beauregard opened his eyes painfully. his head ached, and his left arm hurt horribly.
he was lying on a rumpled bed in his torn uniform. piquette and a wizened, very black negro man were standing beside the bed, looking down at him anxiously. he recognized that he was in the house in winchester, in the room where he had spent last night ... or was it last night?
"quette!" he croaked, trying to sit up. he couldn't make it, and he gasped at the pain in his arm. "i thought i told you to leave winchester."
"i didn't want to leave you, gard," she answered softly. "and it's lucky i didn't. some men on an ammunition truck found your car. your driver was killed and your arm blown half off. they brought you here."
"dammit," he complained, "why didn't they take me to the base hospital?"
"because the base hospital took a direct hit from a bomb."
that startled beauregard into the realization that there was no sound of firing, no crash of bombs, outside. there were men's shouts and the normal sounds of a town occupied by the military. had the union forces been repulsed by some miracle?
"well, for pete's sake, call the medics and get me to a field hospital," he ordered. "and you head south for birmingham, like i told you to."
"gard," she said soberly, "i thought it ought to be your decision, and not mine. if we call the medics, they'll be federal troops. winchester was captured hours ago, and it's just chance that they haven't entered this house and found you before now."
beauregard lay silent, stunned. the strange man beside the bed spoke for the first time.
"it is not his decision," he said. "there is work that i must do which may be delayed forever if he is captured."
"this is adjaha, a friend of mine," said piquette. "he came to winchester to see you. he thinks he knows a way to end the war."
"poppycock!" snorted beauregard weakly.
"general courtney," said adjaha intensely, "you spent last night with piquette. where did you spend the night? here or in chattanooga?"
beauregard opened his mouth to say, "here, of course." then he stopped. suddenly a vision, almost a memory, rose up before him and he could not be sure. there was a chandelier, and a black voodoo charm....
"you do remember some of it!" exclaimed adjaha delightedly.
"it seems that i dreamed the south was winning, and i was going to drive on tullahoma, and i went to chattanooga to see piquette," said beauregard slowly. "but it's mixed up in my mind with another dream, in which there was no war at all, and i was elected governor...."
"those were not dreams," said adjaha. "they happened and yet they did not happen."
"i remember you in a dream," said beauregard faintly, "and words about 'fan-shaped destiny'...."
"you have to understand this or i can do nothing," said adjaha hurriedly. "the south was doing well, although it could not have won in the end. you were preparing to advance on tullahoma, and you did go to chattanooga last night to see piquette. this happened.
"but it didn't happen, because i utilized the ancient knowledge of my people, involving dimensions beyond time, to change the factors that led to it. decisions of different people were influenced differently at a dozen points in the past so that piquette did not become your mistress before you went to memphis, and your own emotional attitude was changed just enough to steer you on a different course.
"then the other things you call a dream happened instead. there was peace instead of war."
"then how is it that we actually have war and defeat?" demanded beauregard, his voice a little stronger.
"piquette," said adjaha gravely. "you found her again, and she became your mistress after you were governor."
"but i remember that now!" exclaimed beauregard. "that's three years in the future ... and there was no war."
"it is difficult to understand, but the future can change the present," said adjaha. "general courtney, even more than i realized at first you are the 'man of destiny,' the key to war or peace in the south, and piquette is the key to your own emotions.
"try to comprehend this: you cannot love piquette in a south that is at peace! the whole social fabric in which you were nurtured demands of you that a woman of negro blood cannot be your paramour unless she is socially recognized as an inferior and, in a very real sense, not your co-equal lover but the servant of your pleasure. when piquette became your mistress, even five years after the decisive moment of the memphis conference, the entire framework of time and events was distorted and thrown back into a sequence in which the south was at war. this time, unfortunately for you, a slightly different time-path was taken and the south does not fare so well."
"then you've failed, and things are worse than they were if you hadn't interfered," said beauregard.
"no, i must try again," said adjaha. "piquette's mother must never have brought her to nashville as a child, so there will be no chance of your ever meeting her at all."
there was a thunderous knocking at the front door. federal troops who were investing the town at last had reached this house. adjaha gave beauregard one sympathetic look from his dark eyes, and slipped quietly from the room, toward the rear of the house.
the knocking sounded again. beauregard lay in a semi-daze, his blood-encrusted left arm an agony to him. through the haze over his mind intruded a premonition that bit more deeply than the physical pain: never to know piquette?
he clutched her hand to his breast.
"quette," he whimpered.
"be still, darling. i won't leave you," she soothed him as a mother soothes her child. her cool hand caressed his cheek.
