Fiddlehead

Ten

“The war will end, and no one will be the victor. This is the assured outcome, provided that the menace that threatens both North and South is not addressed, and addressed immediately—with the full attention, commitment, and vigilance of the governments and people on both sides. This menace has many names, some regional, some colloquial.

“I am speaking, of course, with regards to that peculiar affliction that ruins men—and sometimes women—throughout the continent. You’ve seen the symptoms, or heard of them at least: A yellow tinge to the skin, particularly around the eyes and joints; difficulty breathing; a running nose with bloody mucus; receding gums and protruding teeth; an emaciated, cadaverous appearance; and, eventually, a mindless pursuit of human flesh. And although those who carry the affliction cannot spread it, their bites spread a gangrenous rot that is very often fatal. Among doctors and scientists it’s commonly described as ‘necrotic leprosy’—but this term is not well known outside those circles.

“This—not the war—is the crisis of our time.

“For quite some time, this plague progressed quietly, taking primarily soldiers in its grip, because soldiers were the primary consumers of the substance which is believed to cause the disease: a common, inexpensive drug sometimes called saffron, which is smoked or otherwise inhaled. But increasingly, unaccountably, the situation has worsened to such an extent that thousands are dying by the day—either by drug use and subsequent sickness, or through the cannibalistic assaults that follow. Our troops are being decimated, and the Confederate troops are similarly burdened.

“But this must not be considered a purely military matter. The walking plague is now escaping the uniformed ranks and spilling into civilian society, taking not merely those soldiers who contaminate their bodies with the drug, but also those who struggle to live in the midst of this never-ending war.

“The war must end, and it must end immediately. If it does not, this creeping horror will consume the continent beyond salvation by 1886. Figures in the rest of the world are more uncertain, but rest assured this is not merely a problem of North and South. This is a problem of which the planet must be made aware, and the U.S. must lead by example. The threat is a scientific fact, measurable by advanced calculating engines created by the nation’s top scientists.”

Gideon paused there, and looked up at Nelson Wellers. “I don’t understand why I can’t just name myself. I’m the top scientist. It’s my machine.” He fondly, almost wistfully imagined the Fiddlehead as it’d been before the sabotage—all bright keys and jaunty levers, chewing up numbers and possibilities, offering its direct, complex answers on a roll of paper. Cryptic only to others. Never to him.

“That you are, and that it is. But most people don’t know your name, and those who do might be … disinclined to take your warnings as seriously as you’d like them to be received.”

The wistfulness melted, and he glared across Lincoln’s library in the doctor’s direction. “Because I’m a negro.”

The physician shrugged and shook his head. “It doesn’t help, but that’s not the whole of it. Don’t look at me that way. You’ve taken great pains to remain more or less anonymous. Well, congratulations. No one knows who you are. Your campaign has been a roaring success.”

Gideon glared some more, but didn’t argue. He returned his attention to the handwritten draft before him, and continued reading aloud, his last review before heading off to the papers. “The Union is aware of these scientists and their devices, and President Grant has been advised on the matter.” He looked up again. “Bit of an exaggeration, isn’t it?”

Wellers shrugged again. “Lincoln said he talked to him. Even if he didn’t, or even if their conversation skirted around the issue … the president will surely want an audience with you when your letter goes public. You can brief him then.”

“To explain myself, yes. I expect you’re right—and perhaps it’s an underhanded means of gaining an audience, but it will almost certainly work. Very well. That part stays.”

He picked up where he’d left off. “President Stephens has been informed of the dire situation as well. Though details are not available to the author of this letter, this devastation allegedly affects Southern troops at a rate twice that of Northern ones.”

Wellers held up a finger to interrupt. “You made that part up, yes?”

“More or less. There’s always a chance that the problem isn’t any worse down South, but since virtually all problems are, it’s a safe enough guess. I can’t offer up the Fiddlehead’s figures because the incoming stream was incomplete. The results are speculative, by the machine’s own admission, but within a calculated margin of error.”

Wellers chuckled softly. “You talk about that thing like it has a mind of its own.”

“It does,” Gideon assured him. “It has mine, only better. And besides, I see no good reason to tell the South that their problems aren’t as bad as ours. Let them think they’re taking the brunt of it, assuming we can get this message to go public down there.” He set his papers atop his knee. With more earnestness than he usually felt or showed, he asked, “Do you really think this sounds all right? It feels odd. It doesn’t sound like me at all.”

His companion smiled. “I thought that was the point.”

“Don’t be a jackass.”

Wellers’s smile grew even bigger. “Go on, keep reading. It’s hard for me to judge the document as a whole when you keep stopping like this.”

