“As I think I told you once before, General, my friends and I can find out whatever we think important enough to know.” Yes, Rhoodie was smug.
Lee said, “That hardly appears open to question, sir, not after your repeaters, your desiccated foods—though I wish you might find a way to provide us with more of the latter—and now your ability to ferret out the Federals’ plans. But I did not ask what you could do; I asked how you did it. The difference is small, but I think it important.”
“I—see.” Suddenly Andries Rhoodie’s face showed nothing at all, save a polite mask behind which any thoughts whatever might form. Seeing that mask, Lee knew he had been foolish to hope to loosen this man’s tongue with a couple of glasses of homemade wine. After a small but noticeable pause, the big man with the odd accent said, “Even if I were to tell you, I fear you would not believe me—you would be more likely to take me for a madman or a liar.”
“Madmen may babble of wonderful weapons, but they do not, as a rule, produce them—certainly not in carload lots,” Lee said. “As for whether you speak the truth, well, say what you have to say, and let me be the judge of that.”
Rhoodie’s poker face hid whatever calculations were going on behind it. At last he said,” All right, General Lee, I will. My friends and I—everyone who belongs to America Will Break—come from a hundred and fifty years in your future.” He folded his arms across his broad chest and waited to see what Lee would make of that.
Lee opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again while he did some thinking of his own. He did not know what he had expected Rhoodie to say, but the big man’s calm assertion was nothing he had imagined. He studied Rhoodie, wondering if he had made a joke. If he had, his face did not show it. Lee said, “If that be so—note I say if—then why have you come?”
“I told you that the day I met you: to help the Confederacy win this war and gain its freedom.”
“Have you any proof of what you allege?” Lee asked.
Now Rhoodie smiled, rather coldly: “General Lee, if you can match the AK-47 anywhere in the year 1864, then I am the greatest liar since Ananias.”
Lee plucked at his beard. He himself had brought up the excellence of Rhoodie’s equipment, but had not thought that very excellence might be evidence they were from out of time. Now he considered the notion. What would Napoleon have thought of locomotives to carry whole armies more than a hundred miles in the course of a day, of steam-powered ironclads, of rifled artillery, of rifle muskets with interchangeable parts, common enough for every soldier to carry one? And Napoleon was less than fifty years dead and had rampaged across Russia while Lee was a small boy. Who could say what progress another century and a half would bring? Andries Rhoodie might. To his own surprise, Lee realized he believed the big man. Rhoodie was simply too strange in too many ways to belong to the nineteenth century.
“If you intend to see the Confederate States independent, Mr. Rhoodie, you would have been of more aid had you chosen to visit us sooner,” Lee said, tacitly acknowledging his acceptance of Rhoodie’s claim.
“I know that, General Lee. I wish we could have come sooner, too, believe me. But our time machine travels back and forth exactly one hundred fifty years, no more, no less. We did not manage to obtain even the small one we have—steal it, not to mince words—until just a few months ago—just a few months ago up in 2013, that is. Still, all is not lost—far from it. Another year and a half and it would have been too late.”
Those few sentences held so much meat that Lee needed a little time to take it in. By itself, the idea of travel through time was enough to bemuse him. He also had to come to grips with the notion of two stations in time—in his mind’s eye, he saw them as train stations, with an overhang to keep passengers dry in the rain—each moving forward yet always separated from the other by so many years, just as Richmond and Orange Court House each moved as the Earth rotated on its axis, yet always remained separated from the other by so many miles.
Not content with those conceptions, Rhoodie had saved the most important for last. “You tell me,” Lee said slowly, “that absent your intervention, the United States would succeed in conquering us.”
“General Lee, I am afraid I do tell you that. Are you so startled to hear it?”
“No,” Lee admitted with a sigh. “Saddened, yes, but not startled. The enemy has always put me in mind of a man with a strong body but a weak head. Our Southern body is weak, but our head, sir, our head is filled with fire. Still, they may find wisdom, while we have ever more difficulty maintaining what strength they have. They force themselves upon us, do they, when all we ever wanted was to leave in peace and live in peace?”
