Then the dot was back and the pain began to fade.
And there was noise. A very faint noise. Clicking. Something Dane had heard before. Where? When?
It was a dolphin. Rachel had made the same noise.
The ocean. Dane was in the ocean, swimming. Not using arms and legs, but his entire body. The water was gliding by on his skin, so smooth. He’d never felt so powerful. So free. He could see sunlight glinting above and darkness below, but he was in a warm band of cobalt blue. And he wasn’t alone. To his right was a dolphin, keeping pace with him.
It was all so natural that it took Dane a little while to realize he had the same form as his companion. He was a dolphin, swimming with thrusts of his flippers. He realized this was the avatar that Talbot had talked about. He was being projected into the psychometric plane in the form most suitable to do what was needed.
Dane had no idea how long he swam alongside the dolphin before he remembered why he was here. He turned toward the dolphin and focused his thoughts. The Ones Before.
The dolphin halted and floated still, staring at him.
The Ones Before.
The ocean was gone and Dane realized he was in a tank. Trapped. Darkness. But there was a sound. A steady throbbing sound. He felt pressure all around. He was moving, he knew that, but how?
Then the pressure was gone, although the sound remained. Dane realized he was not only floating in water but the tank was floating inside whatever enclosure it was in. He realized he was in space, in zero gravity.
Then the sound was gone. There was light, but artificial, not sunlight. All around, from all directions. Dane was moving but he was still in a tube. A long one. The water was pushing him forward.
Then he was in open water, but still under a strange bright light. And there were other dolphins. A half dozen. All around him. Staring at him with their dark eyes.
The Ones Before.
Then Dane understood. As if the information were a bucket of water that was poured into his, brain and absorbed by the cells with instant awareness.
The Ones Before.
The Shadow.
And. most important what he had to do.
CHAPTER TWELVE
General lee was surprised and for once, he did little to hide it. “You say the main bulk of the Federal Army is north of the Potomac?”
The spy was covered in mud from a hard night’s ride. His face was haggard from both exhaustion and stress. He had just traversed many miles of enemy territory. It was a hard journey on the nerves because he knew that if he were caught he would be hanged immediately. He nodded at lee’s question. “Yes, General. I saw two corps at least.” The spy went to the map on the field table and pointed. “Stretched from here to here.”
Lee looked at Longstreet. His senior corps commander was the only person in whom he would confide, and he did not need to speak out loud his shock that the Union forces had moved so quickly as he saw it reflected in Longstreet’s face.
“And they got a new commander, general,” the spy continued. “Hooker got sacked by Lincoln. Meade is in command.”
That was one piece of information Lee had already received, although it was not common knowledge throughout the Army of Northern Virginia.
Several of the junior officers gathered in the tent 19hed at the mention of Meade’s name, and one who had served in the prewar army pointed out that Meade was about as mediocre as Hooker. Lee shook his head. silencing the derision. “I, too, served with Meade. He is not audacious but he will commit no blunder on my front. And if I make one, he will make haste to take advantage of it.”
“Then we best make no mistakes,” Longstreet said, but Lee was focused back on the spy. “Did you see anything of Stuart? Of my cavalry?”
“No. sir.”
It was a question Lee had started asking almost hourly, of anyone who wandered too close to him. Lee switched his attention to the map. As near, as he could tell the terrain between him and the place where the spy indicated the Federals were was relatively flat with some hills and ridge but no piece jumped out at him as the place to choose for battle. The streams mostly ran to the Potomac, and while there were many, none seemed particularly out· standing from a military point of view as an obstacle. There were numerous roads crisscrossing the area and an army could move relatively quickly if unopposed.
“What direction were the Federals moving?” Lee asked.
“North.”
Lee frowned. “A blocking force to keep us from Baltimore?”
No one answered the question, as none could know.
“You say two corps,” Lee said to the scout. “What about the rest of the Army of the Potomac?” The larger Union Army had seven corps, which meant Lee still didn’t · know where the bulk of Meade’s force was.
The spy shrugged. “I saw only those, but they were moving. The rest might be following or they might be in Washington or they might still be in Virginia for all I · know, sir.”
Longstreet was now looking at the map. “There are hills to our west.”
“I know there are hills to our west,” Lee snapped, a little more irritably than he intended. He knew Longstreet wanted to find a nice hill and dig in and wait for the Federals. “The problem is we might sit for a very long time waiting for the Federals to come to us. And our supply line is long and could easily be cut. Meade could sit all summer between us and Washington and Baltimore with interior lines. If only I knew his intentions.”
The atmosphere in the command tent was one Longstreet had never experienced before in two years of war. There was an air of uncertainty as Lee stood staring at the map and musing options out loud. Longstreet had never seen the Old Man so indecisive, but he also understood the lack of intelligence due to Stuart’s disappearance was weighing heavily on his commander. They were blundering around in enemy territory.
“All the better reason for us to sit tight for a few days,” Longstreet said. “Stuart will come back.”
“We have the initiative,” Lee disagreed. “We must keep it.” He reached down with his right hand, fore and middle finger extended. They touched the map on two towns. “Cashtown and Gettysburg. Ewell is already in the area. We will move the rest of the army in that direction. Via Middletown.”
“Which town is the primary objective?” Longstreet asked.
Lee kept his fingers on the map. “I’ll decide when I each Middletown.” He looked up and tried a smile. “I ear there are shoes in Gettysburg.”
One of the division commanders heard this. “If there is objection, General Lee, I will take my division in the morning and go to Gettysburg and get those shoes.”
Colonel John Buford had an objection to any Rebels coming to Gettysburg. He was a Kentuckian who had served in the Regular Army before the war. He’d fought Indians on the frontier and was already an experienced combat leader when the Civil War broke out. Since the beginning of hostilities, he had seen more than his share of combat. He commanded two brigades of battle-tested Union cavalry. His reputation was as a hard and energetic leader who pushed himself as hard as he pushed his men. He pushed himself so hard, that less than six months after the battle that was approaching he would be dead. The coroner’s report would state simply that he had died of exposure and exhaustion.
At the moment, he was very much alive, just west of Gettysburg, looking through his binoculars down the Chambersburg Pike. There were fields on either side of the pike, and his military mind saw an axis of advance that was wide and open, other than for a number of easily revolved rail fences splitting the fields. He was standing in the cupola of the Lutheran Seminary that held a commanding ding view of the terrain all around. He turned and looked back toward Gettysburg.