Independence Day Read online

  The old man closed his eyes. His voice was so low, Doc had a hard time hearing. “I saw a great war being fought on our soil. A war between the colonies. Northern versus southern.

  “I saw battle flags for each side. In the north they were much like the one that Navy man John Paul Jones hoisted late last year on his ship and Washington is speaking of adapting. Red and white stripes. Not the British Union in the upper left corner as proposed, but white stars against a blue background. That army wore blue. The other flag was red, and blue diagonals. And stars also, but inside the blue diagonals. Those soldiers uniformed in gray and brown rallied to that flag.”

  “Those are the flags I saw,” Adams said. “Go on.”

  Jefferson nodded.

  “Terrible battles, in places I didn’t recognize.” Franklin opened his eyes. “Men killed by the thousands.”

  “Charges back and forth, in a valley between two ridgelines?” Adams asked.

  Franklin agreed. “Men in gray first on one day. Mowed down by cannon and musket fire. But the cannon fired farther than any cannon I’ve seen. And the muskets also had greater range.”

  “You have an eye for detail,” Adams said.

  “’Eye’?” Livingston said. “This was in your head.”

  “True,” Franklin acknowledged, “but it was in Mister Adams and Mister Jefferson’s heads also. In detail. In this great battle, on the next day in the rain, the men in blue charged, with the same futile results. Both sides were massacred in the bravery in the same field. I sensed the gray were from the south and the blue from the north. Thomas?” Franklin asked. “The same?”

  The man who hadn’t spoken yet broke his silence. “Yes. I don’t know why. But that is the way I saw it. Even the flags in such same detail.”

  Doc frowned, trying to determine what battle Livingston was describing, then it struck him: if Roland failed at Gettysburg, the North would attack on the Fourth, back across the same killing ground. The hair on the back of his neck rose as he felt the connection to Roland’s mission eighty-seven years from now. But in this same twenty-four-hour bubble.

  Doc was excited, realizing this held huge potential for a breakthrough on the Turing Time Computer. Direct linkage and--

  “I did not recognize the place,” Adams said, and Doc forced his mind to the here and the now, because there would be no work on the Machine if he didn’t succeed and make it back to the Possibility Palace.

  “Nor I,” Jefferson said. “But based on the vegetation, it was not far from here. Not much farther south than Virginia. Not much farther north, either.”

  Franklin chuckled. “That is a detail which I didn’t focus on.”

  “But you noted the design of the flags in detail,” Adams said. “And I am sure if there had been a woman in it, you would have paid even more attention.”

  “Now, John,” Franklin chided. “You have your wonderful Abigail. She is more than enough woman for any man. Do not begrudge my little hobbies. I have not been as fortunate as you in that area.”

  Jefferson got them back on track. “I believe we saw something that might occur.”

  “Something that will occur,” Adams said, “unless we deal with the issue.”

  “But to go to war over slavery?” Livingston asked. “You say it was obvious those in the vision had a country and it was divided. We do not even have a country yet.”

  “Hear, hear,” Sherman said.

  “The slavery issue,” Adams said. “It is a moral imperative that we deal with it now. These dreams, visions, nightmares, whatever you wish to call them, coming to each of us in the same manner, with the same occurrences, are simply the way the Lord is ensuring we do the right thing.”

  “Now, John,” Franklin said. “I never took you for much of a Bible man.”

  “I am not,” Adams said. “But we are, what is it Thomas said? Holding a lion by the ears? These visions are what will happen when we let go of the ears too late.”

  “Too late or too soon?” Sherman said. “We must deal with reality. I believe we must proceed cautiously. The vision could come true much too soon, before we have lifted the yoke from the King.”

  Doc looked at Thyia. She was perfectly still, peering down the stairwell, bow in hand, arrow notched but not drawn.

  “It is a curious conundrum,” Franklin said. “Either way, early or late, is a path fraught with peril and this horrible possibility we have seen for the future. It may come about no matter what we do.”

  “What say you, Thomas?” Adams asked.

  “If it may come about no matter what we do,” Jefferson said in a low voice, “then we should do the right thing. Now. Why did we three get this vision in our last sleep? Why not earlier? Why not after Independence is signed? I do not share Mister Adams’ religious beliefs exactly, but I do know there are powers greater than ourselves moving our hands, our heads and our hearts. To defy that power is foolish.”

  Doc had to agree with that. There were greater powers. If not some sort of God, then most definitely the Fates. Or the Shadow. Or, Doc had to accept, the Time Patrol.

  Franklin clapped, not in irony, but with admiration. “That was the longest speech I’ve heard you make, Thomas, after all this time in the chambers where you sit as if mute. You should speak more often.”

  Jefferson indicated the papers. “I am better with the quill.”

  “Indeed,” Franklin said. “Indeed you are. I tell you that your Declaration of Independence will stand the test of time and will be an inspiration for generations to come.”

