The Clockwork Century: Fiddlehead Part 1

Fiddlehead.

(The Clockwork Century).

Cherie Priest.

Acknowledgments.

So here goes Fiddlehead, which is not exactly the end of the series-but it brings us to the end of the war, at least, and perhaps it may be the last full-length project in the Clockwork Century. For a while.

I am both a little sad and a little relieved at the prospect, really; I love this series from the bottom of my heart, and I have been terribly flattered, honored, and delighted by the response it has garnered from the genre community. But at the same time, twenty years of civil conflict is a very long time, even in a fictional universe. I have always said, from the very beginning, that this series should be the story of two nations on the cusp of what they could withstand. This was always meant to be the story of how the fictionalized war ends, and why.

And now ... here it is.

But first and foremost, I must detail my undying thanks to everyone at Tor-in particular my editor, Liz Gorinsky, who first talked me into taking a chance on Boneshaker ... and then threw herself behind it with everything she had. None of this would have happened without her. She believed in these books when I believed they were maybe a little too wacky, a little too unconventional; she encouraged and guided me through neuroses, crises of faith, and other a.s.sorted potholes in the process, and I cannot say enough to commend the persistence of her awesomeness.

Next up, the inimitable Jennifer Jackson, my agent extraordinaire-my bottle rocket of fiery justice. From whip cracking to hand-holding, she's 100 percent weapons-grade awesome, and I seriously could not navigate the frothy waters of this industry without her.

And then there are the other usual suspects-so usual, in fact, that I fear I begin to repeat myself in these acknowledgments ... because I pull open the last couple of books to take a peek (and remind myself of all those who've let me lean on them, all this time) ... and I realize that I am h.e.l.la-lucky to have found myself in such outstanding company.

Therefore, broadly and in brief (this time): a million and one thanks to Team Seattle and the Cap Hill Crew, Uncle Warren's Secret Service, all the lovely people (and visitors) at Woodthrush and Robin's Roost, the Nashville Brigade, the Consortium, Team Capybara and all its affiliates, and my spouse.

And of course, all the steampunks, alternate-history geeks, and other a.s.sorted amazing readers who've been kind enough to spend time with me on this bizarre and beautiful journey.

Thanks again, to all of you. Everywhere. Always.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

-WINSTON CHURCHILL.

November 10, 1942.

Prologue.

September 1879.

Sally Louisa Tomkins stood her ground. She jerked her elbow free from the congressman's hand and refused to take even one small step toward the door. Instead, she planted her feet on the speaker's stand and turned on him, pointing a finger between his eyes. "I came here at your behest, Mr. Caperton, but I will not stand for your disrespect."

"Captain Sally," he tried, reaching for her elbow again, but missing, as the tiny dark-haired woman ducked out of his reach.

"Nor your condescension, thank you very much. I came to say my piece. I was invited to say my piece-"

From the second row on the left, Herschel Cobb interjected. "You were invited to discuss your hospital."

"And so I am," she fired back. "If you don't like my report, that's well and good. It's a terrible report, one that I hate to make-but my facts and figures are true! Gentlemen, we have an epidemic on our hands. One that the Robertson Hospital is neither equipped nor prepared to fight."

"Don't sell yourself short, Captain. We have great faith in you," a.s.sured Francis Pugh, in the third row on the right. He smiled indulgently, his muttonchops stretching across the wide expanse of his fleshy pink cheeks. "Your rank is testament to that."

She sneered, and took one measured step away from Boyd Caperton, who opened his arms as if he might ask her to dance. "Apparently my rank is meaningless here." And before the gentle hems and haws of protest could rise loud enough to drown her out, she declared, "For nineteen years I've served the Confederacy. Nineteen years, I've made this work my life-taking no husband, bearing no children, and bankrupting myself in the bargain. I'd do it again in a moment, because it's good work. I've saved thousands of men. Tens of thousands, and still counting. I keep them clean; I feed them and bathe them and st.i.tch their wounds, hold their heads while they bleed and cry. And most relevant to this testimony, I watch them. And I know what I've seen! You can't make this go away by pretending I'm a madwoman!"

Senator Landon Barksdale rose from his seat. "Miss Tompkins, no one is accusing you of being a madwoman."

"Yet you treat me like a liar or a scoundrel. And a fine irony that is, as I stand here before your Congress." She spit out the word, and eyed Mr. Caperton, who hovered about her now as if he wasn't entirely sure how to proceed.

Praying that he wouldn't make another, more aggressive grab, Captain Sally turned her back and addressed the a.s.sembled men. "You sit there behind your little desks in your fine suits and act like you understand this war and these soldiers more fully than I do ... but every last one of you knows better than that. Josiah Snead, I see you creeping toward the door like you're trying to escape me-you, sir. It was your son who picked up three bullets in Henegar; and everyone said he'd die, didn't they? But they got him to me, and where is he now? Home with your new grandson, unless I'm mistaken. And Wellers Chrisman, don't you hide your head. Your brother would've died without the attention he received at the Robertson. Morgan Cluskey, your father wouldn't be here without me. Charlie Hartridge, your nephew. Robert Batson, your sons-both of them!-still walk this earth because of me."

