Fiddlehead

Two

President Ulysses S. Grant shook his head and watched his watery reflection quiver in the glass of Kentucky whiskey. He had better beverages on hand—more expensive beverages, at least—but he picked one of his finer bourbons for the other man, who barely sipped it. What a waste. He should’ve kept it for himself.

“I don’t like it when you talk in absolutes. It usually bodes ill.” He kept his eyes trained on the glass while he waited for a response, because the glass was more likely to tell the truth.

Desmond Fowler leaned in close, trying to force the president’s eye contact and failing. He gave up and withdrew into his narrow seat. It wasn’t intended to be comfortable. Grant didn’t want him to stay.

“Freedom and slavery are absolutes. War and peace.”

“You’re wrong about all four.” Grant swallowed the last of his drink, but neither put the glass aside nor filled it again. He held it firmly, lest his hands shake. They often shook these days. He called it nerves or exhaustion. “But these two things are true, Fowler: They can’t hold on much longer, and neither can we.”

“You’re wrong about both, if I may be so bold.”

“I’ve never stopped you yet, even when I should have.”

Grant looked up in time to see him frown. “Sir, the program is vital to—”

“The survival of the nation, yes, as you’ve said. But we’re fooling ourselves if that’s what we’re out to save. The nation has been lost for years. Maybe even since the war began. You could make a case for that.”

“And you’ve done so. But now we’re arguing semantics.”

“So we’ll argue, then. We can’t save the United States; we can only reconstruct it. And we can’t do that until we wrap up this damn war.”

“Which is why I—”

The president slammed down his glass. “I don’t like the program,” he said bluntly.

“And I don’t like the war,” Fowler replied. “I thought you didn’t, either.”

It took all Grant’s strength to keep from calling him a liar. If he’d been a bit more sober, or a bit younger, or a bit less alone in a quiet room with a man he could not trust, he might’ve done so. Instead he calmed down and forced himself to breathe.

He rubbed at his eyes until they were red, then folded his arms and matched Fowler’s stare. “I hate it. But this is what it comes down to: Do we hate the war more than we love our country?”

Desmond Fowler did not quite squirm, but was clearly uncomfortable. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“The war can’t go on forever, but if a Union victory costs all hope of reconciliation, then what have we truly won? Shall we govern a conquered, resentful people by force—until they rally to rebel again? Or shall we welcome our fellow citizens back into the fold?”

“Obviously one hopes to welcome one’s fellow citizens,” Fowler tried carefully. “But Alabama and Mississippi still cannot agree with Lincoln—or yourself—regarding who is a citizen, and who constitutes property. Reconstructing the Union will be an uphill battle regardless of how the war is concluded. The question is not one of tactics, but of expediency.”

“And there you go again—now you’ve turned the matter into a binary. Another absolute. We can end the war expediently, tactically, without … without…”

“My program is the fastest, most efficient option.”

“The most brutal, you mean. Killing Americans, civilian and soldier alike.”

“Killing Confederates, and thereby ending the conflict.”

“And killing our own men, too. God knows how many of them. You’ve said it yourself, there’s no safe means to deploy such weaponry. Not without tremendous casualties to both sides. We’d have to lie to our soldiers, assure them we aren’t leading them to their deaths.”

“All soldiers assume, or at least suspect, that they’re being led to their deaths. And as for the deployment, we’re working on that,” Fowler assured him. “And sir, we must be pragmatic. The simple fact is that we have more men to lose than they do. If it costs us a handful to kill thousands of the enemy, then we—”

“The enemy? Our fellow Americans, you mean.”

“No, sir. Not anymore. By their own choice, and their own hand. Some days, I don’t understand why we fight so hard to keep them, when they fight so hard to get away.”

It was true, and Grant knew it. True, anyway, that Desmond Fowler didn’t understand why the Union should be preserved, or that the men and women on the other side of that line were not all godless foreigners. They were not dogs to be killed or tamed, any more than the Union armies were fodder to be sacrificed in pursuit of … what, precisely?

The Great Experiment.

