Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century 5)

“Then tell me what we do know. Or tell me what your Fiddlehead knows, at least. ”

Lincoln looked down at the pages again, then withdrew a pencil from his satchel. He pressed a button to activate his wheeled chair and brought himself closer to the president, pulling up alongside his seat. The firelight warmed and brightened them both and made the brittle paper look brighter than a lampshade.

Lincoln circled one column’s worth of information. “You see this part, here? These are casualty figures from three skirmishes two months ago. None of the field doctors reported any lepers, or any drug use among the men. ”

“I see,” Grant said. But he didn’t.

“The numbers are precisely what you’d expect: Half of the men died from their wounds. Of those who remained, approximately half succumbed to known diseases or infection. These other men”—he pointed at a secondary line—“were too badly hurt to return to battle, but they did survive. Now, look at these figures, over here. ” He drew another circle. “These are numbers from four other skirmishes around the same time. Two in northern Tennessee, one on Sand Mountain in Alabama, and one outside of Richmond. ”

Grant took a slow, deep breath and let it out again as he read the Tennessee casualty figures. Fifty percent dead from injuries. Two percent injured beyond further combat. Forty-eight percent …

“Forty-eight percent dead … from what?”

“From necrotic injuries, inflicted largely by their fellow soldiers. ”

“What on earth have those Southerners done?”

“It’s not just the Southerners. ”

“These are all Southern battlefields!”

“Most of the battlefields are Southern battlefields,” Lincoln reminded him, using the gentle tone of someone who is dealing with a drunk. Grant didn’t care for that tone, but he ignored it. He’d heard it from everyone, for years. “And the Southern soldiers aren’t the ones chewing up our boys after the fact; these are our figures. Our men. That said, the Confederacy’s having problems too—the same problems, almost exactly. In fact, the only time the Fiddlehead balked was when we asked where the drug came from, North or South. ”

“It didn’t know?”

“It didn’t say. Gideon says the question shouldn’t have been phrased that way, since it might have come from someplace else. Something about contradictory absolutes, he said. ”

“So where did it come from, do you think?”

Lincoln shrugged, a gesture that made him look like a funeral suit sliding off a hanger. “The Western territories? The Mexican Empire? The islands? The machine couldn’t tell us the drug’s origin—only that the lepers will win the war. ”

“Balderda

sh,” Grant spit. “It’s utter balderdash, and you know I mean no disrespect. ”

“It’s science. ”

“The war won’t be won by the walking dead, Abe. ”

“And why not? Before long, we’ll have more soldiers dead than living—and when the dead outnumber us, the advantage is theirs. ”

After a frustrated, uncertain pause, Grant said, “Your machine offers up more questions than answers. ”

“Its vocabulary is limited. It can only work with what we give it. ”

“It must be wrong. ”

“It’s frightening, but I don’t believe it’s wrong. We can’t win, and neither can the CSA. ”

The president laughed sadly. This was almost precisely what he’d told Desmond Fowler not ten minutes before. “Then what do you suggest we do?”

“The only thing we can do is stop fighting. Declare a cease-fire, call a summit. Explain the situation to Bragg and Stephens—they’re reasonable men, old men. And they’re tired of fighting too. ” He sat forward with some difficulty, and the firelight played across the sharp-cut angles of his cheeks. “You can tell them that we do not ask their surrender, and do not offer our own. Explain the greater threat and extend a hand of brotherhood. Not North against South, but living against dead. ”

Grant shook his head. “It would never work. They’ll never believe us. ”

“They might. When we asked the Fiddlehead to tell us how the war would end, we had to estimate figures on the Southern side—we didn’t have the precise numbers of living, dead, sick, or wounded. It was funny, really—or, rather, Gideon thought it funny: The machine accused us of lying to it. ”

“How’s that?”