“They do just that,” Rhoodie said grimly. “They force you to free your kaffirs—your niggers, I mean—at the point of a bayonet, then set them over you, with the bayonet still there to make you bow down. The Southern white man is ruined absolutely, and the Southern white woman—no, I won’t go on. That is why we had to steal our time machine, sir; the white man’s cause is so hated in times to come that we could obtain it by no other means.”
There was one question ‘answered before Lee had the chance to ask it. He sadly shook his head. “I had not looked for such, not even from those people. President Lincoln always struck me as true to his principles, however much I may disagree with those.”
“In his second term, he shows what he really is. He does not aim to stand for election after that, so he need not mask himself any longer. And Thaddeus Stevens, who comes after him, is even worse.”
“That I believe.” Lee wondered at Rhoodie’s claims for Lincoln, but Thaddeus Stevens had always been a passionate abolitionist; his mouth was so thin and straight that, but for its bloodlessness, it reminded Lee of a knife gash. Set a Stevens over the prostrate South and any horror was conceivable. Lee went on, “Somewhere, though, in your world of 2013—no, it would be 2014 now—sympathy for our lost cause must remain, or you would not be here.”
“So it does, I’m proud to say,” Rhoodie answered, “even if it is not as much as it should be. Niggers still lord it over white Southern men. Because they have done it for so long, they think it is their right. The bloody kaffirs lord it over South Africa, too, my own homeland—over the white men who built the country up from nothing. There are even blacks in England, millions of them, and blacks in Parliament, if you can believe it.”
“How do I know I can believe any of what you say?” Lee asked. “I have not been to the future to see it for myself; I have only your word that it is as you assert.”
“If you want them, General Lee, I can bring you documents and pictures that make the slave revolt in Santo Domingo look like a Sunday picnic. I will be happy to give you those. But, General, let me ask you this: Why would my friends and I be here if these things were not as I say?”
“There you have me, Mr. Rhoodie,” Lee admitted. Now he finished his glass of wine and poured another. Though it warmed his body, it left his heart cold. “Thaddeus Stevens, president? I had. not thought the northerns hated us so much as that. They might as well have chosen John Brown, were he yet alive.”
“Just so,” Rhoodie said. “You captured John Brown, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I was proud to be an officer of the United States Army then. I wish I had never found the need to leave that service, but I could not lead its soldiers against Virginia.” He studied Rhoodie as if the man were a map to a country he had never seen but where he would soon have to campaign. Fair enough; the future was just such a country. Normally, no man had a map into it; everyone traveled blind. But now—”Mr. Rhoodie, you are saying, are you not, that you know the course this war will take?”
“I know the course the war took, General. We hope to change that course with our AK-47s. We have already changed it in a small way: Kilpatrick’s raid would have penetrated much further into Virginia and caused much more damage and alarm had it not been for us—and for the valor of your troopers.”
“I understand your Konr
ad de Buys showed uncommon valor of his own,” Lee said.
Rhoodie nodded. “I’ve talked with him. He enjoyed himself. There’s no room for cavalry in our time—too much artillery, too many armored machines.”
“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it,” Lee said. “I am glad to hear the horses, at least, are out of harm’s way in time to come. They cannot choose to go into battle, as men do.”
“True enough,” Rhoodie said.
Lee thought for a while before he spoke again. “You say you think you have as yet affected the course of the war in only a small way.”
“Yes.” Rhoodie’s poker face had disappeared. He was studying Lee as hard as Lee studied him, and not bothering to hide it. Lee felt as if he were back at West Point, not as superintendent, but as student. He had to assume Rhoodie knew everything about him that history recorded, while he knew—could know—only what Rhoodie chose to reveal of himself, his organization, and his purposes.
Picking words with great care, Lee said, “Then you will have knowledge of the opening events of the coming year’s campaign, but your knowledge thereafter will decrease as our victories, should we have such, deflect events away from the path they would have taken without your intervention. Is my understanding accurate?”