“You’re judging it?”

“You asked for my opinion, so yes. I’m taking great relish in judging it, because you so rarely care what I think.”

Gideon tried to frown, but couldn’t muster it. “I don’t care what you think. I want to know what you think. It’s not the same thing.”

“And Douglass and Lincoln are away right now, so you’ll settle for me. I’m still flattered to be third place to such company.”

“I’m not trying to put you in their company, Nelson. If—”

Now he laughed outright. “No! No, you can’t take it back now—you’ve flattered me, and you’re just going to have to live with it.”

Gideon gave up and grinned back. “Fine. You’ve been complimented. Don’t get so goddamn excited about it.”

“I’ll try to contain myself. But do go on—finish it up. Let’s hear your closing. The paper offices will shut down in another hour or two, and if you want to get this into tomorrow’s edition, we need to be on our way.”

Gideon cleared his throat and picked up the papers again. He scanned the last few lines and began afresh. “In Washington, D.C., luminaries such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass are calling for an immediate cease-fire in order to discuss the pressing threat which all of us face. In Richmond, the renowned hospital manager Captain Sally Louisa Tompkins is aware of the situation and has made efforts to rouse the CSA’s own Congress, to limited success. For make no mistake: There are those who wish the war to continue.

“Though it may sound ridiculous, inhumane, or impossible, there is money to be made in a war—huge money, for people without ethics or sentiment. These people have always existed, and they will always stand in the way of peace, for they are powerful. But we are more powerful still.

“Now is the time to call for action. Rally your representatives, petition your governors, and refuse to stand by in the face of indifference. Silence is not our friend, and it will not protect us. Only through public inspection and open discourse can we combat this problem, and we must do it together—Northerner and Southerner, white and colored, Indian and Texian, blue and gray. We are all human, and all living, breathing men. We must act accordingly, lest our entire species be eradicated from the face of the earth.”

After a pause, Wellers nodded and gave a round of formal, steady applause. “I like it. And that is a fierce climax indeed, at the end of an impassioned call to arms.”

“I wouldn’t call it impassioned.”

“You don’t have to, because I just did. You’ve written a fine piece of propaganda. Let us hope it works as well as it ought to, if only to get people talking.”

Gideon sighed hard with frustration. “We need for people to do more than talk.”

“Yes, but this is a start.”

“It’ll have to be a quick start,” he grumbled. “The Fiddlehead suggests wrapping up the war immediately—preferably years ago. We’re given a window of six months to instigate a complete turnaround in hostilities, and to engender absolute cooperation between the states.”

“Six months? When you put it like that, it sounds impossible.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment, but then Gideon agreed. “You’re right. It sounds impossible. And it might be impossible, but if we don’t try, we’re doomed for certain. It’s this or nothing, until and unless someone else comes up with a better plan.”

Nelson Wellers rose from his seat and stretched, cracking his back and straightening his waistcoat. “I don’t imagine any better plan forthcoming. You’re our last, best hope. I pray that isn’t too much pressure.”

“Not at all. Do you think I should’ve mentioned Haymes and her project? I left her out because I couldn’t tell if it would help or hurt.”

“When in doubt, leave it out.”

“Very funny,” Gideon sighed, fiddling with the papers as if he couldn’t yet bear to part with them.

“A little funny; surely no more than that. But I do mean it: You’re right, and there are too many ways her interference could be viewed. The Southerners don’t like her, but they think she’s useful. The North might want to use her research for themselves. She’s somewhere in the mix, but it’s hard to say what she really wants, or means to do. It was the right decision, leaving her out for now.”

“Then I suppose it’s finished.”

Nelson nodded. “Good. Then give it here, and I’ll take it to the Washington Star-News.”

Gideon stood up and shook his head, folding the missive and slipping it into his vest. “No. It’s my editorial, and I’ll run the errands to see it in print. But you’re welcome to come with me. If anything, I expect you’re duty-bound to do so.”

Wellers made an unhappy little grunt, but admitted, “Yes. I promised I’d keep an eye on you.”

“If you must,” Gideon surrendered, and grabbed his grandfather’s coat.

In truth, he didn’t mind having Wellers assigned to his personal safety. Better the physician than the Confederate spy, after all—send that unreliable woman on some other errand. Wellers was preferable by far. For that matter, ever since Gideon’s talk with Frederick Douglass, he’d been increasingly worried, though no new violence had occurred. He had a plan now, and that was the problem. It was just the one plan, and if someone were to interfere with it, there was no backup waiting in the queue.

All offhanded responses to Wellers aside, the pressure was getting to him.