She glowered at them, her gaze darting from face to face.

She knew them all, in some fashion or another. She'd received letters from many of them, begging, accompanied by money, all of them essentially the same: "They say this man is done for, but at the Robertson he may have a chance."

When they prayed to G.o.d, they prayed for her.

And still they treated her like a fondly regarded pet, a reliable watchdog, or a steadfast mule.

While she still had them stunned into uncomfortable silence, she lowered her voice, steadied it, and continued. "Out on the western coast, in the Washington Territory, a substance seeps from the ground-a toxic gas, which kills anyone who breathes it. But the people it kills don't lie down and rot. They walk, they hunt, and they feed. The gas is largely confined to a walled, partially abandoned city called Seattle, but its ill effects have scaled the walls and headed east in the form of a drug-sometimes called sap, sometimes saffron-which has become terribly popular with fighting men on both sides of the Mason-Dixon."

"Conjecture!" cried Morgan Cluskey, who sat back in his chair with an impatient sigh.

His sigh gave Boyd Caperton the nudge he needed. Caperton caught Sally's arm again, and this time, she could not shake him loose.

As he determinedly, carefully ushered her off the speaker's stand, she called out over her shoulder, "Men are dying-more men than I ever saved at the Robertson! And if you think"-she tripped over Caperton's foot, and recovered-"if you think it'll stop with the soldiers, with the poor men from the Southern fields and the Northern factories, you're idiots, every last one of you! The problem grows bigger every day."

"We're aware of this drug, Captain Sally," said Wellers Chrisman. "But it's a Union problem. Who cares if the illiterate Italians blast themselves senseless?"

Frantic now, she grabbed the edge of a table. That bought her another few seconds while her escort tried to figure out how to more forcibly accost a lady without being too ungallant in front of G.o.d and everybody.

"Exactly how many Union soldiers do you think I treat at the Robertson, Mr. Chrisman? It's our boys, too, and we've got fewer of them to lose. Take off your blinders and take action while there's still time. Gentlemen, the world will judge us by the steps we take right now. The whole globe is in danger!"

Her grasp on the table edge failed. She lost a few steps, then caught herself on the door frame. But before Caperton pushed her out with absolute finality, he bowed his head so that his lips came close to her ear, and his breath lightly tousled the stray curl that dangled there. "Captain Sally, you put us in a difficult position."

She turned her head so fast that it cracked his face. "More difficult than mine?"

He let go of her, then, so he could hold his nose, waiting for it to start bleeding. It didn't, so he removed his hand. "This isn't a problem of war. It's a social issue."

"It's a disease!" She tried another angle, pleading now. "A disease spread by soldiers, not so different from cholera or typhoid. That makes it an issue of war, does it not?"

"Not on the word of one nurse."

"One nurse, fine. What about two? What about a dozen? A thousand? How many nurses will it take, Mr. Caperton?"

"You're missing the point. Bring me a doctor, and let him testify. In the meantime, the Confederacy thanks you for your service, but you must return to your duties and let the men run the war."

"Which you've done a bang-up job of thus far."

He didn't answer. He only shepherded her through the last great door and shut her out of the proceedings with heavy, slow calmness.

He leaned against the door then, holding it shut even though she no longer pushed or knocked. All eyes were on him. He wiped at his nose once more, in case it'd begun to bleed after all. But no. He was not injured, just unsettled. He cleared his throat. "Gentlemen. Now that the matter is resolved, let us return to business."

The room sighed its relief with a rustle of papers and the creaks of men shifting in their seats, suddenly more at ease. The fifteenth Congress of the Confederacy was in session still, in its enormous hall with gilt ceiling, leaded and colored gla.s.s windows, and polished wood trim-all designed to advertise and rea.s.sure that Danville was not finished, and certainly not broke.

In the far corner, a young man still in his teens wrote feverishly, recording the minutes in his cleanest Pitman shorthand. He captured every word faithfully, scrawling like a phonography racehorse, noting the last bits of the tense exchange between Captain Sally and Congressman Caperton. He even dutifully included the muttered gripe of Robert Welch, who'd complained, "Shouldn't have let a woman address the floor in the first place, rank or no rank. Let her take her pride in it, but give her no privileges apart from cashing checks."

Above and behind the stenographer, on the second-story balcony that ran around the congressional hall, a board creaked under a finely heeled boot, and a spindly white cobweb was swept aside by the long hem of a cotton skirt.

This woman did not approach the floor, but withdrew from it, leaning back among the shadows that had hidden her thus far. She did not want to talk to the men. She'd come to see Captain Sally, though the captain did not know it. Now that the fireworks were finished, this woman took her leave exactly as she'd arrived: in silence and darkness, with a widow's veil to hide the smile that spread coldly across her face.

But she had not gone unnoticed or unrecognized.

In the back row, seated beside the stenographer, a man collected his belongings, sorting his papers and straightening them before slipping them into a satchel, as if he were any other clerk wrapping up his business.

He was no clerk. Nor was he a congressman, senator, or any other party to the CSA.

