Fugitives of Time: Sequel to Emperors of Time (10 page)

The
Capitol

The next day, Tim took a deep breath of anticipation before
he entered the Capitol.  He’d already gotten a good view of the
construction on the building.  The Capitol hadn’t grown to its 21st
century size, though when this current project was completed, seventeen years
after its approval in 1850, it would be much closer.  The Capitol didn’t
even have its iconic dome yet.  There was a dome, but it was green-stained
copper, and much shorter than the dome Tim had seen on his 21st century visit
to the nation’s capital.

He went into the building and turned into the House Chamber.

As he entered the room, Tim got a good idea why they needed
extra construction.  In spite of the air of spaciousness provided by the
high-vaulted ceilings, the chairs and desks were crammed into the
chamber.  There were hundreds of desks, arranged in semicircles, and
precious little other space in the room.  Tim knew that the room the House
was currently meeting in was what would one day be the National Statuary room,
after the new chamber opened in 1857.

Luckily, one of the bits of information that Hopkins had
been able to provide Tim about Sage was where he was supposed to sit in
meetings of Congress.  He was looking for the seventh seat from the
Speaker’s left in the third row.  He started counting to try to find the
seat before he started going that way.  Then, he realized that that was
something the real Russell Sage wouldn’t have to do.  He looked around
quickly to see if anyone had noticed him and was mostly convinced that no one
had.  Unfortunately, the nerves that hadn’t been much of a problem for Tim
last night when he was talking to Julie were with him in full force now.

Tim decided it might be more natural to get to his row
first, then count the seats as he was moving past them.  This method
turned out not to be without its own complications, as getting to his seat in
the crowded room required almost a dozen excuse-me’s, three to one old man who
appeared to be nearly deaf.  It took the intervention of another,
comparatively younger, gentleman to get the older man to move the six inches
required to let Tim pass.

When he finally got to his seat, Tim was already feeling
exhausted.  He sunk down and placed both elbows on his desk, cradling his
head in his hands.

“Good morning, there, Russell,” said a man who took the seat
beside him. 

Tim took one hand away from his head so that he could gaze
at the man who had called his new name.  Hopkins had shown Tim pictures of
about a dozen of the most important Representatives, and Tim had known a couple
of the names already.  This man was not one Tim recognized.  However,
he had studied the names Hopkins gave him, so he probably had the name tucked
away somewhere.  Whoever the man was, he was nearly bald with a crown of
white hair. 

“Yes, good morning,” said Tim, treading carefully and hoping
he would sound standoffish enough that whoever this was wouldn’t talk to him
anymore.  The goal was for him to observe, so he didn’t want to talk to
any more people than he had to.

The stranger looked at Tim sympathetically.  “Not quite
yourself today, are you, Sage?”

Tim saw no point in denying this, so he said, “I suppose
not.”

The man gave Tim a sympathetic smile and said, “A bit
hungover, I daresay?”

Tim was about to deny this immediately, but he held himself
back.  It would perhaps account for why he was not quite normal today. 
So Tim gave a nod and an affirmatory grumble, hoping he was convincing. 
Tim had never drank alcohol before, so he had no firsthand knowledge of what it
would be like to be hungover, but he had seen it an awful lot on
television.  He hoped he had enough to work with.

“But that means you were drinking last night, on a
Sunday.  Drinking on the Lord’s Day.  By God, if I didn’t know any
better, I’d say you were a Democrat!” chuckled the stranger.

Tim gave the sort of weak smile that he assumed someone in
his pretended position would.  The friendly stranger seemed to buy the
act, as he continued chuckling happily.

“Well, I’m surprised at you, lad.  Never seen you come
to a session in such a state, but I guess you must have had your reasons,” he
said.  Then he leaned in and whispered conspiratorially.  “And
perhaps I might venture a guess as to what they were.  Was Sally in your
company last night?”

Tim almost asked who on Earth Sally was, when a general
hushed murmur came over the hall.  Everyone was going to their seats, and
apparently the jovial stranger did not sit next to Sage.  He excused
himself with a rushed “goodbye” and situated himself in a seat on the same side
as Tim, but in the first row.

