The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

Diachronicle

DAY 1945 (DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, YEAR 5)

In which the road to perdition is paved with gold

GRÁINNE AND I HAD ARRIVED in San Francisco without benefit of the level of research to which I was accustomed. Blevins, clearly smitten with Gráinne, had allowed—one might even say encouraged—her to learn all manner of Internet searching, and she assured me that she had done all the background work for this DTAP. There were no particular skills required, it was argued, as San Francisco in 1850 was such a madcap swill of different cultures (and so extremely under-populated by women) that even if I wore pants and chewed gum I would not stand out as irregular, while no matter how prepared I was, I would still stand out for being female. Because we were so close to the end of magic, the intention was to get in and out quickly.

As arrival was always in the nude, and this was San Francisco at the start of the Gold Rush, it was sensible to arrive in a brothel. Gráinne had chosen the Golden Mounds, right on Portsmouth Square, which was so new (having been rebuilt twice in the past year due to monstrous fires) that it still smelled of pine sap and paint, which stale beer and stale sweat had not yet masked. Imagine whatever tawdry image of Gold Rush whorehouses you like; this one was surprisingly well-appointed, despite the slapdash construction. Somebody, somewhere, had come into massive amounts of gold leaf, and the whole place glittered. You’ve surely seen the photographs of prostitutes of this era, I need not spend the ink describing them—but I was not prepared for the loud, rowdy, almost assembly-line attitude of the place. Curtains, at best, separated nooks for nookie sexual congress. There was nothing close to privacy. It was a madhouse of copulation. This made our arrival—in the corner of a large room with some eight beds all sectioned off by hanging “tapestries”—entirely unnoticed.

We both stumbled to our knees. I recovered quickly, for I had been Sent many times. Gráinne was a little slower to shake it off—but then she was more in her element than I, and in a trice she had pinched a couple of day-dresses. Corsets and blouses generally remained on the girls, at least at this tier of low-latency prostitutional services.

“We’ll do better to find their non-work clothes,” I said, as Gráinne tossed me the more modest of the two dresses. “Since we shall have to go out on the street.”

“No need to dress primly here at all,” she replied cheerily. “Not for the time that’s in it. Here’s some knickers that look clean enough”—and she tossed me some linen bloomers. (Not unlike the ones I am wearing now, although these are a much finer weave and mercifully much cleaner. I must be grateful for these small blessings now.)

We made our way downstairs and headed for the main door, when a wasp-wasted figure stepped between us and our egress. “Who are you?” demanded this older woman (dressed more as one imagines ladies dressing in the early Victorian era—so clearly the madam of the place). She aimed the query straight at me, and I, unprepared, without the usual backstory we were always careful to produce, hesitated.

“It’s grand, ma’am, surely,” said Gráinne, with a winsome smile. “Mary it was sent us over from the other place, there’s a ship arrived with lots of new women, and they haven’t the beds set up. If you don’t want us we’ll be striking out on our own, but we’ve heard such agreeable things about your terms. Will you take us, so? Shall we just be fetching our bags from the harborside? Pay my cousin no mind, she’s deaf and dumb.”

The woman frowned. “Mary should know we don’t take Irish,” she said.

“It’s a surfeit of English ladies you’ve got, is it?” Gráinne asked in a playfully disbelieving voice. And then, in an odd accent somewhere between London and Appalachian, she asked, “What if we were English, then? Would that work for your johns? We can easily be English. My cousin here, she can be anything!”

Now the woman looked confused, but in a way that suggested Gráinne would get her way. With a brusque gesture she motioned toward the door. “Very well, then, get your things and come back, we can use the help.”

“Help,” Gráinne quoted with a snigger, and out we went to meet the city.

“Who’s Mary?” I whispered as we exited.

Gráinne shrugged. “Mary’s such a common name there will always be at least one nearby. ’Tis the best name to be using when you’re counterfeiting.”

To say that San Francisco in 1850 was a city being built on Gold Rush fever does not begin to capture the chaos, havoc, greed, and rough-hewn glamour that made up the peninsula. It had taken almost no time at all for the sharpest of the ’49ers—or Argonauts, as the tens of thousands who came by sea were called—to realize that the real money was to be made not from mining gold but from selling all manner of goods to the fellows who were trying to mine it. Shops of every conceivable sort had sprung up in buildings around the waterfront and on the route out of town—freshly built wooden buildings that (I did know this much from some hasty research) had already burned in three enormous conflagrations over the past year or so.

I also knew from my abbreviated Googling that a fourth Great Fire would destroy a swath of the town just a few weeks after our arrival. This, in concert with my awareness that magic was soon to wane entirely, added a certain urgency to our DEDE—I was eager to accomplish it and get out quickly.

Between credit and gold, the town was obviously, and almost dangerously, wealthy. Grand, elegant palace-like hotels and buildings were being constructed in a slapdash manner even faster than they were burning down. The building we had just exited was three stories tall and brightly painted, facing onto a large city square. I looked to either side—the entire block was a series of theatres, saloons, and inns, bustling in the bright midday sun with prostitutes, gamblers, con men, and the occasional gentleman. Given there was no easy natural source of water or wood, I cannot imagine where all the resources to do this were being obtained.

“Amazing,” said Gráinne heartily, gazing down the hill toward the harbor—in which was moored many hundreds of tall ships. “Two years ago this was a village; now this. See all them ships? Marooned there by their crews, so they are, the crews having jumped ship to go prospecting. So it’s taking possession the city folk have done, and turned them into homes, inns, taverns, brothels, theatres, and I do believe a jail. And look, that’s where the Chinamen are living.”

She pointed to a peculiar neighborhood of unaccountably neat and sturdy wooden homes, laid out in a grid, on a slope near the harbor. “Those houses were shipped over here from Canton, in pieces but ready to be assembled. They’re very popular and their owner is about to make a fortune. Can’t say as much for the rest of the Chinese.”

“Where’s Xiu Li?” I asked, this being the name of the witch we were to recruit. “Since you did all the research I assume you have some idea? I guess the Chinese have brothels as well?”

Gráinne cut me a look. “Why are you even suggesting that? Do you think all witches are prostitutes?”

“Well, in all fairness, you—”

“Sure wasn’t I a spy for the O’Malley!” she said with ferocity. “Prostitution was a front and didn’t I only engage in it to suit my own purposes! Anyhow,” she said, collecting herself and making a let’s-put-this-behind-us gesture, “it certainly isn’t the case here. There be no witches amongst the Chinese tarts, no witch would be finding herself in the straits those poor women are subjected to. No, our lady is right across the square there, in the fancy hotel—the St. Francis. Not much saintly about it from what I hear.” She chuckled her distinctively Gráinne chuckle, took me by the hand, and led me across the dry dirt square.

We entered the lobby of the St. Francis—like the Golden Mounds, there was tacky, tawdry opulence everywhere, much as I imagine Vegas must look, but without the neon—and a woman unlike any Chinese witch I had expected was standing by a card table in the center of the room.

Xiu Li was tall and elegant, almost gentlemanly, feet unbound (although I noticed when she walked that she walked stiffly). Her dress was an ingenuous blend of Oriental and Western that revealed just enough flesh to make a gentleman inclined to stare, and yet concealed enough that she could, technically, pass as modest, at least here.

She was watching the card game, and at a certain point, she settled upon the arm of one player’s chair. She moved with the demure grace of a geisha pouring tea, and yet at the same moment somehow with brazen confidence as well. She was beautiful and spellbinding.

Literally, spellbinding.

She was helping her companion cheat at cards.

For a few moments, we watched the card game. Xiu Li’s companion was also Chinese—a gentleman with short hair, cut in the Western style. There were three other players, all white men, one young, two chubby and older. Standing back from the table were an assortment of servant-ish types, including a Chinese man with long hair in a queue.

“’Tis a weak magic here,” said Gráinne under her breath at last. “She’s using soft magic to influence their choices, rather than what I’d do in her place, change the order of the cards in the deck.” I recalled Erszebet lamenting on the cheap parlor tricks she’d been forced to perform to earn her keep, back in . . . well, just about now, actually. What an odd thought, that at this very moment Erszebet was a young witch somewhere in Eastern Europe, innocent to all that lay ahead.

We watched the game to its completion—that is to say, to her partner’s satisfaction—and then without hesitation, Xiu Li turned with radiant grace and walked elegantly directly toward us. She greeted Gráinne as if a friend she knew attended her. Not surprising, as I have come to understand that witches recognize each other in subtle ways.

“You are no witch,” the tall elegant woman said to me.

“Along for the ride with me, she is. Gráinne I am by name, and this is Melisande, and you are Xiu Li.”

Xiu Li smiled, her teeth small opalescent pearls. “Yes.”

“We’ve a proposition for you,” said Gráinne. “Be there a place to talk in private?”

“There is a room upstairs,” said Xiu Li. “I do most of my business there.”

I confess deep curiosity to know what her business was, but as Gráinne was clearly the lead DOer here, I satisfied myself with following along quietly. We headed for a wooden staircase.

It seemed to me that somebody was following us up the stairs, and sure enough, at the top, we were stopped by a Caucasian gentleman who had been just behind us. “Hey, Shirley,” he said, mispronouncing her name in a nasal voice. “Introduce me to your friends here.” He had a flat accent, akin to what I would in my own time describe as midwestern.

“We talk first, and then we talk to you,” said Xiu Li, with cold friendliness.

“Hi, I’m Francis Overstreet,” he said, offering his hand to Gráinne, and then to me.

“St. Francis, is it?” Gráinne smiled.

“Hardly,” he said, in much the same tone. “Although I am the proprietor of this fine establishment. And as Miss Shirley here knows, when courtesan services are being established, I not only get a cut, but I get to sample the wares.” He turned a leering eye to the two of us, and, determining at once which was more leer-worthy, he winked at Gráinne. I confess a certain relief. If he were not handsome, his demeanor would be utterly repugnant. But he was a man in the prime of life, fine looking, his face intelligent. A portrait of him would suggest a man of integrity and dignity. So the leer was more disorienting than disgusting.

Gráinne was already giving him an inviting smile. “After supper?” she suggested. “I’ve some errand to run before that.”

“My dance card is otherwise empty.” He smiled back.

“Oh good,” I said, nudging Gráinne slightly, as I realized that expression would mean nothing to her.

“Oh good,” she echoed. “Invite a friend,” she added, pushing me slightly toward him.

He looked nonplussed: further confirmation I was the less delectable morsel.

Francis Overstreet trotted back down the stairs to oversee his glamorous den of iniquity, as Xiu Li led us a short way down the corridor to a small room made all round of sanded wooden planks, with admirably clean windows, that looked out over the square.

“Your business?” she asked coolly.

“Magic’s dying off,” said Gráinne matter-of-factly. “I’m sure you’ve felt it.”

After a sober, studied pause, Xiu Li nodded once. “I have. I wondered if it was to do with being in this new world that has no history or civilization.”

“It has plenty of history,” I corrected her. “The native people have had witches and magic all along. But they are feeling the loss as well. Everyone is.”

“In fact,” continued Gráinne, “we are about to lose magic entirely.”

Xiu Li’s eyes opened wide. She did not speak.

“But that is temporary,” I amended. “Many years from now, in the future, magic is restored and used in a very different way in society. We are here to encourage you to come forward with us to a time when magic will be strong again. There are some caveats, but it will be far better than being stuck here in this time and place, especially as a Chinese woman.”

She was ignoring me, her intense black eyes studying Gráinne’s face. “Why does it end? What stops it?”

“Photography,” said Gráinne confidingly.

Xiu Li received this and mused upon it for a moment. “I see,” she said at last—as if she really did see, although she obviously lacked the education to grasp it in the manner that we at DODO did. “How long do we have before it is gone?”

“July next year,” said Gráinne sympathetically. “There’s a solar eclipse, witnessed by everyone in Europe, and someone takes a photograph of it, and that’s that.” She snapped her fingers. “It’s over. So you’d best consider our offer and come forward with us.”

I stared at Gráinne. She was strikingly well-informed for an Anachron. Who would have told her something that specific? It must have been Erszebet.

Xiu Li’s pale skin had paled even further hearing this. She sank onto a stool, her heavy silk dress shifting gracefully around her legs so that she appeared almost a mermaid. “This is dreadful news.”

“Yes,” said Gráinne, with no sense of dread at all. “You take some time to think it over. Melisande, let’s be seeing the city, and we’ll return by teatime.”

She took me by the hand in her casually familiar way and led me out of the room, down the hall, down the stairs, and back out into the square.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Sure I’d love to see the city,” said Gráinne. “But in truth there’s a gentleman here to introduce ourselves to.”

“What gentleman?” I demanded. “I don’t recall that being part of the DEDE.”

“Not that DEDE as written,” agreed Gráinne. “But there is more going on than meets the eye here. Blevins set me on to him, and explained he could not put it down into the official assignment because it is, what was that phrase he was using now? Deep cover? Black cops?”

“Black ops,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Black operations. Covert activity.”

“Covert, aye, there you go,” said Gráinne, without a shred of the sober demeanor one associates with such discussions. “One reason he wanted us to come here together was so that you could be witness to it all, but off the record, like. In fact, this whole DEDE is a different beast than you are currently thinking.”

I felt a wave of alarm but pushed it aside. This was irregular, but not dangerous. “Will you explain yourself?” I said.

“Surely,” said Gráinne. “There’s a Fugger here, a direct male descendant of the one I know in my generation. He knows to expect us, and he’ll help us with the DEDE.”

The more she revealed the more confounding it seemed. “How?” I demanded. “How on earth can he possibly know to expect us? Nobody has ever been close to this DTAP before.”

“Melisande,” she said in a confiding, delighted voice. “What is the one thing you can carry through time with you?”

“Information,” I said.