“Yes, General Lee. You understand as well as any man could. My friends and I hope and expect that, with the Confederate States a bulwark of freedom and strength, the white man’s cause all through the world will be stronger than in our own sorry history.”
“As may be,” Lee said with a shrug. “Bear with me a moment further, though, if you would. It follows from what you have said that our generals, including myself, will need to be informed as exactly as possible on the situation of the Federals in front of them at the moment the campaigning season resumes, that we may extract the maximum advantage from what you know.”
“I will draft you an appreciation of what the Army of the Potomac plans to do,” Rhoodie said. “One of our people will do the same for General Johnston in regard to the Army of the Tennessee. Other fronts will be less important.”
“Yes, Johnston and I have our country’s two chief field armies. I look forward to receiving your appreciation, Mr. Rhoodie. It may well give me an important edge as the year’s campaign opens. Afterwards, I gather, things will have changed, and we shall have to rely on the valor of the men. The Army of Northern Virginia has never failed me there.”
“You can rely on one other thing now,” Rhoodie said. Lee looked a question at him. He said, “The AK-47.”
“Oh, certainly,” Lee said. “You see how I am already coming to take it for granted. Mr. Rhoodie, now I have answers to some of the matters which have perplexed me for a long while. Thank you for giving them to me.”
“My pleasure, General.” Rhoodie stood to go. Lee also rose. As he did so, the pain that sometimes clogged his chest struck him a stinging blow. He tried to bear up under it, but it must have shown on his face, for Rhoodie took a step toward him and asked, “Are you all right, General?”
“Yes,” Lee said, though he needed an effort to force the word past his teeth. He gathered himself. “Yes, I am all right, Mr. Rhoodie; thank you. I ceased to be a young man some years ago. From time to time, my body insists on reminding me of the fact. I shall last as long as I am required, I assure you.”
Rhoodie, he realized, must know the year—perhaps the day and hour—in which he was to die. That was a question he did not intend to put to the Rivington man; about some things, one was better ignorant. Then it occurred to him that if the course of battles and nations was mutable, so small a thing as a single lifespan must also be. The thought cheered him. He did not care to be only a figure in a dusty text, pinned down as immovably as a butterfly in a naturalist’s collection.
“Is it your heart, General?” Rhoodie asked.
“My chest, at any rate. The doctors know no more than that, which I could tell them for myself.”
“Doctors in my time can do quite a lot better, General Lee. I can bring you medicine that may really help you. I’ll see to it as soon as I can. With the campaign coming up, we want you as well as you can be.”
“You are too kind, sir.” Yes, Rhoodie knew Lee’s allotted number of days could change. He wanted to make sure they didn’t unexpectedly shorten. Even that possibility made Lee feel freer. He thought of something else. “May I ask you an unrelated question, Mr. Rhoodie?”
“Of course.” Rhoodie was the picture of polite attentiveness.
“These Negroes you mentioned who were elected to the British Parliament—what manner of legislators do they make? And how were they elected, if I may ask? By other Negroes voting?”
“Mostly, yes, but, to the shame of the English, some deluded whites sank low enough to vote for them as well. As for what sort of members they make, they’re what you’d expect. They always push for more for the niggers, not that they don’t have too much already.”
“If they were elected to stand for their people, how are they to be blamed for carrying out that charge?” Storm clouds came over Andries Rhoodie’s face. Lee said, “Well, Mr. Rhoodie, it’s neither here nor there. Thank you once more for all of this. You’ve given me a great deal to think on further. And I do want to see that plan of what General Meade will attempt.”
Once off the topic of Negroes, Rhoodie relaxed again. “It will be General Grant, sir,” he said.
“Will it? So they will name him lieutenant general, then? Such has been rumored.”
“Yes, they will, in just a week or so.”
