Ghosts of Time (23 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It was late morning and the Virginia April sun was blazing when Angus Aiken rode south along Ninth Street, past stately homes and upscale hotels and stores, listening to the sound of Richmond’s various church bells. After crossing the rails of the Richmond, Fredricksburg & Potomac Railroad that ran east to west along the center of Broad Street, he proceeded another block south and found himself with the landscaped slope of Capitol Square rising gently to his left up to Jefferson’s Classical capitol building. Across the street on his right was St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. From within, he could hear a hymn coming to an end—something about “Jesus, lover of my soul.”

The street was largely empty, at this hour on Communion Sunday, and thus it was that Aiken could clearly see a figure in Confederate uniform emerge from a building one block ahead, on the right, and run in his direction. As the man approached, Aiken could see he was clutching what appeared to be one of this era’s telegrams. He dashed past and, to Aiken’s surprise, flung open the door of the church and entered. Aiken caught the sound of a sonorous German-accented voice reading the Communion service. He turned his horse’s head again and prepared to continue southward.

Then he saw four uniformed figures ahead, turning right off Main Street and advancing toward him on foot. The officer leading them was waving to him.

Recognition dawned, and he spurred his horse half a block before flinging himself from the saddle and clasping arms with a broadly smiling Jason Thanou.

“Commander! I don’t mind telling you it’s a relief to see you. I was delayed, and I’m only just getting into Richmond.”

“I know, Angus. I’ve been homing in on your TRD. Now, listen: we’ve pinpointed the secondary nanobot cache that we’re going to have to destroy subsequent to the day after tomorrow. In the process, we had a run-in with a Transhumanist who’d been left on watch. His boss is somewhere here in the city. We’re provisionally assuming he’s Stoneman—”

“I caught sight of him in the course of a skirmish in late February,” Aiken interjected. “Up around Ashby’s Gap, when we whipped the tar out of the Yankees at Mount Carmel Church.”

“All right.” Jason showed no sign of reaction to Aiken’s turn of phrase. “We’ll continue to assume it’s him, and that he’s not alone. And my ability to detect their bionics is, as you know, very short-range. For the next couple of days, we’re going to have to be on the alert every second . . .” Jason’s voice trailed off, and he stared past Aiken, who noticed that Carlos Dabney was staring in the same direction. Following their gaze, he turned and looked back at the church.

A small group of very grim men, some in uniform but most not, were emerging from the open door, through which Aiken thought he could hear the minister’s German accent growing thicker and his voice shakier. The group was led by a tall, gaunt, well-dressed man. They walked quickly south on the cobblestones of Ninth Street.

“Ten-
hut!
” said Jason as they passed. The time travelers came to attention, and Jason saluted, as Jefferson Davis passed without acknowledgment, staring fixedly ahead, his pale eyes seemingly focused on something that was slipping rapidly away and would soon be lost to sight forever.

“You know who he is, don’t you, Commander?” said Dabney.

Jason nodded. “I once glimpsed him through his office door, in the Confederate White House. He’s not headed in that direction now.”

“No. He’ll be going to his working office in the Treasury building just south of Capitol Square, where he’ll convene his cabinet and staff. A courier from the War Department just brought him Lee’s telegram telling him Richmond must be evacuated. He’s never really believed it, you see, so he’s made no real plans for this contingency. The Confederate government will have to pack up and leave in a matter of twelve hours.” Dabney gestured toward St. Paul’s. “Dr. Minnegerode will manage to finish his sermon, but as the churches empty out, the word will rapidly spread and panic will start to set in.”

“Yes, I remember,” said Jason, gazing around with a haunted look. “Although Jason Mk I missed out on these early scenes. Even though he’s already here,” he added wryly.

“But you know what comes later.”

“Yeah,” remarked Mondrago grimly. His Mk I version had also been—and, in fact, currently was—here.

“Right,” Jason agreed. “So we’ve got to find a place to go to earth. Someplace where our earlier selves aren’t.”

“How about that train station where we hung out for a while after leaving Elizabeth Van Lew’s?” suggested Mondrago. “It will be a madhouse, with people trying to get out of town, so we can lose ourselves in the crowd. And the Transhumanists won’t try any funny business there.”