“Indeed,” she said. “And it’s a wide varieties of ways, so it is, that information can be carried through time. If it’s going back in time, the information’s got to move magically. But if it’s coming forward, it can be planted and moved through generations.”

“Do you mean you told this fellow’s ancestor to meet you in San Francisco in 1850? And they’ve passed the information along, accurately and without embellishment, for two and a half centuries?” I was incredulous—this was an extremely dangerous way to work with historical agents.

“It’s not nearly that specific,” said Gráinne blithely. “Think of it more as a mythology. The Fuggers know—all of them—that there’s an immortal red-haired Irish witch named Gráinne who is an ally of the family, in any generation, and the family knows this and keeps it close to themselves. And ’tis true enough that this witch, in 1602, did recommend to the family patriarch of the time to keep an eye westward, ever westward, over the generations. It has served them well, and this is as westward as it gets. So I was not surprised, when I did my Internet research, to be confirmed in my belief that there would be a Fugger already here, opening a bank and prepared to make ungodly profits. And he is already an ally though he has never met me, nor has his sire, grandsire, great-grandsire going back many generations . . . but they know about me. It’s delighted he’ll be by our presence, and he’ll help us, no questions asked. ’Tis a remarkable boon for our needs.”

“What will he do?” I asked, struggling to keep up with all this. Did Tristan know any of this? Surely Frank Oda or Mortimer must, as they oversaw the Chronotron data and none of this could be managed without tremendous Chronotron oversight. Why had I not been told?

“Here’s the second part you do not know,” she said. “We’re not actually meant to bring her forward in time.”

“What?” I cried. “Then what are we doing here?”

“We’re here to recruit her,” said Gráinne. “Much as I recruited the Fuggers. If she comes forward in time, what do we have? One more witch. But if we leave her here, educated and motivated to pass a family legend down, then we can sculpt her to our needs, and seven generations hence, it’s allies we’ll have in all her dutiful descendants. And if we set her up so that her descendants will be people of power in America, then when we come to them in the twenty-first century, it’s powerful allies we will have. They will have things that we need—because we will arrange now for them to have such things.”

Again, I was utterly gobsmacked—what a very clever and extremely dangerous methodology. And shocking that I had not been told of it. Again, I wondered: Had Tristan? Was he also in the dark, or had he begun to keep secrets from me?

Three banks had already opened in or near Portsmouth Square, and the third bank was owned by the current Mr. Fugger. Gráinne wrote a note to have delivered to him, and after we waited for a few minutes in the brick lobby (brick! In that time and place! Proof these were no ordinary bankers), the gentleman appeared, in very fine and sober attire, and received Gráinne as if she were Santa Claus and he a toddler. They exchanged certain code phrases that she had planted with his ancestor, to reassure each other (or to reassure him; Gráinne had this insouciantly in hand). He was only too happy to follow us back to the St. Francis, where his duty would be to set up Xiu Li as the wealthiest Chinese immigrant in all of California.

I do not know—I suppose I shall never know now—if Gráinne offered him other incentives to fork over a chunk of his private fortune to a total stranger, and a Chinese woman no less. But determined, even eager, was he to fork it over.

“Now,” said Gráinne, as we all stepped lightly across the square, “it’s hopeful I am of this matter being wrapped up quick enough, but ’tis a matter of logistics that we will have a gentleman caller who must be dispatched politely. This may require you to pretend to be Melisande’s companion for an hour.”

Young Fugger regarded me with skepticism but was too polite to express his disappointment. His eyes, however, strayed not infrequently to Gráinne’s curvier shape as we walked back toward the St. Francis.

Back in the upstairs rooms, we found a grim Xiu Li.

“I am not yet resolved to go,” she said, almost pouting—if pouting can be applied to a woman of such mature and majestic bearing.

“There is another way,” said Gráinne. This immediately commanded Xiu Li’s attention. “Yes. There’s always the option to stay here and swap out magic for dosh, if you have that phrase here. Money. This gentleman is an associate of ours, and he will happily set you up for life, and for your children’s lives, and your children’s children’s lives.”

Xiu Li’s bright eyes narrowed, and she looked back and forth between them. I might as well have not been present. “There is always a condition to these matters,” she said. “What is the condition here? Must I marry this Caucasian? I am already the mistress of the Celestial Jong Li.”

Gráinne shook her head. “No condition but that you think well of us—myself and the gentleman here. And that you breed, if you haven’t yet, but choose the man yourself, sure. Then raise your children to think well of our memory, and to raise their children to do likewise, and their children, and so on down the line. One day in the future I might be meeting one of your descendants, and I would have them very well-disposed toward me.”

With a wink to me, as if I were a part of all of this unsettling collusion, she commented, “Worked a wonder with the Fuggers, might as well try it again, isn’t it?”

Xiu Li thought this over. “When magic disappears,” she said, “are witches gone? Do the powers lie dormant through the generations or are they entirely snuffed out?”

“Oh, the magic comes back just fine, so it does,” said Gráinne. “Although it takes the witches a while to get the feel for it.”

“So a distant daughter of mine—”

“—is what I’m saying,” said Gráinne, nodding.

Xiu Li pursed her lips and looked out the window. It seemed to me an eternity passed, and I was not comfortable about this, as time was drawing near for Francis Overstreet to return to “test the wares,” and I did not like the idea of pretending to be a prostitute with Mr. Fugger as my client.

Xiu Li finally turned to us. “I will agree to this. But I want a contract and surety.”

Mr. Fugger raised his handsome leather briefcase. “I’ve got it all arranged here,” he said. “But this is hardly a place to do respectable business, so I’d like to bring you both to supper where my cook will treat you like royalty.”

“Both?” I echoed, now feeling even more invisible, in a manner that was beginning to make my hackles rise. “There are three of us here.”

The gentleman turned to me. “Miss Gráinne said you’d be wanting to return home as soon as possible.”

“Yes, but—”

“There’s no need of you to stay here,” said Gráinne cheerfully. “This was really my DEDE all along, we only needed you to come along to cover my tracks. If I return a few scant hours after you, ’tis no concern of anyone there.” With a wink. “And the longer you stay here the likelier you are to be called to service, not that anyone will be too hot to hoist that skirt up off your bony hips.”

I reviewed my options. Gráinne had entirely commandeered the situation—mostly because I was so unprepared for any of these developments, but it seemed clear enough that Blevins had entrusted her as a DOer. I could not see a benefit to my remaining here any longer. And frankly, it would be helpful to have some time in Cambridge without Gráinne underfoot, to suss out how all of this had come to pass.

“Thank you, yes, I’ll go home now,” I said.

“Excellent,” said Gráinne, and turned to Xiu Li. “Do you have much experience Sending people?”

Xiu Li shrugged. “As children my sisters and I did it as a game, but as magic weakened it became very difficult, the fun not worth the effort.”

“I’ll be refreshing your memory, then,” said Gráinne. “I shall Home Mel, and you, watching me, will then know how to Home me after our agreeable dinner.”

Xiu Li nodded.

“But I need you to be paying particular attention,” said Gráinne, “as a few things will be different. In particular, the coordinates of where we are to end up.”

“How so?” I asked. “We are both returning to the same place.”

“No,” said Gráinne, in an amused-yet-apologetic smile. “We’re not, actually, Melisande Stokes.”

Suddenly I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach—a premonition, which is not, dear reader, something I am prone to. I sensed it had something to do with Gráinne’s detailed knowledge about photography, and the significance of the eclipse. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s back to DODO headquarters for myself, sure,” she said. “I’ve stacks to do there, and I can’t have you underfoot. So it’s elsewhere I am Sending you, where there will be no magic strong enough to Send you forward. God ye good day, Melisande Stokes. ’Tis been a pleasure to serve with you. Fare thee well.”

Even as she spoke, the room began to dim and tilt about me, and the lovely aroma that always wafted at the edges of my attention when I was Sent—I smelled it, and then . . .

. . . And then I awoke three weeks ago, naked, cold, on the grimy pavers of a London street at dawn, frantic to know what date it was, like a perversion of Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol (which came out less than a decade ago).

To make short shrift of it: a beadle was called and I was bundled off to Bedlam, but a physician there sensed there was something different about me (thank God!) and brought me to his home, for he and his wife to try to “salvage.” They have it almost right: they take me for a witch (there are witches in distant branches of his family, and he has watched with compassion as several of them have fallen into despair as their powers waned; one took her own life). So they have offered me shelter, food, the clothes upon my back . . . on the sole condition that I make no attempt to communicate with any witch in any way.

Not that I know any witches in 1851 London anyhow. And even if I did, it would be a miracle if she had the power left to Send me forward before the eclipse. Which will occur in just seventeen days.

Post by Mortimer Shore on

“General” GRIMNIR channel

DAY 1947 (BLACK FRIDAY, YEAR 5)

Mortimer here, writing first entry on new GRIMNIR system from safe locale.

OK, so those of you who are into the Norse mythology might have read a story about Odin disguising himself as a regular mortal for tactical reasons. The name he adopted was Grimnir.

The old ODIN system is no longer accessible to me, they have changed the passwords and kicked me out, I’m on the outs, and on the run, with a few of the others. But I set up a new system on the dark net that we can use to stay in touch with each other and make a record of all that’s happening. And I’m calling it GRIMNIR.

I’m not much of a narrative writer, but here’s what has gone down . . .

Two days ago, on Wednesday afternoon (the day before Thanksgiving), after some delays, Mel and Gráinne were Sent to the 1850 San Francisco DTAP, supposedly to recruit a Chinese KCW there. The old-school ODECs don’t have enough room inside of them for a Sending witch and two DOers, so this was a dual Send from ATTO #1, which has plenty of room on the interior. By that point it had been hoisted up and mounted on the back of its tractor-trailer rig, making it ready for field trials on the streets of the greater Boston area beginning Friday.

This was billed as a one-day DEDE, or possibly a one-nighter, but as I said it got off to a late start, and by the time they were going into the ATTO, Mel was resigned to the fact that it was probably going to wipe out most of Thanksgiving Day and that she’d take Friday off instead.

At the same time (Wednesday) there was a lot of bureaucratic back-and-forth involving Tristan, Erszebet, and Blevins regarding this unusual DEDE that had been planned for Tristan starting Friday morning, where he was being sent back to 20,000 BC Germany. Erszebet was all like, “I am only following orders. Like the indentured servant I have been since I met you.” And so it was up to Tristan to verify and double-check the order with Blevins and interface with the Chronotron crew.

Gordon Healey, one of the Chronotron nerds, ended up staying late and missing his flight home as he tried to help make sense of the mission and dig up the background information that Tristan needed to prep for it. He and Erszebet booked a slot in ODEC #1 early on Friday morning (that’s today), since the ODECs were already fully booked for the rest of the day and the ATTO would not be available. I volunteered to come in and run the control panel.

So we arrived this morning, about an hour before the rest of the staff was due in. Tristan had slept well although he still looked a little ruffled about this strange assignment (like I said: 20,000 BC. Dude.). Erszebet had a look of sort of grim resignation to her—but that’s not too unusual for her. We checked the logs to see if Gráinne and Mel had made it back, but there was no sign of them. A little unusual, but nothing that would really raise a red flag yet.

I stayed on the outside of the glass wall to run the controls. Erszebet and Tristan went through the usual protocols in the bio-containment ward while I got ODEC #1 powered up and ran the usual checks. Through the glass wall I saw Tristan come out of the sterilization suite in the usual bathrobe. He tossed me a salute and walked into the ODEC.

Erszebet began to follow him in. Then she hesitated mid-stride, and stepped back away from it. For a long moment she stared into the ODEC. She kind of looked a little queasy.

I turned on the intercom and asked if there was a problem.

“Come on, Erszebet,” I heard Tristan say.

“You will come out of there,” she said.

“What?”

“I say you will come out of there. Very quickly. I must tell you something.”

A sound nearly a harrumph, and then Tristan came out of the ODEC. Erszebet closed the door behind him, and then visibly relaxed—I hadn’t realized she had been tense until I saw the tension leave her shoulders.

“. . . All right,” said Tristan, bemused. “What’s going on?”

“There is no real assignment to send you on this DEDE,” she said.

Tristan was totally still for a moment, and then pursed his lips together until they were colorless.

“What?” he said at last.

“It is all faked. Every bit of it. It is all part of a scheme.”

“What scheme? Who’s behind it?”

She looked troubled, but resigned. “The scheme requires getting rid of Melisande and yourself. Melisande is gone forever and now I am supposed to get rid of you.”

The look on Tristan’s face was of even greater shock than I myself was feeling, which is saying a lot. “But Mel’s with . . .” he protested.

“It is Gráinne’s scheme,” said Erszebet. “It was almost mine as well. But I have been awake all night thinking of Melisande and it is wrong to do this. So I am not doing it.”

There was complete silence in the chamber except for the background hum of the ODEC.

“I do not want to do this anymore,” she continued, sounding almost plaintive, which if you’ve ever heard Erszebet speak is a hard thing to imagine. “I am quitting. I will leave and do something el—”

Tristan had closed his hand around her wrist and was trembling with the effort of not shaking her. “What’s happened to Mel? What is Gráinne doing? Explain yourself!”

She looked cowed—or at least, as close to cowed as Erszebet Karpathy could ever look. “She wants to take over DODO and use it for her purposes,” she said in a strangely small voice. “From San Francisco, she has already Sent Mel somewhere else, someplace Mel will not be able to come back from.”

“Where? When?”

She avoided his gaze. “We agreed not to tell each other what we were doing. Like the French Resistance—it is safer not to know.”

“How the fuck is this like the French Resistance?” Tristan growled, looking angrier than I’ve ever seen him. He let go of her and walked away, muttering to himself.

Erszebet’s face had flushed such a bright shade of red that she was almost unrecognizable. I’d never known until this moment that she was capable of being embarrassed. “I know, of course.” She looked at Tristan. “And, if you think about it, so do you. You have always known where Mel would end up.”

