L Neil Smith - [North American Confederacy 06]

by The Gallatin Divergence (epub)

  He peered at Brackenridge over the rims of his glasses. “Now, as one consequence, claim is being made that everybody in this rebellion rises only out of fear of everybody else! Thus the bizarre misimpression that we rebel, not against the excise and the government, but because our neighbors are brutes—and we ourselves cowards!”

  Angry, confused reactions from committee and spectators alike. Gallatin, voice thin and accent thick, managed to shout them down. “Consider Monsieur Brackenridge, mes amis. In the event of defeat, if he and the other—‘fence-sitters’ inform Hamilton that they came to Braddock’s Field out of fear for their lives, they cannot reasonably be prosecuted for attempting to overthrow the State.”

  He fumbled in his jacket. “I have prepared a document that will draw lines between those who resist the government in this matter and those who support it in suppressing their neighbors. Moreover—” Several attempted interruptions. Many here didn’t want that line drawn. “Moreover, albeit I make no comparisons to, for example, the Magna Carta, or the Declaration of Independence—even to the Constitution that brought us to this pass—I believe this document will assure that something like this can happen never again.

  “Therefore, mes amis, I, Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin, propose: A New Covenant, among the Individual Inhabitants of the Continent of North America—”

  There were mutters from the crowd. Gallatin adjusted his spectacles. “We, the undersigned Witnesses to the Lesson of History—that no Form of political Governance may be relied upon to secure the individual Rights of Life, Liberty, or Property—now therefore establish and provide certain fundamental Precepts measuring our Conduct toward one another, and toward others:”

  Beside me, one of the men murmured, “What in the name of what a bear does in the woods does that mean?” “That democracy hasn’t worked,” Ed whispered, “and Gallatin wants to try something else.”

  “Oh.”

  “First,” Gallatin continued, not having heard the whispers, “that we shall henceforward recognize each Individual to be the exclusive Proprietor of his or her own Existence and of all Products of that Existence, holding no Obligation binding among Individuals excepting those to which they voluntarily and explicitly consent;

  “Second,” said Gallatin, “that under no Circumstances shall we acknowledge any Liberty to initiate Force against another person, and shall instead defend the inalienable Right of Individuals to resist Coercion employing whatever Means prove necessary in their Judgment;”

  The woodsman persisted, “Well, Socrates, what’s he sayin’ now?”

  “If you don’t want to do something—” I preempted Ed, earning a scowl. “—including paying taxes—no one will have the power to make you.”

  “Third, that we shall hold inviolable those Relationships among Individuals which are totally voluntary, but conversely, any Relationship not thus mutually agreeable shall be considered empty and invalid;”

  “I know what that means,” shouted our bucolic companion. “No more militia call-ups!”

  Beside him, another rifleman asked, “But what about the Indians?”

  I said, “They won’t have any more militia call-ups, either.”

  Gallatin plowed on. “Fourth, that we shall regard Rights to be neither collective nor additive in Character—two Individuals shall have no more Rights than one, nor shall two million nor two thousand million— nor shall any Group possess Rights in excess of those belonging to its individual Members;”

  The buckskinned frontiersman had a puzzled expression on his face. I opened my mouth.

  “No more call-ups,” said Lucy. “No matter how many folks try an’ vote you into it!” She waggled her eyebrows toward a tree where a well-bandaged Cato was leaning, listening to his employer with a proud grin on his face. Lucy shrugged.

  There was more: “Fifth, that we shall maintain these Principles without...” He returned the black man’s smile. “... without Respect to any Person’s Race, Nationality, Gender, sexual Preference, Age, or System of Beliefs, and hold that any Entity or Association, however constituted, acting to contravene them by Initiation of Force shall have forfeited its Right to exist;” I felt a tap on my shoulder. This time I waited before ! opened my mouth, and sure enough, a voice behind the rifleman said, “He says ve haf put up mit dis idiotic government und its depredations for too long, und it is time to do zomething deztructive about it!”

  When the woodsman turned, he saw another bald bespectacled individual looking up at him, this one waggling his cello bow.