“The Virginia Central Railroad depot,” Jason nodded. “Good idea. Let’s go.”

He led the way toward Sixteenth and Broad, turning left and skirting the southern edge of Capitol Square. Across the street were government office buildings. Stacks of documents were being piled up on the sidewalks, and set afire. On the lawn of Capitol Square itself, the same was being done to wheelbarrows full of Confederate paper currency. The smell of smoke began to fill the air.

“Now it begins,” murmured Dabney.

By the time they reached the depot, there was another aroma in the air, one which only the most insensitive could fail to smell: that of incipient panic.

Jason knew it well, from various times and places. It grew as rumor spread, and wagons arrived under heavy guard, loaded with gold and silver to be loaded aboard railroad cars. To the south, a low rumble of sound could be heard as government officials frantically tried to secure passage on James River Canal packet boats. As the afternoon wore on, lines of frightened depositors at the banks grew longer and less orderly, and the streets grew more and more full of people and animals and every kind of wagon, and the noise from the direction of the river rose as a steadily growing stream of refugees poured along the canal’s towpath in the direction of Lynchburg. But so far there was nothing shrill about any of it. Most people stumbled about in a state of unreality, determined to continue to make the motions of normalcy.

Then, just after 4:00, criers rode through the streets with the City Council’s official evacuation announcement. Like a cloudburst suddenly dissipating a stifling miasma, full-blooded panic erupted.

“The council and Mayor Mayo—that really is his name—authorized a citizens’ committee to meet with the Union commanders and arrange the city’s surrender,” Dabney explained to Jason, raising his voice to be heard over the uproar from the increasingly choked streets: rumbling wagon wheels, shouting people and the pathetic shrieks of whipped animals. “They also passed a number of resolutions intended to maintain order. One was to destroy all liquor supplies, smashing the barrels and pouring the whiskey into the gutters. Another was to set fire to the tobacco warehouses. Both of those are going to turn out to be terrible mistakes.”

Jason glanced at Aiken. The young Service man’s face wore an unmistakable look of sadness as he watched the Confederacy’s death throes. Jason placed a hand on his shoulder. “Remember, Angus, we can’t take sides.”

Aiken smiled. “Is it that obvious, sir?” Then he spoke forthrightly, almost defiantly. “I can’t help feeling that something of value is being lost. I lived and fought with Mosby’s men for months. They had a certain naïve dash, an innocent gallantry. The world won’t see their like again.”

“No, it won’t,” Jason admitted. Then he noticed a man who had “slave dealer” written all over him enter the depot, leading a coffle of chained blacks. He argued furiously with a guard who barred the way to one of the trains reserved for government use. The guard shook his head and hefted his bayonetted rifle meaningfully. The slave dealer threw up his hands in disgust and, with a resigned expression, unlocked his human property and walked away.

“No, it won’t,” Jason repeated. Then he indicated the newly released slaves, standing bewildered. “But it also won’t see
their
like again.”

“I know,” said Aiken in a voice almost too small to be heard, lowering his head. After a moment he looked up, and his young eyes sought Jason’s. “Sir, aren’t things ever unambiguous?”

“No. You’ll learn that.”
But you’ll never learn to like it
, Jason decided not to add.

“One exception to that,” Mondrago demurred. “The Transhumanists are unambiguously evil.”

“Amen,” intoned a deep voice behind them.

They all whirled to face Gracchus. The black man was dressed in his usual rough, nondescript laborer’s clothes, and stood inconspicuously in the depot’s turmoil. “Remember I told you I intended to be here around on this day, Commander.”

“So you did. I didn’t understand why at the time. Still don’t, in fact.”

“Simple. I knew this city is going to fall tonight. And I know Mr. Lincoln is coming day after tomorrow. I want to be here for that.”

“You know—?” Jason swung around and stared at Aiken.

“Yes, Commander, I told him,” said Aiken miserably.

“You
what?!”

Aiken wilted under Jason’s glare. “I thought I owed it to him, sir. And I didn’t reveal anything else.”

Jason opened his mouth to say more. But then he closed it again and shook his head. “Well, what’s done is done. We won’t bother Rutherford with things he doesn’t need to know. And,” he added, turning to Gracchus, “I’m glad you’re here. For one thing, I can tell you that I kept my promise.” He looked around anxiously, but under the circumstances no one seemed to be taking any notice of their conversation, which was practically inaudible above the uproar anyway. “I went back to Jamaica on the date your letter required.”