Tristan turned and looked at her, his anger suddenly replaced by a look that said, Of course. I get it. “London,” he said, “1851.”

“Yes. We can speak more of it later. But today . . . Gráinne will be back from 1850 San Francisco,” said Erszebet. “She has Blevins wrapped around her pinkie finger. Frink too. She also has the affection of Mr. Shiny-face Gordon Healey. She tried to seduce Mortimer but she says he is too much of a nerd.”

“Geek,” I corrected. “I’m a geek. If I were a nerd she’d have me in bed by now.”

“There are other people,” said Erszebet. “I do not know all of them.”

Tristan’s face still showed blank astonishment. “But what’s her goal? What does she want?”

“She wants magic not to go away,” said Erszebet. “That is not the same thing as letting it go away and then bringing it back.”

“Holy shit,” said Tristan under his breath. And then, as the full implication of this hit him, he repeated it much louder: “Holy shit!”

“I will leave,” said Erszebet, with nervous decisiveness. “It is best if you leave too, Tristan Lyons.”

“You’re not going anywhere without me,” said Tristan. “Not until you’ve told me everything you know.”

Erszebet’s breathing suddenly seemed labored, as if it were dawning on her that she couldn’t casually walk away from her aborted mission. “I have already told you almost everything. But I will stay with you until we figure out how to help Melisande.”

“Damn right you will,” said Tristan.

“That is my choice,” she informed him, rebounding back to the fierce and scornful witch around whom we all love to walk on eggshells. “Do not treat me like I do not have a choice in this. It was my choice right now not to send you back to the Ice Age. I could have done it like that”—she snapped her fingers for emphasis. “Do not treat me like I have done something wrong. I have done something right. You will appreciate that or I will walk away.”

Tristan collected himself. “Okay,” he said. “You’re right. Thank you for not annihilating me when you had the chance, I realize that maybe wasn’t easy for you.” A brief pause as he considered options. “We’ll go to Frank Oda’s house and bring him up to date.” He turned to me. “You’re logged in as being here with us right now. If we disappear they’ll want to know what you know. You should probably get out of here with us.”

“We have an hour,” I pointed out.

“What do you mean?” Tristan asked.

I’d already punched in the commands to power down the ODEC. “Gráinne can’t come back until at least one of the ODECs is turned on for her.” I was checking out the day’s schedule on a monitor. “Earliest that could happen is an hour from now. During that time, I’ll get as much intel as I can and get it out of the building.” And because Tristan hesitated: “I’m on Team Oda. I don’t care about the rest of it.”

“We should go,” said Erszebet to Tristan, heading back into the bio-containment ward, which was the only way out. “Everyone arrives soon. Let’s be far away.”

They left, and I did some deep-breathing exercises to lower my heart rate back to normal, and then went about my morning as if it were just another day. Except that I also quietly plugged my biggest flash drive into my desktop computer, and began to download as much of ODIN as possible. The whole ODIN system—all of the message threads, NDAs, HR records, DEDE reports, security camera video, and other bureaucratic junk that had piled up on our servers during the five years that DODO had been in existence—would have filled my flash drive a thousand times over, so I tried to be selective, searching for documents that referenced Mel, Tristan, Blevins, and other key names, and focusing on certain ranges of dates when it seemed like a lot of important shit had gone down—like Halloween. Even so I ended up accidentally grabbing a lot of stuff like the sexual harassment policy that I didn’t really want or need, but I didn’t have time to be more selective. Now that it’s all up on GRIMNIR I can maybe go through and prune it later.

I kept my head down as people came in and the office filled up as on any other day, except that head count was low because a lot of people were taking vacation. My cube is on the edge of the R&D group area, so I saw Dr. Oda come in and do a stand-up meeting with the crew that was going to be taking the ATTO out on the road—a driver, obviously, plus a MUON and two technicians who were going to be in the back, operating the equipment and running tests. Nothing too fancy—they just wanted to verify that the ATTO’s onboard power supply and comms features would operate nominally while the thing was bouncing around in real-world traffic conditions.

My cube is also in earshot of the big open stairwell that runs up the middle of the building and so eventually I heard Gráinne’s voice—she had returned from the San Francisco DTAP, without Mel. I heard her go up to the floor above me and enter Blevins’s office. The door closed, and there were a few minutes of calm-before-the-storm before voices were raised and people up there started looking stressed out. A couple of DOSECOPS personnel came up the stairs double-time and blew past Blevins’s receptionist into his office and there was a lot more jawing. I was sitting there trying to be cool, watching the progress bar on my screen, wondering whether I should just yank the thumb drive and get out of there.

Then the decision was made for me by a DOSECOP who had approached me from behind, a little bit sneaky-like, and told me I was wanted in Blevins’s office immediately. I made a glance toward the stairwell and saw another DOSECOP loitering there, keeping me in the corner of his eye, so I figured they had orders not to let me just bolt. So I got up and went up the stairs into Blevins’s office. He and Gráinne were in there with two of the higher-ranking DOSECOPS officers, including Major Isobel Sloane, who I kinda wondered if Gráinne had a bit of an influence over. Blevins was in his big leather swivel chair and Gráinne was standing behind him, sort of hovering, and both of them were glancing between me and a monitor on Blevins’s desk.

“Where be they, then?” Gráinne demanded, eyes fixed on me in a way that made me feel like a prey animal.

“Who?” I asked, trying to look stupid, which is actually something I’m pretty good at when I have to be.

“Where’s Colonel Lyons?” demanded Blevins. “We know he and Erszebet came into the building early this morning within moments of your arrival, and that they both left a short time later.”

And then Blevins pivoted the monitor around and let me see some security camera footage from earlier that morning: yours truly talking to Tristan and Erszebet.

I have no idea what kind of look was on my face at that moment, but I can tell you how they looked: Blevins was sort of blank-faced and unnerved, while Gráinne was trying to kill me with her eyes.

“Yeah, I saw them, but they had a fight about something and they both stormed out. I wasn’t really paying attention because I’m a little hungover and anyhow those two are always bickering. I think Erszebet said she was going home.”

“It’s a lying bit of treachery, is this one,” Gráinne declared.

And then I glanced down at Blevins and saw a change come over his face. I know magic can’t work outside of an ODEC or an ATTO and that Blevins’s office was neither of those, but I swear it was like seeing a Jedi mind trick in action. Whatever Gráinne had done to Blevins during all of that time they’d spent together in ATTOs conducting psy-ops “research,” it still worked on him somehow. Maybe it wasn’t magic at all. Maybe it was just plain old psychological influence. But it was clear to me in that moment that Blevins had been reduced to a marionette.

But not a very precisely controlled one, apparently.

“You,” announced Blevins, with a flip of his manicured gray mane, “are fired.”

“Don’t be firing him now!” Gráinne objected. “You want to be interrogating him, you’re not allowed to do that if he’s not yours anymore.”

I caught the eye of Major Sloane, the ranking DOSECOPS officer, and I thought maybe she was taken aback a little too, so I was maybe mistaken about thinking she was Gráinne’s minion. I pointed out, “You’re not allowed to do it anyway because this is a free country and we don’t just interrogate people here. Maybe Major Sloane could explain some of the legalities.”

Blevins thought about it for a moment, which was fine with me—I just needed time to download as much of the ODIN database as possible. Major Sloane looked back at me like she was taking the point I was making.

Then Blevins called out to his admin that he wanted General Frink on the line as soon as possible, to discuss a matter of national security.

“Where’s Mel?” I asked Gráinne.

“Detained in San Francisco,” she answered, sort of indignant, like how dare I even.

Getting Frink on the line happened incredibly quickly, apparently he was taking the day off with family and so he just answered his phone. The admin patched him through on voice and Blevins went off on a rambling, bizarro version of the last couple of days’ events, talking about how Mel was AWOL and now Tristan and Erszebet were up to no good and assumed to be on the lam with important national security secrets, and I, Mortimer, was in cahoots with them. And he couldn’t just call the cops because national security this and classified that, and so he wanted to invoke special powers and procedures and basically send out a DOSECOPS squad to round up Tristan and Erszebet and just let the chips fall where they may in terms of lawyers and arrest warrants and all of those other minor technicalities. Every so often he’d pause for breath and General Frink would grunt into the phone like, Yeah, I’m still here, I’m with you, bro. Finally Blevins didn’t so much finish up as wind down for lack of anything more to say and Frink says, “I am authorizing you to mobilize the DOSECOPS Extra-Facility Ops Team and get this done as surgically as you can.”

Now, I’d never even heard of the EFOT before, so its existence must have been a pretty closely guarded secret, but everyone else in the room seemed to know exactly what it was. Major Sloane nodded and said, “Already mobilized, General Frink. When I got word earlier this morning that trouble was brewing, I sent out the call. We have two squads in the ready room fully armed and armored, deployable on short notice.” As if reassuring herself this was the case, she unlocked her phone and scanned her eyes over some information.

“Well done,” Frink said over the phone.

“And what is the word from our surveillance team at the East-Oda residence?” Blevins asked. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised they’d already covered that angle.

“Sir, Professor Oda is still on the premises here, of course,” said Sloane, “but Colonel Lyons and Erszebet were just reported at the residence with Mrs. East-Oda. Somehow they got in without being spotted, but they got careless once they were in there, and surveillance saw them in the kitchen.”

“What are the odds that if we go in quickly, EFOT can take them into custody without it becoming a cause célèbre in the neighborhood?” Blevins asked.

“Depends on whether Tristan puts up a fight,” said Major Sloane, “but I don’t imagine he would.”

“Very well,” said Blevins. “Major Sloane, I am ordering you to deploy the EFOT squads to the East-Oda residence and—”

He stopped in midsentence, a little surprised because every phone in the room had started ringing. Even mine. And there was a bit of a funny moment, just then—not “ha-ha” funny—when Gráinne clearly didn’t know what to do. Because Gráinne didn’t have a phone. And it was clear from the look on her face that she hadn’t been expecting this interruption—whatever it was.

Everyone else was looking at their phones, so I did too, and what I saw was a text from one of the R&D crew saying, “OMG is that the ATTO on Channel 5?” And for a second I didn’t even catch the reference. I thought he was referring to some internal top-secret communications channel. It took a minute to realize he was talking about the local television network news station.

Meanwhile there’s all kinds of confusion and consternation from others in the room, everyone shouting into their phones with their fingers plugged into the other ear, Gráinne looking around with kind of a wild desperate expression. “Dr. Blevins, can that thing stream live television?” I asked, nodding at his computer.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “You’re the sysadmin.”

“Point taken,” I said. “Let’s all trot downstairs to my workstation and I’ll pull up the stream.” And before any orders could be issued to the contrary I ducked out the door and headed down the stairs. Frankly I didn’t care whether they followed me or not, but when I reached my cubicle and looked back over my shoulder I saw them all traipsing along behind me, on their phones or whatever, and all around the whole office was in pandemonium. I sat down and plucked the flash drive out of my workstation and slipped it into the little cargo pocket down on the calf section of my tactical pants, and then cleared my screen and brought up the live news feed from the local network TV station.

And what we were seeing was the front of a Walmart, and the caption on the screen said it was in Lexington, Massachusetts. The same store where Magnus had hightailed it to a few weeks ago, before he’d coerced Constance Billy into Sending him back to Viking Paradise or wherever.

The entire front of the store—the glass entryway where they keep the shopping carts—had been punched in by a huge impact, all the windows destroyed.

Embedded in the middle of all that destruction we could see the rear of a tractor-trailer rig that had obviously just been driven straight into the front of the building at high speed, and come to rest just inside the store. Looked like it had obliterated some checkout lanes en route.

The rig was a common type seen around port facilities: a steel shipping container resting on the bed of a trailer. The shipping container was green, with rust spots.

We had all seen it before.

It was the ATTO.

Before I could ask the question, Major Sloane—who’d been on the phone—looked up at Blevins and said, “Confirmed. We lost contact with it immediately after it left the facility. Obviously, it was hijacked.”

“Police radio transmissions report several large naked Caucasian males have emerged from the shipping container and are taking hostages,” said the TV reporter.

Gráinne was the first to put it together. “Magnus!” she hissed, and then let fly with a torrent of rage in what I assumed was Gaelic. She’s always been pretty emotional, but I’d never seen her just completely lose it before. She’d have torn Magnus apart with her fingernails if he’d been in the room.

“Major Sloane,” Blevins said, “get the EFOT squads and everything else you have to that Walmart immediately.”

Everyone split up. I trotted downstairs and walked out the front door and around the corner. And then I ran like a motherfucker. I just had a feeling it would be for the best.

So that was the moment I went from being a geek with the coolest job a recent CS grad from MIT could ever in a thousand years hope to find . . . to being a renegade. A serious renegade. Anonymous has got nothing on me.

That’s how we ended up here at the Odas’ place. I’m not even sure how Frank himself got back here. I mean, there’s an argument we should just GTF out of here and try to disappear, but (1) disappearing is hard and (2) we can’t just ditch the Odas and (3) we haven’t violated any laws and so there’s no reason the Cambridge PD should give a crap one way or the other.

Rebecca is (natch) making us some tea. I’m not sure when she will relax her jaw muscles enough to ever open her mouth again, but that doesn’t mean she wants to throw us out.

We’re sort of expecting Blevins will be sending someone to assassinate us, at least figuratively, very soon. Which is why I wanted to get this whole story written and uploaded.

Journal Entry of

Rebecca East-Oda

FRIDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING

Temperature 38F, and never mind about the rest of it.