  “My friends,” said Gallatin, “I near the finish: Upon unanimous Consent of the Members or Inhabitants or any Association or Territory within the Continent of North America, we further stipulate that this Agreement shall supersede all existing governmental Documents or Usages then pertinent, that such Constitutions, Charters, Acts, Laws, Statutes, Regulations, or Ordinances contradictory or destructive to the Ends which it expresses shall be null and void, and that this Covenant, being the Property of its Authors and Signatories, shall not be subject to Interpretation excepting insofar as it shall please them.”

  Silence. Gallatin put the paper down, removed his glasses, and cleared his throat. “Consistent with these sentiments, I believe we must release those who may be present here against their genuine inclination. I cannot speak for anybody else; I would not. Yet to ensure their safe passage back to Pittsburgh or wherever they may wish to go, I guarantee their lives with mine.” Silence turned to uproar. There were shouts, curses, a general confused babble.

  “Likewise—” The noise stopped him for a moment. “Likewise, mes enfants." The noise died. “Likewise, we must pledge to leave all property—save that of the excisemen, which is forfeit—unmolested. Else we become what our enemy is and lose the war by default.” Another hubbub rose at this idea, more restrained. Gallatin let it play itself out before he went on. “Our purpose has been set forth in writing. Barring emend-ment, I would ask each participant to sign this Covenant, make his mark before witnesses, or, without prejudice or ill-will from those who do sign, depart.”

  Andrew McFarlane seized the quill and laughed. “By all means, Monsoor Gallatin, spare Kirkpatrick’s property. But I caution you all—say this to him when you see him—if ever he and I should meet, one of us will die!” Having warned his brother’s murderer, he signed.

  “So shall it be,” Gallatin answered, pausing to put his own name to the document. “The suggestion has been offered by Monsieur Bradford that we burn Pittsburgh to the ground. Monsieur Brackenridge, on the other hand, would have us transform our revolution into a harmless parade. There is a third alternative, mes amis. Let us, indeed, proceed through Pittsburgh to demonstrate the discipline of our convictions, and to permit our numbers once again to swell—and then on to Philadelphia!”

  18

  Enough Rope

  A Nipponese copy of a twentieth-century Filipino switchblade. A semiwaterproof fuse that managed to get lit in an eighteenth-century downpour, likely with a twenty-first-century laser. One anachronism calls for another.

  That’s how a tired twenty-second century detective came to be among the signatories to Gallatin’s “New Covenant,” scheduled, in another year or so, to become the backbone of the Revised Articles of Confederation—replacing the Federalist Party’s hated Constitution.

  It’s a matter of recorded fact.

  Ed, a Confederate native and boyhood social studies victim, had always assumed it was just some unrelated namesake, this “Edward William Bear” who’d put his name to the revolutionary document in 1794. Not having grown up in the Confederacy—and being more interested in the Declaration of Independence (containing Gallatin’s “one little word,” tragically missing in my world)—I never noticed the “coincidence.” Taking the quill, I signed for both of us. Lucy signed with disappearing ink, supplied by Ooloorie, and passed the pen to Ochskahrt. In our century, their names would still be visible, when sprayed with just the right mixture of turpentine, sour milk, and parrot g
uano. As others crowded in to add their marks, word filtered back to the camp. Soon a line of would-be John Hancocks stretched through the woods, across the tent-covered field. Gallatin called for a monkathon—more parchment, ink, relays of individuals with decent penmanship—to copy out the Covenant so it would appear in full on every page.

  The quill, at last, came to Brackenridge.

  The Pittsburgh mouthpiece leaned over the improvised table, sweat beading his forehead. Pen in hand, he turned to the crowd. “Y-yes, by all means... although I confess it’s a simple march I still advocate—with no other view than to give proof to the Executive that the strictest order can be preserved among us and no damage done.”

  Boos and hisses, unimpeded by any notion of civility a later era might have demanded. The professional mugwump didn’t hear, kept on talking, inwardly directed. “That’s it, we’ll march through the town and, taking a turn, come out again upon the plain of the Monongahela, and, sampling some whiskey with the inhabitants—you boys all relish whiskey—embark across the river.”

  Gallatin placed a hand over Brackenridge’s, removed the pen. “You are under no obligation, Monsieur."