Leaving a nation in the hands of its people, to govern itself. A terrible risk barely a hundred years old, and it could not fail so soon, so completely. Grant believed that with all his heart, because if a successful democracy was not possible, then what alternative was there? Chaos or kings, he supposed. And he regarded both with equal dismay.

“Sir, you want to end the war,” Fowler started afresh.

“Doesn’t everyone?” The president asked it too flippantly, given the company.

“My program is our best option. Not the prettiest, not the easiest political decision—no one’s trying to make that case. But it’s for the best, and we need your authority to proceed. We need your signature to release the funds from the War Department. Otherwise the program will languish, and we will miss our window of opportunity.”

“I’m sure another one will open. I just … I can’t. Not yet. Come back when you have more information, better numbers, or a better idea of how, exactly, this weapon would work. At present, you can’t even guess the extent of the damage. There’s no research to say that it won’t poison the land for a thousand years.”

“You’re asking for guarantees.”

“I’m asking for absolutes. I thought you liked those.”

“But that could take weeks! Months!”

“Then you’d better get started,” Grant said, as he flicked a glance toward the door. He heard a familiar noise approaching from down the hall, and was relieved to realize that he’d discovered a way out of this interminable, wheedling conversation. “Right now, I think. I have another visitor, and I need a word with him in private.”

Before Desmond Fowler could muster a response, the incoming hum grew louder and a mechanical chair appeared in the doorway. Fowler sprang to his feet, and made a small, formal bow. “Mr. Lincoln, sir.”

President Grant got to his feet somewhat more slowly, but he was balancing his weight against the alcohol in his blood. He leaned on the arm of his sturdy chair and smiled a greeting. “Abe, it’s good to see you. Come on in. Pull up to the fire. Fowler was just on his way out.”

For a moment, Grant thought Fowler might fight him on it—that he might scramble for some excuse to stay, some flattery he might apply or some social pressure he might leverage. Thankfully, he decided against the effort in time to politely bow again.

“Yes, I was just leaving. But it’s been a pleasure as always, Mr. President. And Mr. Lincoln.” He retrieved his overcoat from a rack by the door and took his leave.

When Grant and Lincoln were confident that Fowler was well out of hearing range, Lincoln adjusted his chair, backing up and pulling forward again so he could shut the office door. While he did this, Grant moved his normal guest chair aside to make room at the hearth.

Abraham Lincoln said, “I was afraid you’d be in the yellow oval. It’s a fine office, but I find it hard to reach, these days.”

“Nah. I don’t like that office. Too big, too much to look at. I can’t get a damn thing done in there. Can I get you a drink?”

“No, thank you. But don’t let my temperance stop you from having another.”

“I never do.” President Grant refreshed the whiskey before dropping back into the big armchair. Its leather had become so fire-warmed that it stung, but he liked the sharp heat seeping through his clothes.

Lincoln removed the blanket that covered his knees, folding it over the arm of his chair. His long, knobby legs leaned slightly to the right, and his shoulders stooped to the left, but the chair had been created with his height in mind and he looked more or less comfortable. Minus the eye patch, and with the addition of his infamous hat, he might have looked like he was just sitting down and not confined there.

“What did Fowler want you to sign this time?”

“Something for the War Department. I told him no.”

“Then he’ll be back,” Lincoln said quietly.

“Well, he is the Secretary of State. If he didn’t come back, I’d have a problem. Another problem, I mean. There are always plenty to go around.” He changed the subject, fishing for a more casual tone or topic. “So, why are you out and about tonight? I’m always happy to see you, but I thought Mary had some kind of party she was using to hold you hostage.”

“That was last night, and I didn’t attend. I’m not much of a dancer anymore.” He smiled, and the top of his scarred cheek disappeared under the edge of his eye patch. “I never liked parties much, anyway.”

“Me either. But I hope it went well.”

“I expect that it did. Now, let me ask you something: Have you heard about what happened to the Jefferson?”

A memory flickered at the back of Grant’s mind. He’d heard something that morning, part of a briefing that had piqued his interest. “The science center? They told me there was an explosion last night during the party.”

“Correct.”

“And you have people working out there, don’t you? That scientist from Alabama?” They’d met once or twice in passing at the Lincolns’ house. Grant recalled a quick, impatient colored man, with eyes too old for a man still in his thirties.