Extraordinary development: Tristan, Erszebet, and Mortimer have taken up residence in the basement and we presume Frank is no longer an employee of DODO, but it’s all rather disordered at the moment. The local news is airing the most remarkable story about a raid at the Lexington Walmart. Mel is stuck in 1851 London, thanks to the machinations of Gráinne. Tristan and Frank immediately preoccupied with sorting out how to build a homemade ODEC in the basement so that if Mel can find a KCW, she will have a safe re-entry point to the modern day (although since she wouldn’t know we had it, how would she know to be Sent there? Never mind. Better than taking no action.). Frank suggested shanghaiing one of the new ATTOs, toward which he has a wounded proprietary pride—ATTO #1 seems to be embedded in the aforementioned Walmart with naked berserkers pouring out of it, but three others have been constructed and six more are nearly complete. Mortimer is trying to set up a secure mini-intranet in our basement, as he has a flash drive called GRIMNIR with an enormous amount of ODIN material on it and he wants to upload it someplace stable so that it can’t fall out of one of the pockets of his ludicrous trousers. The cats have disappeared in the chaos.

THE LAY OF WALMART

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE (CONTD.): Part 2, written in ballpoint pen on printer paper, was found in the ruins of a Walmart in suburban Boston, Massachusetts, following a bloody siege by persons described in media reports as a gang of methamphetamine addicts connected with the Russian mafia.

PART 2

Ingibjörg and those of her ilk

Sent me and Magnus to more ditapps

Than memory can contain. Twenty and two

Were the reckless recruits, all renowned warriors.

On Sverðvík’s shore they stood, steaming,

Ready for the recital. Tales from Tóki,

Told many times, from Magnus’s memories.

Mead he served to the men, full horns.

Looming from a longship’s proud prow, he spoke.

“The ship we sail today, fighting the Fatlanders

Is but a box, oarless, ordinary. ATTO they name it.

To it Ingibjörg Sends me. It’s on a great cart.

“Vikings love to shove ships

Up onto the shores of realms ready for ruin.

Just so, I’ll attack with the ATTO

The glass gates of the Walmart

“Like a dagger, driving deep, not stopping

Till the blue-vested guard, the till-keepers,

Towers of trifles, the cart crushes,

Ramming, reaming out of its way.

“Furious Ingibjörg, future-fearing,

By then will have Sent Storolf.” Magnus’s sword

Swung round toward he of that name,

Grizzled but great-framed, giant-killer.

Storolf recited: “Inside of the ATTO are

Oddments, weird wares, dangerous distractions.

I ignore them. Brace my body on the bulkhead.

Ride through the ruin of the glass gates.

“Silence is my signal to dart to the door.

From it I face east down a wide way.

Vexing my vision, many marvels. Ignore them.

Magnus my guide. I go where he shows me.

“Eastward, thence, lies victory for vikings.

Counting the cairns, the merchandise-mounds.

Standing in the center of the wide east-west way,

Stop at the sixth. Atop it’s an image:

“A fair lass, tresses flowing,

Like the lush Linndalsfallet,

Where it rushes over rocks,

Teeth shining like Snæfellsjökull.

“Cradled in the lass’s hands, a bottle.

Bewitching brew, beautifying the hair.

Below it, many more such, stacked like soldiers.

That is the landmark that leads me to the left.

“A long lane, laden with loot.

Its Rune is like Berkano: the Beginning.

Its number, one score and five.

Let it lead me north. Little more to say,

“For in fewer than five paces

Is what my hand has hungered for

Since I found myself in Fatland,

Alone and naked: Numberless knives, new and needy.”

“Furious Ingibjörg, future-fearing,

By then will have brought Brand.” Magnus’s sword

Swung round toward he of that name,

Berserker of Zealand, brutal and bearlike.

Brand recited: “Vexing my vision, many marvels.

Storolf shows my way. Stop not where he does.

Brand goes beyond. Count cairns thrice more.

Number nine is a doll-dump: toddlers’ toys

“Painted purple and pink, smiling like simpletons,

Box-bound. Brand there turns right.

A long lane, laden with loot.

Shopkeepers screaming. Pay no mind.

“Clashing carts may cause trouble. Don’t be deterred.

Vikings can vault them, berserkers bash them aside.

All the way to the wall goes Brand.

Heaped there are hammers. Axes also.

“Spades, saws on long shafts, all manner

Of death-dealers, racked and ready

Or stacked like firewood on the floor.

Commandeer a cart, kill its keeper if need be,

“Fill it full of those death-dealers, leave nothing

That might be handy for hewing heads

And severing sinews in the struggle to come.”

Thus the berserker, bright-eyed, blood-lusting.

“Furious Ingibjörg, future-fearing,

By then has Halfdan Sent.” Magnus’s sword

Swung round toward he of that name,

White-bearded king-slayer, lord of legend.

Halfdan recited: “Vexing my vision, many marvels.

Ignoring them, I wait. Ingibjörg sends more.

In the meantime, knives from Storolf,

Axes and hammers from Brand, harden my hand.

“All told, my band is four. My companions three

Are Thorolf, Bild, and Glama. Travel to the tenth cairn.

Turn to the left. Toys stacked to the ceiling.

Do not let them beguile the eye.

“Long lanes, laden with loot.

Wide ways, well made for waging war,

Like the roads of the red-crested Romans

Ordered just so, as warp and weft.

“Too many for merchants to memorize,

Marked, therefore, with runes they can read.

Romans wrote them first. The fat ones stole them,

As well as Arabs’ numerals, arranged below.

“For each district of the treasure-town,

A Roman rune written, raised high.

For each lane lying below it,

An Arabic number to know it.

“Their runes resemble ours often.

Others are different. One’s like a fish-hook.

That’s in the northeast of the store,

Norsemen’s native land, all the good gear.

“Forests of fishing-poles you can see from afar.

Ropes for rigging. Machetes for making way

Or bringing battle. Don’t be delayed though.

Go till glass gleams on all sides. Behind those wide windows,

“Boxes, brick-sized, written with runes, stacked to the ceiling.

Glass is nothing to Glama. Hammer in hand, he has at it

Shears shelves, loots little boxes, carrying them in carts

Down long lanes to the wall of the wonder windows.

“Halfdan hastens down the glass-lined lane

Till the way to the wall’s barred by a counter.

Behind it, bang-sticks of the Fatlanders

Counter-keepers looking askance.

“They’re the only true foes we must fight at first.

Don’t be deceived that there’s no swords at their sides.

Bang-sticks instead, shooting sling-stones

Faster and more fearsome than arrows.

“At a distance they’re deadly. Get close quick.

For of fighting at arm’s length, axe to axe

They know nothing. Rush at them right away

If their hands are empty. Lie low otherwise.

“Hunker down, holding my tongue,

Till I hear Heid, who’s the only one

Who can get close to the guards.

When the shield-maid has their attention,

“That’s the time to burst in bravely.”

Thus Halfdan, gray-hamed, picked out for his patience.

Magnus’s sword-tip, swinging this way and that

Picked out each warrior, each shield-maid.

In turn, each told the tale, written by Tóki,

Foretelling the future of what was to come,

The doom to descend on the Fatlanders’ storehouse,

What deeds each warrior would do, and when.

Under the awning of the longship, idle till now,

Ingibjörg waited, sipping stew of spotted mushrooms,

Eyes lazy, but half in this world,

Fingers fondling her broom-twigs.

Magnus met her there, sharing the shade,

Smelling the scent of eldritch herbs,

Gathered round the gunwales, we felt the glamour.

Ingibjörg had Sent him, sticks thrown, die cast.

Storolf she Sent next, blade-bringer.

Brand the berserker, Halfdan the wise,

Heid the shield-maiden, Glama, Bild, Thorolf.

Tóki was taken. Ship sank from my sight.

I beheld a big box, shiny steel.

It must be the ATTO. I darted to the door.

Vexing my vision, many marvels. I ignored them.

Magnus my guide. I went where he showed me.

North of the nose of the great cart, the ATTO-bearer,

Where it had crashed to a halt after driving deep,

A forest of fabric, as had been foretold:

Clothing of all colors, made for men and women,

Bigger than any bazaar. Beyond that, the marvel

Magnus had mentioned, too strange to speak of:

Wonder-windows, a wall of them. The great gift

Of the Fatlanders is these: panes of perfect glass

Showing not what lies beyond them,

But images, effigies, prophecies, wonders.

Painted in piercing light, melding many hues.

Bright as berries, flickering like fire.

Like the windows of Christian cathedrals

When lanced by the light of the sun.

But not frozen forever, as those are;

Images in movement, flashing and flitting.

Tóki was here to take treasure,

Reading the runes in those windows.

North went I, wandering in the wake

Of the shield-maiden Heid. Her hair

Was braided in back, hanging below

Brushing bare buttocks. Walking behind,

My gaze was beguiled. Gladly I’d go

To battle behind one such as Heid.

She raised her arms, baring herself

To a shocked shopper, a fat woman

Fondling fabrics. Heid, heedless,

Elbows bent, hands swung down behind head.

A knife she held there, stolen by Storolf,

Sheathed safely. She stuck it into her braid

Where the tresses came together at the nape of her neck.

Tucked in, held by her hair, until needed.

Remembering Magnus, Tóki took trousers,

Sacking a shelf-load, but went onward

North to the wonder-wall. East turned Heid.

Tóki’s eyes tracked her. She broke into a run.

Screams escaped from her mouth. Not war-whoops

But cries of terror. Not a word of the Angle-speech

Heid spoke. No matter. The men it was meant for

Heard it, and heeded. Heid was now bound

For the bang-sticks. Kept in that corner

Were the weapons of Walmart. Three guards

Gathered there, wondering what had happened.

Cart’s crash, shoppers’ screams, fleeing Fatlanders

Alarm had raised. And now a lass, not a stitch on,

Screaming for succour, coming on at a run.

What harm could she do them? Into the arms

Of the first Heid threw herself.

Out from the braid came that blade,

And into the back of his neck. As he dropped,

She closed on the next, arm whirring.

The third aimed his bang-stick, ready to shoot

Till an axe struck home in his head,

Hurled by Thorolf, part of Halfdan’s band,

Running round from the long lanes

Marked by the rune of the fish-hook.

The first part of the fight was now finished.

From the ATTO, attackers kept coming.

Asmund, Icelandic berserker, far-famed.

Hrani, the shipwright from Sweden.

Arngrim, Hjorvard, Yngvar, Snorri,

Mighty Thord. Magnus gave each man a task.

Sending them this way and that.

Hostages were herded and held.

Strange sheets of wood, wide and flat,

Formed the flanks of a new fortress

Wrapped and roofed in bright blue tarpaulins

Lashed down with lines.

The West-march of the Walmart

Held all the food in the world,

Bottled beer by the boatload,

Frost-kept food, milk and meat.

Setting up for a siege behind barricades

The Norsemen fetched food, collected clothing,

Turkish trousers with flies in the front

Kept closed with clever contraptions,

Tiny teeth, meshing like millipedes’ legs,

Gnashing, knitting, concealing the naked.

Zipper the Fatlanders called it.

Cock-catcher it was to Hunfast, the hapless.

Chains, padlocks, ropes of wrought steel

Fetched forth from the long lanes

Curved round the captives’ necks.

But all turned to the source of a sound,

A big bang, like the trunk of a tree

Snapping in a storm, making all deaf.

A Fatlander, about to be fettered

And fastened to the fortress’s side,

Had pulled out a small bang-stick,

Concealed in his clothes, shot a stone,

Struck Saemundr, Yngvar’s son,

Beloved brother, oar-puller, sword-swinger.

He had taken on a troll once, outside of Eiðar,

Bested him in battle, hand to hand.

But the bang-stick’s stone had struck a lung,

Saemundr’s life-blood gushed out of his mouth.

He fell like a tall tree. Magnus took a machete,

Held it in the hero’s hand, sent him to Valhalla.

Another bang bloodied our ears. Thord cursed.

A stone had struck him in the arm.

A third bang as Thord threw down, thrashed

The man who’d murdered Saemundr,

The coward who killed from afar.

The stone struck no one, hewing a hole

In the wooden wall, tearing the tarpaulin.

Face down on the floor, the Fatlander

Rose not again. Murder-loving Magnus,

Riven by rage, grabbed an axe,

Swung it into the spine of the shooter,

Severing two ribs, just by the backbone,

Adjusted his aim, swung again,

Rending the ribcage, separating the spine.

The shooter’s screams went silent

As wind whistled through those wounds.

His struggles ceased. Magnus opened the man

Like the spreading wings of an eagle, blood-bright,

Lungs loose, open to the air now.

A clashing cart was fetched, dumped out,

Making room for the murderer’s remains.

Magnus shoved him out through the glass gates.

Fatlanders’ fear-cries resounded, Sirens screamed.

Magnus made his way back to the fast fortress

We’d made around the wonder-windows.

Translator’s note: “The Lay of Walmart” breaks off at this point. Surveillance camera footage, combined with eyewitness accounts compiled from surviving hostages, agree that from this point onward the author, Tóki, was kept busy learning how to extract cartographical data from computers in the home electronics section.

Journal Entry of

Rebecca East-Oda

NEXT DAY, I.E.,

SATURDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING

Temperature 39F.

Our dining area has been designated a “War Room” and is now matted with cables of various descriptions. Most of these have something to do with Mortimer’s efforts to “boot up” the new GRIMNIR system, which is going to be his improvised ragtag replacement for ODIN. It runs on something called the dark net, of which the less said, the better. Fielded a telephone call from a representative of the cable television company complaining that we have been making all sorts of connections to dodgy servers and are in danger of having our service cut off. Played the little old lady card, feigned ignorance, requested technical support which I knew would hold them off for days.

A few years ago when we dug the book out of the vegetable garden, and made all of that money, and transferred the property to the East House Trust, and ceased to become its legal owners, it felt as if I had sawed my right leg off. But only for a few days. When it became obvious that this made absolutely no practical difference, I forgot it had happened. Since then it has only entered my awareness when we receive a property tax bill or some such, and I see the official name on the address label. Today, however, it is much on my mind, as it gives me a sort of detached emotional status from which to view all of these goings-on. SUVs, obviously belonging to some sort of government agency, are parked on the streets around us, drawing comment from the neighbors. Presumably they are spying on us, but they make no effort to cross the property line.

