The Guns of the South Read online

  The Guns of the South

  Harry Turtledove

  A “what if” story that deals with a group of time-traveling South African white supremacists who supply Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia with AK-47s and small amounts of other supplies (including nitroglycerine tablets for treating Lee’s heart condition), leading to a Southern victory in the American Civil War war.

  The Guns of the South

  by Harry Turtledove

  * I *

  Headquarters

  January 20, 1864

  Mr. President:

  I have delayed replying to your letter of the 4th until the time arrived for the execution of the attempt on New Berne. I regret very much that the boats on the Neuse Roanoke are not completed. With their aid I think success would be certain. Without them, though the place may be captured, the fruits of the expedition will be lessened and our maintenance of the command of the waters in North Carolina uncertain.

  Robert E. Lee paused to dip his pen once more in the inkwell. Despite flannel shirt, uniform coat, and heavy winter boots, he shivered a little. The headquarters tent was cold. The winter had been harsh, and showed no signs of growing any milder. New England weather, he thought, and wondered why God had chosen to visit it upon his Virginia.

  With a small sigh, he bent over the folding table once more to detail for President Davis the arrangements he had made to send General Rote’s brigade down into North Carolina for the attack on New Berne. Re had but small hope the attack would succeed, but the President had ordered it, and his duty was to carry out his orders as best he could. Even without the boats, the plan he had devised was not actually a bad one, and president Davis reckoned the matter urgent…

  In view of the opinion expressed in your letter, I would go to North Carolina myself. But I consider my presence here always necessary, especially now when there is such a struggle to keep the army fed clothed.

  He shook his head. Keeping the Army of Northern Virginia fed and clothed was a never-ending struggle. His men were making their own shoes now, when they could get the leather, which was not often. The ration was down to three-quarters of a pound of meat a day, along with a little salt, sugar, coffee—or rather, chicory and burnt grain—and lard. Bread, rice, corn…they trickled up the Virginia Central and the Orange and Alexandria Railroad every so often, but not nearly often enough. He would have to cut the daily allowance again, if more did not arrive soon.

  President Davis, however, was as aware of all that as Lee could make him. To hash it over once more would only seem like carping. Lee resumed: Genl Early is still in the—

  A gun cracked, quite close to the tent. Soldier’s instinct pulled Lee’s head up. Then he smiled and laughed at himself. One of his staff officers, most likely, shooting at a possum or a squirrel. He hoped the young man scored a hit.

  But no sooner had the smile appeared than it vanished. The report of the gun sounded—odd. It had been an abrupt bark, not a pistol shot or the deeper boom of an Enfield rifle musket. Maybe it was a captured Federal weapon.

  The gun cracked again and again and again. Each report came closer to the one before than two heartbeats were to each other. A Federal weapon indeed, Lee thought: one of those fancy repeaters their cavalry like so well. The fusillade went on and on. He frowned at the waste of precious cartridges—no Southern armory could easily duplicate them.

  He frowned once more, this time in puzzlement, when silence fell. He had automatically kept count of the number of rounds fired. No Northern rifle he knew was a thirty-shooter.

  He turned his mind back to the letter to President Davis. —Valley, he wrote. Then gunfire rang out again, an unbelievably rapid stutter of shots, altogether too quick to count and altogether unlike anything he had ever heard. He took off his glasses and set down the pen. Then he put on a hat and got up to see what was going on.

  At the tent fly, Lee almost collided with one of his aides-decamp, who was hurrying in as he tried to leave. The younger man came to attention. “I beg your pardon, sir.”

  “Quite all right, Major Taylor. Will this by any chance have something to do with the, ah, unusual gun I heard fired just now?”

  “Yes, sir.” Walter Taylor seemed to beholding on to military discipline with both hands. He was, Lee reminded himself, only twenty-five or so, the youngest of all the staff officers. Now he drew out a sheet of paper, which he handed to Lee. “Sir, before you actually see the gun in action, as I just have, here is a communication from Colonel Gorgas in Richmond concerning it.”

