Cherie Priest: Fiddlehead

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. ”

Maria Boyd, sometimes called Belle and sometimes Isabella, stamped her feet and wished she was sitting closer to the big iron furnace in the corner of the room. She drew her shawl around her shoulders and eyed the empty desk beside the big iron hearth, where Andrew Kelly usually sat. He was away on assignment, and wouldn’t be back for a week.

One long, cold week.

“To hell with it,” she muttered. After all, no one was present to object: Rose Anderson was out of the office chasing down a murderer in Minnesota; Fred Williams was eyeballs deep in legal paperwork following that affair in New York last Tuesday; and Timothy Hall had been sent down to the jailhouse to bail out Percy Jones—who had gone and done it again, and might get fired this time, depending on the boss’s mood.

Only James Elders was left on the main floor of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency office. And yes, he’d probably notice if she moved seats, because he noticed every time she moved anything, and was not precisely subtle about it.