Tim, since he was already seated, had the luxury of looking
around as everyone was rushing to their seats.  It was time for the
session to begin, and people soon began to process down the aisle of the room,
starting with a man holding a long staff with an eagle on the top.  Tim
searched through the inner-recesses of his mind, where he kept trivia he’d
learned about American History from his Civics class.  He remembered this
ceremonial staff was called the mace. 

Behind the mace came the Speaker of the House, and he was
one of the faces that Tim had been able to memorize from the pictures of
important Representatives that Hopkins had shown him.

His name was Linn Boyd.  He was a Democrat from
Kentucky.  The notes that Hopkins had given him had revealed that Boyd, as
the Speaker, did not vote on the law the first time it was passed. 

The Speaker of the House is only required to vote on ties
and usually only votes more often when it would be politically helpful. 
Tim could understand why, when the law split both parties and passed by 13
votes, it didn’t qualify. 

Still, he was a Democrat from Kentucky, so it was not a
great leap to assume that he would have been in favor of the law, since almost
all Southern Democrats wanted to expand slavery, partially just to get more
congressmen sympathetic to their point of view elected to these very
chambers.  Therefore, if he saw anything that would suggest that he was
wavering from these principles, Boyd would quickly shoot to the top of Tim’s
list of people who might be under the Emperors’ sway.

It turned out that the mace-led procession to the Speaker’s
chair was one of many pieces of pomp and circumstance before the day’s debate
could start.  One of the bits of tradition was pledging the flag, which
was good, because Tim actually got to stand up and do something at that point. 
Otherwise, all the traditions were starting to lose Tim’s interest. 

Although he wasn’t hungover like the chuckling stranger had
assumed, he’d had a bit of trouble sleeping the night before, both because of
nerves and because of the hours he had lost in the jump back to 1854. 
Besides, it seemed the summer had come early to DC this year, the room wasn’t
particularly well-ventilated, and the invention of air-conditioning was still a
long way off.  With one thing and another, he was having a bit of a hard
time even staying awake through all the parts of the day’s introduction. 

Finally, someone introduced the proposal that debate should
begin in the full House on House Resolution 236, To Organize the Territories of
Kansas and Nebraska.

There was an anxious mumble at this proposition throughout
the chamber, and although the motion quickly passed, Tim could tell not
everyone was happy about having this discussion.

Tim, meanwhile, listened as best he could to the murmurings
and mutterings of those seated around him, knowing that this, just as much as
the speeches, would tell him what he wanted to know about what people were
thinking.  It would also be a good way to find out the names of people who
he didn’t recognize from the pictures.  He had discovered pretty quickly
that, just like in Tim’s own day, the representatives were more likely to
address each other formally in speeches as, “The Gentleman from Kentucky,” and
so on, than they were to actually use their colleagues’ names.

One of the best ways to catch someone’s name, Tim found, was
to hear what the page called him when he came to assist him.  Every once
in a while, a congressman would clap, and the page would come over to find what
sort of assistance he needed (it was mostly stuff like asking for quills,
paper, or a copy of a document).  But the page would, luckily for Tim,
call the Representative by his last name.

Whigs, like Republicans in modern times, sat to the
speaker’s left, with Democrats to the right, and throughout the morning Tim
heard more and more evidence confirming that he was in the heart of Whig
territory, although that didn’t mean that everyone around him was against the
Kansas-Nebraska Act. 

For instance, the man to Tim’s right, who a page addressed
at one point as Mr. Lindley, was a Whig from Missouri, who was in favor of the
bill.  By the end of the day, Tim knew the names of the eight people
sitting nearest to him, and a handful of other people as well.  He knew
that the name of the white-haired man who thought he had been hungover this
morning was James Abercrombie, a Whig from Alabama.

However, every time someone spoke whose eventual vote Tim
knew, they ended up saying exactly the things that they would be expected to
say in his own timeline.  No one was showing evidence that the Emperors
were manipulating them yet.  However the final vote was almost two weeks
away, May 22 in the original timeline.  Whether or not anyone was being
manipulated by forces from the future to vote differently, certainly no one was
tipping their hand.

Still, Tim walked away from the chamber feeling like he at
least knew enough now that he could walk in tomorrow slightly more confident,
greet those around him, and not have to pretend that he was hungover for a
second day in a row.  This was just as well.  People might start to
talk.

He also walked away feeling a little giddy.