  Benjamin Parkinson seized the lawyer’s lapels, his freckled face flushing with an anger that leaked out between clenched teeth. “It is well for you that Mr. Gallatin has resolved matters in Christian charity. Else-wise, you would have been taken notice of, you... gentlemen. If we go to Pittsburgh, sir, we won’t be going for whiskey!”

  Brackenridge’s hands fluttered like frightened birds. “B-but I meant no more than that we should drink together, and not any offense whatever! Mr. Parkinson, it would affect me in a sensible manner if anything inadvertently said by me should interrupt harmony and injure the cause.”

  A frozen moment.

  Parkinson threw his head back, roaring with laughter. It began to echo all around until Brackenridge, face as red as Parkinson’s had been, slouched off to the margin of the clearing.

  “Huzza for Tom the Tinker!" Beside me, a scruffy rifleman put his wear-stained hat over the pitted muzzle of his weapon. Twirling it aloft, he shouted, “Onward to wealthy Sodom! I’ve a bad hat now, but’1I have a better one soon!”

  Gallatin trod through the crowd, seized the rifle, threw it to the ground. “For shame! It is not we who are thieves, but the collectors. Sign the Covenant, swear yourself to its provisions, or by the good God, be gone!” It was the first I’d ever seen him angry. As surprised reaction to his uncharacteristic tirade rippled through the crowd, I noticed that Brackenridge had disappeared.

  “Trying to round up members of the Pittsburgh bunch.” Ed was in touch with the encyclopedia in his head again. “I’m going to follow him!”

  “The hell you are,” I said. “Watch Gallatin. Tell Lucy.” I was gone before he had a chance to protest. Soon I was through the trees, out of eyeshot of the clearing. Glancing around, I stopped to take my clothes off. I hadn’t had much opportunity to experiment with my skinsuit, but familiar with its predecessors, I played with the inset buttons. Patterns chased each other across the surface, plaids and polka-dots and paisleys. With some finagling, the light-sensitive layers began picking up whatever was behind me—trees and bushes— transmitting it to the front. Meanwhile, the front relayed what it saw to my back. Not perfect, but for optical purposes, I became a part of the woods I moved through. Invisible.

  Camouflaging myself as whatever Arbor Day centerpiece I happened to be standing near at the moment, I stopped, disguised as a clump of lilacs near the edge of the tent-cluttered field. Further north and east stood a whitewashed frame farmhouse where the Committee was meeting.

  I lay outside, just under a glass-paned window, pretending to be the annex to a blackened tree stump. Laying a fingertip on the sill as a periscope, I stepped up my senses. The inner surface of my hood filled with an indoor scene. My suit-augmented hearing was nothing short of phenomenal—and what I could learn of my surroundings from just a casual sniff would have filled encyclopedias. I reduced the audio of my suit-receptors, stopped down the—what, smellio?—as far as it would go. Just didn’t have the olfactory lobes to tolerate it.

  Hugh Henry was inside, sending men to find the rest of the Committee. The impromptu meeting would be assembled from whatever Pittsburghers could be rounded up. Brackenridge was in something transcending even his usual funk, insisting an altogether new course of action be outlined to deal with Gallatin’s philosophical bombshell. Fast.

  Paradoxically convinced the rebels were uncivi-lizable animals—and at the same time harbored a Presbyterian resentment against the fleshpots of Pittsburgh—members were appointed to collect whiskey, bring it to the plain east of town to “refresh” the troops. Every store and tavern was to be ordered closed—no liquor to be sold to the rebels. Meanwhile, individual townsmen would be encouraged to contribute from their provisions. That way, there’d be no excuse for the rebels breaking ranks and wandering about through the city streets.

  “The insurrectionists are in an ugly mood,” Brackenridge maintained. “There is no doubt in my mind that they plan to plunder the town. I have it on the best authority that numbers of rebel women on Coal Hill are waiting to see its destruction, and to help their men accomplish it.”

  John Wilkins, Sr., asked, “And what authority is that, Hugh Henry?”

  “Why, er... never mind, sir! Little Edna—” The lawyer stopped. “—that is, my informant assures me it is so.”