Together they left the Lincoln homestead and climbed into one of the former president’s personal carriages—a carriage with a ramp that lowered to the ground, so that his mechanical chair could be lifted aboard with minimal effort. Gideon liked these carriages; they were oversized to accommodate the bulky seat, and there was plenty of room to stretch out when its owner was not present.

The city was still brittle and bright with a sheen of ice, a half-present crust that made the world look damp and uncomfortable, too wet to be warm, and too warm to freeze.

Gideon sank into his coat and buried his chin in his scarf, watching small puffs of his own breath dampen the air and vanish. The streets scrolled past outside the window, and Nelson Wellers gazed out at his side of the avenue—both men watching for suspicious persons, or for any vehicles that might be following them. Nothing piqued their sense of alarm, but they still didn’t relax. Being out in the open required too much of their attention, and their previous good moods shifted into something less friendly and free, and far more wary.

They did not speak the rest of the way to the Star-News.

The newspaper office was an impressive building—a monument to the freedom of the press, if you believed in such things, though Gideon tended not to. Regardless, he had to admit it was handsome, with Georgian columns over brick and wide stairs funneling visitors inside. Tasteful landscaping, and tidy walkways. It looked efficient and earnest.

Inside they found the office they needed, and an editor by the name of Sherwood Jones—a once-burly man whose impressive shape was beginning to sag. He was bald, and one of his prominent ears had a long-ago-healed tear in it; his nose looked like it’d been broken once or twice, and maybe a third time, a long time ago.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked, rising from his seat behind his desk and shaking both Gideon’s and Nelson’s hands. “A pair of doctors, ganging up on an old man. I hope I’m not dying or in need of some … scientific treatment. I hope you’ll pardon me, Bardsley, but I’ve never been too clear on what it is you do.”

“A little of everything.”

“Then my potential for peril is great indeed! Draw up a chair, fellows. What can I do for you today?”

“You can help us spread the word on a matter of national importance,” Gideon told him, and handed over the statement he’d so meticulously prepared. “You can publish the most important letter you’ll read this year.” Then he sat back with Nelson Wellers and waited as the editor read it, watching for the man’s eyes to widen, or for a gasp to escape his lips.

They were disappointed on both fronts. Sherwood Jones maintained a stony silence and stillness as he read. When he finished, he put the paper down on his desk, then folded his hands atop it. “So you want me to run this as an editorial?”

Wellers, a little surprised by Jones’s lack of surprise, made a guess at what he wanted. “That’s where you’ll have to run it, unless you could be persuaded to accompany it with an investigative piece.”

Gideon instinctively balked at his friend’s suggestion. “No, we don’t need … we shouldn’t have … No.”

“Why not?” asked the editor.

“Because the machine … There was an explosion,” he said vaguely. “The information is not reproducible at present, and the original paperwork is in safekeeping at the Lincoln estate. Attempts have already been made on my life, and there is some concern for the Lincolns’, as well.”

But the editor said, “If I understand what I’m reading, there’s concern for the whole damn continent. I understand your desire to protect the Lincolns, but isn’t getting the evidence out more important in this case? If you’re serious about this—”

“What do you mean, if?” Gideon asked, annoyed, and now somewhat inexplicably anxious. Something about being in this office, on the verge of going so very public. Something about making a shout like this—a shout to the whole world—and knowing that the world might not listen.

Wellers also went on the defensive. “Are you trying to say you don’t believe us?”

Sherwood Jones sighed and shook his head. “The awful thing is, I do believe you. Or, if nothing else, I think you’re on to something. It might not be such a big something; perhaps this is just another one of those things like typhoid or cholera or consumption that is making the rounds through the ranks these days. But I’m hearing about it more and more. Everybody’s hearing about it. We’re already running a piece or two a month on the subject.”

“I read the most recent one,” Wellers said. “You talked to a colleague of mine—or, your reporter did, at any rate—wanting to know the medical details of the situation. Not all newspapers are so precise with their facts.”

“Dr. Harper, yes. Might’ve known he was a friend of yours. See, we get letters and telegrams all the time from people asking what we know about it and if we’ll do a more in-depth investigation. I’m aware of the scope and I’d love to do another exposé, but I lost a reporter to the project this past fall. He went to the front and didn’t come back. The fellow I sent after him said everyone gave a different version of how he’d died, and he didn’t know who to believe.”

Gideon frowned. “Why would anyone lie about such a thing? It’s a public menace! I don’t understand how people can just … bury their heads in the sand, and pray it’ll all blow over.”

But the editor shook his head. “It’s not that simple. People are afraid, yes—and the people who are closest to the situation don’t want to frighten anyone further.”

