“I hope you can recognize your man quick,” said Jem. “There’s not much space along that road clear to the eye from here, and on horseback he’ll pass through it fast, even at a walk—which it’ll be on that muddy road. I’d say there’ll be time for one good shot, maybe as many as three if that musket can fire as fast as you claim it can.”
“I think I can identify Grant from his silhouette,” said Vick. “And the gun’ll fire faster than you believe. Look, the road makes a bow around to the creek so I’ll slip across and go down to the edge of the road on foot. That way I can see him coming well down the road and run back here in time to get set for firing. I’d say either you or Sergeant Devereaux go down and signal when he appears, except neither of you knows Grant by sight.”
He dismounted, left his weapon with Jem and waded across the creek, half-swimming part of the way. He vanished quickly into the woods and the others settled themselves to await his return.
“Lieutenant, suh, you’re my superior officuh,” said Devereaux. “Maybe President Davis sent Mistuh Vick to shoot this gen’l but this strikes me as bein’ a fur piece for pickin’ off somebody on that there bridge, with all these trees aroun’.”
“I’ve been thinkin’ the same. He says that repeatin’ musket of his is accurate at that range but I haven’t seen it fired yet. Maybe he can and maybe he can’t.”
“Then, suh,” said Devereaux, “by the lieutenant’s leave I’m thinkin’ to slip in about a hund’ed yahds closer where I can get a bead on him with my carbine. Ain’t no sense in missin’ a chance at a Yankee gen’l—if he does show up—jest to see if that gun of his’n works the way he says it does.”
“You go ahead, Sergeant. He can’t complain at bein’ backed up if he really wants to get Grant.”
Vick came thrashing back in a great hurry and splashed back across the stream.
“He’s on his way, with one orderly,” said Vick.
Devereaux slipped into the bushes with a lift of his hand. Vick looked at Jem questioningly and Jem explained somewhat apologetically, “The sergeant’s gettin’ in position closer in to the bridge to back you up, suh.”
“Think you need some insurance against my shooting, do you? It’s all right with me if you’re worried about it—but I don’t often miss when I can settle in a blind like this.”
Vick settled behind a log with the M-l, aiming down the alleyway created by the creek. Union soldiers were slogging southward along Telegraph Road in ragged formations, gaps of varying length intervening between the marching groups.
“It’s the 20th Ohio,” said Vick without turning his head. “I think they’re to be assigned to Wallace’s force.”
After long minutes two mounted men could be seen spottily through the trees, nearing the bridge as they rode north against the tide of reinforcements.
“There he comes!” whispered Vick excitedly. “The one in front, with the cigar!”
Harry Vick was not a scientist and he rarely gave thought to the paradoxes inherent in time travel. When he did, they puzzled and disturbed him. The unexpected twist of the current paradox nagged at his mind.
It was paradox enough that he, a man born in the 20th century, was here now and with a squeeze of the trigger was about to change the course of history. He would kill Grant, the South would win the Civil War and remain an independent nation—but he remembered that the North had won and he had fought in a war under the flag of a unified nation. If he succeeded here, what became of the things that had happened to him and many, many others?
When he got back to his own time what changes would he find had occurred in his own life? Could he even be sure of meeting Edgington and coming back here in the time machine? And if he didn’t, how could this happen that was about to happen, assuring that the South won the Civil War? Or was this fated, in that altered time stream would it be someone else who came back?
He had no doubt about succeeding. He was a good shot with the M-l at this range and he had eight rounds in the magazine. The twist was that Devereaux, whom Hardaway said was a marksman, was now in a position to make Grant’s assassination absolutely sure, even if Vick should unaccountably miss.
What struck Vick as ironic was that Devereaux himself wouldn’t be here, in a position to shoot Grant, except for Vick’s time travel venture. Devereaux had followed Hardaway up here, to protect his friend and lieutenant, and Hardaway had come only to accompany Vick on his mission. If Vick had stayed put in the 20th century, neither of them would have come here. Part of the paradox.
Waiting tensely for his quarry to emerge onto the bridge, Vick pictured again that chivalrous Southern society he sought to preserve, largely agrarian, with extensive estates and graceful mansions, slow-paced and pleasant. Into that picture intruded another: looking out the window at Luke Westford’s farm and watching the overseer, Quince, swing his whip brutally against the back of a goldenskinned woman. That was the other side of that gracious, cultured Old South he treasured… and what did it remind him of?
He could not evade it. Slavery could be benevolent but when it was not, one exclusive attribute characterized it. The slave had no recourse from the grossest injustice, from torture, rape or death, whether that slave was a Roman captive, a black servant on an American Southern plantation… or a Jew in Nazi Germany.
That too was a part of the life he remembered—and where would it vanish when history was altered? Of course, as in the time line he was about to discard, he would be born and reared in the 20th century South, which might well remain neutral in World War II, like Ireland. Then what would happen to the long treks over rough terrain, the brief, sharp skirmishes, the extended battles with tanks and planes roaring all around him, the corpses in olive drab and German grey sprawled on the ground… and that wild ride through the poplars to Dachau and its pitiful inmates?
Would an independent South remain neutral in World War II? And what major difference would it make if a Confederacy still technologically incompetent did join the neighboring North on the side of the Allies?
In the history he remembered the Nazi war machine had almost won before the United States was drawn into the conflict. Even with the support of a fresh and united nation, technologically sophisticated, it had taken the Allies another three and a half years to defeat Adolf Hitler. With the confederacy either neutral or technologically incompetent, the added weight of the curtailed United States could not possibly beef up the Allies to the point of invading Festung Europa.
He hadn’t ever thought it all the way through before. Now the picture of the future he had sought became clear: not a gracious agrarian South sharing the land with an industrialized North in a peaceful world, but two second-rate powers isolated behind their oceans while the world was ruled by two tyrannical megapowers, National Socialist Germany and militaristic Japan.
The present caught Vick’s waiting eye. Grant rode onto the bridge, into the clear. He was a small man, slumped slightly forward in the saddle, a wide-brimmed hat on his head and his cape whipping in the wind. Behind him rode a slender figure in Union blue, the orderly.
Vick stared at him down the barrel of the M-l. Ulysses S. Grant, in the flesh! The legend he had known only from books. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Devereaux half rose behind a bush, his carbine lowering to get Grant in his sights.
A symbolic image seemed to rise before Vick’s eyes: the impeccably uniformed SS lieutenant at Dachau, ignoring the tortured, emaciated people behind him to greet his American conquerors with formal military protocol. Blind denial of responsibility for the human consequences of his adherence to the abstraction of a “perfect state.”