L Neil Smith - [North American Confederacy 06] Read online

  Which was on its way.

  It had been a while coming. On June 22, U.S. Marshal David Lenox had left the national capital in Philadelphia with warrants issued by the Treasury Secretary the previous May against local entrepreneurs who hadn’t registered their stills. Pure political skullduggery: one of the biggest gripes Pennsylvania farmers had was that trials under the new Excise Act were held in the capital. Given the economy and condition of the roads, it might as well have been the Moon.

  In April, at Hamilton’s recommendation, Congress had authorized local hearings. But the warrants he issued later were written under the old law—though they weren’t to be served until July. What it boiled down to was that Hamilton could tell the rest of the country how lenient he was—getting that nasty law changed—and still use it against those resisting his authority.

  On June 24, Lenox arrived in Pittsburgh, stopping by the home of Hugh Henry Brackenridge, prominent citizen and professional mouthpiece. Anybody but Hamilton would have considered the new tax more trouble than it was worth. His assistants reported it was being ignored all over the States. Hardly a cent had been collected. Already it had cost the government plenty, prestige-wise. Witnesses against noncompiiers had been assaulted, even kidnapped, their own stills bullet-riddled (Holcroft—Tom the Tinker—had called it mending, thus acquiring his nickname) and their bams burned, despite pompous threats from President Washington and offers of multihundred-dollar rewards. The law had also sparked establishment of “democratic societies” that would later coalesce into the party— the Democratic-Republicans—that even in my own over-governed universe would put the Federalists out of power. One of the first had been in Washington County, at Mingo Creek, in February.

  In March, Neville and family had been accosted while riding home from Pittsburgh, and the chief collector later pursued by a party of sixty angry tax-evaders. Appeals had been made to replace Neville’s more corrupt and officious assistants. Local magistrates opposed the law. Local Federalists had begged the Army for protection. “Respectable” citizens sat tight, ostensibly backing the government—they wanted to sell whiskey to the Army—and abandoned the smaller fry who had no recourse except violence.

  Democratic societies continued springing up, passing seditious resolutions, encouraging loose talk about George Washington and guillotines. An old revolutionary custom, the erection of “liberty poles,” was revived as a not-so-subtle warning. In this powder-keg ambience, calm reasoning was called for, but they were dealing with a government, here. On July 15—yesterday to us time-travelers—Lenox and Neville had braced William Miller of Peter’s Creek with one of Hamilton’s documents. Miller had told them to fribble off.

  Knowing which end of a shotgun was which, they complied. But in mid-fribble, a flock of neighbors, there to offer moral and ballistic support, fired on the pair, sending Lenox back to Pittsburgh with dampened breeches, and Neville, in similar condition, here to Bower Hill. They should have realized that anybody from the area, equipped with the customary long-barreled rifle, could have eighty-sixed either of the officials if they’d been serious.

  Meanwhile, the local militia Brigade Inspector, Dr. Absalom Baird, fed up with sporadic violence, well aware of its source, and with a keen appreciation of what militias are all about, ordered the arrest of Hamilton’s minions, sending a Captain Pearsol to Pittsburgh and Holcroft to Bower Hill. This was the earliest we figured Edna was likely to try goofing history up. Tom the Tinker was due to arrive at daybreak, five minutes from now, with joy in his heart, a song on his lips—and blood in his eye. We were here to deal with Edna.

  I was sort of looking forward to it.

  7

  The Bower Hill Massacre

  “Humans,” came the warning, “five minutes remain!” The small voice, nanoelectronic, was Ooloorie’s, injected through a micro-Broach the fishy physicist maintained in our locality. I could hear her from the region of my collarbone, even without the headpiece of my skinsuit in place. The thing was useful, more than comfortable, but it made you look like a pantyhose bandit unless you took the trouble of adjusting its surface to your own likeness. Or somebody else’s.

  Another voice, muffled: “See ’em all right, Ooloorie? Pretty smart-lookin’ outfit for a buncha easterners! No sign of Edna, curse the luck.” Bonnet off, hood pulled over her eyes to provide magnification, Lucy breathed on my shoulder as we lay in the still-wet grass above Bower Hill. If Edna was wearing a skinsuit herself, carrying an energy weapon or any par-

  atronic instrument, she should stand out like the proverbial damaged digit. Despite my own suit, my bones ached from dampness. Some noble redskin, lurking in the bushes, catching my death of lumbago.

