'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 

 Prev. P 16/23 next