  “If it’s signed,” Livingston said. “It is just paper now. As far as your hastily-penned second Declaration, the Congress is not even aware such a thing exists, never mind having laid eyes on it.”

  Jefferson indicated a single piece of parchment. “It is not a complicated matter. Free or slave.”

  Sherman snorted. “Thomas, you are naïve, especially as a southerner and slave owner. The Carolinas will not hear of it. Nor Georgia.”

  Doc assumed the dreams, nightmares, visions, whatever, that each had had, was some ploy of the Shadow. To nudge them into action other than that which they were to do this day: present a final copy of the Declaration of Independence to the Whole Congress later today, when thirty-four delegates would sign it.

  “Slavery will die a natural death,” Sherman argued. “It is fading away here in the north and moving farther and farther south. Except, of course, for those richly titled and landed,” he said with a harsh look at Livingston.

  “It is not simple,” Livingston said. “Yes, I do own slaves. It is an integral part of society. Something that must change, I agree. But should I simply free my slaves? What then? Who are they in society? How do they exist? Would they be better off? To start with, they would not have the vote. Without the vote, they are irrelevant and their voice muted.”

  “I do not think,” Franklin said, “that a slave is as concerned about voting as freedom, although that’s speculation on my part, having never experienced that peculiar institution.”

  “Freedom for the Negro,” Livingston said, “without all rights, is a recipe for degradation.”

  Doc understood Livingston’s argument in concept, but he sided with Franklin; as did history. It would take until 1870 for the Fifteenth Amendment to be ratified against great opposition, and for the right to vote to ‘not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude’. Even with that, there was still a need for the Voting Rights Act to be passed a century later.

  “Gentlemen,” Franklin said, “let us move forward. Are we agreed on the final draft of the Declaration of Independence that is to be presented to Congress later this morning? John?”

  “Aye,” Adams said.

  “Thomas, I don’t believe I need ask you, but I will do you the courtesy. I know you are bitter about the sections we’ve just removed, but let us keep our focus on Independence for this wonderful document you crafted. The second document m
ore than makes up for the removal.”

  “Aye,” Jefferson said. “I agree.”

  “Chancellor?”

  “Agreed,” Livingston said.

  “Mister Sherman?” Franklin asked.

  “Aye.”

  “Excellent,” Franklin said. “We have accomplished the task we were given so many weeks ago and on which Thomas has labored so diligently. As far as a second Declaration, as proposed by Mister Jefferson. Should we present it to Congress?”

  “Aye,” Adams said, echoed by Jefferson: “Aye.”

  “Never,” Livingston declared.

  Sherman was with him: “Nay.”

  “It seems, then,” Franklin said, “ that it comes down to me. And I vote to go with what we must do. We present both the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Emancipation.”

  Monticello, VA, 4 July 1826

  Moms considered the angles and realized she was clueless.

  Jefferson was shaking his head. “Amazing. Simply amazing.”

  “It is what it is,” Moms said, as safe an answer as she could conjure up.

  Jefferson was traveling back in time via his memories. “The dream came to us, three of the Five, back in ’76.”

  “The dream?” Moms asked.

  “A vision,” Jefferson said. He was rallying, Moms’s presence giving him energy. “Adams, Franklin and me. We all saw the same thing, a terrifying vision of a horrible war between north and south. It convinced us we had to do more than just declare independence.”

  The Shadow, Moms assumed. It had sent the ‘vision’ to them. Perhaps via a Valkyrie, which it had done before, to Walter Raleigh and to Benny Havens, convincing them it was an angel from God.

  Moms scanned the download and the number five: “The Committee of Five, sir?”

  Jefferson nodded. “They put the writing on me. Franklin. Devilish old man. Good at delegating. Good at women. Good in Paris. Very good. I had to follow him there. Replace him, but you couldn’t replace Franklin. Ah. Paris.” He winced as if in pain.

  “The vision, sir?” Moms pressed. “What did you do because of it? What does it have to do with the Cipher?”

  But Jefferson was remembering it in his own way. “I only had seventeen days to write.” Jefferson shifted position, grunting in discomfort.

  Moms adjusted one of the pillows behind his upper back.

  “Thank you,” Jefferson said. “He said someone would come on the appointed date.”

  He? Moms adjusted her assumption about a Valkyrie, knowing what Nada would say. “What date?”

  “Today. Fifty years to the date, if we survived this long. Adams knew that too. It’s why he lasted, but then he must have grown afraid.” Jefferson closed his eyes. “Water please.”

  Moms brought the glass to his lips.

  “Ah, the other change. They’d already cut out my mention that the Crown had imposed the slave trade on the colonies. And it had! But there were those wanting to appease the small group of supporters we had in England. But on the Third, it was decided to cut a piece of my heart out of the Declaration.”

  The download was trying to intrude, to info dump history into Moms’ consciousness, but she blocked it, wanting to hear it firsthand, from the man who made the history. More importantly, she wanted to know what history hadn’t recorded.