  Lucy looked like a molting frog. “Right smart-lookin,” she repeated to herself, “Too bad they’re jerkin’ the wrong quahog.”

  I peered at her, just to see if she’d really said that. “Lucy, I don’t know much about history—”

  She leered at me. “But y’know what y’like?” “Grrr! Those people down there are westerners. Lewis and Clarke won’t be doing their thing for another nine years. Pittsburgh is the wild frontier!”

  She was right about one thing: their mission to Bower Hill was a wild clam chase. When John “Tom the Tinker” Holcroft had been chosen to boss the punitive expedition, everybody thought the bureaucrat they planned to arrest for aggravated tax-collection had retreated to Bower Hill with his partner-in-crime, John Neville. But the militia’s Mingo Creek commander wasn’t stupid—another party had been sent to Coal Hill, overlooking Pittsburgh, to intercept Lenox in case he was missed by the main force.

  Knowing what was going to happen in advance was less advantage than I’d imagined. The entire period of history—like every other—was a matter of amateur goodguys trying to outfumble amateur badguys. Rubbing a sore shoulder, I grunted, more at my own murky thoughts than in reply to Lucy. Discomfort made me homesick, reminding me of Clarissa. Clarissa, laid out on a long white table.

  This wasn’t the first time—nor the last—that heroics had been displayed at the wrong time, in the wrong place. A couple generations from now, Andy Jackson would honor himself at the Battle of New Orleans (in my world: the War of 1812 hadn’t happened in Lucy and Ed’s) tv/o weeks after the ink was dry on the Paris peace treaty. All Jackson’s victory would accomplish would be to provide lyrics for Homer and Jethro.

  Or was it Johnny Horton? In the dawn-lit distance, hard-ridden horses thundered closer. Holcroft’s men, gathering at the Mingo Creek Presbyterian Church, had been exhorted to meet “opposition with opposition.” If fired upon, they were to destroy any obstacle preventing their success. Too stiff in the joints to bother with my own suit-instruments, I strained naked eyes to see through trees. It was said of this era that a squirrel could travel from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes without touching ground. For once, what was said was right. The morning haze didn’t help matters.

  Below us, sudden activity: slowed to a walk, horsemen sifted from the woods either side of the road. I’d never realized you could smell a body of cavalry approaching. Not unpleasant, just noticeable. They dismounted, traps jangling, a congregation of around forty, few of them with guns, Dispersing like the guerrillas they were, they surrounded the house. They’d left the meeting about midnight. Tempers would be short.

  The big front door of the Neville mansion lay open, cooling the place off. I could sympathize: coming from the high, arid plains of eastern Colorado, I’d once before endured Pennsylvania in July—police business, twentieth-century Philadelphia. The previous day’s rain had made today’s heat more miserable. Awakened by the commotion, a nightshirted figure stood just inside, ominously indistinct in the slanting shadows.

  “It’s General Neville!” Lucy whispered. “He’d just got up as the militia arrived!” I had the feeling this was the first of a long series of color commentaries. At any moment, Lucy, Ed, even Ochskahrt—anyone who hadn’t spent the last forty years beating Rip van Winkle’s ante by a factor of two�
��could refer to the computer on his cortex, tell us what was going on. Worse, Ooloorie was listening in, keeping a watchful eye on the four of us, also recording everything in color stereo for posterity and profit. I had nothing against the latter, but prefer making my mistakes in private. Telecomic supervision—and the commentary it engendered—was not progress. I determined to do something before it got out of hand.

  Meanwhile, I’d rather watch events unfold for myself.

  "Hello the housef” shouted a big man, clad in soiled leather and wrinkled homespuns. After a long night’s ride, he’d do swell as the “Before” model in a deodorant ad. I was grateful all over again for the distance between us and Bower Hill. The fellow’s hair was gray-shot, his scalp thinly upholstered, but he had big shoulders, hard-muscled forearms. He was heeled, but kept his flintlock grounded, butt-down.