At two in the morning, three people climbed over the back fence and caused us all sorts of alarm before we recognized them: Felix Dorn, Esme Overkleeft, and Julie Lee. They had got together for late-night drinks at the Apostolic Café and made the decision to defect from DODO to join our little ragtag reboot thereof (Julie being the obvious instigator given her romance with Mortimer). Then they all stayed up all night talking. Now they are sleeping in shifts in Mei’s old room, the guest room, and the floor of my sewing room. (Chira Lajani, they report, counts herself among us in spirit, but dares not defect openly from DODO lest it interfere with her younger siblings’ immigration status. She might be able to function as a mole, but these are early days yet.)

From them we were able to get more news of what has been going on at the Walmart. Our access to the message traffic on the ODIN system was of course cut off the moment Mortimer left the building, and since then we were limited to what we could glean from television news reports and Internet rumors. The powers that be at DODO—which by this point basically means Gráinne, since she seems to control Blevins absolutely—are not even aware that Felix, Esme, and Julie have come over to our side, and may not appreciate that fact until the three of them fail to show up for work on Monday morning. In the meantime they still have access to the ODIN system over their phones.

This has enabled us to solve a riddle that bedeviled our minds from the very beginning of Magnus’s siege at the Walmart.

Clearly, Magnus made the rounds of the Viking world and recruited a sort of all-star team of marauders who were willing to follow his lead.

And on one level it makes sense for them to raid a Walmart, which to them would be a poorly guarded storehouse of near-infinite wealth.

But beyond that it makes no sense at all. They must either stay in the present, or return to the past via the ATTO.

If they stay in the present, they will inevitably be caught, tried, and put in prison. Magnus must know this.

If they return to the past, they’ll do so naked and empty-handed. Why, therefore, go to the effort of sacking a Walmart and gathering loot they can’t take with them? Magnus must understand this too.

According to the “over the fence” gang—Julie, Felix, and Esme—the answer was pieced together yesterday afternoon by the DOSECOPS people who have access to surveillance camera footage from the Walmart.

As soon as they had the electronics department fortified behind plywood and blue tarps, and their hostages secured (except for the one unfortunate who was rolled out into the parking lot after being blood-eagled), Magnus raided the pharmacy section and secured a large amount of lidocaine, which is a topical anesthetic.

In the meanwhile, some of the hostages were being chained to computers in the electronics section and put to work downloading information on certain topics. To make a long story short, it appears that during his sojourn in the present day, Magnus became aware of the fact that the New World contained an amount of gold and silver that was beyond the dreams of the most avaricious Vikings. Their longships were perfectly capable of making the voyage across the Atlantic by hopping from Iceland to Greenland to Newfoundland and thence down the coast. What they lacked was information: nautical charts showing the way, and land maps of Mexico and Peru and other gold-rich areas. And so this is the sort of information that the hostages were put to work downloading and printing out on paper.

Magnus’s Vikings then took turns lying facedown on the floor. Lidocaine was smeared on their bare backs and the treasure maps carved into their skin using hobby knives from the store’s art supply section.

This procedure has apparently been going on all night. When the DOSECOPS people understood what was going on, they cut power to the building. But the Vikings were ready for that with candles and lamps from the camping section, and by then they had already printed out everything they needed on paper. The ATTO has its own built-in power supply capable of running for days; Frank made sure of that. One of DODO’s spy drones has been circling above the store and has been picking up bursts of GLAAMR suggesting that some of the Vikings are already being Sent back. So they must have a witch among them who is ensconced in the ATTO doing the Sending and god only knows what else.

All of this information is several hours old, and I’m writing it late Saturday morning. The television news shows no change in status at the Walmart, which of course doesn’t reflect what might be happening within the ATTO; the police haven’t raided yet, no hostages have been released; it is a standoff.

It appears that what is going to happen—or already has happened, many centuries ago, on this or some other Strand—is that Magnus’s band of “all-star” berserkers will end up in tenth-century Scandinavia with detailed maps carved into their backs showing them how to traverse the Atlantic and Caribbean and sack the Americas for their unimaginable wealth of precious metals, then bring it all back to Scandinavia, or anywhere else they feel like living.

It is difficult to see how this could be stopped. DODO could Send some DOers even further back in time to try to change history to somehow foil Magnus’s plan, but two can play at that game—Magnus can just as well Send people further back yet to intercept the DOers, and so on.

Needless to say, any Strand on which Magnus’s plan succeeds will have a very different future from the one we are living in. Tristan is of the opinion that DODO spy planes are probably flying high above Mexico City and Cuzco at this moment, looking for signs of GLAAMR indicating the temporal equivalent of a nuclear strike.

We all wish Melisande were among us to help us think it all through. Unfortunately she remains marooned. Mortimer, logging in to ODIN through Esme’s phone, has been able to pull up some message traffic confirming that Gráinne Sent Mel to Victorian London in the summer of 1851—only weeks before the eclipse that marked the end of magic. By that time, the few remaining witches who could do magic at all were much enfeebled, especially in London, as that’s where the Great Exhibition was, and thus there was an immense concentration of magic-dampening technology all amassed in one place. So there is great concern that even if Mel were able to land on her feet in that DTAP and make contact with a practicing witch, it would be too late to get her back. In any case, there is little we can do except try to provide a place for her to land. If she materializes in one of the existing ODECs, she’ll immediately be in Gráinne’s power. So we need to build or obtain an ODEC of our own. Frank, who has spent the last couple of years designing and constructing room-temperature ODECs, is of course the leading authority in the world when it comes to that. He seems to have had a premonition of what was to come (or perhaps he received a warning from the future?), for he has for the last few weeks been laying plans to improvise a room-temperature ODEC in our cellar. Many of the parts, he says, can be obtained from Home Depot, but others are highly specialized, including room-temperature superconductors that are easy to obtain with the resources of DODO at one’s back but almost impossible for mere civilians to acquire.

UPDATE, WRITTEN LATE SATURDAY

Television reveals that the siege has been lifted. The Walmart was stormed by SWAT teams after several hours had gone by with no sign of activity. The hostages were found bound and gagged with duct tape but otherwise unharmed. No arrests have been made; police are claiming that the perpetrators made their escape from the building by crawling along a sewer line, or some such nonsense.

On the television footage, which is all shot from a distance, using drones and helicopters with long lenses, it’s possible to see two different groups of officers inside the Walmart: the local police SWAT team, which is roaming all over the store, and DODO’s EFOT squad (whose existence we’ve all just learned about this weekend—sort of DOSECOPS on steroids), which has surrounded the tractor-trailer rig and is not allowing anyone else near it. Apparently the tractor and trailer were so badly damaged as to be unusable. Now, however, another tractor-trailer has showed up in the parking lot, as well as some sort of enormous forklift from Massport that is capable of picking the ATTO off of the one and transferring it to the other. I’m sure that the ATTO is about to disappear into the bowels of the military-industrial complex, never to be seen again.

Exchange of posts on “ATTO Operations”

ODIN channel

DAY 1949 (SUNDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING, YEAR 5)

Note: Posts recovered from a telephone belonging to Julie Lee, who had access to ODIN until the following day.

Post from MAJ Isobel Sloane, 00:16:

Here is yet another update—hopefully the last—from the Walmart. The obstructions that had been preventing the forklift from getting into the building were finally cleared away about an hour ago. We’ve had to work around the police crime scene teams. Since there is no particular urgency, we have taken a “go along, get along” approach, which is why it has been so slow. They were irritated by our insistence on padlocking the ATTO the moment we arrived and keeping people out of it, but thanks to some calls from on high (kudos to LTG Frink, I suppose) they eventually got the message that the ATTO was a no-go area on national security grounds.

The forklift is now maneuvering into position alongside the tractor-trailer and getting ready to move the ATTO.

Reply from LTG Octavian Frink, 00:21:

Thank you, MAJ Sloane, despite the late hour I am monitoring from my office at the Pentagon. What is the status of the ATTO itself? Has it suffered any damage?

From MAJ Sloane, 00:30:

It took superficial damage—one good reason for housing it in a beefy steel shipping container. From the fact that Magnus’s team were successfully Sent into it and later Homed, we have ample evidence that it remains fully operational. The external status lights all show green.

BTW I don’t know if you have video feed on this, but the forklift has removed it from the ruined rig now and is taking it into the parking lot. Should have it on the good rig in a couple of minutes.

From LTG Frink, 00:35:

Do we know how Magnus’s personnel were Homed?

From MAJ Sloane, 00:37:

Haven’t had time to do a full after-action report. Will analyze it. Presumably they had their own MUON in the ATTO and she Homed them one by one after they had the maps cut in their backs.

From LTG Frink, 00:40:

Is Dr. Blevins awake and monitoring this? I feel the need of some expert opinions. My understanding is that MUONs cannot Send or Home themselves; some other MUON must do it for them.

From MAJ Sloane, 00:45:

ATTO is now on the good rig and the truck driver is conducting routine inspection prior to departure. I’ll ride shotgun with him. There is a security concern around possibility of media vehicles tailing us back to DODO HQ and so remainder of ETOF squads/vehicles will block streets and run interference until we are clear of the area.

From LTG Frink, 00:49:

I have confirmed with staff here that air space has been shut down, so you don’t have to worry about media choppers. Drone frequencies being jammed.

From MAJ Sloane, 00:51:

LOL I see drones falling out of the sky all over the place. Very satisfying.

From LTG Frink, 00:52:

I have not seen a response to my query about MUONs being able to self-Send. Dr. Blevins must be out of commission.

From MAJ Sloane, 00:55:

Not an expert but my understanding is that they can’t self-Send.

From LTG Frink, 00:56:

In that case, when Magnus’s MUON had finished Homing all of Magnus’s other personnel, what did she do? Remain in the ATTO? She would be marooned in the present day, correct?

From MAJ Sloane, 01:01:

General sitrep: truck driver reports good to go, have deployed DO-SECOPS personnel/vehicles for traffic management detail.

In answer to LTG Frink’s last question, hostile MUON did not remain in the ATTO.

From LTG Frink, 01:02:

How do you know that?

From MAJ Sloane, 01:03:

Well, when we first entered the store at conclusion of the hostage situation, I went into the ATTO to check it. It was empty. We then padlocked the door. It has remained padlocked since.

From LTG Frink, 01:05:

I would like you to double-check it before departure.

From MAJ Sloane, 01:05:

Roger wilco. Stand by.

From LTG Frink, 01:15:

Has anyone on site heard from MAJ Sloane? I would like a sitrep. It has been ten minutes.

From MAJ Sloane, 01:19:

Sorry for delay, it was a mess in there. Everything is fine, proceeding to DODO HQ, will report in upon arrival.

From LTG Frink, 02:03:

It is very late and I want to turn in but would like positive confirmation that the ATTO is safe and sound at DODO HQ before I shut this damned thing off. I have not heard a sitrep in something like forty-five minutes. What is status? Major Sloane?

From LTG Frink, 02:05:

Major Sloane? Are you monitoring this channel?

Will someone else on this channel please supply Major Sloane’s phone number?

From 1LT Jesperson, 02:07:

She is not answering her phone. It went off the network after she checked the ATTO. It may have fallen out of her pocket there. ATTO is electromagnetically shielded.

From LTG Frink, 02:10:

So we have no way of tracking or communicating with Major Sloane?

From 1LT Jesperson, 02:11:

Correct.

From LTG Frink, 02:12:

Lieutenant Jesperson, where are you exactly?

From 1LT Jesperson, 02:13:

Down in DOSECOPS C4.

From LTG Frink, 02:14:

Has the ATTO arrived?

From 1LT Jesperson, 02:15:

Negative. DOSECOPS personnel standing by to receive it.

From LTG Frink, 02:16:

Patch me through to ranking DOSECOPS officer in escort vehicle.

From 1LT Jesperson, 02:18:

Escort vehicles already arrived.

From LTG Frink, 02:19:

Escort vehicles arrived without the vehicle they were escorting? How many?

From 1LT Jesperson, 02:19:

Both of them.

From LTG Frink, 02:20:

We only had two escort vehicles? What is remainder of DOSECOPS staff doing? Christmas shopping?

From 1LT Jesperson, 02:23:

Staking out the East-Oda residence, as per Dr. Blevins’s orders.

From LTG Frink, 02:25:

I am pulling him out of slumberland right now. Am I to understand that we have lost the ATTO? Does anyone know where the ATTO is?

From Dr. Roger Blevins, 02:36:

Okie, unsettling news that we have temporarily lost track of the precise whereabouts of ATTO, but Boston’s a small town, we’ll find it in a jiffy once we get local police involved.

From LTG Frink, 02:41:

FOR FUCKS SAKE WE CANNOT GET LOCAL COPS INVOLVED! We have to track this down with national security resources.

From Dr. Blevins, 02:45:

Sorry, a bit groggy, not thinking straight. Of course you’re right, Okie. But those resources are considerable as you know and how far could it have gone?

From LTG Frink, 02:49:

In an hour and a half? Approximately a hundred miles.

In case you are too groggy to remember Mr. Reinhardt’s 7th grade geometry lessons, that implies a search area of 31,142 square miles.

Has it not occurred to any of you that if a MUON stayed behind in that thing, she could have played with people’s minds? And that Magnus could by now have Sent more hostiles into it?

From 1LT Jesperson, 02:52:

General Frink, Dr. Blevins, all of this traffic is going out on the ATTO Operations channel which has wide distribution inside of DODO. Suggesting we switch over to DOSECOPS RESTRICTED channel. Please acknowledge.

From LTG Frink, 02:53:

Yes.

From Dr. Blevins, 02:53:

[message thread ends here] Acknowledged.

