Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century 5)

One large metal chute dumped an intermittent tumble of filthy laundry into a terrifying heap, confined by a bin so large it could’ve comfortably held a pair of horses. Each new bundle was announced by the muffled clatter of its descent from the floors above, falling wetly, gruesomely into a heap like a blood-and-vomit-soaked pyramid of human misery.

Maria gagged.

Sally sniffed and cleared her throat. “Only a little farther. Back behind the mountain of things you don’t want to touch. ”

Sally was right. Maria didn’t want to touch it. She didn’t want to see it, either. She didn’t want to know it existed at all, and if she could retrace her steps for a minute or two and smudge out the memory with a piece of India rubber, she would’ve given her soul to do so.

Stumbling behind Sally, Maria followed—almost blindly, her eyes watering from the vapors of stomach bile and pus, the old-penny scent of drying blood, the slick yellow stink of feverish sweat, the porklike odor of burned flesh, and a hundred other things too horrible to tease out from the whole. And the laundry fell and fell, bundle after bundle, dropping down the tin chute and sometimes landing with a thump, sometimes with a squish, sometimes with a splash. The laundry mountain grew and shrank, fed and whittled down at a similar tempo as masked women with elbow-length gloves and leather aprons removed it, one nasty armload at a time, for sorting in the bins along the wall. Almost as if it were alive and breathing—but that was a thought so impossibly awful that Maria choked on it, and swallowed it down lest she throw it up.

Sally pressed onward until she reached a small cupboard door behind the massive pyramid of disgusting cloth. “Here,” the captain said. Her voice was thick but satisfied as she drew out a leather satchel that was stuffed quite full. “This is what they want. Take it with you. Keep it safe. Give it to Mr. Lincoln and his scientist, and see if it can help them. Because if it can’t, then God help us all. ”

Seven

“What do you mean, they won’t let me on the floor?” Gideon came very close to shouting. Only the near proximity of Abraham Lincoln’s face prevented him, and even so, this measure of restraint took a great deal of self-control.

“Not at this time,” he replied carefully. “Sessions are closed this week, and they aren’t admitting any new testimony until Wednesday. But Wednesday,” he emphasized, “you’re first on the list. Eight o’clock in the morning, you can say whatever you like. It’s a good thing, I think. This way, we have time to plan. Time to decide and prepare. ”

Gideon crossed his arms and leaned up against the cold, hard wall of the Capitol building.

For twenty-four hours he’d been ready to storm Congress with facts, figures, and numbers. He was ready to present proof of what had befallen him, his machine, and his family; he was prepared to offer evidence about the coming plague that would end the nation more surely than the war could ever do. He’d swallowed all the outrage he could swallow, and he needed to unload it—and he’d been counting on doing so here and now.

“I don’t want more time to plan. I already know what to say. ”

“Yes, but I think you and I can work together, with regards to how you might say it. Gideon,” Lincoln said more gently. “You have a mind without equal, but a tongue that costs you listeners. To be honest, I’m relieved that you won’t go up on the podium today. ”

“Sir, I can’t agree. The sooner we get the message out, the sooner the world will know, and…” He moved away from the wall now, leaning over the man in the mechanized chair. Not for menace, but for emphasis. “Nothing else will help us. If we make the information public, we take away the power of those who wish to conceal it. ”

“You and I agree on the fundamental principles; we only disagree in the execution. We won’t get a second chance to introduce the world to the goings-on that your machine has brought to light. The presentation is almost as important as the message itself, and so is the presenter; if we alienate those we wish to sway, we will accomplish little, or nothing. ”

“Mr. Lincoln, if the facts aren’t enough to sway them, then we’re worse than doomed—we’re surrounded by fools who don’t want to be saved. ” He jammed his hands into his pockets, turned around, and walked away, trusting that Lincoln would know better than to call him back.

Gideon left the premises to the tune of Lincoln’s chair puttering in the opposite direction, down a different marbled corridor, rolling deeper into the bowels of a building Gideon viewed with deep-seated loathing. This wasn’t a place to be heard. It was a place for men of power to meet and conspire.

His long, old-fashioned coat dusted the back of his thighs as he barreled outside, into the blinding light that seared the city every time it snowed.

A thin crust of powder and ice coated every building, tree, and walkway with a sharp, chilly sheen. Not much had fallen, but everything that fell froze, and now the world was slick as well as frigid. Gideon didn’t mind. If it was going to be this cold, the city might as well have something pretty to show for it.

Out on the street, horses stamped and shot clouds of steam from their nostrils. Women drew their coats tighter and walked more quickly, prancing from step to step in fancy shoes; and the old men at the newsstands clapped their hands together, teeth biting hard on hand-rolled cigarettes and the stems of pipes.

Gideon adjusted his scarf and worked his hands open and closed, open and closed. His fingerless gloves were warm knitted wool, made for him by Polly as a Christmas present the year before. The gesture had touched him more than he’d admitted, and he made a point to wear them not only because he liked them, but because he wanted her to know that they were appreciated.

He buttoned his coat up to his neck and drew the scarf up over his face. It wasn’t quite cold enough to warrant such measures, at least so far as the locals were concerned. But he wasn’t a local, not in any original sense, and though he appreciated the freeze for its change of pace, he wasn’t so accustomed to the weather as someone who’d lived with it for a lifetime.

Much as he hated to consider it, and his innate impatience bristled at the prospect … he suspected that Lincoln was right.

He found it virtually impossible to pretend to the niceties that served as social lubricant for the masses. He did not like all the runaround and flowery difficulty that accompanied even the simplest transactions. Why couldn’t everyone just say what they meant? Why did they need to couch everything so cautiously? The truth should always be enough, regardless of its delivery.

He stamped his feet while he walked, as the chill worked its way through the soles of his shoes. His socks were thick and warm, but they were damp with mud and melted ice, and now he carried the slush of the streets along for the ride.

He considered catching a cab, but to where? Back to the Lincolns’ home, where he lurked in unhappy hiding? How could he rest under the ostensible guard of Nelson Wellers, a man who looked too fragile to wind a watch? He needed to stretch his legs. He needed to stretch his brain.

Abraham Lincoln was not wrong. But at the moment, he wasn’t interested in the president’s help. It wasn’t that he didn’t value the assistance and patronage; far from it. But there was some gap, some disconnect between them that occasionally could not be traversed. It might’ve been as simple as money, except that Lincoln had grown up poor as well … though not enslaved. It could’ve been as complicated as power, but were those two things different? Money and power? Gideon thought so, but he would have been the first to admit that the line between the two was thinner than D. C. ’s icy air, and the overlap between them could not be overstated.

In simple fact, they did not always understand each other. And while Lincoln was a great speaker, a great writer, a great orator, even … he wasn’t the man whose audience Gideon craved right then.

And just like that, he knew where he wanted to go.

He hailed a cab after all, climbed inside, and gave directions to a townhome on the other side of the Capitol.