Clockwork Souls (19 page)

Tad dropped a magnifying lens over his night vision goggles.
The ectomorphic gel in the frames cast a greenish glow to the cautious dance of
human figures around the flare and hiss of a massive steam engine below him.
Heat from the living bodies glowed brighter than the river and the inert barge.
The firebox powering the boiler showed bright enough to block details without
even extreme magnification.

“Lower, Sergeant Nichols. Take the balloon one hundred feet
lower,” he ordered.

“Aye, sir. But that’s as low as we dare go. That’s barely
beyond rifle range.” Nichols adjusted the flaps on the black painted balloon
envelope. They drifted lower and further east on the wind, prisoners of the
wind’s whims, on this chill night in early April.

“That’s a mighty big firebox,” Nichols said, leaning over
the balloon’s basket. “What they need that much steam for?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.” Tad added another lens
over his goggles.

Details of men hauling ammunition toward the inferno on the
Mississippi River’s surface jumped forward while darkness pressed against his
peripheral vision. He hated the sense of viewing the world through a tunnel.
That was the price of finding out what devilish plot the Rebs concocted aboard
that bloody big barge.

One hundred yards square if it was an inch. High gunnels
kept the rain-swollen current from splashing their machinery. He’d been
watching the barge’s construction and the machine atop it for months, sometimes
from the hilltops around Vicksburg, as often as he could from the balloon’s
heights. He liked this new design that allowed aerolons to spread out and guide
them in wide tacks against the wind to return to their original position.

Throughout the long winter, General Grant had launched seven
separate attacks upon the fortified cliffs of Vicksburg and been repulsed each
time. All the while, the enemy had constructed something in secret behind
protective tarpaulin walls. Only the constant glow of a coal fire and the hiss
of a steam engine leaked through. Tad had seen pipes taken on board to fill a
boiler directly from the river. Shortly thereafter, on a calm day perfect for
ballooning, he’d heard the hiss of steam.

Last night the tents came down, revealing a swivel turret
reminiscent of the ironclad
Monitor
and
a cannon barrel nearly as long as the barge was square. Tonight the Rebs
hoisted a dozen twenty-four-inch shells aboard the barge from smaller, ironclad
gunships. A single shell strained the cargo net. Three men steadied each shell
and carried it to the growing stack at the turret’s base.

The craft was still moored on the river’s eastern bank. When
deployed, it would block the entire channel.

And if the cannon hit where it was aimed, it would kill
everything within a quarter mile and tear up the land to bedrock. Who could
conceive of such a devilish weapon?

Tad removed his goggles and handed them to his Sergeant.
Nichols strapped the instrument on his head and peered at the scene below. “Holy
Christ! Look at the size of that thing.”

“I did,” Tad replied. He drew a small notebook and pencil
stub from his kit, sketching the weapon’s shape and proportions. He’d grown
used to the accuracy of his drawings. Grant had promised him another promotion
if he sketched the right details to destroy the thing. On a fresh page, he
began the calculations. “At a thirty-seven-degree elevation with a pound of
gunpowder per shell, the gun can fire a shell three miles. At least.” Sweat
broke out on his back and brow.

He upped his damage estimate to a square mile. The crater
alone would be almost half that.

“Can’t aim anything that big,” Nichols grunted. “Can’t shoot
at anything closer than half a mile. That’s why they’ve got all them little
boats flitting around it, protection from attack closer in.”

“And they are all blocking the river so Admiral Porter can’t
get his flotilla down to the crossing. Without that flotilla Grant can’t cross
the river and attack Vicksburg from the vulnerable south.”

Tad took back his goggles to survey the monster again. He
dropped a third lens over the previous two, further decreasing his peripheral
in favor of picking out faces and uniforms. The glow from the firebox gave him
plenty of light, overriding the ectomorphic gel. One man stood out from the
others by his very stillness. An officer, by the cut of his gray uniform, bent
over an opening in the turret. He straightened and turned to issue an order to
the enlisted man beside him. The distance and engine noise stole his words. Tad
had no device to magnify sounds as the goggles did sight.

For five long heartbeats, he gasped for breath, unable to
believe the sight before him. The officer who controlled the delicate mechanism
inside the gun was none other than Tad’s brother Nate. Eleven months younger
than Tad and a near-mirror image.

Corporal Nathanial Hyatt-Forsythe had been reported missing
after the battle of Shiloh. The letter of condolence to Tad’s mother in
Richmond said they thought Nate had been blown to bits by a Union mortar. There
wasn’t enough of a body left to identify. Or bury.

So how did his dismembered brother, the boy who couldn’t sit
still for more than five seconds, except when drawing the exact details of a
bird in flight or a flower facing the sun, hadn’t learned to read until he was
nearly twelve, the young man who had never had an original thought but took
orders well, doggedly completing each task before he could do anything else,
become this officer in charge of an experimental weapon of mass destruction?

The physics of the thing would task him to the point of
violent rage and frustration.

“Take us up, Nichols. I’ve got to report to Colonel Jeremiah
Inglis.”

Jules de Chingé heard the faint buzz of conversation above
him. Crisp words without a southern lilt and drawl. He stepped over the rails
that would guide and limit the recoil of his weapon and into the shadows
outside the circle of heat and light blasting from the firebox. With hands
cupped around his mechanical eyes, he searched for the source.