Post by Felix Dorn on

“General” GRIMNIR channel

DAY 1949

As you all know, I’m not one for writing long reports, but Tristan is twisting my arm to jot down some notes on what I observed during my last couple of days at DODO. He wants this on the record so we can document and explain our actions if this all comes to light eventually.

During the last week or so I began to see message traffic on the “Deutsch” ODIN channel, which is simply a channel that is used by German-speaking staff members like me for general discussion.

To make a long story short, it was obvious from these messages that a DEDE to Prussia was being planned on short notice and that its date was unusually late—I could guess from some of the references that it was going to be the late 1840s or even the early 1850s.

DEDEs of that nature are extremely unusual because magic had already become very weak by that time and so there is a risk of the DOer ending up trapped in the past (as Mel seems to be now unfortunately). We don’t even have any legit KCWs post about 1845 and so these DOers on the message threads were asking questions about some sketchy witches that we’d been in contact with circa 1840, wondering if they were still alive ten years later.

The DOers asking these questions were tough guys. Fighters and Snake Eaters. Not the kind of people you would send on a scouting or intel-gathering type of mission.

I started asking around, buying people beers, chewing the fat with the Chronotron staff, trying to get to the bottom of it. The whole thing just seemed weird to me, especially combined with Mel’s very unusual DEDE in 1850 San Francisco and the one that had been planned for Tristan. As context you have to remember that the operational wing of DODO has been pretty much in mothballs for the last few months—we’ve been winding up ops in different theaters but not starting anything new. This felt like something new, but also something very weird.

What I learned was that Blevins had been asking a lot of questions about Berkowski, the photographer who took the daguerreotype of the July 1851 solar eclipse that put a stake through the heart of magic. And not just about him but about Daguerre and Niépce and Schulze and some of the other inventors who worked on early forms of photography. Blevins had set up a small private channel on the ODIN system to discuss his interest in this topic and had invited three of the Chronotron geeks but was otherwise keeping it under wraps. I was able to talk to one of those guys about it. He said it had been started a little after Halloween and that Gráinne was definitely in the loop, driving some of the questions and the discussion.

Erszebet has come over to our side now and has confirmed, just in the last few hours, that Gráinne has pretty much seized control of Blevins’s mind by repeatedly using some pretty hard-ass magic on him during their many hours in the ATTO together.

What this all adds up to is that Gráinne is looking for a way to roll it all back. She wants to change history so that photography, and other magic-jamming technologies, were never developed in the first place. Maybe it begins with assassinating Berkowski, which would push back the end date by a few years, but that’s just the beginning of what she wants to do. She wants to morph our entire historical timeline into one where science and technology never advanced out of the late medieval age and magic still flourishes. To avoid Shear, she’ll have to do it one small change at a time. That implies a program that is going to be executed patiently over a long period of time, using the full resources of the Chronotron and the ODECs (until there are no more Chronotrons or ODECs because duh, to quote Mortimer). And that in turn means she has to control the organization from the top down. Blevins she has in her pocket. Mel and Tristan had to be gotten out of the way by other means.

And she came close to nailing it on the first try. Two unexpected outcomes messed up her plan. First of all, Erszebet had a change of heart and decided not to Send Tristan into Gráinne’s trap. And second, just at the moment when the EFOT squads were about to pounce on us and round us all up, Magnus launched his raid on the Walmart. It is obvious from the way Gráinne has reacted to this that she wasn’t expecting it and she’s furious.

So, the good news is that Tristan’s safe and that Magnus has thrown a huge monkey wrench into whatever Gráinne was planning. The bad news is that we don’t know how to get Mel back and that the full resources of the Department of Diachronic Operations are now at Gráinne’s beck and call.

Diachronicle

In which I meet my final witch

TODAY I ACCEPTED A LOAN from my patrons to afford a custom-fitted corset, perhaps because I now know that I shall be wearing one for the rest of my days. The end of magic approaches and my last chance for escape has been denied me.

The Great Exhibition—that very event which had such a dreadful influence on magic’s demise—provided me an opportunity to take the air at last. My patrons expressed an interest in attending it, now that the initial flood of visitors has calmed somewhat (it still bustles like a city inside), and allowed that I might go with them without any danger or embarrassment to myself.

I doubt that in the twenty-first century any gathering could marvel the general population the way that the Crystal Palace marvels today. An enormous glass building framed by iron—nearly a million square feet and more than one hundred feet high. In its sheer spectacle it rivals anything in Las Vegas. Within were tens of thousands of items and exhibits, visited by more than forty thousand people a day. It had been built essentially as a giant two-story greenhouse, leaving old-growth trees undisturbed on site and thus creating in certain open areas the quaint feeling of an antique movie set. (Except movies do not yet exist.) I was given leave to roam, with instructions to meet up at the reconstructed Medieval Court (between the Sculpture Garden and Africa) in two hours.

The wonders waiting within include all sorts of mechanical and technical marvels, and samples of the raw materials processed or created by them. Foucault’s pendulum is there, hanging from a roof beam to demonstrate the rotation of the earth. There are envelope-folding machines, musical instruments, inventions from abroad and fabrics from everywhere, an elementary voting machine, at least two enormous diamonds (one pink), a rash of photographs and daguerreotypes (I avoided those, instinctively), tinned foods, a stuffed elephant or two, a locomotive, and for the price of a penny, the novel experience of—gasp!—public lavatories! And foodstuffs from all over the world, or at least the British Empire, which here in 1851 is nearly the same thing.

I had studied the catalog and exhibition layout ahead of time, naturally, and had plotted a course before we arrived. We entered via the vast, vaulted Southern Transept, between wares from China, Tunis, and India, and at the Crystal Fountain I bid my patrons au revoir and turned left. The air had the humid, peaceful heaviness of greenhouses. I hurried past offerings from Africa and Canada, Ceylon, Jersey, and Malta, past inventive labor-saving hardware for housework and industry, past sumptuous furniture and items of leather, fur, rock, paper, scissors (not a joke), and—wait for it—hair, then mounted stairs and continued westward until I had pressed on through the bustle of fascinated faces, all the way to the Western Nave, where I knew I’d find the telescopes and other lens-related hoo-haa items amongst the “philosophical instruments.”

I had come here with the wan hope that astronomy might be of interest to witches, being as ancient as magic is. And I hoped perhaps my presence might leave a trace of glamour that only they could see—in which case perhaps I would be approached by one of them. A far-fetched wish, I realize, but I was in desperate straits (although not yet as desperate as I now feel).

My eyes scanned the crowd, wishing I knew what it was that identified somebody as a witch. Standing with a handsome older couple near one of the largest telescopes (Buron’s, I believe the nameplate said) was a very beautiful young lady, perhaps twenty, who looked like Erszebet Karpathy.

Because it was Erszebet Karpathy.

To be honest, she did not look exactly like Erszebet in our era. While certainly grave and serious, her demeanor was lighter, her presence more buoyant. She was smiling at something the man had just said. It was a charming, unself-consciously girlish grin. She did not carry the weight of centuries upon her shoulders. She was truly, as they say, in the bloom of youth. In that first moment of recognition, I understood, in I way I could not have before, what all those decades of waiting for us had done to her spirit. For a passing moment I was pierced with guilt for what we had done by convincing her to preserve herself.

And then I realized, with a shock, that this was that moment. This was the moment she had referred to when first we’d met: the moment that I convinced her to stay alive into the twenty-first century.

Since she had indeed preserved herself, I already knew that I would be successful—apparently with only one Strand’s effort! This suggested our encounter would be an easy one, and further—oh, the joy of it!—she could Home me. I was saved! I had never felt more grateful to her than I did that moment, although she had not officially even met me yet.

I took several hurried steps towards her, wondering how coy I should be, and then realizing I hadn’t the time to be coy whatsoever.

“Miss Karpathy Erszebet?” I said, approaching with a polite but familiar smile.

She and the two older adults turned to look at me. As she sobered slightly, she looked more familiar, and her familiarity in that setting was so reassuring that I could barely keep myself from embracing her.

“Miss Karpathy, I am a friend of yours you haven’t met yet,” I said quietly, barely audible above the general hubbub. I had to risk assuming the two guardians knew her for a witch. “I have been Sent here with a very great request to ask.”

She frowned, and looked confused. Then she glanced at the man and said, “Papa, Ki o˝?” Then turned to me and said, in halting English, “Do you Hungarian? I can only some little bit English.”

“Kicsit,” I said, wishing her native language was Akkadian or classical Hebrew or something I was more familiar with. Given how strong her accent was after at least a century in America, it should not have surprised me that she did not yet speak English, yet it was jarring to suddenly have a language barrier between us.

“I speak English,” said the man. “I will be your translator.” Seeing the wary look on my face, he said, with stern reassurance, “I assume you are working with a witch and perhaps somebody powerful.”

“May we speak in private?” I asked.

He looked around at the crowd. “We hide in plain sight,” he said. “We attract more attention if we huddle in a corner. Here nobody pays attention, we are ignored.”

He had the air of a man unused to changing his mind, and for a moment I felt stymied.

“Nem, Papa,” said lovely young Erszebet, and gave me a shy smile. “Én teázni vele. Azt szeretné gyakorolni az angol tudásom.” To me: “We have tea, yes?”

With a sweetness and grace of movement, the pure fluidity of youth, she held her hand out to me with a smile, and smiled even more happily when I took it.

“Add nekem néhány shillinget,” she said over her shoulder to the man, whose solemnity melted. “Én is fizetek vissza, amikor hazaérünk.” He drew a coin from the wallet in his vest pocket, she accepted the money with a grateful smile and began to pull me through the crowd, down the stairs, to the West Refreshment Court (flanked by those exotic public lavatories). She selected a tea-cart surrounded by little tables and chairs full of flagging matrons.

When we were close to the tea-cart, she gave me a conspiratorial grin, her eyes twinkling as I had never known Erszebet’s eyes to twinkle. “I speak very good English,” she whispered in my ear. “But I do not want him to know that.”

“Thank God,” I said impulsively. “Erszebet, I am glad to hear it, because truly I must speak to you alone.”

“Very well, let us speak over cakes and tea,” she said, and, smiling, she held up the coin with a flourish.

When we had settled at a small table with our refreshments, she said, eyes still sparkling, “So you have been Sent from the future. That has never happened to me before and I am very happy to meet you. Please tell me about the future. Father would say it is wrong to ask that, but I am so curious. I hope it is better than the present. The present is very difficult for us, for so many reasons. Please tell me magic is repaired soon. Surely it must be, or you could not have been Sent.”

I had never heard Erszebet speak so exuberantly, without an absence of rampaging insults, in all the time I’d known her. I hated that I had to be the one to give her the news.

“I am here to warn you that things will get much worse before they improve,” I said, “and they can only improve at all if you will agree to the request I am about to make.” I hesitated for a moment. Surely Erszebet knew many witches. Should I ask her to tell all of them to preserve themselves? Would that not give us more witches to collect in the twenty-first century?

And yet that would create such a muddle, and I had no Chronotron or even quipu to ask for clarity. I decided to stay within the bounds of what I knew we needed to accomplish. “And you must keep this request a secret. It is only for you.”

“I love secrets,” she said, grinning again. Grinning, she looked like a teenager. “I’m very good at keeping secrets.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, and said confidingly, delighted with herself, “I have a secret lover my parents do not know about. Not even Mother suspects, and she’s a very able witch!”

“I promise not to tell her you have a lover,” I said, forcing myself to grin right back at her. “If you do not tell her this. But, Erszebet, this is something you cannot even tell your lover.”

“That is easy, we do not actually talk very much,” she said slyly, with the tiniest blush of a recent ex-virgin. She giggled. Erszebet Karpathy giggled. It took so much willpower to keep my face smiling, to not close my eyes and shudder a bit at what I was about to ask of her.

“Erszebet, magic is about to end completely. Totally.” She blinked, and suddenly was serious and attentive, vaguely more similar to the Erszebet I knew. “It will stay extinguished for many, many years, and then we will bring it back—you and I, and some other people.” She blinked again, doe-eyed and speechless. “But, Erszebet, this is the most important part: it does not come back for such a long time that you would have died of old age first. So I have come here to tell you to cast a spell upon yourself that will prolong your life as long as possible. To slow your aging enough that you can live for two hundred years.”

She looked almost in a state of shock. “Who are you?” she asked. “Who are you that would ask me to do this?”

“My name is Melisande Stokes, and I am your friend,” I said. “I wish I did not have to ask this of you, but you, and only you, will be able to save magic someday—as long as you cast that spell upon yourself.”

She gave me a distressed look—not the haughty irritation of my Erszebet, but a childlike confusion. “Why me?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. I had never stopped to think about this, since my experience of our relationship was that she had reached out to me. “Perhaps it is because fate has placed me here at this moment in time, when magic is about to end. It is perhaps that random. I don’t honestly know. What I do know is that it is your destiny to fix it. Extend your life, and Send me back to my own time, and we will meet there eventually and work together.”

Her dark green eyes darted from side to side as she considered this. “If this news is true, then I would prefer,” she said, “that I extend both our lives and you go through this journey with me. Then when the time comes, we will meet your colleagues and work together.”

I believe my heart actually stopped for a beat. “That’s not possible,” I said, thinking fast. “I already exist in that time period, I will be an old woman and a young one simultaneously on the same Strand. Surely that will cause diakrónikus nyírás.”

She thought this over, her mouth setting into a harder line now, a foreshadowing of the Erszebet to come. “This is a terrible thing you are asking me,” she said. “A very, very difficult thing.”

“I realize that, Erszebet,” I said. “But so important. And you choose to do it. And it is the right thing. You are there with me, in the future, and—” I hesitated. It would be a lie to tell her that she was glad of making that choice. She had only ever expressed regret and bitterness. But I had to convince her to do it. “In the future you know that it’s the right thing to have done.”