“Ah.” Gracchus’s face was unreadable.

“And I saw your founder Zenobia die.” Jason said it bluntly, and watched Gracchus’s face carefully. But those dark features now went entirely—and strangely—expressionless.

“Yes. I knew she was going to die around that time,” the black man said in a carefully neutral voice.

“And so,” Jason continued, “I still don’t know why your letter-writer wanted me there at that time, since I accomplished nothing.”
Except the death of a Teloi, which is somewhat more than “nothing,”
Jason mentally amended. But he held his peace, for Gracchus wouldn’t have understood, and it had no apparent relevance to the enigmatic letter. “However, that’s water over the dam. Here I am now, and here’s where we stand.” He described their finding of the second nanobot cache and their encounter with the Transhumanist on Belle Isle. “So,” he concluded, “we worked our way across the river to the city to rendezvous with Angus—and, we hoped, you as well. But now we need to get back across to the south shore of the river before dawn tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“I may as well tell you that that’s when the retreating Confederates are going to burn the Mayo Bridge—the last one left—as soon as the last of their troops are across it. We’ve got to be with them.”

“Again, why?”

“Because, for reasons you don’t need to understand, we can’t destroy the cache before the fifth. With all the bridges gone, we wouldn’t be able to get to Belle Isle from this side of the river without a boat—and we can’t count on being able to get one, with the city under military occupation.”

“Why not go across the river now?”

“I know for a certainty that there are Transhumanists here in Richmond now, most likely including Stoneman. If it can possibly be done, I want to find them and deal with them before they can try and interfere with us on the fifth.”

“I understand,” said Gracchus. “And I think I might just have an idea of where they are. But let’s wait here a little longer, until things get to the point where nobody will notice us on the streets.”

“That won’t be much longer,” said Dabney.

It was a little past five when Jefferson Davis arrived with his staff. The chaos was such that he was barely noticed. Dabney explained that his wife and children had already left on a train for Charlotte, North Carolina. The plan was for him and his cabinet to depart for Danville, Virginia at 8:30, one railroad car per department, but in fact he didn’t get away with his peripatetic government until eleven, beginning a forlorn flight south.

Midnight came, and Gracchus led them out of the depot, unnoticed, amid the mounting exodus. Jason became aware that they were headed southeast, toward the lower-class housing areas near the river and Shockoe Creek.

Dabney realized it too. “Wait! We don’t want to go in this direction.”

“That’s right.” Jason, who had never exactly been noted as a mindless rules-robot, nevertheless swallowed hard before he could speak. “Later tonight, large areas between the river and Capitol Square are going to burn to the ground.”

Gracchus’s eyes grew wide. “Then we’ve got to go there and get my people out! Come on.” He pressed ahead, and the others followed after only the slightest hesitation.

As they entered the Exchange Alley area south of Main Street, they were startled by a sound of shattering glass. Moments later, a trio of raggedly dressed men emerged from a broken store window, loaded with merchandise, and hurried shiftily on.

“The looting has started,” Dabney told Jason. “The inmates have broken out of the unguarded jails, and the lowlifes are starting to come up from the riverside tenements. And there’s nothing to keep order except a token force of Confederate troops left behind to burn the Mayo Bridge as soon as the last of Lee’s rear guard is across it. The respectable people who haven’t fled are barricaded inside their houses. From now on, the mob rules the night.”

They continued south, and the signs of pillaging grew worse and worse. Ahead, they heard a roar of shouting voices. Then they emerged into the intersection of Fourteenth and Cary Streets, where the commissary depot was located, and entered a scene from hell.

A hungry mob had descended on the commissariat, and was looting those stores of food which had not been transported. Nearby, the militia had followed the City Council’s well-intentioned order and smashed the heads of three hundred barrels of whiskey, pouring thousands of gallons into the streets. Now the looters, on all fours like animals, were scooping and lapping it up from the gutters, heedless of how much foul, muddy water went with it. And the more they swilled, the more the frenzy grew. The looters were no longer furtive. They smashed their way into any abandoned building, fighting with each other over their plunder.