Ghosts of Time (12 page)

Yes,
thought Jason, who in the Aegean Bronze Age had spent time imprisoned in a Teloi “pocket universe” with its own customized time-rate.
That would explain how the Teloi were able to pull off that particular trick. I’m not likely to forget it, since it caused me to be the first and so far only time traveler in the history of the Authority to return late—a distinction I could easily have done without.

But . . . wait a minute! What was that about
reversing
it?

As a horrible suspicion awoke in Jason’s mind, Stoneman’s smile took on a gloating look.

“I see you’ve grasped it,” said the Transhumanist. “Within this building, we can set up a reverse-stasis effect, so that time is speeded up. It has its uses. It enables us to get work done at a faster rate than those outside. In point of fact, we have activated it now. It is difficult, and the time rate cannot be speeded up by a very great factor. Still, the atomic decay in the microscopic ‘clocks’ inside your TRDs is proceeding at a time rate slightly more than two and a half times that on which the outside universe—including the Authority—operates. They’re going to have a bit of a surprise at a considerably earlier date than the one on which they expect you to appear on their displacer stage. With luck, that stage will be empty at the time you materialize . . . although it
does
get an awful lot of traffic, doesn’t it?”

“But what about
you
?” Jason heard Logan ask in his usual calm way. “It also applies to you. How can you people operate this way?”

“Oh, it’s quite simple. Whatever our retrieval time works out to be, we send prior notification of it by message drop, at a site that is constantly checked in our own time. Thus our displacer stage can be cleared when necessary.”

It really
is
simple.
Jason mentally kicked himself for never having thought of it as a solution to the problems involved in the “controllable” Special Operations TRDs.
I’ll have to write Rutherford a memo on it when I get back,
he thought sickly.

Still not really believing it, he summoned up his display. The red dot denoting Aiken, which had been moving slowly along the road from Rectortown appeared to have slowed still further, so that there was no perceptible movement at all.

Beyond the ghostly, translucent outlines of the optically projected map that filled his field of vision, he could see Stoneman’s infuriating smile.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Yup, I seen ’em,” nodded the elderly man, rocking back and forth in a chair on the porch of the “hotel” in Paris. “Come through around noon yesterday—a captain and three men, looking like you say. In fact, I talked to the captain. He was asking about some other cavalry that had passed through. I told him they’d headed over the Gap, and he thanked me kindly and rode on, in an awful hurry.”

“Thanks,” said Angus Aiken, and mounted his horse.

The old fellow gave him a narrow look. “Your color don’t look none too good, young feller. Why not rest a bit?”

Aiken shook his head. Gracchus had been skeptical about letting him set out so soon. But his wound was a minor one, and he didn’t want to get even more separated from Commander Thanou and the others than he already was. “No. I’ve got to rejoin my command.”

He turned the horse’s head and started out toward Ashby’s Gap.

A week later, he was back in Rectortown, entering the town at night so as to avoid being seen seeking out Marcus’s shack.

“So you never did find Commander Thanou?” asked Gracchus as Aiken warmed himself at the fire and sipped ersatz coffee. Marcus and his family were out of earshot. They seemed to understand that there were things they were better off not hearing.

“No. More to the point,
he
never found
me.
”

“That’s right: he somehow always knows where you are.” Gracchus shook his head slowly. “But you can’t find him in the same way, can you?”

“No. But, I wanted to stay as close behind him as possible, to make it easy for him to make contact with me. So after hearing he had passed through Paris I pressed on, over Ashby’s Gap into the valley.

“But then the trail went completely cold. I spent four days in the nearby parts of the valley.” Aiken recalled those days with no fondness. He’d had to cope with the lower temperatures at higher altitudes, and also with the stress of having to find his way without the commander’s optic map display as a guide. Nor had that been his only source of stress.
My second mission
, he reproached himself bitterly,
and I’ve made a hash of everything.
“I stayed on the Ashby’s Gap Turnpike, crossing the Shenandoah River at Berry’s Ferry and proceeding to the town of Millwood. But nobody I could talk to there had seen any groups that resembled the Transhumanists with Dabney, or the Commander and the others following them. It was as though they had vanished off the face of the earth.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t vanish into a Union prison camp,” said Gracchus drily. “Before you changed, that is,” he added, indicating Aiken’s rough farm-hand civilian outfit.

“Oh, I remembered what you’d said about the Valley crawling with Sheridan’s troops. I was very careful, until a farmer who put me up—I took a chance and claimed to be one of Mosby’s men—let me have these clothes. I kept going, along the road toward Winchester . . . and got to see some of what Sheridan had done to the valley. It’s worse than Merritt did over here.” Aiken scowled. He noticed that Gracchus’s expression was carefully neutral. “Anyway, nobody had seen either of the two parties, so before I got to Winchester I decided that the commander wasn’t in the valley; he must have circled around and gone back east through Ashby’s Gap, somehow missing me.”

