“They are a tiny group of radicals, then,” Lee breathed. Goldfarb gave him a curious look. He took no notice of it;
“Shall I go on?” Goldfarb asked.
“Wait.” Lee was thinking hard. If mankind’s opinion—”the rest of the world,” Blankaard had written—had decisively turned against these self-admitted Afrikaner outlaws a hundred fifty years ahead, then what better, more logical reason for their return to the Confederacy than an effort to build another nation that favored “white power” to become South Africa’s friend and collaborator in a changed future? Rhoodie had said as much, and everything the Rivington men had done here fit in with that goal.
The Confederate States of America had not been formed for outlawry: just the reverse. That alone would have made Lee oppose the AWB with everything he had. But the men from the future had given him other reasons. He heard again Bishop Johns’s prayers over Mary’s casket. “They shall not have their way.”
“Sir?” Goldfarb asked.
“Never mind,” Lee said. “No, you need go no farther in that book now; I have heard enough.”
“Yes, sir.” Goldfarb slapped the volume closed, stared all around. “What a strange place,” he said, to which Lee could only nod. Goldfarb pointed to an object—Lee knew no better word for it—on one of the desks. “What is that thing, for instance?”
“I cannot tell you, Mr. Goldfarb, for I do not know.” Lee had curiously tapped the artifact in question a couple of times himself, as he walked back and forth past it. Its main piece was shaped like a box, taller than it was deep, but it had a thin metal tube projecting upward from one comer of the top. A spiral cord joined the boxlike part to another one which was small enough to be held in the hand.
The front of the boxlike part was covered with switches and knobs. One said ON-OFF. Lee flicked it from the latter to the former. A light went on in the glassed-in upper part of the box. A low hiss, rather like distant surf but more steady, came from a metal-covered grill. Lee moved the switch back to OFF. The light went out; the noise faded and was gone.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Goldfarb said, “but what is it good for?”
“Again, I do not know,” Lee answered, though the AWB men doubtless did.
“Or what about this other thing next to it?”
“Still another mystery, I am afraid.” Lee ran his hand over the gadget close by the one that hissed. It was hard, but did not feel to the finger like metal, wood, or glass—though glass did seem to cover the large, dark, greenish square that dominated the center of the oyster-gray, upright cabinet.
Connected to that small cabinet by another spiral cord was a low, flat box with letters, numbers, and symbols printed onto upraised studs. For no reason Lee could fathom, the letters were scrambled, and there were two sets of numbered studs, one above the top row of letters, the other off to the right by itself. He poked a couple of studs. They clicked and went down under the pressure of his touch, but otherwise did nothing.
“Maybe it is a qwerty,” Goldfarb said, pointing to the nonsense word formed by part of one row of letters.
“Maybe it is,” Lee said, quite seriously. Then he pointed, too, at the words beside the sole decoration on the otherwise severely functional device: a stylized apple with rainbow stripes and a bite taken out of one side. “Or maybe it’s a Macintosh IVQL.”
“I wonder what it is for,” Goldfarb said.
“So do I.” Lee turned away from the qwerty—he liked the merchant’s suggestion better than his own—and found another book with Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging on the spine. “Tell me what this one contains, Mr. Goldfarb, if you would be so kind.”
* XVII *
Judge Cornelius Joyner nailed a sheet of paper to the notice board in front of the Nash County courthouse. To Nate Caudell, who watched from the middle of a crowd of silent, grim-faced people, each stroke of the hammer sounded like a bullet slamming home. He squeezed Mollie Bean’s hand. She squeezed back, hard enough to hurt.
The justice of the peace tossed aside the hammer. The thump it made against the damp ground reminded Caudell of a dead body falling. He sternly reined in his runaway imagination. Judge Joyner turned and faced the men and women who packed the square. “I know not all of you have your letters, so I’m going to read this out loud for you. You’d best listen and pay heed, too.”
He turned back to the notice he’d just posted. His deep voice was big enough that Caudell had no trouble hearing him: “The following proclamation is published for the information of all concerned: By virtue of the power vested in men by law to declare the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in regions threatened by rebellion: I, Robert E. Lee, President of the Confederate States of America, do proclaim that martial law is hereby extended over the counties of Nash, Edgecombe, Halifax, Franklin, and Warren (in North Carolina), and I do proclaim the suspension of all civil jurisdiction (with the exception of that enabling the courts to take cognizance of the probate of wills, the administration of the estates of deceased persons, the qualification of guardians, to enter decrees and orders for the partition and sale of property, to make orders concerning roads and bridges, to assess county levies, and to order the payment of county dues), and the suspension: of the writ of habeas corpus in the counties aforesaid. In faith whereof I have hereby signed my name and set my seal this fifteenth day of March, in the year 1868. Robert E. Lee.”
Caudell added his sigh to the dozens that went up around him. Read all at once, as Joyner had read it, the proclamation felt like a boulder rolling over him. He hung his head in shame at having his home county branded throughout the South as a “region threatened by rebellion”—but then, Rivington lay within Nash County. Till word came down of what people were calling the Richmond Massacre, he’d been mildly proud to have Rivington close by, no matter what he thought of some of the men who’d settled there. Now he wished the place were on the far side of the moon.
Judge Joyner said, “Don’t go away yet, folks. There’s more.” He raised his voice again: “Lieutenant General Forrest, commanding Confederate States forces in eastern North Carolina, is charged with due execution of the foregoing proclamation. He will forthwith establish an efficient military police and will enforce—the following orders: All distillation of spirituous liquors is positively prohibited, and the distilleries will forthwith be closed. The sale of spirituous liquors of any kind is also prohibited, and establishments for the sale thereof will be closed.”
Now the noises that rose from the crowd sounded more like mutters than sighs. Most of the grumbles came from farmers who were used to turning part of their corn into whiskey. The Liberty Bell saloon had a shiny new padlock on the front door, though Caudell suspected that would not keep Wren Tisdale from selling a spirituous liquor or two out the back.
“I’m not done,” Cornelius Joyner warned. “You all had better listen to this: “All persons infringing the above prohibition will suffer such punishment as shall be ordered by the sentence of a court-martial, provided that no sentence to hard labor be for more than one month by the sentence of a regimental court-martial, as directed by the Sixty-Seventh Article of War. By command of the Secretary of War. S. Cooper, Adjutant and Inspector General.”
“A month working on the roads for selling a man a drink?” Raeford Liles said. “I don’t believe it.”