Cherie Priest - Fiddlehead

Privately, Grant had similar sentiments about his fellow general; but it wouldn’t do to share them, and he refused to give her the idea that they might hold any feelings in common. It would only give her power, and he’d lost enough of that already.

“I suppose I should thank you for your patience,” he said, not believing for a moment that it was patience that prompted her to give him an audience. It was something else, crueler and more calculating. She wasn’t there to answer questions; she was there to ask them. So it was up to him to ask them first. “Now, let’s see how long I can persuade you to indulge me. Tell me about the weapon. Tell me about the project. I don’t even know its name, if Desmond ever gave it one.”

“Project Maynard,” she graciously supplied.

“Maynard? A rather … uninspiring title. Not very evocative of a plan to wipe out a nation.”

“Of course not. That’s the point of a code name, isn’t it? It’s fitting, though. Named for the first man to die of the gas.”

Grant filed that bit of information away, suspecting it was minor enough to be true. “How does it work?” he pressed, wringing the conversation out, even if it only told him things he already knew, or half-truths to wonder about later. He wouldn’t have her attention for too much longer—he could sense it—so his questions became more direct.

“The gas kills anyone who inhales it. But a significant portion of those who breathe it don’t stop moving. Instead, it takes over their nervous system and makes them into mindless cannibals. They turn on their fellow men, spreading the contagion while seeding terror.”

“I should think so,” murmured Grant. “If I heard that dead men were coming to eat me, I’d be quite terrified.”

She leaned forward, her thorny smile brightening. “Oh, but that’s not even the worst of it. Everyone’s afraid to die, yes, but everyone dies eventually—we all know it, even if we’d rather not think about it. But imagine all the horrors of dying, without the reward of resting. Imagine no longer being in control of your own faculties, at the mercy of a chemical flood, a brainless compulsion that turns you against the people you once knew and loved. That, Mr. President, is truly a fate worse than death. And our studies have shown that, indeed, men fear becoming one of the shambling plague-walkers more than they fear a bullet to the head.”

It was such a precise comparison that Grant knew it must be based in experience, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything, for a moment.

“So this is what it’s come to.”

She reclined, somewhat crossly. Apparently that wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. “Yes, this is what it’s come to. You want the war to end? This is how you end it.”

“It sounds … unethical. Unfair. It doesn’t sound like war; it sounds like cheating.”

“Call it what you like. But for all your talk of preserving and restoring the Union, I’m the only one doing anything about it. You’ve been sending boys to do the jobs of men. It hasn’t worked out. Now it’s time to give a woman a crack at it. And let me assure you: I will do what needs to be done. I’ll do what none of you have been able to do so far, or what you haven’t had the stomach for.”

Grant shook his head, then sat forward to tap one finger on the edge of the desk for emphasis. “Now, Miss Haymes, it is my understanding that this weapon is only effective for a mile or so—that’s one of the only things I know about it for certain—and that it’s too big and heavy to be deployed from a cannon, or even hurtled down a hill. That was my complaint to Desmond, when he brought it up: Your magnificent war-ending weapon needs a team of, what—two dozen men? At least?—to deploy it, and those men will almost certainly die in the delivery. Even if we could find men willing to sacrifice their lives on account of this stunt, it’s highly unlikely that one of these gas bombs would be enough to end the war. I’m not certain it could even turn the tide, except to galvanize the South. Deploying a weapon of such … terror, that was the word you used? Deploying such a thing will frighten them more than it will harm them.”

“And fear does no harm?”

“Sometimes fear is a source of strength. You’re talking about a nation that has been at war for an entire generation—and, like what’s left of the United States, their population has become almost complacent about it. Warfare has become the standard of existence, a miserable constant, but a predictable one, given this long-running stalemate.”

“But it’s not a stalemate,” she argued. “The South is in decline.”

He launched the tapping finger of emphasis once more. “Precisely. We have held on long enough that they’re finally bending under the weight of this conflict. To change the rules now is to risk a resurgence in effort and planning on their part. Your weapon will give them something new to rally against—it will give them back the focus they’ve begun to lose.”

“You’re wrong,” she told him. “And if a few dozen men are required to safely transport the Maynard, then a few dozen men are an acceptable sacrifice. Military men know the danger of assuming the uniform. They’ll likely die with or without any treachery on their government’s behalf.”

Exasperated, he gave up on the finger and threw his hands in the air. “Precious few of the men who serve us now signed up to do so of their own accord!”

“Fine. So it’s murder either way you look at it. The government conscripts them and sends them to war, and they die. The result is the same. I don’t understand why you’re taking such issue with the particulars.”

“I don’t understand how you write them off so easily,” he complained. “And I do not believe that wasting good Union men on a square mile of devastation could possibly turn the tide of the war, except to turn it against us.”

“You’ve made your case. We must agree to disagree.”

A clattering outside in the hall made them both stop talking.

A maid appeared with her cart. She gasped at the glass and swore at the cleanup required … then spied two people chatting—amiably by all appearances—within the breached and broken office. She opened her mouth to say something—likely an admonition, or a reminder that these offices were closed.

Then she recognized Grant, and her expression shifted from irritation to surprise, then to concern that she’d interrupted something she shouldn’t have. “Mr.… Mr. President,” she stammered. “I … I didn’t realize it was you.”

He forced himself to smile at her. “Mr. Grant will work just fine, my dear. And I do apologize about the mess. It’s my fault entirely.”

Katharine rose from her spot behind Desmond Fowler’s desk and smiled as well. Grant hated it when she did that. It was as if every upturn of her lips lowered the temperature in the room by a few degrees. But she was kind to the girl, saying only, “I hope you’ll pardon us. Mr. Fowler sent me to retrieve some important documents, and Mr. Grant was kind enough to see me inside, but he must have closed the door too hard, and … Well, these things happen. I’ll leave an extra tip on the desk for your trouble.”

“Oh … thank you, ma’am. Miss. Ma’am.” The girl finally settled on an address. “That’d be very kind of you. And if you’ll just lock up behind yourselves.… Or … don’t bother with that, I guess. I’ll come back in a little bit.”

Katharine shook her head. “No dear, that won’t be necessary. The room’s all yours. The president and I were just leaving.”

“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.