  There was an indistinct hissing noise. “Hello to you, Captain Holcroft!” the half-hidden figure replied in a low whisper that forced me to turn to my suit-ears.

  “You have ridden hard to commit trespass this early in the morning!”

  His attention on the house, the militia leader leaned the business end of his weapon toward the man standing beside him. He shaded his eyes to peer into the doorway, took a step forward, addressing the nightshirt. “And a good morning to you, Marshal David Lenox.”

  As a detective, most of my life is spent with the feeling I’ve come in at the middle of the movie. Time travel didn’t make the feeling any better—now it was a movie I’d already seen, and it made my head ache. Even I knew about the historic mistake, Holcroft’s taking Neville’s voice for the marshal’s. Also the subsequent historic sarcasm: “We are friends from Washington Township.” American hadn’t been invented yet; everyone had an accent, Holcroft’s a slight Scottish burr. “We come as an honor guard to escort you to safety. Will you step out to parlay, sir?”

  General Neville wasn’t buying any. “Stand off, Tom the Tinker, stand off, I say! I’ve my wife in the house with me, also my little granddaughter Harriet Craig, and a lady visitor besides! I’ll not see them come to harm! Stand off or pay the penalty!”

  With that, as Holcroft realized his mistake, Neville swung a hidden brown-barreled weapon into view. Amidst exclamations, there was a plop!, a spark-punctuated orange flash, a gray billow of charcoal smoke. The dull crackless musket-roar came to us a moment afterward. The man beside Holcroft folded, his leader’s weapon clattering across his body. A crimson pool began accumulating around his inert form.

  A noise behind me. I twisted my neck. Ochskahrt had a look of horror on his face. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He clapped both hands over his mouth, waddled off toward a bush, the clumsy, gentle little guy.

  “Oliver Miller,” Ed muttered, closing his eyes. “William Miller’s father. The poor old man will be dead before noon, first casualty of—”

  “Ed?” I interrupted.

  He refocused. “What?”

  “Shut up.”

  There was a muffled boom of returned fire, interspersed with the crack! of rifled weapons, the sound of glass breaking. Someone screamed inside the house. Someone else began to curse. When a breeze next blew the smoke away, Bower Hill was without windows. The rebel militia retreated under covering fire, dragging Miller’s soon-to-be-lifeless body with them.

  Still the door stood open. I shook my aching head, about to comment on this tactical lapse, when several men rushed toward it. Lucy, straining forward, cried, “He’s got a swivel-gun in there!”

  Sure enough, I could see the brassy glint of the small cannon. The rebels saw it too, diving for the dirt. The General held his fire, not relishing reloading the thing. Small arms firing went on, no small percentage of it coming from the house. I was about to revise my estimate of Neville’s wealth, at least in terms of firepower, when I realized that someone—the women—was in there loading for him.

  “We oughta be closer!” the little old lady complained.

  “S’pose one of them Hamiltonians is down there, changin’ things? We couldn’t stop it from here!” “Quiet!” I shouldn’t have yelled at her, I know. Similar strain underlay Ed’s otherwise deliberate calm. “They’re all Hamiltonians in that house, Lucy, the original flavor. Even if we knew when Edna’s supposed to arrive, there’s nothing happening down there she’d want to change. This is a defeat for our side.” “A temporary one,” Lucy insisted.

  “One we mustn’t interfere with.” Then to himself: “What Holcroft couldn’t do with a tachyon cannon!” “Don’t fret, honey.” Lucy changed sides. “We’re here t’practice lookin’ without touchin’, for the moment. Edna won’t be jumpin’ the gun, either—after the first real change she produces, she’ll be flyin’ blind as everybody else.”

  True, no one knows all the consequences of his actions, time-traveler or not. Gunsmoke drifted toward us, reeking of brimstone. I surprised myself, feeling a version of Lucy and Ed’s combat itch. It was hell lying here, doing nothing. It drug on this way for twenty minutes, bang!-reloa.d-bang!-reload, Holcroft and Neville shouting commands, the wounded hollering their heads off, when the clear moo! of a hunting-horn sounded from the house.