Tim had never understood the way girls his age reacted to
going to a concert.  The next day in school the girls were always
inexplicably blushing in pride and embarrassment saying things like, “Oh my
gosh, can you believe we actually saw him?” or “Did you see he reached down
from the stage and actually
touched my hand
?”  What Tim had never
understood was why actually
seeing
or
touching
the person should
make so much of a difference.  If you liked their music, what did it
matter if you were there listening to it in person, or on the cd-player in your
car?  Even if the issue was that you liked how they looked, why not just
stare at a poster for a few hours?  It would certainly be cheaper.

But now, Tim felt that in a weird way, he really understood
those girls a lot better now.  One of the Representatives in the row in
front of him that day was Thomas A Hendricks, who was now a Representative from
Indiana, would be the Vice President for the first 8 months of President
Cleveland’s term in 1885.  William M. Tweed was there from New York. 
He wasn’t destined to make much of a splash during this, his single term in the
House of Representatives. However, Tim knew that after he got back to New York,
he was going to gain such personal power in New York City and New York State
that he would be known as “Boss Tweed” in history textbooks throughout the ages
that would use him as an example of political machines gone awry.  He
would later be arrested on charges of corruption and die in prison. 
Alexander Stephens, a Whig from Georgia, would be the one and only ever Vice
President of the Confederate States of America.

Now Tim understood that maybe none of these were things to
be proud of.  Corruption and under-the-table politicking had earned Tweed
a reputation of infamy lasting a century and a half.  As for the other
two, John Nance, who was Vice President for Franklin D Roosevelt from
1933-1941, once famously explained that the Vice Presidency “wasn’t worth a
bucket of warm piss.”  And if that was true of the Vice Presidency of the
United States, Tim supposed that being VP of the Confederacy was worth, at
best, half of that bucket.  Still, Tim had read about these people in
history textbooks and had once read a biography of Boss Tweed.  He
supposed that if he got the chance over the next few days to shake the hand of
any one of these men, he would take it, and he would probably be oddly proud to
have touched their hand.  He might even blush a bit.

A
Letter From Rose

That night, after a stroll in the cool night air through
downtown Washington DC, Tim made it once again to the kitchen of Cooper’s
boarding house.  This time Julie made it there first and was sitting at
the table when Billy let him in. 

“Rose isn’t coming tonight.  She wanted me to let you
know, Tim, that she’s staying in intentionally and you don’t need to worry
about her,” Julie stated.  “Although she thinks you’re sweet.”

“Yo!” Billy interjected.  “I was worried, too!”

“I’ll be sure to tell her,” Julie assured him.  “But
you have
got
to be a little bit better at keeping to 19th century
vernacular.”

“I’ve been doing well during the day,” Billy countered
defensively.

“Back to the business at hand, though,” prompted Tim, “you
said you were able to talk to Rose today?”

“Yes, I was,” Julie confirmed proudly.  “In fact, I
have a letter from her.”

This was better than Tim had hoped.  If she wasn’t able
to be there in person, leave it to Rose to represent herself in some other
way.  Maybe she had made more progress than Tim had today and could tell
them about it now.

“Well, what does it say?” Billy
asked anxiously.

“Here,” Julie said, taking an envelope from the pocket of
her jacket.  “I had probably better let you two read it yourselves…  She
didn’t bother to limit herself to anything approaching 19th century vernacular,
so I don’t really want to read it to you out loud.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Tim said.

Since Julie had already read the letter, Billy and Tim put
the letter down on the table between them.  Julie entertained herself by
examining some of the Cooper’s boarding house’s best china and silverware.

The first thing that struck Tim as he started reading the
letter was that even though the girl who handed this letter to Julie would have
looked like Joanna Curtis, the handwriting looked distinctly like Rose’s. 
Tim started to read.

Dear Friends,

Oh screw it, I’ve been having to talk like a 19th century
school-teacher for the past day, and I don’t like it one bit, so you guys are
getting unfiltered Rose.  Don’t worry, it’s not fatal.  At least in
small doses.

Anyway, sorry I couldn’t make it out last night. 
Have I told you that I have three younger siblings?  I’ve got one younger
sister, who’s a baby named Elizabeth, and two brothers.  One is nine,
named Jonathan, and one is six, named Randall.  Well, lucky me, last
night, around 8:30, our little Jonathan thought it would be appropriate to tell
Randall a bedtime story.  A freaking
ghost-story
, as it turns
out. 

