He climbed the steps to the exterior door and unlocked it, shoving it with his upper back. It was heavy, but it wasnt barricaded from the other side. He knocked it open and stepped out into the crisp November night.
His breath clotted in the air, and the stars looked like ice. He was free, and his unwelcome guests didnt know it yet.
But had the unwelcome guests brought company?
Gideon gently let the door fall shut behind him.
He stayed close to the building for now, sticking to the shadow of the eaves and hustling toward the front of the old facility, ducking down away from the windows and putting as much distance between himself and the laboratory as possible.
The men had brought dynamite. Their mission was sabotageand possibly espionage as well, but he didnt think so. Only seven people had ever seen the Fiddlehead, and none of them couldve used it if their lives depended on it. Only Gideon could coax it into its calculations. Only Gideon understood it, and there were days when even he was stunned by what it could do. No, even if someone, somewhere knew precisely what the device was for there wasnt another scientist in the world who could operate it. He wouldve bet his life on it.
Therefore, whoever sent the men didnt want to use the Fiddlehead. They wanted to destroy it.
Behind him, a blast shook the nighta terrible percussion that rocked the building and made the earth beneath his feet rumble unsteadily, like the ground might open up and swallow him. He staggered forward, adjusting for the quake and hunkering as he moved, bracing himself against the shingles and other bits of small debris that followed him.
When the last of it had settled, he heard nothing. Not the two men talking, not anyone chasing after him. Not even his own feet as he started to run.
Eventually his hearing caught up to him, and his head echoed with a high-pitched hum. He shook it, trying to cast the buzz out of his ears like so much water after a swim. The hum wavered but stayed, keeping him company as he cut across the lawn, past an old fountain that had been dry for decades. He turned through an overgrown gate, pushing past the vines that knitted the old garden exit shut, stumbling briefly as his boots tangled in a brittle patch of rose briars.
Past the garden and into the woods he went, though the woods were almost too swampy to call them that. His feet splashed through puddles left by the recent rains, and the half-frozen water soaked between his toes. He held the papers up high, sometimes over his head if he was afraid of falling.
The woods thinned quickly and gave way to a road with two wide lanes and intermittent traffic. Some of the carriages and carts boasted those new combustion engines that were all the rage. Gideon liked the noise of engines more than he liked the chatter of people or the whinnies of horses, even though it all meant the same thing: civilization. Some element of safety, he supposed, assuming that no one intended to murder him in front of witnesses. And how likely was that? He couldnt say.
He crossed the road, letting the traffic flow between him and the hospital. Here and there, over the dull ringing in his ears, he heard people asking one another what that loud sound might have beenWas it an explosion, do you think? Was it artillery?for the D.C. population always had a good reason to be nervous. Now more than ever, he supposed, when Southern spies with dynamite were running about, blowing up advanced technology willy-nilly.
With a bit of distance from the hospital, Gideon played the scene over in his head one second at a time, examining every detail as he walked a road he usually traversed in a horseless carriage belonging to Mary Todd Lincoln and driven by his old friend Harrison.
As he hiked, he reviewed his information. He assessed the details and considered the motives.
The intruders had absolutely planned to kill him. Why destroy the Fiddlehead only to let its creator survive to build another one? Men who didnt know what such a machine could do probably wouldnt know how preposterous the idea was: Gideon could build another Fiddlehead, yes, but not without a vast sum of money and several years at his disposal. His lifes work could not be conjured back into existence with the blink of an eye, but it could be conjured eventually.
So, yes, his life was in dangerthat much was certain. But in danger from whom? He had assumed that the saboteurs were
Southerners, but upon reflection that may not be correct. Regional accents were dead giveaways, in Gideons experience, and although one of the men might have come from the South, the other one was definitely a northeastern coastal resident.
Mind you, a Northerner still couldve been hired by the CSA. Allegiances shifted across state lines every day, and mercenary loyalties came with price tags, not regional fidelity.
He couldnt be sure. This made him unhappy, because he liked to be sure at all times, of as many things as possible. It made for better plans.