A three-second flare from a burner revealed the outline of a
black observation balloon and two figures inside the basket.

“Corporal, your rifle, if you please.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel Hyatt-Forsythe.”

De Chingé cringed a little at the new name the Confederate
Army had given him along with a new body. The General Staff did not want the
world to know who truly designed and activated the weapon. He liked his old
name. But he reveled in the strength, accuracy, and enhanced senses in this
automatic body that now housed his mind.

Such a relief to be free from the need to eat and sleep,
or to cough
. An immortal body that would
allow him to design and build forever.

He held out his hand and felt the reassuring slap of metal.
Then he brought the gun to bear, pleased that he knew his body would compensate
for any imperfection in his training. One blink and the men in the balloon
jumped into sharper focus. Two blinks and his mechanical eyes found details a
normal eye could not discern. He saw sergeant’s chevrons on a sleeve and
captain’s bars on a collar.

His hearing sensors closed down a fraction of a second
before he pulled the trigger. A muffled explosion and a miniature cloud of
acrid smoke. The rifle recoiled but he barely felt the slam of a wooden butt
into his shoulder. He tossed the weapon aside. By then the smoke had cleared
and he saw a dark stain blossom across a uniformed chest.

“You will not interfere with my invention!” he snarled at
his unknown enemies. “My creation must live! As I live. Corporal, another
rifle. Now.”

A second weapon snapped into his hand even as someone
withdrew the spent rifle and began reloading. He didn’t care who saw to his
needs, only that they were met. With the pilot out of the way, he aimed for the
balloon envelope. A broader target—he didn’t need as careful aim. But he took
the extra second to make sure the black silk had not drifted too far east. The
upper winds must be stronger than those closer to the river. Coldly he
calculated the new distance and fired. When his hearing returned five pulses
later, he heard the warning hiss of air leaking. He thought he saw a distinct
sag in the envelope.

“Another rifle.” His hand remained empty. “Now, Corporal.”

“Yes, sir.”

De Chingé snapped his fingers, activating a powerful magnet
in his palm. The first rifle, now reloaded, returned to his hand without
assistance. He did love the improvements that enhanced his work. A third shot
and the observation balloon dropped rapidly, the envelope deflating at a
dangerous rate.

“Corporal, I suggest you alert Lieutenant Markham that he
needs must capture our spy quickly. Before he has a chance to hide and escape.
We cannot allow him to report news of our weapon to General Grant. And, I want
the man alive and able to talk. So if he is injured from the fall, get to him
fast, before he dies.”

De Chingé returned to his ordering and reordering the gold
codex cards he’d designed for his creation. He had reused the codices that came
with his new body, only modifying them slightly for their new purpose. Lovelace
and Babbage would not sell an automaton without the coded instructions for
Christian behavior. They made the best machines with the most accurate and
complex operating instructions built in. The late Lady Ada Lovelace did not
want the transference of souls into her automatons. With the codex, her
machines did not need a soul. Indeed, in her last years, she’d fought for
making such transference illegal throughout Europe. The United States and the
Confederate States had other problems and made no decision on the issue. De
Chingé had a better use for the intricately punched cards. His mind embedded in
the automaton worked better than artificial intelligence. With the cards, he
had a gun that would soon think for itself and carry its burden of destruction.
By then de Chingé would have moved on to the next enticing project, bending his
genius to a new puzzle, a uniquely beautiful maze, like wooing a beautiful
woman.

Tad jumped clear of the balloon six feet above ground and
rolled to his feet. Two seconds later the basket thunked to the ground beside
him. The balloon dragged it a few feet before completing its collapse.

“Good bye, Nichols. You served well and died in combat. I’ll
inform your family of your regretful death, myself.” Saddened, he bowed his
head in brief prayer.

With his goggles in place, he ducked and ran a zigzag course
from bush to tree across the meadow. The guns of Vicksburg above the bluffs
seemed to point directly at him the entire time.

Where to go? He had to return to headquarters to the
northwest of the bluffs and across that bloody big river. He dropped the map
lens over his goggles. Immediately a sketchy drawing of landmarks jumped into
view, lighted by that odd green glow from the goggle gel. A long chain of hash
marks indicated a railroad just north of his position.

Exposed. But in the remaining hours of darkness he had a
chance to get to the bridge. He had a few rations in his kit in case dawn
caught him still behind enemy lines and he had to take refuge in a ditch.

As a precaution he ripped the two pages of drawings and
calculations from his notebook, folded them small and stuffed them into his
drawers, the last place captors would look for contraband.

He dashed to the next shelter revealed by his goggles, a
line of low shrubs, bordering one of the numerous creeks that drained into the
Big Muddy.

Just as he reached the first leafy willow, Tad heard an
ominous rustle. The gentle breeze that had carried the balloon was above them.
Down here at ground level, the air was still.

Tad dug in his heels, slowing his headlong plunge into the
bushes. Something tripped him, a root, a rock, a trap, something. He flailed
for balance.

A rifle butt caught him in the gut. Fierce pain doubled him
over and robbed him of breath. He gagged and coughed, all his concentration
centered on forcing his lungs to break free of paralysis and work again. His
vision narrowed worse than four degrees of magnification on the goggles.