  “In matters concerning ordnance of any sort, no view could be more pertinent than that of Colonel Gorgas,” Lee agreed. He drew out his reading glasses once more, set them on the bridge of his nose.

  Bureau of Ordnance, Richmond

  January 17, 1864

  General Lee:

  I have the honor to present to you with this letter Mr. Andries Rhoodie of Rivington, North Carolina, who has demonstrated in my presence a new rifle, which I believe may prove to be of the most significant benefit conceivable to our soldiers. As he expressed the desire of making your acquaintance as the Army of Northern Virginia will again, it is likely, face hard fighting in the months ahead, I send him on to you that you may judge both him his remarkable weapon for yourself. I remain,

  Your most ob’t servant,

  Josiah Gorgas,

  Colonel

  Lee folded the letter, handed it back to Taylor. As he returned his glasses to their pocket, he said, “Very well, Major. I was curious before; now I find my curiosity doubled. Take me to Mr.—Rhoodie, was it?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s around behind the tents here. If you will come with me—”

  Breath smoking in the chilly air, Lee followed his aide-decamp. He was not surprised to see the flaps from the other three tents that made up his headquarters were open; anyone who had heard that gunfire would want to learn what had made it. Sure enough, the rest of his officers were gathered round a big man who did not wear Confederate gray.

  The big man did not wear the yellow-brown that was the true color of most home-dyed uniforms, either, nor the black of the general run of civilian clothes. Lee had never seen an outfit like the one he had on. His coat and trousers were of mottled green and brown, so that he almost seemed to disappear against dirt and brush and bare-branched trees. A similarly mottled cap had flaps to keep his ears warm.

  Seeing Lee approach, the staff officers saluted. He returned the courtesy. Major Taylor stepped ahead. “General Lee, gentlemen, this is Mr. Andries Rhoodie. Mr. Rhoodie, here is General Lee, whom you may well recognize, as well as my colleagues, Majors Venable and Marshall.”

  “I am pleased to meet all you gentlemen, especially the famous General Lee,” Rhoodie said.

  “You are much too kind, sir,” Lee murmured politely.

  “By no means,” Rhoodie said. “I would be proud to shake your hand.” He held out his own.

  As they shook, Lee tried to take the stranger’s measure. He spoke like an educated man, but not like a Carolinian. His accent sounded more nearly British, though it also held a faint guttural undertone.

  His odd clothes aside, Rhoodie did not look like a Carolinian, either. His face was too square, his features too heavy. That heaviness made him seem almost indecently well fleshed to Lee, who was used to the lean, hungry men of the Army of Northern Virginia.

  But Rhoodie’s bearing was erect and manly, his handclasp firm and strong. His gray eyes met Lee’s without wavering. Somewhere in his past, Lee was suddenly convinced, he had been a soldier: those were marksman’s eyes. By the wrinkles at their corners and by the white hairs that showed in his bushy reddish mustache, Rhoodie had to be nearing forty, but the years had only toughened him.

/>   Lee said, “Colonel Gorgas gives you an excellent character, sir, you and your rifle both. Will you show it to me?”

  “In a moment, if I may,” Rhoodie answered, which surprised Lee. In his experience, most inventors were wildly eager to show off their brainchildren. Rhoodie went on, “First, sir, I would like to ask you a question, which I hope you will be kind enough to answer frankly.”

  “Sir, you are presumptuous,” Charles Marshall said. The wan winter sun glinted from the lenses of his spectacles and turned his normally animated face into something stern and a little inhuman.

  Lee held up a hand. “Let him ask what he would, Major. You need not forejudge his intentions.” He glanced toward Rhoodie, nodded for him to continue. He had to look up to meet the stranger’s eye, which was unusual, for he was nearly six feet tall himself. But Rhoodie overtopped him by three or four inches.

  “I thank you for your patience with me,” he said now in that not-quite-British accent. “Tell me this, then: what do you make of the Confederacy’s chances for the coming year’s campaign and for the war as a whole?”

  “To be or not to be, that is the question,” Marshall murmured.