Aiken paused, as a cloud crossed his mind. Turning back had been a difficult decision, for he’d been deeply perplexed. Surely Commander Thanou, who knew where he was at all times, wouldn’t simply have left the Valley and abandoned him there without trying to retrieve him! His perplexity had deepened when he’d recrossed the Blue Ridge at Ashby’s Gap and found that no one at Paris had seen “Captain Landrieu” and his men returning eastward. But he’d been disinclined to press his luck by returning to the Union-occupied valley.

“So you came back here,” prompted Gracchus, interrupting his thoughts.

“Right . . . and I’ve been dodging Yankees ever since. People tell me that Torbert’s cavalry came through on their return march on the 27th, just when I was on my way back from the valley.”

“Yes. By that time, Sheridan had learned that Mosby had been wounded—in fact, Northern newspapers were reporting he had been killed—and he wanted conformation. But they didn’t find him. The next day, Major Frazar came back, in disgrace for letting Mosby slip through his fingers and determined to find him. That was three days ago, and he’s been looking up every chimney and into every chicken coop in the county. But Mosby, even though he still has to be carried around, has stayed one step ahead . . . as usual.” Gracchus shook his head and gave a tongue-click of reluctant admiration. “Word is that Frazar got orders yesterday to give up the search, and that he’ll be court-martialed before long. They’ll get him for being drunk on duty, most likely.”

“So there shouldn’t be any Yankees around here now.”

“No, not right now. Oh, Sheridan will keep sending raids through here. And just yesterday, on the first, he stationed Devlin’s cavalry brigade at Lovettsville, in northern Loudoun County, where there are lots of pro-Union Germans.”

“That’s right: yesterday was New Year’s Day, 1865, wasn’t it?” It brought home to Aiken how thoroughly he had lost track of time; Christmas had come and gone while he had been skulking about west of the Blue Ridge. It also brought home to him the excellence of Gracchus’s sources of information. “But anyway, none of them are operating here in Fauquier County at present.”

“No. And Mosby’s men are taking advantage of it to get him out of the county. Dr. Monteiro, who cut the bullet out of him, is taking him to his family’s home in Amherst County so he can convalesce. But in the meantime, this county alone isn’t going to be able to support the Rangers through the winter. I’ve learned that they’re rendezvousing at Salem under his second-in-command Captain Chapman to decide what to do.”

“Then that’s where I ought to go. In fact, maybe the commander will be there.”

“Maybe.” Gracchus gave him a look that was not unkind but completely uncompromising. “If, that is, he isn’t lying dead somewhere in the valley. I’m sorry; that hurts me more than it does you.” (Aiken wondered what he meant by that.) “But it would account for his failure to link up with you.”

“In fact, it’s the most obvious explanation,” Aiken admitted miserably. “I just haven’t let myself think about it. I’ve
got
to go on the assumption that he’s still alive.”

“But if he isn’t,” Gracchus persisted, “where would that leave you?”

“It would leave me stuck here on my own until April 5, when at some point in the small hours of the morning I’ll be snatched back to my own proper time. So I’ve got to stay alive until then. Which is yet another reason for me to put my uniform back on and head for Salem. I’ll need all the friends I can get, and I’ve got a ready-made group of them there. And there are certainly worse friends to have than Mosby and his men!”

“I suppose so.” Gracchus had gone expressionless to the point of coldness.

Aiken recalled what he had learned about the issues of the current war, so remote from those of the twenty-fourth century as to be barely comprehensible. He knew he could never feel, on an emotional level, what Gracchus felt. “According to Dr. Dabney, our historian,” he said carefully, “Mosby is no supporter of slavery.”

“Maybe not, by personal preference. But if the side he fights for wins the war, slavery will remain, so he might as well be. And don’t think he can’t be mean. Last November, right here at Rectortown, he selected several prisoners by lot to be hanged.” Gracchus paused, and his expression changed to one which Aiken could not read. “Uh . . . Mr. Aiken . . .”

“Angus.”

“I still have trouble getting used to that.” Gracchus shook his head slowly. “Angus . . . I know you come from the future. So just like I know who won the Revolutionary War, I suppose you know . . .” He trailed to an embarrassed halt, and his expression grew almost pleading.

Nesbit would have a stroke
, Aiken thought.
But what the hell—my career in the Service is probably wrecked anyway. And considering how much this man already knows . . .
He drew a deep breath and spoke words that violated one of the Authority’s most sacrosanct rules.