As he retreated from the seat he'd borrowed from an absent legislator, he mentally composed the telegram he'd send within the hour.

KATHARINE HAYMES IN DANVILLE STOP PLEASE ADVISE.

One.

Gideon Bardsley was working in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the former Jefferson Hospital, which had been converted into the science center that housed his laboratory, when the first window broke. He heard the brittle sound of gla.s.s being strategically shattered, but he did not turn off the machine. Instead, he glanced at the dial beside his hand. Its tiny needle leaned hard past the yellow warning threshold, and tapped against the red zone.

A second window broke upstairs.

He rejected the reflex to look up at the bas.e.m.e.nt door. Looking at the bas.e.m.e.nt door would not tell him anything he did not already know-nothing he could not discern from the sounds of motion upstairs. Two intruders, at least. Entering from the western side of the building. Not close yet; not even in the correct wing of the disused hospital s.p.a.ce. But coming.

He had time, but not much.

Gideon reached for a large gla.s.s k.n.o.b and turned it carefully, but as quickly as he dared. He checked the dial again. Its needle careened farther to the right, fully in the red, but fairly stable. The lever on the left would activate the printing apparatus upstairs. He pulled it.

He needed an answer, and he needed it now.

The mighty computational engine strained and hummed, its gears and chains struggling against the request. At the rear a fuse fizzled and popped, but did not blow; a circuit objected with a fit of sparks, but held steady; a row of lights flickered, but did not go out.

Now Gideon looked up at the bas.e.m.e.nt door. He stared at it. Hard. And he willed the system to work the way he told it to-please, just this once, if never again.

Three seconds pa.s.sed. He knew because he counted.

Click.

Whir.

A blue-green glow sparked to life on the machine as a thin line of watery light pooled through the crack where the bottom of the door met the top stair.

"Yes," Gideon breathed, but he did not smile. Turning on the apparatus was not the hard part. It was the first hard part.

The printer was far too large to share the bas.e.m.e.nt with its companion device, which occupied two-thirds of the downstairs floor s.p.a.ce. Ordinarily this was a source of great irritation for Gideon, who would've been much happier to have everything in one room, or at least on one level, preferably at a quarter of the present size. But just this once, it was a good thing.

So long as everything worked. And sometimes, it didn't.

The lines, wires, tubes, and lumpily soldered joints that connected the two machines were strung through holes in the ceiling and floor, carrying more information at a greater speed than any such wires were ever expected to bear. They twitched, sparked, and jerked as electricity surged from the master device, depositing Gideon's answer into the printer's circuits, where the information sorted and arranged itself.

And then the printing apparatus began to translate the electric and magnetic impulses from the mechanical brain in the bas.e.m.e.nt onto paper.

The nimble, spindly lead keys clacked slowly at first as rows upon rows of them rallied for the task, pressed themselves against ribbons of ink, and banged down on the paper receipt with sticky gravitas. Then the rhythm rose in volume, the noise soaring into something loud and rumbling, like the gravelly grunt of a diesel engine.

A tremendous roll of paper, bought from the Washington Star-News, unspooled within the printer's belly. The apparatus dutifully pressed its message on the newsprint, and through a slot that emptied into a basket it spit out paper covered with whatever the brain downstairs commanded.

He grabbed his grandfather's coat off the back of a chair he never had time to sit in, and donned it with a fast hitch of his shoulders. He also seized a cast bronze plaque created as a gift by former president Abraham Lincoln-not for sentimental reasons or because the plaque was as valuable as the coat, but because it praised and identified Gideon's greatest creation.

A series of heavy blows battered the door to the laboratory upstairs, but Gideon was finally smiling. He already had a plan-plans were never the problem. Time to execute them was more often the difficulty.

He dashed up the stairs in a hurried tiptoe that m.u.f.fled his steps, opening the bas.e.m.e.nt door with care to keep it from squeaking.

Whoever was trying to get inside through the reinforced main door had discovered his folly, or so the scientist a.s.sumed. That particular portal was lined with lead, and fastened to the wall with hinges made to hold a firehouse door.

Gideon checked the paper basket and said, "Excellent!" Before his eyes, the basket filled and then overflowed with a billowing flutter as the paper kept coming, covered with facts and figures of such outstanding volume that it surprised even the man who'd demanded them, knowing the answer would not be brief. And knowing it would not be good.

Apart from the printer's clatter, he heard only silence.

The intruders had given up on the door, but it wouldn't take them long to come around the side and realize there was another way into the office.

Crash.

Not long at all.

The breaking gla.s.s of his office window was followed by the sc.r.a.pe of an arm, cleaning out the frame and pushing the shards to the floor. After this came the crush of feet on the scattered fragments, and the grinding sound of heels turning the gla.s.s to dust.

Gideon picked up an armful of paper and scanned it. His eyes widened.

A man called out, "This way! I see him!"

Without lifting his attention from the printout, Gideon kicked the office door shut, then twisted the lock. It wouldn't hold forever-not nearly as long as the main entrance. But he needed more time. The printing apparatus wasn't finished. It spewed its contents without pause, flinging more and more and more still into the basket, faster than Gideon could empty it.