  “I hope our prospects are somewhat better than poor Hamlet’s, Major,” Lee said. His staff officers smiled. Rhoodie, though, simply waited. Lee paused to marshal his thoughts. “Sir, since I have but so briefly had the honor of your acquaintance, I hope you will forgive me for clinging to what may be plainly seen by any man with some knowledge and some wit: that is, our enemies are superior to us in numbers, resources, and the means and appliances for carrying on the war. If those people”—his common euphemism for the Federals—”use their advantages vigorously, we can but counterpoise to them the courage of our soldiers and our confidence in Heaven’s judgment of the justice of our cause. Those have sufficed thus far. God willing, they shall continue to do so.”

  “Who said God is for the big battalions?” Rhoodie asked.

  “Voltaire, wasn’t it?” Charles Venable said. He had been a professor of mathematics before the war, and was widely read.

  “A freethinker if ever there was one,” Marshall added disapprovingly.

  “Oh, indeed,” Rhoodie said, “but far from a fool. When you are weaker than your foes, should you not take the best advantage of what you do have?”

  “That is but plain sense,” Lee said. “No one could disagree.”

  Now Rhoodie smiled, or his mouth did; the expression stopped just short of his eyes. “Thank you, General Lee. You have just given much of my sales talk for me.”

  “Have I?”

  “Yes, sir, you have. You see, my rifle will let you conserve your most precious resource of all-your men.”

  Walter Taylor, who had seen the gun in action, sucked in a long, deep breath. “It could be so,” he said quietly.

  “I await the demonstration, Mr. Rhoodie,” Lee said. “You will have it.” Rhoodie unslung the weapon. Lee had already noted it was of carbine length, stubby next to an infantry musket. Because it was so short, its socket bayonet seemed the longer. Rhoodie reached over his shoulder into his haversack. That was made of mottled cloth like his trousers and coat, and looked to be of finer manufacture than even a Union man carried. Most of Lee’s soldiers made do with a rolled-up blanket.

  The tall stranger produced a curved metal object, perhaps eight inches long and an inch and a half or two inches wide. He clicked it into place in front of the carbine’s trigger. “This is the magazine,” he said. “When it’s full, it holds thirty rounds.”

  “In fine, the rifle now has bullets in it,” Taylor said.” As all of you will no doubt have noticed, it is a breechloader.” The other aides nodded. Lee kept his own counsel.

  With a rasping sound followed by a sharp, metallic click, Rhoodie drew back a shiny steel lever on the right side of the rifle. “The first round from each magazine must be chambered manually,” he said.

  “What about the others?” Venable whispered to Taylor.

  “You’ll see,” Taylor whispered back.

  Rhoodie reached into the haversack again. This time he drew out some folded papers. He unfolded one of them. It proved to be a target, a cutout roughly approximating the shape of a man’s head and body. He turned to Lee’s aides. “Will you gentlemen please put these up at different ranges out to, say, four or five hundred yards?”

  “With pleasure,” Taylor said promptly. “I’ve seen how fast your rifle can shoot; I’d like to learn how accurate it is.” He took some of the targets; Rhoodie handed the rest to the other aides. They stuck low-hanging branches through some, leaned others against bushes, both in the upright position and sideways.

  “Shall I have them straighten those, sir?” Lee asked, pointing. “They will make your shooting more difficult.”

  “Never mind,” Rhoodie answered. “Soldiers don’t always stand up, either.” Lee nodded. The stranger did not lack for confidence.

  When the aides were through, a ragged column of thirty targets straggled southeast toward Orange Court House a couple of miles off. The knot of tents that was Lee’s headquarters lay on a steep hillside, well away from encamped troops or any other human habitations. The young men laughed and joked as they came back to Rhoodie and Lee. “There’s General McClellan!” Charles Marshall said, stabbing a thumb in the direction of the nearest target. “Give him what he deserves!”

  The others took up the cry: “There’s General Burnside!” “General Hooker!” “General Meade!” “Hancock!” “Warren!” “Stoneman!” “Howard!” “There’s Honest Abe! Give him his deserts, by God!”

  Lee turned to Rhoodie. “At your convenience, sir.” The aides fell silent at once.