She stared at me levelly a moment. “Am I happy?” she asked. “Am I joyful? My lover tells me I am joyful. It is my favorite thing to be these days.” I stared at her like a deer in headlights startled fawn, and she knew the answer before I could prevaricate. “I see,” she said. “Not happy. Not joyful.”

“But . . . satisfied that you have done the right thing,” I insisted. “This makes you the most significant witch in the history of the world.”

“And if I say no?”

“Magic will end forever, completely, seventeen days from now, and it will never return.” I realized that was likely a lie, that some agent from some other nation would still manage to recruit some other witch—that I was asking this not for the good of magic but only for the good of the United States’ ability to close the Magic Gap. I chose not to clarify this point.

“So,” she said, “magic will end in seventeen days no matter what I do, but in the next seventeen days, if I put this spell on myself, I will bring it back someday.”

“Yes.”

“What do I do for all the many long years that I am alive? How do I make my way? I am trained only to do magic.”

“I don’t know,” I said, taken aback. “But I know that you land on your feet. When we meet, more than a century from now, you have been staying somewhere for many years where all your needs are taken care of, so somehow you must stumble across money. Perhaps you marry a wealthy man and inherit his fortune. Perhaps you become a schoolteacher or scientist or take up with the Fuggers—remember that name, Erszebet, and ODEC, and Facebook, and—” My mind whirled: What else was I supposed to tell her? What else had the ancient Erszebet claimed I’d told her? “I don’t know, Erszebet. I wish I did. All I know is that if you had not agreed to do this, I would not be here right now.”

“I Sent you back?”

“Not this time. But most of the times that I have been Sent places, you Send me.”

She frowned. “Why do you want to be Sent so often?”

“We work for the government of the United States. It requires us to move around through time.”

Her eyes brightened for a moment. “Will I do that too? Move around in time?”

“You never expressed an interest, but I suppose you could. We can discuss it—but only if you agree to put the spell on yourself and Send me forward to my own time.”

She pursed her lips. “Why does magic end in seventeen days?”

“It’s very complicated,” I said. “Technology—like everything you see here in the Crystal Palace—it interferes with magic. In just over a fortnight, an extremely significant technological achievement will occur and that will end magic.”

“Why not just prevent the technological achievement?” asked Erszebet.

“It’s too important to the rest of the world.”

“More important than magic?”

“Yes,” I said, and she looked displeased in a way that made it clear this would be harder than I’d anticipated.

“Technology should not be more important than magic,” she said earnestly. Very earnestly, and naively, because she was actually only nineteen years old. Not one hundred and eighty appearing to be nineteen. “I will interfere with this technology. What is it?”

“It’s too far away,” I said. “It’s something that happens in Prussia.”

“I have friends in Prussia,” she said immediately. “I can communicate with them and tell them to sabotage whatever it is.”

“That will cause diakrónikus nyírás,” I said.

She looked terribly deflated. “I wish I did not know this,” she said.

“There is no other way,” I said. I had never believed much in fate, but I was shaken by how remarkable it was, that I had been sent to this DTAP as an act of Gráinne’s treachery, and yet being here—it turned out—was unavoidable. Perhaps on other Strands I got here by different methods.

“I need to think about this,” she said. “This is so much, so very much, to ask of anyone. Do you understand?”

“I do. I wouldn’t ask if it was not incredibly important. Please let me give you the information that you need in case we are separated.” Out of my reticule I took my journal and a pencil, and wrote down ODEC, Facebook, the approximate date we were to connect in the future, Tristan Lyons, and Fuggers (Bank). Then, remembering that she had impressed Tristan with her understanding of the ODEC’s mechanics, I scribbled what fractured physics-engineering babble I could remember from five years earlier, when Tristan and Oda-sensei were first bonding over developing the ODEC. I tore the leaf from my journal and handed it to her. She hesitantly took it, looked at it, grimly tucked it into her own reticule. I felt faint with gratitude. “So you will say yes?” I said.

“It would be easier if somebody else aged with me.” She looked relieved. “Perhaps my lover!”

“That’s a bad idea,” I said. “Do you know the saying, three may keep a secret if two of them are dead? It will be hard enough for you to pass undetected.”

“Then you shall stay here and keep me company until you die. By then I will have found somebody else. I will be a freak of nature if I try to remain in one community for very long. They will grow suspicious. I will need companions. You must be my first companion.”

“Erszebet,” I said, “I cannot do that. I must get home. I must warn my friends against some terrible things that are happening. If I do not warn them, even your sacrifice may ultimately be for nothing.”

She looked very weary then, and rubbed her face with her hand. “This is far too much for me to think about all at once,” she said. “I need some time.”

“There is no time,” I said with urgency. I glanced around and, with a sinking heart, saw her parents approaching us, her father with a scolding look on his face. “Please think about it,” I said, “and meet me again as soon as possible. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow we go home to Budapest,” she said, looking down. “I cannot help you. And I will not extend my life to help you in the future, it is far too painful a calling.”

“Please,” I said, “please, Erszebet, reconsider. If you do not do this, I am mired here forever.”

“I would not be your jailor, but I cannot be your savior,” she said, almost apologetically. Then she rose, with a forced smile on her face, as her parents reached us.

Her mother gave me a look that might shatter concrete, and then in a low voice began to interrogate Erszebet right in front of me in Hungarian. My Hungarian was weak but the sentences were fairly rudimentary: “Who Sent her? Where is she from? What does she know about magic dying? What can we do?”

Perhaps Erszebet was not the witch I should have spoken to?

“Tell your mother!” I said urgently to Erszebet, as her parents began to move her away from me. “Tell her everything!” And to the mother, in bumbling Magyar: “Erszebet can help the magic. I told her how. But I can do nothing. She must do it.”

Her parents looked astonished. After a stunned moment, they both glanced at me and then back to her, and she seemed to wither under their gaze. To see Erszebet Karpathy cowed was even more disorienting than to see her joyful.

Her father took her arm and very forcefully began to lead her through the crowd. I was certain—I am certain—never to see her again.

In a daze, I wandered over to the reconstructed Medieval Court, which I alone of all those tens of thousands knew from personal experience to be a hack job abounding in solecisms. The good doctor and his wife collected me and brought me home, expressing great concern that I seemed so exhausted by the outing, and declaring that for the next week or two I must have bedrest or the equivalent. They do not perceive themselves as keeping me a prisoner. Indeed, they believe themselves to be nothing but my benefactors. They were very willing to bring me all the paper and ink I could ask for, although they had no idea I would ask for as much as all this.

For when I returned from the meeting with Erszebet, I realized I must make an accounting of everything, as there shall never otherwise be any record of it. Tristan, I suspect, must also be lost now too, and he is not the sort who would stop to record a narrative like this. So this is all that will ever remain of us.

I shall now take this sheaf of papers to the Fugger Bank on Threadneedle Street and deposit it in a safety deposit box. I have lost all hope of returning to my own time.

And so, dear reader, with these words, as the ink dries, I disappear.

Journal Entry of

Rebecca East-Oda

DECEMBER 6

Nothing good to report. Yesterday—or was it the day before?—realized, while eating Chinese take-out, that a week had passed since the events in the Walmart. Frank, Tristan, Mortimer, and the others have scarcely ventured out of the house during that time, except to run to the hardware store for parts, or farther afield to collect obscure ODEC components from various scientific and industrial supply houses. These are being assembled into a contraption that has taken over half of the cellar. For a while it seemed that this was coming together quickly, and morale was high as the big components were being hammered and welded together with impressive speed. Meanwhile Julie (on her motorcycle) and Felix (in his SUV) kept making runs to the Amazon Locker over by MIT to collect packages of various sizes containing electronics that Mortimer has been incorporating into the “server rack” taking over my pantry. A bundle of cables as thick as my waist now snakes from there down the dumbwaiter shaft into the cellar where it is connected to various devices built into the walls of the ODEC.

So the physical changes are impressive. This had gulled me into thinking that actual progress was being made toward getting Mel back home. But last night, just before he turned in, Frank broke the news to me that the entire project is futile unless he can get his hands on a larger quantity of high-temperature superconductors. He already had some samples on hand, which have been incorporated into the device, but he needs ten times as much of the stuff in order to make an ODEC large enough to accommodate a person.

All of the work that the crew have been doing since Black Friday has been in the hope that these materials could be obtained. Only two companies in the world manufacture them. One is in China and has been slow to deal with. Julie, who is fluent in Mandarin, has spent many hours on the phone with them trying to cajole them into overnight-shipping some samples, but they see us as too small a customer to be worth bothering with. The other possible source is right here in the Boston area—they are on Route 128 in Waltham, so only a few miles away—and Frank had high hopes that they would supply what he needs until yesterday, when his order ran afoul of some kind of internal roadblock within the company. I suspect some kind of meddling by Blevins.

Post by Mortimer Shore on

“New ODEC” GRIMNIR channel

DAY 1957 (7 DECEMBER, YEAR 5)

Hey all, I could just walk upstairs and deliver this news in person but I’m too tired to stand up and I know people are sleeping.

Breaking news: if you check out a couple of these links from this morning’s Wall Street Journal and some other biz sites you will see that we have just been Pearl Harbored as far as getting what we need to finish the new ODEC. TC Materials Science Group—our erstwhile friends out in Waltham—have just been purchased lock, stock, and barrel by a hedge fund operating out of lower Manhattan. This explains why they suddenly clammed up a couple of days ago and stopped processing our order.

So as you might expect I have been learning whatever I can about said hedge fund.

We have all been assuming that Blevins had something to do with our recent difficulties in getting these supercons. That might be the case with the company in Shenzhen, which is a big DODO supplier, but what’s happening today seems unrelated. There is another player, apparently.

This hedge fund has also recently taken big positions in a number of mining companies operating in Mongolia, Congo, and Bolivia, which are the only places to get the rare earths and other unusual minerals needed to manufacture the high-temp superconductors we need.

So it would appear that someone with a lot of money is making a concerted effort to corner the world market on exactly the stuff we need in order to conduct diachronic operations, or for that matter magic of any kind.

I have a few feelers out to friends of mine in the “gray hat” world who I was not allowed to have contact with when I was a U.S. government employee. They might be able to dig up more.

Follow-up from Mortimer Shore, four hours later:

I have heard back from a friend of mine who got scared straight a couple of years ago and ended up working as a programmer for a Wall Street quant fund. He knows his way around the financial systems.

It’s a big data dump, but the bottom line seems to be that our adversary in this case is not Blevins or DODO.

It’s the Fugger Bank.

Reply from Tristan Lyons:

Makes me wonder about the disappearance of the ATTO from the Walmart. We assumed that was Magnus’s work . . . but who knows?

ENTRY FROM PERSONAL JOURNAL OF

Karpathy Erszebet

written in Magyar in a leather-bound diary on linen paper

London, 13 July 1851

Dear Diary,

Today I was at the Great Exhibition in London, with my parents, when I was approached by a woman who, while not a witch, knew much about magic and why it has been waning. She warned me that magic will soon die and requested me to participate in its resuscitation. This required two things of me: first, that I cast a spell upon myself to extend my life out by more than a century, and second, that I Home her back to the future time from where she comes. Overwhelmed by the enormity of her request, I refused.

However, Mother, seeing the distress on my face, demanded to know what it was we spoke of, and when I told her, she said that of course we must prevent this Mr. Berkowski from taking his accursed photograph and ending magic (this is the event that completely destroys magic). As soon as we were back in our room at the inn, she began to scry in an attempt to find a sister-witch in the area of Koenigsbourg, Prussia, who might be able to deter Mr. Berkowski.

Father pointed out with some impatience that this would merely delay, by some small time, the actual snuffing-out of magic, and that if Miss Stokes was so determined, that surely I should follow her resolve and put a spell on myself to lengthen my life. I said I could not bear to do this. When Mother agreed with Father, I told her, “You are free to use such a spell on yourself if you like, then.”

“I am already too old for such a spell to work well,” she said. “I had you too late in life and I am already an old woman and my health wanes with my power. It has to be you.”

I dared her then to set the spell on me. She said it would be bad magic to use such a spell against an unwilling witch—especially her own daughter.

Exchange of posts on

“General” GRIMNIR channel

DAY 1959 (9 DECEMBER, YEAR 5)

Post from Frank Oda, 11:17:

Has anyone seen or heard from Julie? She went off on her bike two hours ago to pick up some parts and should have been back a while ago. It’s not like her to not report in.

Reply from Tristan Lyons, 11:20:

Good catch, Frank, we have been a little distracted by the sudden disappearance of the DOSECOPS SUVs from the street. They all took a powder about forty-five minutes ago.

From Rebecca East-Oda, 11:25:

Good riddance. The neighbors will be pleased too.

From Julie Lee, 14:30:

Sorry for the mysterious absence, everyone. I’m fine and I’m hanging out in a top-floor hotel room at the waterfront Westin with none other than Major Isobel Sloane.

From Tristan Lyons, 14:31:

WHAT!? Glad you are okay but please explain.

From Julie Lee, 14:45:

I was on my way back to the house with the delivery, just a couple of blocks out, when I noticed that all three of the DOSECOPS SUVs were blasting down the street, headed for the main drag. So, on the spur of the moment, I decided to follow them. Couldn’t have kept up with them on the highway but of course they were in Boston traffic and so it was pretty easy to keep pace. I had to make a few illegal sidewalk runs and cut through some parking lots but was able to track them across the Mass Ave Bridge and across the South End into Southie where they ended up passing through a guarded gate into the container terminal. There’s a big slip there lined with cranes where they load and unload the container ships. Thousands of containers stacked all over the place, trains, trucks, etc.