“Remember what I said about me returning to my own time on April 5? Two days before that, Richmond will fall to Grant’s army. And the day after that, President Lincoln will enter the city.”

When Gracchus could finally speak, he said only, “I sure intend to be there to see that!”

Salem was easy to find. The next morning Aiken simply rode south, following the Manassas Gap Railroad, for a little less than four miles.

The town was a good deal more substantial than Rectortown, with around three hundred people. Its half-mile-long main street was lined with homes, churches, around half a dozen businesses, and some kind of private academy. As Aiken rode in, it was obvious that the resident population was outnumbered at least two to one by the Rangers who had mustered here. He recalled Dabney mentioning that this was the nearest thing Mosby had to a center of operations; there were many homes in the surrounding country where his men boarded, and it was here that Mosby would, in late April, gather the Rangers for the last time in a field north of town and disband them, undefeated.

Riding along the main street, Aiken passed a nattily uniformed rider and recognized a familiar face. “Captain Richards, sir!” he called out.

Adolphus “Dolly” Richards gave him a perplexed look, then his handsome features formed a smile of recognition. “Oh, yes, you’re one of Captain Landrieu’s men, aren’t you? I’d recognize that red head anywhere! What’s your name? Is your captain here?”

“Private Aiken, sir. And no, I don’t know where Captain Landrieu is.” Aiken launched into a highly edited account, omitting all mention of the Transhumanists and the Order of the Three-Legged Horse, beginning with an honest description of the events of Mosby’s wounding, and then stating that he had been wounded and Dabney captured (by Yankee cavalry, in this version) and that “Captain Landrieu” and the rest of the detail had set out over Ashby’s Gap to try to effect a rescue.

“The captain left orders for me to follow him at best speed, but I couldn’t find him,” he concluded on an accurate note. “The valley was too hot to hold me, so I thought I ought to come back here and try to make contact with the Rangers.”

Richards looked glum. “I wish Captain Landrieu well in his gallant attempt, but I fear he may have come to grief in the valley. From your account, we owe him a great debt for saving Colonel Mosby’s life. That obliges me to do what I can for you, who may be the last survivor of his command. Come with me; I’m on my way to meet with Captain Chapman.”

They rode a short way north of town, more or less retracing Aiken’s steps. “Bill Chapman is in command in Colonel Mosby’s absence,” Richards explained as they rode. “He and I are still officially captains, because the reorganization of the Rangers that the Colonel worked out with General Lee almost a month ago still hasn’t officially gone into effect. When it does, the battalion will become a regiment, and Bill and I will command its two battalions, him as a lieutenant colonel and me as a major. As a practical matter, we’ve gone ahead and organized the battalions; I’ve got Companies A through D, Bill’s got Companies E through G. Ah, here we are.”

They turned off the road at the most imposing mansion Aiken had yet seen in “Mosby’s Confederacy.” The sign at the gate read “Glen Welby.” A number of Rangers were visible on the front lawn.

“The owner is Richard Carter, one of the wealthiest men in the county,” Richards explained. “He’s often let Colonel Mosby use it as a headquarters.” As they dismounted and tied up their horses, the tall form of William Chapman descended the steps.

After initial greetings, Richards repeated to Chapman the story Aiken had told him. Chapman thoughtfully stroked his black beard—surprisingly thick for a man only in his mid-twenties—and regarded Aiken with somber dark eyes.

“I’m afraid, Private Aiken, that I must regretfully agree with Dolly. We can’t cherish too much hope for Captain Landrieu.” Chapman’s expression lightened slightly. “Normally, no one is allowed to join the Rangers without first being interviewed by Colonel Mosby. But that’s not exactly practical at the moment; he’s now at his family’s house, and Dr. Monteiro says it will be weeks before he can resume command. So I’m going to allow you to attach yourself to us.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now, Dolly and I have decided to separate before dispersing for the winter. His battalion will stay here in Fauquier County, from which it will be conducting raids into the valley, against the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. I’m taking my battalion to the Northern Neck.” Aiken still had trouble with the local geography, but he seemed to recall that the expression referred to the area to the east, between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers. Going into winter quarters at the doorstep of the enemy’s capital city, he reflected, would have seemed a rather remarkable thing to do, had one been talking about any outfit other than Mosby’s Rangers.

“Sir, if I may, I request to be assigned to Captain Richards’ battalion. As long as there’s a chance that Captain Landrieu has in fact survived, I should stay here against the possibility of his return.”

“I understand. And I respect your loyalty.” Chapman turned to Richards. “Satisfactory, Dolly?”

“Perfectly.” Richards smiled. “Welcome to the Partisan Rangers, Private Aiken.”