  The yard filled with dirty-edged clouds as barrels burst through the grease-papered windows of the slave quarters, the noise as they flashed like a giant, ripping sheet. To anyone left in the yard, it was like being inside a blender. I counted four casualties after the first volley. Nobody stuck around for a second. Men and horses scattered to the woods. Someone emptied his lungs of terror, or pain. Not Ochskahrt, he was too busy emptying his stomach. The rest of my companions looked pretty solemn, too. My headache surged to new intensity.

  Return fire from the rebels dropped off as they began retreating in earnest. The rout would take them southwest four miles to an abandoned Indian-fighting establishment. In later years, the Nevilles would claim Bower Hill had been attacked by a hundred-man, sixty-rifle party. According to the General’s account, he succeeded, unsupported, in wounding several attackers, so discouraging them that they withdrew.

  Don’t ask me: I counted fifteen rebel guns, brought more for show than serious intention. During the half-hour engagement, I saw six of them fired, gunsmiths being scarce in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. Henry Ford was right, about some things, anyway.

  Meanwhile, the first real battle of the Rebellion was over, amateur badguys 5, amateur goodguys 0. Time for semiprofessionals to move along, too. “Onward to Couch’s Fort.” I sighed, trying to operate against the pounding inside my skull. “They tell me the news gets better after this.”

  I moved to rise—-at least those were the orders I gave my hands and feet. Somehow, the message failed to get through. Lying flat on my stomach, I was overtaken by dizziness, then an urge to imitate Ochskahrt my stomach didn’t have the coordination to obey.

  I was paralyzed.

  8

  The Last Hamiltonian

  Blackness never quite overwhelmed me. Instead, I remembered Edna.

  Cheyenne, Wyoming, 217 a.l.: we were lifting her injured victim over the doorsill. It wasn’t easy. The passage was narrow. His head and feet were hanging off the ends of the tool cart. The little wheels flopped and skidded through the gravel, the whole ungainly assembly threatening to go belly-up any moment.

  My first acquaintance with the lady had been a raid she’d staged on my house in Laporte while I was trying to protect a client—the guy we were carrying. She’d shot me, a couple of neighbors, had my client imprisoned for murder, and generally made a nuisance of herself. That as an encore to butchering two bound and helpless old men—with a pair of manicure scissors, beginning with their eyes.

  Now, outside, studded with machine-gun blisters and small arms ports, a big black hovervan waited with its back hatches open. Naturally, it belonged to Griswold’s. But compared to Edna Janof, even Griswold’s didn’t know the meaning of the word brrrr.

  Suddenly, around the corner slashed a yellow ground-effect machine, canopy open, a wild-eyed Edna Janof at
the tiller, hair streaming in the wind. One-handed, she levered her flechette gun onto the edge of the door, its garbage can muzzle pointing at—

  BLOMMM! BLOMMM! BLOMMM! BLOMMM! BLOMMM!

  Steel slivers sleeted around us. Everybody went for the ground and their hardware at the same time. The cart tipped over, spilling its passenger but providing him with a shield.

  I grabbed for my .41.

  I won’t even try conveying what all that weaponry going off at once sounded like. Somebody in the van let loose, concentrating firepower on the stolen sports car as it worked its way around for a second pass. Edna never did know when to quit. An explosion ripped its plastic skirt from hood ornament to trunk, flipping the vehicle over as smoke and flames enveloped it. The thing smashed through the flimsy wall of an abandoned warehouse. There was a flash that lit up all the windows, a bellowing of tortured steel and superheated air. The walls puffed outward, splitting at the comers of the building, the released energy flattening everything within a hundred yards.

  We never did find Edna’s body...

  ... next time I felt like noticing anything, I’d climbed a big tree when I wasn’t looking. Curious, I peered between the leafy branches, watching Ed, Lucy, Hirnschlag scurrying like ants trying to move the stiffened body of a caterpillar. Trouble was, the caterpillar was me.

  Sort of interesting: Ed had my sleeve up, jabbing skinsuit buttons, while Lucy slapped at my face. From this angle, it looked like I’d gained weight—have to watch that. He labored in grim silence, she calling my name (her version of it) over and over. Ochskahrt gave up getting in the way, sat hugging his rawhide-cased cello.