  Jefferson looked past Moms, into his bedroom. “Over there.”

  Moms was uncertain what he was indicating. There was a bookcase/desk to the left of the fireplace. It was crowded with books and papers.

  “The book bound with red leather,” Jefferson specified.

  Moms went over and pulled a thick book off the shelf.

  “Page seventy-six,” Jefferson said with a chuckle.

  Moms opened the book carefully, then turned to the page. A piece of thick parchment was folded in half at the indicated point.

  “Read it,” Jefferson said.

  Moms unfolded the paper. She had a little trouble reading the cursive, but caught on quickly: He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

  The download had the same words: a section of the original draft of the Declaration that had been left on the cutting room floor.

  “Slavery,” Jefferson said. “The dark cloud thundering on the horizon of our country. South Carolina would not hear of it. Nor Georgia. And even some of the northerners whose business interests intersected with the trade. Roger Sherman and his special interests in Connecticut. After all, it was his ships that carried the damned souls across the ocean. But at least I stopped the trade when I was President.”

  An achievement the download confirmed, but one of only partial merit. By 1807 there were over four million slaves already in the United States, more than enough to be self-sustaining, as one look around Monticello confirmed.

  Moms folded the page then put it back in the book, returning it to the shelf. She wondered if someone like Edith Frobish would find it some day, cataloguing it as part of history without knowing what had really happened today, in this room.

  Moms went to Jefferson’s bed. “And the vision, sir?”

  “We’d finished the Declaration of Independence. Final draft. The one that would be presented later in the day to Congress for signature. But then we moved on to the pressing matter. We argued. Myself, Adams and Franklin pushed for more. For a second declaration. Sherman and Livingston, who had not seen what we had, were opposed.

  “We put it to a vote and, of course, the majority prevailed.” Jefferson grunted in pain as he moved on the bed. There seemed no position in which he would ever be comfortable. “So I wrote another document. A Second Declaration.”

  He fell silent, leaving Moms to ponder the possibilities. None of them were good. There was no second declaration. She could sense a presence on the outside of the bedroom door and knew Hemings was waiting. Moms didn’t know how much longer Jefferson had. The download indicated that he died this morning, before Adams passed away in Massachusetts, with the supposed last words: ‘Thomas Jefferson survives’ although the witness, his son John Quincy Adams, said the last word was indistinct. Could have been Thomas Jefferson sucks. Who knew?

  “This second declaration,” Moms pressed. “Where is it?” She had a feeling the Cipher held the answer. “What is it?”

  Jefferson’s voice was so low, Moms had to lean over, her ear just a foot from his mouth in order to hear.

  “Fifty years. How did he know? Who was he? Who are you?”

  “We’re friends,” Moms said, sorting through the possibilities. Too many variables. Too many players who didn’t matter right now. What mattered was what had been done fifty years ago. What the Second Declaration was and where it currently was.

  “A compromise,” Jefferson said. “We were all excellent at compromise. So once more, we compromised. We presented the edited Declaration of Independence on the morning of the Fourth. But before we allowed it to be formally adopted, we sealed the room. Just the delegates. It was so hot in there. Growing hotter as the sun rose. We told the delegates no one must speak of what came next. No one would ever write of it. The thirty-four who signed that day.” He nodded. “No one has. Until now. Until me
. But I am the last of the Five.”

  The download confirmed that. In fact, after today, there would be only one man still alive who’d signed the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Maryland, and he hadn’t been present in Philadelphia until the second signing.

  “What of the others?” Moms asked. “The twenty-two who signed on the Second of August? Do any of them know of this?”

  “No. We had a majority on the Fourth,” Jefferson said. “That was all that was needed. All that is needed.”

  “What did you write? What was the second declaration?”

  “What we should have written in the first place to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Declaration of Independence. A Declaration of Emancipation.”

  Vicksburg, Mississippi. 4 July 1863

  “What the devil was that?” Pinster demanded.

  “Nothing,” Ivar said.

  “Nothing!” Pinster pointed at the spot where the body had been. “That weren’t nothing.”

  They came for me, Ivar thought. He’d known there was a possibility, but he’d always felt second tier, not the cutting edge of the Time Patrol. True, he’d almost been whacked by the mob on Black Tuesday, but that had been the mob, not the Shadow.

  And I won, he marveled. Sparta? A mercenary in the service of the Shadow, like the one Roland ran into. Are there others here?

  Ivar turned to Joey who was staring at him, eyes wide. “Come on. Let’s get you back to your mother.”

  The boy didn’t move.

  Ivar placed his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder. “Joey. Let’s go.”

  Joey nodded. “All right, sir. All right.”

  Together, they shuffled off, leaving a bewildered Pinster behind.

  Joey wove his way through the abandoned homes and shops of Vicksburg even though there was hardly any moonlight.

  “That sure was some shooting,” Joey repeated, as if he couldn’t find any other thoughts.

  Ivar didn’t know how to respond to that. “Don’t tell anyone what you saw.”