Well, as I found out yesterday, dealing with something
like that falls squarely into the job-description of “big-sister,” so at 8:50,
just as I’m scouting the feasibility of climbing out of my 2nd story bedroom
window, little Randall knocks on my door and insists that he has to sleep in my
bed.  So…
that
happened.  Of course, this morning, I read good
old Jonathan the riot act, but the damage was done.  I mean, I couldn’t
very well leave with Randall snuggled up to me, so I decided to spend the night
here. 

And, as the day has gone on (I’m writing this at noon on
Monday, hoping one of you guys will be here soon to check on me), I’ve noticed
that those two kids can’t really get along without me.  I’m starting to
think I’m not going to be able to come to ten o’ clock meetings of the 19th
century Impostors’ Society.

So, since I’m not going to be able to see you guys
tonight, I figure I ought to update you on my progress.  So far, I’ve seen
the venerable Mr. Curtis for a total of, say, an hour.  Although
forty-five minutes of that was at dinner last night.

I’ll tell you what:  Let no one say that family
dinner is not alive and well at the Curtis house.  I was done with my meal
after twenty minutes and sat there in silence for the next twenty-five
listening to the grown-ups talk and watching Randall play with his food. 
I probably would have stayed there for another half hour, except that when
Jonathan asked to be excused, I figured out that was something that you were
actually allowed to
do.
I’m still not quite clear on why it took
forty-five minutes for someone to do it.  Maybe it’s only allowed in
emergencies.  Like, if you really need to pee, or it’s the only way to
prevent yourself from dying of boredom.  But that’s where I was at…

Still, I found out at least one bit of useful information
at dinner, from what Curtis said.  Coincidentally, three congressmen are
coming over tomorrow.  Now, Benjamin Curtis, as I learned from my pre-trip
reading, was appointed Chief Justice by Millard Fillmore, a Whig, so I assume
that these guys are Whigs, but I don’t know much else about them.  I mean,
I know that the guy isn’t supposed to be involved in partisan politics now that
he’s on the Supreme Court, but let’s be real about this.  And besides, if
he’s going to have congressmen over for an evening visit, you’d think they’d at
least be guys he gets along with, i.e. Whigs.  I assume.

Anyway, their names are Nathan Stratton, Charles Skelton,
and Samuel Lilly.  If you know anything about them, I’d like to know, so I
know what to expect when I spy on them.  Because I am
definitely
going
to have to spy on them.  I just gotta figure out how. 

Sorry if this letter got a little rambly, I have a lot of
time on my hands. 
Apparently,
I’m homeschooled.  Now, I know
that being home-schooled in our time can be very rigorous, but from what I’m
seeing, in 1854, what it means is that my mother has given me a stack of books
to read and I’m supposed to be working through them.  But I’m definitely
not doing
that
right now, hence the long letter.

Missing you guys and a house without two tiny
boy-children and one crying baby-girl,

-Rose

“Do you know who those congressmen are?” Billy asked, when
he was done reading.

“No, I don’t, not off the top of my head,” Tim admitted,
reluctantly.

“Ah, good.  Gives me a chance to be useful,” Billy
said, hopping quickly out of his chair.  “I’ll be right back with the
summary Hopkins gave us.  I think it’ll at least tell us where they’re
from and how they voted.”

“How was your day?” Tim asked Julie as Billy ran up the
stairs to the second floor.

“Ah, pretty boring.  Aside from talking to Rose, I
basically read Widow Macphearson’s diary all day long.  She gossips a lot
about the love-life of various congressmen and senators.  Who’s having an
affair with whom, whether it’s a secret, and who knows that secret if it
is.  It reads like my grandmother’s soap operas, which I’ve always found
to be pointlessly tedious.”

“That’s annoying.  Although information like that might
be worth a lot to some people in this town.  Which is maybe why she was
keeping track of it in the first place,” Tim pointed out.

“On the bright side, I have some leads I’m thinking of
chasing.  She knew a couple of congressmen who I could talk to starting
tomorrow and see what happens.  Actually, there’s one Representative who
lives next door to me.  Felix Zollicoffer.  I remember, because he
has about the best last name ever.”