“Gideon, yes. That’s him. He was there when it happened.”

“Dear God … did he survive?”

“Oh yes, yes indeed. Some of his work was lost, but he saved as much as he could. Quite a lot of information, considering.”

“That fellow’s research … what was it about, again…?” Grant rooted around in his memory. “He’s teaching a machine to count, or something like that?”

“Something like that.”

“Oh, wait, I remember: He was building a machine to solve all the problems that mankind can’t. Once upon a time, you would’ve argued that there were no such problems. You were such an optimist, Abe. You believed we could do anything.”

“I still do,” he insisted softly. “Mankind remains a marvel; and this machine was built by a man, after all.”

“True, true. Did it work? Can it count? Or was it destroyed in the explosion?”

“It worked.”

Grant shifted forward, his elbows on the tops of his knees, the glass still perched in his hand. “Did you ask it … did you ask…?”

“We gave it all the known parameters, variables, and information points we could find—everything from disease figures to population density, weather patterns and industry, money, trade, and commercial interests. And then I asked your question—our question. The only question worth asking a machine of its caliber. I asked the Fiddlehead who would win this conflict, and how long it would take, assuming no new variables are introduced.”

Lincoln hesitated, and a brief spell of silence settled between them.

Grant did not break it. He was afraid of the answer, knowing it wouldn’t be a good one—and feeling as if he’d asked a gypsy’s magic ball for military advice.

What would a machine know, anyway? How could nuts and bolts, levers and buttons, tell him how to fight a war, much less how to end one? The president was a man of instincts and suspicions, and he understood the flow of battle like a riverboat captain understood the surge of the Mississippi. He could take the pulse of an altercation and listen to the rise and fall of artillery, coming and going like thunder. He had known war firsthand, many times over—and that knowledge had brought him to the nation’s highest office and kept him there for three terms, because men believed in his instincts.

This time, Ulysses S. Grant was terrified that his instincts were right.

He cleared his throat to chase the tremor out of it. “Well?”

Abraham Lincoln withdrew a carefully trimmed packet of papers from a satchel on the side of his chair. He sorted through them, picking out two or three sheets and tidying them before handing them to his friend. “As far as the machine can tell, the United States of America will end. But it won’t be the war that breaks it.”

“I beg your pardon?” Confused, Grant took the pages. They’d been cut by scissors, as if pared down to size from a longer piece of paper. It felt like the onionskin of newsprint, smeared with inky fingerprints and smelling faintly like wet pulp.

“The North won’t win, Ulysses. And the South won’t win, either.”

“You’re not getting all philosophical on me, are you?”

“No, I’m not. There’s another threat, an indiscriminate one. One that maybe…”

Grant lifted an eyebrow and peered over the paper. “Maybe? Maybe what?”

“That maybe can’t be stopped.”

The president quit trying to decipher the papers and returned them to his friend. He didn’t understand any of the abbreviations, or the columns of numbers that covered the sheets from margin to margin. If this was a record of war, it wasn’t one he could read.

“What are you talking about, Abe?”

“We’ve long known that disease can turn the tide of a war more easily than strategy. Cholera, typhoid, smallpox—name the plague of your choosing, and it can devastate an army more effectively than any mere man-made weapon.”

“Hold on, now … are we talking about the stumblebums?”

He lifted one long finger aloft. “Yes, well done. The stumblebums. That’s one word for them.”

“Guttersnipe lepers, I’ve heard that too.”

“Leprosy isn’t the worst possible comparison.”

Grant waved his hand, dispelling the idea, and splashing his drink in the process. “Goddammit,” he grumbled. While he blotted at his pants with his handkerchief, he said, “But it can’t be. We have doctors working on that problem, even as we speak. Entire hospital wings dedicated to the investigation and treatment of the issue.”

“Entire wings, yes. Filled with violent, dying men. Eating up resources, even as the situation worsens.”

“We’ll get it under control.”

