would die. Why would we do that?”
“The rebels want Lincoln to bring those slaves north. They are counting on it. The whole lot is infected with yellow fever. While Lincoln and his army try to deal with an outbreak in Washington, New York will be attacked.”
