Clockwork Souls (21 page)

Every muscle and joint ached, from his toes to his hair roots.
His eyes and his gut hurt the most. Shivering made it worse. He couldn’t help
it. He was just so damn cold, through and through.

He listened to the sounds of men rising for the day. A yawn
here, a belch there, the relieved sigh as another scratched. His own body
smelled rank, worse than all the others. Something one got used to when living
rough. He doubted any of them had had a proper bath in six months. His injuries
must have tainted his skin with additional acid.

Life for these men didn’t vary much from his own troops. He
wondered if they’d treat him any better or worse than prisoners of war were
treated on the western river bank.

A change in the light through his closed eyelids alerted him
to the presence of another. He didn’t care enough to open his eyes and find out
who had come to interrogate him. The sergeant who took delight in inflicting
pain with his fists couldn’t hurt him any worse.

“I have brought you hot coffee. It will help ward off the
chills.” The faint French lilt in the voice told him he would have to face his
brother’s ghost once again.

That might be a worse pain than another blow to his gut or
his head.

Tad decided to accept the offer. The man sounded genuinely
kind. At the moment. He rolled to his side and drew his knees up in preparation
of levering himself upward, in short stages with long breathing spells between
each movement.

“Please, allow me to assist you.” Nate’s strong arm slid
around Tad’s waist and hoisted him to sit on his bedroll. A familiar arm. And
yet much stronger than Nate’s had been. Once Tad had regained regular
breathing, Nate handed him the tin cup. Instantly warmth infused his hand. He
wrapped the other around the cup as well. The chill abated a bit all the way to
his elbows. Two sips of the thick black brew laced heavily with chicory snapped
his brain awake and warmed him down to his belly.

“Thank you,” he said when his teeth stopped chattering. “Why
aren’t you dead, Nate?” Tad finally asked.

“I . . . I have hurt the way you do.” He
ignored the question. Tad couldn’t.

“Did you hurt the way I do now that time you fell from the
apple tree and had the wind knocked out of you? I think you were nine and I was
ten.” Tad grimaced remembering the anxious moments until Nate breathed again.
Awful moments full of guilt and panic.

They had been so close, not even a year between them in age,
but Tad had always been the brighter of the two, much older in learning and
common sense. Taking care of Nate had been his responsibility. He’d been
serving the army as a shavetail lieutenant at Harper’s Ferry when neighbors
convinced Nate to join up with the Rebel cause. When Tad had heard of his
brother’s death, the guilt returned.

Guilt that he hadn’t been able to protect his brother.
Deeper guilt that he was more than a bit relieved that responsibility for Nate
had passed from his hands to God’s.

“Why aren’t you dead, Nate?” Tad asked again.

“A good question.”

“So stop stalling and answer it.” The coffee was almost gone
and he needed more. He held the cup up to the Confederate
Colonel, who was and wasn’t Nate.

The colonel took it
gratefully and left the tent for a moment. He returned with two steaming cups
and a bland face before Tad could fall asleep again.

“The balloon you observed our positions from is quite an
innovation. I had no idea the Union had progressed so far in developing new
technology in aerodynamics,” the rebel colonel remarked.

“We have our geniuses. You have yours. Only, I’m beginning
to think maybe the Rebs only have one. If anything happens to you they fall way
behind in weapons development,” Tad returned. A theory niggled in the back of
his mind. One that made sense and yet erased all hope that his brother truly
did live.

The colonel tilted his head and raised his eyebrows in a
gesture very reminiscent of Nate. Nate had never asked a lot of questions,
mostly because he knew he wouldn’t understand the answers and that frustrated
him to the point of rage.

“That still doesn’t answer my question. If you are indeed my
brother, why aren’t you dead? If you aren’t truly my brother transformed, who
are you?”

Tad blew the steam from the top of his coffee, contemplating
how it swirled and drifted toward the tent flaps. Hot seeking cold. A balance.

Something was very out of balance here. He took a sip of
coffee to help him find the missing pieces.

This second cup of coffee felt just as good as the first. He
could sip it more slowly, working his thoughts around the brew as it infused
his system with warmth and life and small relief of his headache. He could
think around the pain now.

“Do you know if General Grant has hired someone called The
German?” the colonel asked.

“I am not privy to that information.” Tad had heard about
The German at The Point during a class on weapons deployment. The elusive
military designer had written a very good treatise on matching the weapon to
the terrain and troop placements.

He’d also heard about The Frenchman from New Orleans who
made guns and cannons impossibly more powerful and more accurate than logic
allowed. Rumor through the army’s upper echelons said The Frenchman had turned
down many offers from President Lincoln because he was dying of consumption.

Another puzzle piece dropped into place.

“Ah, well, you can at least tell me what you learned of
my
weapon.” The colonel nursed his own
cup of coffee, not bothering to blow the steam across the cup so it wouldn’t
burn his mouth. Another clue. An unsettling one.

“You aren’t Nate,” Tad said flatly.
Not entirely anyway
.

“That is neither here nor there. I need to know how much
information you gathered with your ghost goggles and your balloon that can tack
against the wind. I have already drawn diagrams of both and sent instructions
to Richmond for developing our own versions.”

“Nate could draw exquisite pictures of birds and bugs and
trees and flowers, almost lifelike, with only bits of charcoal on a piece of
bark. Part of his observational skill. He noted details, but couldn’t
understand how to use them. Only draw them. He couldn’t diagram anything
mechanical. He understood how birds move their wings to fly. He couldn’t
translate that to balloon aerolons. He saw ghosts all the time, but did not
understand the chemistry of putrefying flesh.”