“Do you think so?” Lincoln asked. “These numbers tell us otherwise. The epidemic is spreading exponentially, turning a small vice of war into something big enough to bend the arc of history. You could call it a self-inflicted and self-defeating problem, except that when these lepers get hungry, they bite; and their bites become necrotic with deadly speed. One lone leper can kill dozens of healthy men. Perhaps hundreds. God only knows.”

God wasn’t the only one who knew, Grant thought bitterly. Desmond Fowler’s clandestine program probably knew it, too.

“It is thought,” Lincoln continued, “that there may be a secondary cause of affliction—something unrelated to the drug itself.” He paused to watch Grant’s reaction, but Grant didn’t give him one. “But there’s still so much we don’t know.”

“Then tell me what we do know. Or tell me what your Fiddlehead knows, at least.”

Lincoln looked down at the pages again, then withdrew a pencil from his satchel. He pressed a button to activate his wheeled chair and brought himself closer to the president, pulling up alongside his seat. The firelight warmed and brightened them both and made the brittle paper look brighter than a lampshade.

Lincoln circled one column’s worth of information. “You see this part, here? These are casualty figures from three skirmishes two months ago. None of the field doctors reported any lepers, or any drug use among the men.”

“I see,” Grant said. But he didn’t.

“The numbers are precisely what you’d expect: Half of the men died from their wounds. Of those who remained, approximately half succumbed to known diseases or infection. These other men”—he pointed at a secondary line—“were too badly hurt to return to battle, but they did survive. Now, look at these figures, over here.” He drew another circle. “These are numbers from four other skirmishes around the same time. Two in northern Tennessee, one on Sand Mountain in Alabama, and one outside of Richmond.”

Grant took a slow, deep breath and let it out again as he read the Tennessee casualty figures. Fifty percent dead from injuries. Two percent injured beyond further combat. Forty-eight percent …

“Forty-eight percent dead … from what?”

“From necrotic injuries, inflicted largely by their fellow soldiers.”

“What on earth have those Southerners done?”

“It’s not just the Southerners.”

“These are all Southern battlefields!”

“Most of the battlefields are Southern battlefields,” Lincoln reminded him, using the gentle tone of someone who is dealing with a drunk. Grant didn’t care for that tone, but he ignored it. He’d heard it from everyone, for years. “And the Southern soldiers aren’t the ones chewing up our boys after the fact; these are our figures. Our men. That said, the Confederacy’s having problems too—the same problems, almost exactly. In fact, the only time the Fiddlehead balked was when we asked where the drug came from, North or South.”

“It didn’t know?”

“It didn’t say. Gideon says the question shouldn’t have been phrased that way, since it might have come from someplace else. Something about contradictory absolutes, he said.”

“So where did it come from, do you think?”

Lincoln shrugged, a gesture that made him look like a funeral suit sliding off a hanger. “The Western territories? The Mexican Empire? The islands? The machine couldn’t tell us the drug’s origin—only that the lepers will win the war.”

“Balderdash,” Grant spit. “It’s utter balderdash, and you know I mean no disrespect.”

“It’s science.”

“The war won’t be won by the walking dead, Abe.”

“And why not? Before long, we’ll have more soldiers dead than living—and when the dead outnumber us, the advantage is theirs.”

After a frustrated, uncertain pause, Grant said, “Your machine offers up more questions than answers.”

“Its vocabulary is limited. It can only work with what we give it.”

“It must be wrong.”

“It’s frightening, but I don’t believe it’s wrong. We can’t win, and neither can the CSA.”

The president laughed sadly. This was almost precisely what he’d told Desmond Fowler not ten minutes before. “Then what do you suggest we do?”

“The only thing we can do is stop fighting. Declare a cease-fire, call a summit. Explain the situation to Bragg and Stephens—they’re reasonable men, old men. And they’re tired of fighting too.” He sat forward with some difficulty, and the firelight played across the sharp-cut angles of his cheeks. “You can tell them that we do not ask their surrender, and do not offer our own. Explain the greater threat and extend a hand of brotherhood. Not North against South, but living against dead.”

Grant shook his head. “It would never work. They’ll never believe us.”

“They might. When we asked the Fiddlehead to tell us how the war would end, we had to estimate figures on the Southern side—we didn’t have the precise numbers of living, dead, sick, or wounded. It was funny, really—or, rather, Gideon thought it funny: The machine accused us of lying to it.”