“And he will come east to fight in Virginia? Most interesting.” Lee frowned, looked sharply at Rhoodie. “The day you first came to this camp, sir, you spoke of General Sherman as commanding in the west, and Major Taylor corrected you. You were thinking of the time when operations would commence, weren’t you?”
“I remember that, General Lee. Yes, I was, and so I slipped.” He nodded and ducked his way out of the tent.
After a couple of minutes, Lee stepped outside, too. Rhoodie was riding back to Orange Court House. Lee started to call his aides, then stopped to consider whether he wanted them to know the Rivington men were from out of time. He decided he didn’t. The fewer ears that heard that secret, the better.
He went back inside, sat down once more at his work table. He reached out for that second glass of blackberry wine he had poured, finished it with two quick swallows. He seldom drank two glasses of wine, especially in the early afternoon, but he needed something to steady his nerves.
Men from the future! To say it was to find it laughable. To deal with Andries Rhoodie, with the new repeaters in almost everyone’s hands now, with the small, square ammunition crates growing to tall pyramids by every regiment’s munitions wagons, with the occasional shipments of desiccated food that helped keep hunger from turning to starvation, was to believe. The creaky machinery of the present-day Confederate States could not have produced such quantities of even ordinary arms and foodstuffs, let alone the wonders at Rhoodie’s beck and call.
Lee thought about General Grant. In the west, he’d shown both straight-ahead slugging and no small skill. From what Rhoodie said, he would win here too, defeat the indomitable Army of Northern Virginia.
“We shall see about that,” Lee said aloud, though no one was in the tent to hear him.
“Here you go, First Sergeant,” Preston Kelly said. “They’re ‘most as good as new.”
Nate Caudell tried on the shoes Kelly had repaired. He walked a few steps, smiled broadly. “Yup, that’s licked it. The cold doesn’t blow in between the soles and the uppers anymore. Thank you kindly. Pity you can’t do more; a good many of us don’t even have shoes to repair these days. Are you the only shoemaker in the regiment?”
“Heard tell there’s another one ‘mongst the Alamance Minute Men,” Kelly answered. “Couldn’t rightly swear to it, though. Them boys from Company K, they still stick close to themselves after all this time.” Alamance Cou
nty lay a fair ways west of Wake, Nash; Franklin, and Granville, which provided most of the manpower for the regiment’s other nine companies.
“So they do,” Caudell said. “Come to that, I wish you were in my company, Preston. The Invincibles would all be better shod if you were.”
“Might could be, but then my boys from Company C’d be worse.” Kelly spat a brown stream of tobacco juice onto the ground. “When you ain’t noways got enough to go around, First Sergeant, some poor bastard always has to do without.”
“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Caudell said. “Well, thanks again for finding the time for me.”
“Wasn’t but a little repair, with more nailin’ than new leather. You keep your gear in good shape, not like some folks as let things fall to pieces ‘fore they fetch ‘em in to be fixed. Hell, if I had more leather an’ there was five of me, we’d be fine, far as shoes go.”
That was one of the smaller ifs Caudell had heard through the long, hungry winter. He waved good-bye to the shoemaker and headed back to his own company’s area. The parade ground was full of men watching two base ball nines go at each other. He decided to watch for a while himself.
The bat was hand-carved, and the ball, even seen from a distance, imperfectly round, but the players didn’t mind. The pitcher underhanded his missile toward the batter, who took a lusty swing and missed. The catcher caught the ball on the first bounce and tossed it back to his battery mate. The pitcher delivered again. The batter connected this time, launching the ball high but not far.
“Mortar shot!” somebody yelled. “Y’all take cover!”
“Get out your bumbershoots—that one’ll bring rain,” somebody else said.
The shortstop circled under the ball. “Catch it, Iverson!” his teammates screamed. The shortstop did catch it. Everyone cheered except the batter, who had run to first base in the confident expectation he would be able to stay there. He kicked at the dirt as he left. Caudell didn’t blame him. With a muddy, hole-strewn field to traverse, catching a ball barehanded was anything but easy.
The Guns of the South Page 11