  I grinned to myself. Coal Hill housed, among its other distinctions, the closest thing Pittsburgh could claim to a red-light district. Brief, embarrassed silence. Mention of his informant, however, erased my grin as it formed. First a common woods-runner, then a mail-carrier, now Edna was masquerading as vice-squad bait. Manipulating arm-buttons, I tried to get in touch with Ed or Lucy, but before I could, the farmhouse conversation picked up again.

  “Very well,” said minimagnate Wilkins. “If so, let it be individual householders the burden falls on, not the interests represented here.” There was a buzz of cynical assent. More important, they decided neither to sign Gallatin’s seditious, anarchistic Covenant (not much chance of that anyway, and the actual words were “republican” and “Jacobin”), nor permit its circulation in town. Who was it said “I don’t care who does the voting as long as I do the nominating”?

  A number of the Committee, alarmed and nervous at the prospect of invasion, excused themselves, setting out for town to hide whatever papers and valuables they hadn’t already concealed. They invited Hugh Henry to ride along. He assured them he’d sent orders to have his own closet-skeletons ferried across the river to the home of a friend, and volunteered to continue risking life and limb to keep a responsible eye on the rebel camp.

  Some wag, better informed than the rest, mentioned the irresistible favors of Coal Hill’s “kleine Edna Klute, the Pennsylvania Dutch treat.” Ahem! Snort! Fap! After a humiliated Brackenridge, lawyer and well-known family-man, finished with his Major Hoople act, he shooed the others out, locked the door, and waddled toward the sleeping quarters at the back of the house.

  Where someone was waiting—a familiar someone. She was putting out a cigarette in a pewter saucer when I managed to sneak around the comer, into place below the appropriate window. A pile of tea-crates made a fair hunting blind. “Mine liebchen Hugh Henry!” she growled in a sultry voice filtered through a phony accent. “Are you t’rough at lazt mit doze boring men, dollink?”

  “Er, um, ahem...” Brackenridge was momentarily deprived of eloquence. Edna reclined on the crazy-quilt of a large brass bed, traveling cloak and other clothing tossed on a nearby chair. The damage to her skinsuit must have been fatal. In its place, she wore black pantyhose, leg-warmers, topped with a red- and black-striped leotard. It was having a visible effect on the fit at Hugh Henry’s inseam.

  “Come, mine treasure-box,” she said without waiting for an answer, “zit bezide me und your meeting tell me all about. You know how I take an interest in politics.”

&nb
sp; The lawyer complied, leaving jacket, shoes, waistcoat, and knee-britches trailed on the floor behind him. Men’s underwear any century looks ridiculous. His was no exception. As she preened him, he summarized events, answering an occasional question. She worked him like one of Dr. Skinner’s rats, rewarding responses, subtly withholding the reward when there was more she wanted. “Exzellent, dumplingkeit, with our plans it all works out. Listen, now, while Edna tells you what must be done.” It was clear there were other things he’d rather have attended to, but he listened. “I have told you I am from the future—a future that must not be allowed to come to pass. We must change events here and now so that another future is created. Have you understood this?”

  “Well, yes...” answered Brackenridge. “After a fashion.”

  “Very well, after a fashion you may understand that, in this future from which I come, a great deal of technological progress has been made—‘mechanical,’ if you do not understand that other word. We can do things that cannot be done in your day and age. Understanden zee?”

  “No.”

  “It matters not. Once we have this Gallatin and his friends from my century out of the way, I can use what I know to direct the course of events. In some universes, a second war will be fought with England. In the universe we create together, England will lose. Canada will be absorbed into the United States, and, within a century, this country will become the center of a world empire that takes in the entire known galaxy—with me as its Empress. Am I going too fast for you?”

  “Not fast enough, my darling,” replied a frustrated Brackenridge, “but you will always be the Empress of my heart.”

  “How nice.” Her accent was gone now, but the fat attorney didn’t seem to notice. “What we must do is crush this rebellion before it gets underway. Do you think you can do that for me?” He nodded, and she took this as her cue to reward him, directing his head where it would do her the most good. Running one hand through his hair, she lit another cigarette, enjoying two vices at the same time. “Very good,” she said to the unhearing Brackenridge. “Faster, if you please.”