“How’s that?”

“It rejected our estimates as implausible, and supplied its own calculations. But we have every indication that the South suffers from the leper problem too, perhaps even worse than we do. We may get lucky: They may want a way out of the war as badly as we do, and if they’re aware of the threat in their own land, they might be open to a conversation.”

Grant harrumphed and scowled into the fire, as if he were asking it for a second opinion. “What if we could get Southern casualty reports? Send some spies out in search of accurate figures to feed into your machine. That’d give us a better idea of what we’re up against, wouldn’t it? It’d give us a hint about how open they’d be to … a conversation, as you put it.”

Lincoln’s good eye glittered warmly. “It might. But, as you’ll recall, there was an explosion last night—speaking of spies.”

“I’m sorry, come again?”

“Two men,” he told him. “If not spies, then mercenaries—sent to destroy the Fiddlehead, and kill the man who’d created it. From Gideon’s report, I doubt either one of them would’ve thought to make the attack alone. Someone paid them to make the effort.”

“Any idea who?”

A slow, knowing smile spread across Lincoln’s crooked face. “Who? Not precisely. But I appreciate that we both understand the why, and that we choose not to insult one another by pretending.”

“You want to blame warhawks like Desmond, or his brethren on the other side of the line. But why would they go after your calculation machine? How many people even know it exists? How many people would put stock in the conclusions of a … a … a fortune-telling heap of nuts and bolts, assembled by a colored man? No one.”

“I may be permanently seated and long out of office, but I’m not exactly no one,” Lincoln replied stiffly. “Gideon’s work is sound. The machine is unprecedented, a marvel of science—and you just wait”—he waved one warning finger—“history will bear this out. The war has to end. We have to turn our attention to the leper threat. We must bury all the dead and see to it that they remain buried.”

“I can’t push a button and end hostilities,” Grant fussed … but again he thought of Desmond Fowler, whose clandestine program might do just that. “You can’t ask for such a thing based on a pile of paper that no one understands but you. And your team of tinkers,” he amended quickly. “I can’t go in front of Congress with the message that Abe Lincoln says we should all find some hobby other than war because dead men walk and we should do something about that, instead. You have to bring me more than this.”

Lincoln slumped back in his chair, his good eye narrowed. “I don’t have more. Not yet. And someone—perhaps a Southerner, perhaps someone in your own administration—is working hard to make sure I don’t come up with any additional evidence.”

“How so?”

“Because they went after Gideon, and when they couldn’t catch him, they went for his family. They’ve taken his mother and nephew—kidnapped the pair of them without so much as a note. Dragged them back to Alabama, I suppose. But I’ve called in a good man to recover them, one of the old Liberation Rangers. You’d know the name if I said it, but then you’d have to do something about him, so I’ll leave it there.”

“Ah. Then I can make my guess. I remember the old case well—nasty business, that. I appreciate your discretion. But as for the scientist’s family … you think it was a lure? Something to take him away from his work?”

“As likely as not. Gideon is the only man on earth who could rebuild or re-create the machine. Someone, somewhere, already knows what the Fiddlehead will tell us—and without that machine, it’s our suspicions versus their profit. Our word against theirs.”

“The word of a former slave—a political fugitive. It won’t carry much weight.”

“Then add the word of a former president. A political figure, instead. It will carry more weight than you think, and they know it. They’re afraid I’ll say something, but they’re unwilling or unable to come for me. So they reach instead for Gideon, thinking that I have nothing without him, and thinking that he’s vulnerable.”

“And I expect they’ll learn the hard way that he’s not.” Grant mustered a friendly grin.

Lincoln closed his eye. When he opened it again, it was to plead with him. “Yes, they will. But I need your help while I hold them at bay.”

“What can I give you? Money? Men? I know you don’t think much of the Secret Service, and neither do I sometimes … but they’re at our disposal.”

“Oh, no. I can’t trust them any more than you can. I’ll stick with the Pinks, if you don’t mind—they’ve kept me alive this long. Mr. President, my old friend … what I need is information.”