“Leaving people unprepared and uninformed is better?” Gideon asked incredulously.

“How would they prepare for something like this? If we tell people that the walking dead are coming, and we don’t know why but there’s nothing we can do about it, it would only spread panic.”

Nelson Wellers tried to see it both ways. “I understand what you’re saying. It’s true that there’s no preventative or cure yet. But it’s as Gideon said: Silence will not protect us. The plague is spread through a substance, and death also travels by direct contact with the victims. If nothing else, we can warn people to stay clear of the infected. At present, they’re being treated like patients, often mixed in with a hospital’s general population. We are reaching a time when we must consider them enemy adversaries, and segregate them instead.”

“But this letter…” Jones gazed down at it nervously—but not despondently, or so Gideon thought. A gleam in the older man’s eye said that he sensed some glimmer of possibility, but was torn. “You’re brushing up against that truth, but don’t state it outright. This letter could change everything. Or, if it is believed by enough people in enough places, it could lead to mass hysteria.”

“Then let it,” Gideon said coldly. “I’d rather see hysteria than ignorance. Hysteria, at least, has motive and agency.”

“Blind motive. Blind agency,” the editor corrected. “There are ethical guidelines about this sort of thing, for language that incites violence.” Gideon leaned forward to interrupt, but Jones held up his hand, begging indulgence. “Which is why I will print this, but on one condition: Wellers, you must write me a companion piece. Write me a letter as a doctor, explaining what we know, little as it may be. We must give the people a plan, or else we are only seeding terror, and I won’t have that.”

“A plan? Jones, it’s as I said—”

“Say it again. Write it down.” He pushed a pen across his desk, and followed it with a few sheets of paper from his top desk drawer. “If all you can give are your qualifications and your suggestion to avoid the infected, then that’s a start. Warn people against the bites. Give them some hope that this can be managed. To do otherwise would be cruel and unhelpful.”

Gideon was not entirely happy, but he found it difficult to argue with that. “Cruelty can be effective. For the world’s own good, we must frighten it awake.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. But we won’t scare the city awake just to witness its own slaughter. Most people would rather die fighting than screaming.”

“It’s fine, Gideon. I’ll do it,” Wellers said, picking up the pen. “I’ll write it, and he’ll run it, and the word will get out. Just give me a few minutes. It won’t take longer than that, for I have little to contribute to the effort.”

As Wellers wrote, scratching the pen’s quill across the page and pausing occasionally to refresh its ink, Sherwood Jones positively quivered, giving the lie to his former reserve. To Gideon, he said, “This is the break we’ve needed—an educated assessment that ties the facts together. For years we’ve heard rumors about what the saffron does to people, but its extent has been difficult to calculate. And here, in this office, when such things are discussed … well, the press is free, but some people think you get what you pay for.”

“What do you mean?” Wellers murmured, without looking up from his letter.

“I’m saying that this needs to come from men of science, not men of words. A man of words can say anything, and mean nothing. But a doctor must do good, or at least do no harm. I’m ill qualified to do either one.”

On their way out of the editor’s office, Gideon felt something like optimism for the first time since the Fiddlehead had been attacked. It crept up on him, and he even smiled as Jones stomped happily off to the press.

“You think it’ll work? You really think he’ll run it?” Gideon asked Wellers.

“Is that a rhetorical question? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you ask one of those. Didn’t you once say that such queries were a pox upon serious conversation?”

“Do you ever forget anything?”

“About as often as you do,” Wellers said with a cocky lift of his eyebrow. “But don’t worry about Sherwood holding up his end of the bargain. He’ll print it, and people will read it, and then they’ll know. Of course, what they do with the information is up to them.”

Gideon watched the editor disappear around the corner. “Douglass believes that educated people are powerful people. Let’s hope he’s right.”

“And let’s hope we’re stopping a war, not starting a riot.”

“Wellers? Is that you?” asked a voice from beside the front desk, where a receptionist in a prim uniform directed incoming visitors. A young man leaned over her, sorting through a stack of telegram slips. He grinned and waved. “And Dr.… Barksdale? Bardstown?”

“Bardsley,” Gideon supplied.

“Bardsley, that’s right. My apologies.” He riffled through the papers, selected a couple, and approached them.

“Hello there, Timothy,” Wellers greeted him. “Still running errands for Western Union?”

“That I am, doctor. That I am. And you two gentlemen can help shorten my workday, if you’re feeling so disposed and the stars align correctly. Is there any chance you’re headed over to the Lincoln estate?”

“As soon as we leave here,” Wellers said. Gideon wanted to argue, but he didn’t have a better destination in mind, so he didn’t.