  “One of your men might want to look at a watch,” Rhoodie said.

  “I will, sir.” Charles Venable drew one from his waistcoat pocket. “Shall I give you a mark at which to begin?” Rhoodie nodded. Venable held the watch close to his face so he could see the second hand crawling around its tiny separate dial. “Now!”

  The rifle leaped to the big stranger’s shoulder. He squeezed the trigger. Craack! A brass cartridge case flipped up into the air. It glittered in the sun as it fell. Craack! Another cartridge case. Craack! Another. This was the same sort of quick firing as that which had interrupted Lee’s letter to President Davis.

  Rhoodie paused once for a moment.” Adjusting the sights,” he explained. He was shooting again as soon as the last word left his mouth. Finally the rifle clicked harmlessly instead of blasting out another round.

  Charles Venable looked up. “Thirty aimed shots. Thirty-two seconds. Most impressive.” He looked from the rifle to Rhoodie, back again. “Thirty shots,” he repeated, half to himself. “Where is the smoke from thirty shots?”

  “By God!” Walter Taylor sounded astonished, both at the lack of smoke and at himself. “Why didn’t I notice that before?”

  Lee had also failed to notice it. Thirty closely spaced shots should have left this Andries Rhoodie in the middle of a young fogbank. Instead, only a few hazy wisps of smoke floated from the breech and muzzle of his rifle. “How do you achieve this, sir?” he asked.

  “The charge in my cartridges is not your ordinary black powder,” Rhoodie said, which told Lee nothing not already obvious. The big man went on, “If your officers will bring in the targets, we can see how I did.”

  Taylor, Venable, and Marshall went out to retrieve the paper men. They laid them on the ground, walked along the row looking for bullet holes. Lee walked with them, quiet and thoughtful. When he had examined all the targets, he turned back to Rhoodie. “Twenty-eight out of thirty, I make it to be,” he said. “This appears to be a fine weapon, sir, and without a doubt very fine shooting.”

  “Thirty-two seconds,” Venable said. He whistled softly.

  “May I show you one thing more?” Rhoodie said. Without waiting for a reply, he loosened the catch that held the magazine in place below the rifle, stuck the curved metal container into a coat pocket. Then he pulled another on
e out of his haversack and clicked it into position. The operation took only a moment to complete.

  “Another thirty shots?” Lee asked.

  “Another thirty shots,” Rhoodie agreed. He drew back the shiny handle with the snick Lee had heard before. “Now I am ready to fire again. But what if the Americans—”

  “We are Americans, sir,” Lee broke in.

  “Sorry. The Yankees, I mean. What if the Yankees are too close for aimed fire?” Below the handle was a small metal lever. Rhoodie clicked it down so that, instead of being parallel to the handle’s track, its front end pointed more nearly toward the ground. He turned away from Lee and his staff officers. “This is what.”

  The rifle roared. Flame spurted from its muzzle. Cartridges flew out of it in a glittering stream. The silence that followed the shooting came hard and abrupt as a blow. Into it, Lee asked, “Major Venable, did you time that?”

  “Uh, no, sir,” Venable said, “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Never mind, It was quite rapid enough.”

  Rhoodie said, “Except at close range or into big crowds, full automatic fire isn’t nearly as effective or accurate as single shots. The weapon pulls up and to the right.”

  “Full automatic fire.” Lee tasted the words. “How does this repeater operate, if I may ask, sir? I have seen, for example, the Spencer repeating carbines the enemy cavalrymen employ, with a lever action to advance each successive bullet. But you worked no lever, save to chamber your first round. The rifle simply fired, again and again.”

  “When the charge in a round explodes, it makes a gas that rapidly expands and pushes the bullet out of the muzzle. Do you follow me?”

  “Certainly, sir. If I may remind you, I was an engineer.” Lee felt irked at being asked so elementary a question.

  “That’s right. So you were.” Rhoodie spoke as if reminding himself. He went on, “My weapon taps some of the gas and uses it to move the bolt back so the magazine spring can lift another round into the chamber. Then the cycle repeats itself until the magazine has no more ammunition left in it.”