Cherie Priest - Fiddlehead

The moment passed. Fowler’s grin condensed into something harder and differently cruel. “Miss Haymes and I have come to an agreement. A formal, legal agreement which has been signed off upon by Salmon P. Chase.”

“Signed … signed off upon? That’s not even English,” Grant complained, but that wasn’t what really made him mad. “You think you can go running to the Supreme Court every time you want to take steps I don’t approve of?”

“You’ll approve of this one when you hear it. But I didn’t have time to convince you outright, so I’ve taken a shortcut. And before you say so, yes, I know you can fight the Chief Justice on this. I have only his word to back it up. The rest of the court is not yet involved, though it certainly could become part of the game if it has to.”

“Don’t threaten me, Fowler.”

“No one’s threatening anyone!” he protested. “I’m only explaining why I’ve taken the path of least time investment and resistance. And if you’ll only let the lady speak, I think you’ll agree that I’ve come to the right conclusion.”

“If you’re so sure I’d come around, why didn’t you just ask me in the first place?” Grant demanded. He walked over to the liquor cabinet despite only halfway noticing that he needed another drink, so accustomed were his hands to finding refills before he’d even detected the glass was empty.

Fowler snuck a glance down at Katharine, who sat calmly and still. “Because Miss Haymes makes her case better than I do, but I was compelled to guarantee her safety during her visit. I did not have time to risk the possibility of your disapproval. Now, I’m asking you, Mr. President, if you’ll kindly hear her out. She might surprise you.”

“Fine. Talk,” he commanded, and when he was finished pouring, he found his seat again. He leaned back, feeling stronger with the drink in his hand. “You’ve gone to all this trouble, after all. It’d be a shame to waste a judge’s signature. But I don’t care if you surprise me. I want you to impress me—and it had better be good, or I might well be sending a carriage around to Justice Chase’s house. The impolite hour be damned. ”

“Very well, and thank you,” she said, and the other men in the room hovered closer, huddling nearer to the tense little axis of drama.

She began: “First, I’d like to thank you for giving me your time and your attention. And second, I must thank Mr. Fowler for being kind enough to make the arrangements which have made my visit possible.”

Grant, out of patience and full of drink, interjected, “I hope ‘third’ brings us to the point.”

“Third,” she continued, as if she hadn’t heard the naked irritation in his voice, “I am here because the CSA is losing the war, and I don’t want to go down with it. I’m not altruistic, and by your definition I absolutely am a criminal. I have nothing to hide, because all I want is to protect myself. I want to survive the fall of the Confederacy, and whatever comes after it.”

“And how do you plan to do that?” Jemison Simms asked, his usual grumpiness tempered by curiosity.

“I enjoy bargaining, and I do it well; indeed, this is something that Mr. Fowler and I have in common—a deep-seated belief that in the midst of any difficulty, there is a compromise to be found that will benefit all parties.”

“So what do you bring to the table, Miss Haymes?” Grant asked, because he knew better than anyone that political bargaining was just another way of saying “gambling.”

“I bring the end of the South’s rebellion. I bring the end of your war—thanks to a weapon the likes of which the world has not yet seen.”

“We’ve already got one of those—a submarine we’ve fished out of New Orleans. Our engineers are having a devil of a time with it, but they say exactly what you’re saying: It could end the war, reestablish the Anaconda plan, choke off their supplies at last.”

A flicker of annoyance shadowed Haymes’s brow. “I’ve heard of this machine. The papers say it’s a modern marvel, and I have no reason to disbelieve them. But if I understand correctly, you can barely pilot the craft at all, and there’s only the one prototype. If you’re very lucky, you’ll ‘choke them off,’ as you put it, within another year or two at best. More likely three or four, if you ask me.”

She wasn’t entirely wrong, and that was the only reason Grant didn’t interrupt.

Since no one else interrupted, either, she went on. “I can bring you something better. Something faster, and more powerful. Something tested, proven, and catastrophic—something that could end the war in a single battle, if the battle is chosen wisely. Or a single target, depending on your personal commitment to the war’s conclusion.

“I will provide you with this weapon, and it will cost you nothing.”

“Oh, it’ll cost us something, ” Simms growled.

“Nothing you value,” she clarified. “I ask for amnesty and immunity with regards to any charges resulting from the Rossville incident in 1878, so that when the Union is ultimately restored, I can rejoin it with a clean slate. No charges, no threats—just the chance to begin again.”

“Without a cloud hanging over you?” Simms asked, almost as rude sober as Grant could be while drinking. “That’s what it was, am I correct? Or that’s how I’ve heard it described.”

Grant didn’t have time to hide his confusion. “A cloud?”

“Of gas. Poisonous gas, used on our soldiers. One witness said it looked like an enormous yellow cloud, heavy enough to settle across the compound and kill everyone who breathed it.”

Without so much as a penitent lowering of her eyes, Katharine Haymes replied, “Not a bad assessment. That is what it looks like to the uninformed observer, yes—a yellow cloud. But whatever it looks like, Fort Chattanooga demanded a field test, and you can’t seriously think that they would allow me to test it on Confederate soldiers. They were the ones who decided to use prisoners, not me. And once the results hit the papers and telegraph wires, they needed someone to blame for the breach in wartime protocol, so they picked me. The weapon was designed with my money, in my factory, with my scientists and developers. My name was attached from start to finish. I was an easy scapegoat.”

The president found it very difficult to believe that this woman had been anyone’s scapegoat; she struck him as the kind of person who used other people, not the reverse. But she was a woman, it was true; and she was a woman with money, and he’d known plenty of men who didn’t like that combination. He mustered a small sliver of doubt, only to feel it wither and crumble.

She continued: “I know all too well what the Union thinks of me now, but none of it was my call. I want to make clear that I’m an ally, and I was an American before I was ever declared a Confederate. That’s why I’m requesting formal amnesty.”

She sighed, and made a visible effort to soften herself. “As you must know, it can be difficult for an unmarried woman to survive in this world, in this war. While my father was alive, I could rely on him—never my mother, who passed away when I was a child. So you see? I’ve been alone, without guidance or protection for all of my life. And I’ll be the first to admit I’ve made mistakes. Plenty of them, if you want the truth. But I refuse to allow this one to haunt me through the reconstruction of my nation. I am a patriot, Mr. President, but I have fought for my own survival long enough. It’s time for me to fight for my country: the United States of America.”

“That’s a pretty way of saying you don’t want to go to prison.” He looked down at his glass. It was empty. He couldn’t remember having taken a single swallow.