“Oh, wait, yes, he does!” Tim said.  “I remember that
name…  Not just from the notes Hopkins gave us…  Although I remember
he was one of the Southern Whigs who voted
for
the bill, so he went
against his party.  But, anyway… fun fact:  He was a general in the
Civil War, and he’s…  wait, it’s something like…  Yeah, he was the
first Confederate General to die in the Western Theater in the Civil War.”

Julie frowned slightly at this, and again, the expression
looked just like Julie.  Tim had a strangely strong desire to kiss those
lips. Which was confusing, because it looked like they belonged to the Widow
MacPhearson.

“How do you
know
all these things?” Julie asked, a mixture
of admiration and humor in her voice.

Tim shrugged.  “I don’t know, it was in a book I read
once.”

Billy loped back down the stairs in a way that Tim doubted
Cooper had ever done himself, carrying Hopkins’ notebook.  “What are you
two talking about?”

“Apparently, I’m planning a social call on the first
Confederate General to die in the Western part of the Civil War.  Or
something like that,” Julie answered.

“The…  what?” Billy asked.

“Nevermind.  He’s a member of Congress who lives next
door to me.  Tim just told me that he voted for the bill in the original
timeline, so now I know what to watch for.”

“Are you actually going to
ask
him how he’s going to
vote?” Billy asked.

“I might...  Why?” asked Julie.

“Only...” Billy said cautiously.  “I don’t mean
anything personal by this, but remember that we’re living in a time when women
can’t even vote.  Wouldn’t it look weird that you’re asking a congressman
how he’s going to vote in a matter of high political importance?”

“Well… you’d think so,” Julie said, with an air of amusement
in her voice.  “But after reading this woman’s diaries, Macphearson
doesn’t seem like she was exactly one to follow typical gender roles.”

“Whatever you think, then,” Billy said.  “At least, I’m
on board.  Should we vote on it?”

“Well, there’s only three of us here,” Tim said.  “We
already know that you’re okay with it, and I imagine Julie is, too, since she’s
the one who just proposed the plan.”

“Well, there’s Rose,” Julie said.  Then she smiled,
“But of course she’s
always
in favor of my reckless plans, ever since we
were growing up together.  So, she’s in.”

“Wait, how is it reckless?” Tim asked cautiously.

“It’s not, really.  I’ll be careful.  But I think
I will ask him how he’s leaning, then report back.” 

“And you can go visit Rose again, tomorrow?” asked Billy.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t leave her alone without normal-person
contact for more than a day.  Although it doesn’t sound like she’s going
to have any more information for us, given that her father’s not entertaining
visitors until tomorrow evening,” Julie said.

“Right, but we might as well check in,” Tim opined.

“And we need to tell her about the people coming to see
her,” said Billy holding up the book.  He leafed quickly through it,
apparently knowing the page he was looking for.  “Okay… here’s
Stratton.  He’s a…  Democrat from New Jersey.  Okay, and so are
the other two, Skellton and Lilly.  Although this is kind of weird. 
It looks like in the original timeline, Skellton and Stratton voted against the
bill and Lilly voted for it.”

“That is strange,” Tim agreed.  “But at least it’ll
give us something to watch for when Rose tells us about it.  It’s also
kind of weird that they’re Democrats and not Whigs like the Justice
himself.  But they could be talking about something completely
different.  For all we know, they could be having a debate about which is
the better state, New Jersey or New York.”

“Right.  Best to wait to see what Rose says about it
before jumping to any conclusions” Julie agreed.  “Did either of the two
of you find out anything worth sharing?”

“I haven’t really been able to do anything more than putting
names to faces,” Tim said, a little embarrassed.

“That’s all right, you’re just the wealth of information,
anyway, knowing which guys are going to become Confederate Generals and all
that,” Julie pointed out.

“I have three boarders who are in the House,” said
Billy.  “Moses MacDonald, Samuel Mayall, and Thomas Fuller.  All
three of them are Democrats from Maine, and I found out from Hopkins’ notes
that MacDonald votes for the law and the other two vote against, so they’ll be
good folks to watch.”

Tim nodded, as did Julie.  After that, nobody really
had anything substantive to add.  After they chatted for a bit, Tim walked
Julie home, not minding at all that it took him so far out of his way.