Beauregard opened his eyes and looked around him dazedly. He was sitting in the parlor of Piquette's house on Lookout Mountain. Piquette leaned against his shoulder, patting his hand, and Adjaha stood before him with hands clasped behind his back. Adjaha looked like a worried dwarf. "You remember that you relived your participation in the governors' conference in Memphis?" asked Adjaha.
"Yes," said Beauregard, rubbing his forehead. "You black scoundrel! You hypnotized me with that pagan doll!"
"Yes, sir," admitted Adjaha. "It took me a long time to trace the key to this war, and when I found you were that key I knew I could reach you only through Piquette. It was your impassioned speech before the governors that turned the South to war instead of peace."
"Nonsense!" said Beauregard, sitting up straighter. "I just expressed what the majority was thinking. They'd have agreed on the Pact of Resistance even if I had objected."
"The man of destiny sometimes doesn't realize his own influence," said Adjaha drily. "Many factors were concentrated in you that day besides your own native persuasiveness. No, General, your stand swung the governors to the Pact of Resistance. Announcement of that pact spurred the Konfederate Klansmen to massacre the federal troops at Meridian. That brought the federal proclamation placing Mississippi under martial law and the subsequent mobilization and revolt of the South."
"Perhaps so," conceded Beauregard wearily. "Perhaps I did wrong in not following Governor Gentry's instructions and keeping my mouth shut. But I spoke my convictions, and it's too late now."
"That is not necessarily true, General," said Adjaha. "Time is a dimension, and it is as easy to move east as it is to move west. A better simile: one can move upward as well as downward, but the presence of gravitation makes special skills necessary."
Beauregard shook his head.
"A good theory, but good only as a theory," he said. "If it were more than that, the law of cause and effect would be abrogated."
"No, it works both ways. The present can influence the past as much as it influences the future, or as much as the past influenced it. Thus, through the past, the present can influence itself.
"In my native land, the Ivory Coast of Africa, we believe in fan-shaped destiny, General. At every instant where a choice is made, a man may take one of many paths. And those who had the old knowledge of my people could retrace their steps when the wrong path was taken, and choose another path."
"But I can't," said Beauregard. "If I could, I don't know anything that could have changed what I said and did that day in Memphis."
"Tell me, General, how long had Piquette been your mistress before the Memphis Conference?" asked Adjaha.
"About three years," answered Beauregard, too puzzled at this change of tack to be offended.
"Even if you were a psychologist instead of a general, it would be difficult for you to probe the motivation of your own heart," said the Negro. "Piquette was your reason for voting for war, instead of peace!"
Beauregard sprang to his feet angrily.
"Look, damn you, don't feed me your voodoo doubletalk!" he thundered. "If it were Piquette alone I had to consider, don't you think I'd have advocated equality for the black race?"
It was Piquette's voice that sobered him, like a dash of cold water.
"And yet you try to tell me I'm not a Negro, Gard," she said quietly.
The anger drained from him. He slumped back to the sofa.
"Ah, yes, the perversity of a man whose mind and heart are at odds!" exclaimed Adjaha softly. "You love Piquette, yet your pride tells you that you should not love a woman with Negro blood in her veins. For that you must be aggressive, you must prove the moral code taught you as a child was not wrong.
"You went to the Memphis Conference with Piquette's kisses still sweet on your lips, and because of that your conscience demanded that you stand forth as a champion of the white man's superiority."
"So be it, then, you black Freudian," retorted Beauregard cynically, an angry gleam in his blue eyes. "The die was cast two years ago."
"The die shall be recast," said Adjaha firmly. "Piquette must not have gone to Memphis. She must not have been your mistress before you went to Memphis."
With this, he walked swiftly from the room. Beauregard looked at Piquette, his eyes half amused, half doubtful. She smiled at him.
"What he does is out of our hands," she said. "It's still early, Gard."
He took her in his arms.