The colonel stared above Tad’s head, an unreadable blank,
like an empty page in a book.

“Nate spoke basic English with a limited vocabulary. He had
no need or interest in developing another language or accent. He learned very
slowly and incompletely. Simple machines with an automatic language codex
inserted could speak better than my younger brother.”

“What is your point, Captain Thaddeus Hyatt-Forsythe? This
tells me nothing about what you observed.” Was that a crack in the colonel’s
composure? His hand clenched and unclenched, but not in the smooth motion of
muscles and bones working together. This was more like precisely measured
shifts with a tiny pause between.

“I remember once when we were children. I came down with
whooping cough. Nate didn’t. He tried imitating my cough in order to take it
away from me.”

The colonel—or was he The
Frenchman from New Orleans? The accent was right—blanched at the mention of a
cough. His chest drew sharply inward, like the instinctive suppression of lungs
trying to expel the miasma of illness.

Tad gathered his legs beneath him and slowly inched his way
upward. At the last moment the colonel offered him a hand of assistance. Nate
would have done so much earlier in the process.

Tad rested his weight heavily on the proffered hand. He used
the moment to feel the texture and temperature of the skin. No calluses.
Perfectly smooth like the finest tanned leather. But it felt almost feverish,
as if the Confederate officer had just stepped out of a Turkish bath.

A sniff told him even more. He had no smell. No dried sweat,
no body oil in the hair, and no rank breath from the last meal he’d eaten. Tad
did not think the colonel breathed properly either.

Tad said, “I am a reasonably intelligent and well-educated
man. Graduated in the middle of my class of ’59 at West Point. I am competent
in many areas but expert in few.” Observation being his one true talent and the
reason he’d been selected as a spy for this mission, but he wasn’t going to let
that slip right now. “If I can discern that you are not my brother, then others
will as well. Anyone who served with Nate will denounce you for what you are,
Monsieur Jules de Chingé
.”

The colonel drew back in shock. “That . . . that
will not happen. General Pemberton promised.” He took a step toward the tent
flap but Tad still held his hand in a fierce grip.

“Remember that Pemberton betrayed his loyalties once. He
will do it again. Discovery is inevitable. Any officer who attended the Point
or VMI will have heard of your developments; your contributions to the death
toll of every battle. Tell me, how do your comrades feel about automatic
machines imitating people? You can’t be killed by your own inventions. From
what I’ve heard, you don’t even stick around long enough to count the bodies.
Neither does the German. But your fellow officers, they can and will be killed
in battle by your inventions.”

No response except for several quick blinks.

That clinched it. Tad knew for certain now what this colonel
was. He only blinked when he needed to change focus or think more quickly than
usual.

“Last January, President Lincoln issued a proclamation to
free the slaves in the states that are currently in rebellion against the
Union.” Tad had read the statement and found it limited. Slaves in the states
loyal to the Union had no guarantee of freedom. But he needed every flimsy
weapon he had at his disposal. “Ensouled automata were included in that
proclamation. If the South wins this horrible war, how will they treat
automata? Will you be honored for your contribution to the victory? Given
citizenship? Or, will you, too, be classed as a slave? Property. A machine purchased
and utilized. Exploited at every turn while others take the credit for your
genius. When your metal joints and leather tendons wear thin, will they be
replaced? Or will you be cast aside on the junk heap?”

The colonel jerked his arm free of Tad’s grip with superior
strength, turned on his heel, and left without a word.

Tad sank back onto his bedroll and pulled the blankets
around his shoulders to ward off the chill in his heart as well as his body.

De Chingé walked awkwardly through the camp toward the
haven of his weapons barge. His well-oiled knee joints stiffened in the damp.
Rust creeping in?

The camp awakened around him. Some soldiers began to emerge
from their tents.

Was that a sneer on a lieutenant’s face as he grudgingly
offered a salute? How about the corporal who turned his back so he wouldn’t “see”
a superior officer, and then farted loudly.

The little bit of coffee he’d drunk in order to put the
prisoner at ease felt as if it ate through the metal and leather of his
internal workings, disrupting the flow of life-giving steam and lubricant.

Property. A machine purchased and used, then thrown away.

You don’t even stick
around to count the bodies
.

No. General Pemberton had promised him life and freedom from
the consumption that slowly killed his flesh-and-blood body.

Had he promised him citizenship and rights? Had he promised
him the freedom to invent and write academic papers and perhaps teach at a
University?

His mind whirled without answers. He’d dismissed politics,
investments, philosophy, manners, and relationships as useless interruptions of
his work. The lovely Mathilde had seen to his
physical needs and entertained him. But she had had other clients. His
future lay only in his work. He invented. Others deployed. He had no responsibility
for the number of dead caused by . . . that he caused.

He honestly did not know how the Confederate government of
the future would deal with him.

“Private, send for Lieutenant Markham. I have questions for
him,” De Chingé ordered the man on guard at the landside of the barge’s
gangplank. Not
his
barge. It belonged
to the army. As did the weapon awaiting his final touches.

He owned nothing. Not even the body they had given him. He
owned only his soul, which did not truly belong on this Earth anymore.

He’d accepted inevitable death once. He’d never planned on
enslavement.

He’d never worried about the deaths of others at the end of
his projects.

A long time later, probably too long to be considered
respectful of the rank of colonel, rank the army had
given
him, Lieutenant Markham appeared at his side, posture not
truly erect, his salute more than a little sloppy. As if saluting were a
formality he begrudged.