“Then I hope you could be persuaded to take a couple of messages along with you. I know the old president trusts you with his security, so I believe he’d trust you with his telegrams.”

“I expect you’re right about that,” said Wellers, taking them. “We’ll hand them over within the hour.”

On the carriage ride back, the doctor and the scientist examined the messages. They were brief and not in envelopes, so it was difficult to avoid seeing the contents. Besides, if the messages were private, they would’ve come and gone via courier, not the junior runner at Western Union.

One was a note from a foreign ambassador, with thanks for a gift. The other was more interesting by far.

REACHED BIG RIVER YESTERDAY STOP ARRIVAL IN TENNESSEE PREDICTED BY TOMORROW STOP WORD FROM LOOKOUT ALL IS WELL STOP WILL BRING CARGO TO DC STOP EXPECT FULL SHIPMENT BY FRIDAY STOP

“Cargo. Shipment.” Wellers turned the sheet over in his hand. “Railroad terms? If so, it sounds like the Pinks think it’s safe to move your momma and Caleb.”

“Safe as houses, if Kirby Troost is coming.”

Wellers frowned down at the message. “Is that who sent this? It isn’t signed.”

“That’s who sent it, I’d bet my life on it.”

“Really? Your life?”

Gideon gave it a second thought. “Yours, anyway.”

“Who is this guy?” Wellers asked. “I’ve heard Lincoln mention him in passing, but I’ll be damned if I know more than his name.”

A flash went through Gideon’s head—a memory of a very dark night, chosen for its clouds. A hushed caravan, including a baby that’d been given ether to keep it asleep. A boat waiting at the river’s edge, at Ross’s Landing. A searchlight, shining across the tar-black water.

Gideon cleared his throat, and with it cleared away memories that had never quite faded. “You remember the Liberation Rangers? The Union’s effort to meet the railroad in the middle, and lend a hand?”

“I remember it. Didn’t last long.”

“No, not long, but they freed a few hundred people when all was said and done, and it was work worth doing. But Grant, or someone in his administration, decided that the program was an inefficient allocation of funds,” he said, quoting an article he’d read on the subject. “Resources were cut down to the bones, and most of the rangers were sent home. For a while they remained a very small special operations group—only the very best of them, you know—and by the end they were little more than mercenaries. But they did good things, Nelson.”

“Were they the ones who brought you out of Tennessee?”

Gunfire and smoke. A baby who couldn’t sleep through it, not even with the drugs. A drowning. A bomb. A mad dash that left no one behind, even for all of that.

“Yes. A small team, hired by Mr. Lincoln. Led by a captain named Kirby Troost.” He let out a short laugh, right in time with a dip in the road that made the car lurch. His voice caught in his throat. “Funny little man. Not much to look at, but that’s partly why he was so good at his job.”

“Was? So he’s left the business? Did Lincoln bring him out of retirement?”

“Oh, I have no idea what he does these days. He got drummed out of the service, and the service closed down behind him. It was a bad story—made the papers around here; you might’ve seen it. He got caught up with the wife of a congressman, until she turned up murdered. Her husband tried to hang it on Troost, and had just enough money and power to make it stick. Never mind that all the evidence said it hadn’t been Troost at all.”

“This is ringing a bell,” Wellers said, scratching at a spot behind his ear. “Was this the Cartinhour scandal?”

“That’s the one.”

“The wife’s own mother wouldn’t have recognized her, or that was what I heard from the doctor who served as coroner at the time.” Wellers scratched thoughtfully at his chin. “Yes, I remember it now. The subject was quite the rage, if you’re the sort to watch for gossip.”

“And you’re not?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I knew about it through Mary. You know how she keeps up with these things.”

“Oh, yes. Mary. Well.” Gideon reclined more comfortably, away from the rattling door and against a sturdy pillow. “Troost didn’t kill the congressman’s wife, and I’d bet my life on that. Cartinhour either did it himself or had it done. As for Troost, he took one last trip on the railroad, out of D.C. into God knows where. And about a year later Cartinhour himself turned up at a card table with his throat slit.”

“Pure coincidence, I’m sure.”

“Oh, absolutely. But apart from that one coincidence, I haven’t heard so much as a rumor about Troost in half a dozen years.”

“You two will have some catching up to do.”

“Eh.” Gideon gazed at the countryside zipping past out the window. “He’s not much of a talker. But he’s a quick one, and slicker than you’d ever expect. I never worried about him too much. He’s the sort of man who always lands on his feet. It’ll be good to see him.” He surprised himself to realize that he meant it. “I wonder what he’s been up to all this time.”

Nelson Wellers shrugged. “Wait until Friday, and it sounds like you can ask him yourself.”