I couldn’t get through the gate, so I was kind of stymied at that point. I looked around for a tall building and noticed the Westin a few blocks away—it’s like twenty stories high and I could see its top floors, so I knew it had a view of the area. So I gunned it over there. The neighborhood is kinda forbidding, lots of big industrial-type buildings but no place to come in off the street. I left my motorcycle with the parking attendants and went into the lobby and asked the lady at the front desk whether there was a bar or coffee shop on the top floor where I could have a drink and look out over the harbor and she was like no, all of our dining establishments are down low and the top floors are all rooms and suites for our guests. I asked if any of those was available and she said she could get me one with a view of the harbor so I plunked down my credit card and said I would take it.

While I’m there filling out the paperwork, I see a woman approaching in my peripheral vision. She’s coming from the direction of the coffee shop in the lobby, holding a latte cup. I figured she wanted to talk to the front-desk lady but instead she approached me and said, “Excuse me, this might sound very weird and I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable but I have the strongest feeling that I know you from somewhere and I was wondering if I could chat with you for a minute.” So I look up at her and holy shit it’s Isobel Sloane from DOSECOPS! She’s dressed in a sweatshirt and sweatpants and some Crocs that I’m going to take a wild guess were looted from Walmart and she basically looks fine, but a little spacey and disoriented. As evidenced by the fact that she didn’t know my name. We’ve had coffee together lots of times at the DODO cafeteria and she totally knows me.

Obviously something weird was going on so I said, “Sure, I would totally love to chat with you, hang on a sec and we can go up to my suite and get some room service and just chill out for a little bit.” Which she was fine with.

So, ten minutes later we’re up in this fancy suite. Pricey, but the only room I could get with a view of the harbor. I was super nervous that we’d be followed, but nothing of the sort happened, and as soon as we got inside I locked and security-bolted the door. I got Isobel settled down on a comfy chair in the living room area of the suite and then looked out the window and down into the container port area.

DOSECOPS has a fleet of half a dozen black SUVs, as you know, and all six of them were down there, clustered together like cockroaches along the side of the big slip where the container ships tie up to be loaded and unloaded. I could see people standing around them but it was too far away to make out faces. Some of them were looking out into the harbor. And right there, just a mile or two out, south of the airport, was a big container ship steaming away. Piled with hundreds of containers, of course. And everything about the body language of the people around the SUVs was “goddamn it we just literally missed the boat.”

More in a few minutes but I’m gonna hit “send” on this so you get the update.

From Mortimer Shore, 14:59:

I checked the shipping records. That’s the Alexandre Dumas. She’s owned by a French shipping company. They name all of their ships after writers, I guess.

From Tristan Lyons, 15:03:

Where’s she headed?

From Mortimer Shore, 15:06:

Le Havre apparently.

From Julie Lee, 15:12:

CONTINUED

So when I saw how it was down along the waterfront I turned to Isobel who was just chilling, sipping her latte and looking out the window, and I said, “So, Isobel, it’s good to see you!”

“Isobel. Right. That’s me,” she said. Like she’d forgotten her own name.

“We have been worried,” I said.

“Who has been worried?” she asked.

“People who work with you and who knew you had gone missing,” I told her. “You have been missing for over a week.”

“Oh, I wasn’t missing,” she said, and kind of nodded down toward the harborfront area below us. She seemed completely unconcerned.

“You were down there?” I prompted her.

“Yes, there’s a shipping company, with an office, and a lot of shipping containers that they look after.”

“Might one of those containers be green, with some rust spots and some equipment inside?” I asked.

“You mean the ATTO?” she asked without skipping a beat.

“Yeah, the ATTO.”

“That’s mostly where I was. It was in the warehouse. It’s not green anymore, though. We painted it red.”

“We? So, you were involved in this painting project?”

“Yeah, I didn’t have anything else to do, so I helped out a little. It was fun.”

“Where is the ATTO now with its shiny new coat of red paint?”

“They just loaded it onto the ship a little while ago. Then I found myself out on the street and so I decided to go get some coffee. That’s when I saw you.”

“Were you being held prisoner?” I asked.

“No.”

“Was there another woman in the ATTO part of the time?”

“Yes. She was always there.”

“Was it Gráinne?” I asked. “Irish accent?”

“Oh, no,” she said, as if that would be preposterous.

So then I thought about what kind of witch Magnus would probably have with him and asked, “Did she look or sound, like, Scandinavian maybe?”

And she said, “Nope.”

“Do you remember what she looked like?”

She shrugged. “Maybe like Italian or Spanish?”

I couldn’t think of any Italian or Spanish witches on our payroll so I let that go and asked, “And is she in the ATTO right now?”

“Oh, no. They shut it down and locked it before they put it on the ship.”

“So where did the woman go?”

“I don’t know. She went away in a car with the shipping company guys.”

“So all of them—all of the shipping company guys—they all left?”

“Yeah.”

“And pretty much left you where you were standing.”

“Yeah.”

“But it looks like they didn’t hurt you or anything.”

“Oh, no. Why would they do that?”

“Just asking, Isobel.”

And at about this point a change started coming over Isobel’s face. Until then she’d been super relaxed, like she’d been sitting on a beach washing down Xanax with strawberry margaritas and listening to global chill music, but now it was like the circuit breakers in her brain were flipping back on. She seemed preoccupied, and sort of embarrassed. I felt a little bad for her and I didn’t want to, like, jump down her throat or anything. So I just sat there quietly and let her work it all out.

“Wow,” she said. “Oh, shit.”

“You’ve been missing for a week,” I said.

She nodded. “I’ve been missing for a week. I need to call my mom. And my boss. And the cops.”

“Do you remember DODO now?” I asked her. “And DOSECOPS.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Well, they’re all down there, staring at the ass of that big ship as it cruises out of the harbor,” I said. “And I can take you down there if you want. But maybe you could show me the shipping company on the way?”

“Sure. Yeah, I need to get down there,” she said, and by that point she was fully back to normal. The Isobel Sloane we are accustomed to. She stood up and kind of patted herself down, but she didn’t have her phone or any of her DOSECOPS electronic gear, just the Walmart togs she’d been given.

So we went down and got on my motorcycle and she had me drive along the north side of the shipping channel, which is just one long, long row of warehouses with little shipping companies all over the place. It’s hard to tell one from the next, and Isobel’s memories were fuzzy, so my expectations were pretty low. But as we were getting near the end, where the road terminates with a view of the harbor and the airport, I was sorta hit over the head with an incredibly focused and powerful sense of GLAAMR. And it quite obviously emanated from behind the door of one company, which was unmarked except for a suite number (2739) and a little piece of paper about the size of a business card with a drawing on it, a pattern of circles, wide at the top and tapering to the bottom, with a stem and a leaf at the top. Like a bunch of grapes. It was locked, and through the frosted glass window I could kind of make out a filing cabinet and a water cooler. Normal office stuff. Isobel seemed pretty sure that this was the place she’d been hanging out for the last week. It smelled like paint. But I didn’t need her help anymore to know that this was it. I’m a witch. I can tell. The GLAAMR behind that door was almost enough to knock me down.

I dropped her off on the other side of the channel, near the gates to the container port, and then came back to the hotel, where I’m now safely locked in my suite. As long as I paid for the damn thing I intend to get the most out of it!

From Tristan Lyons, 15:39:

Fantastic stuff, Julie. Glad to hear Isobel is fine. Stay safe.

From Mortimer Shore, 16:42:

BOG Container Lines Inc. is the survival into modern times of Bunch of Grapes, which is an extremely old presence in the shipping industry. I mean, it’s named after a tavern in Boston from the 1600s that was named after a tavern in London that dates back to at least the 1200s. Suite 2739 is a registered business address for them. One of many. I’m still waiting for some query results to come back so that we can discover their inevitable connection to the Fuggers. I don’t even know why I bother.

From Tristan Lyons, 17:03:

Mortimer, Julie, you are flying to London tomorrow. Pack.

From Mortimer Shore, 17:05:

My man, that is fascinating and I’m totally packing, but I just wanted to point out that Paris is closer to Le Havre. Assuming that is where you are trying to get.

From Tristan Lyons, 17:07:

Yeah, I have Google Maps too. Marginally harder for the bad guys to track your going into France if you’re arriving from a nearby country via ferry, vs. arriving in a commercial airliner from Boston.

From Mortimer Shore, 17:44:

Tristan? You around? I can’t find you anywhere in the house.

From Rebecca East-Oda, 18:19:

Tristan and Felix are incommunicado. I am giving them a lift to a helicopter charter service at Logan Airport. They have a lot of cash and a lot of equipment.

ENTRIES FROM PERSONAL JOURNAL OF

Karpathy Erszebet

ON THE TRAIN HOME TO BUDAPEST, 14 JULY 1851

Dear Diary,

Mother has been working upon me, or rather trying to, with her ever-weakening abilities, for I can feel her inside my very skull at times over the past few days, trying to convince me to put the spell upon myself willingly. I will not. I considered it, but I know I lack the fortitude to survive the endless decades to come.

BUDAPEST, 23 JULY 1851

Dear Diary,

I have resigned myself to learning a skill, to earn a proper living when magic is no more. With each passing day, I feel a diminishing of power and clarity of mind, an almost physical heaviness. I push through it. I have decided I might learn to be a seamstress, for at least then I shall spend my life around beautiful gowns (which I am fond of) even if I soon lack the means to own them.

BUDAPEST, 26 JULY 1851

Dear Diary,

As the days go by, Mother keeps to her chambers, and Father, when I see him, mostly scowls at me. The day after tomorrow is when this horrible eclipse will happen and then it will all be over.

MISSION LOG OF TRISTAN LYONS

Written in ballpoint pen on pocket notebook

DAY 1960 (10 DECEMBER, YEAR 5)

General intro: I have no idea whether the finder of this notebook is going to consider me a hero, a traitor, or a nobody, but I want to go on record stating I firmly believe my actions are (a) important and (b) based on a good-faith reading of my service oath, as well as a larger commitment to the principles of the United States Constitution and the post-Enlightenment worldview from which it sprang.

(Here’s where Mel would make some crack about how I take myself too seriously, but she’s stuck in 1851 at the moment.)

Furthermore, I don’t know whether the reader will have access to digital electronic devices, or for that matter any post-medieval technology whatsoever, and so I’m writing this in ink on paper so that you don’t need gadgets to read it.

Hell, it could be that by the time we reach France the whole continent will be nothing but smoking ruins . . .

I’m in a steel box on a big boat. I came here with my friends Felix Dorn and Rebecca East-Oda. I talked them into this adventure. Not to say they’re not grown-ups or anything (for the record, Rebecca is a grandmother), but I take responsibility for this, and if there are legal proceedings to follow, they should be exonerated, because this whole thing was my call.

As general background, just to help the reader calibrate the level of weird that’s going on, I believe that the building we all know as the Pentagon was called the Trapezoid when it was first built, circa World War II, and that it remained the Trapezoid all through the Cold War and the decades that followed. It only became the Pentagon a few months ago. But when it did, it wasn’t only the building itself that changed, but everyone’s memories of it as well. So everyone, including me, thinks it has been the Pentagon from the moment its cornerstone (vertexstone? whatever) was laid, and has memories consistent with that, and it’s what you’ll read in old documents and see on old maps. I have memories of the Trapezoid but they have the same surreal and suspect vibe about them as things seen in dreams, or hallucinated during LSD trips.

It was converted into the Pentagon on Halloween, just about two months ago, when a significant chunk of the United States military-industrial complex was taken over by witches in a carefully premeditated coup d’état. They remain in power—well, one does. If you, the reader of this document, are a Special Forces operative who just finished taking me and Felix down in a raid, or a Military Intelligence analyst at the Pentagon, then you actually work for her. The witch, that is. Sorry to break it to you.

The witches’ goal is to roll back scientific and technical progress to roughly the late medieval period. I think they are probably okay with a Leonardo da Vinci level of tech, but once we get into Galileo or even Francis Bacon, these witches get the heebie-jeebies and want to put a stop to it. Cf. my earlier remarks about the Enlightenment.

Okay, so Felix read the above while I was peeing into an empty water bottle (we are saving it in case we end up having to drink our own urine in a few days), and he has advised me to get on with some more concrete details of what’s happening. Thanks, buddy.

But I’ve done some stuff here that from a narrow-minded point of view looks just incredibly batshit illegal, and I need to explain that.

In retrospect, we should never have built the ATTO.

The whole diachronic operations thing was never perfect—actually we had some pretty hairy misadventures from day one—but at least it was under some kind of control as long as we just had a few ODECs that were totally locked down in secure facilities, with necessary bio-containment procedures in place, etc. We used them for one thing and one thing only: time travel, according to a clear set of rules and procedures.

Our critical mistake was the recent policy shift toward using ATTOs (portable ODECs) for psy-ops in the present day. (Note: Melisande Stokes was always iffy about the psy-ops tack, not that she had a say in policy, but given the impact this has had on her fate, she at least deserves her opinion to go on the record.) On the face of it the psy-ops redirection seemed reasonable, or at least no crazier than diachronic operations, but we didn’t reckon on Gráinne and the fact that she would immediately begin using those very techniques to influence DODO’s top leadership.

And Gráinne, in turn, didn’t reckon on Magnus.

Who didn’t reckon on the Fuggers (see below).

So lots of people are surprised.

I won’t re-tell the whole story here because it can be gleaned from documents on GRIMNIR, especially Julie Lee’s entry, but I do want to record (a) what’s happened since then and (b) what I’m pretty sure is the behind-the-curtain truth to What’s Going On. Which I will do first. I’m leaving out an enormous amount here—I’m not “showing my work” as my grade-school math teacher would complain, because I don’t know how much ink is left in this ballpoint.

After Magnus finished getting what he wanted out of the Walmart (treasure maps, basically) and made his getaway, there must have been one witch remaining in the ATTO, since a witch can’t Send herself. (I see empty cold cut wrappers and a whole lot of used water bottles, so somebody was hanging out here for a while.)

After the siege, when DOSECOPS showed up and Major Isobel Sloane went in to check the (still-operating) ATTO, the witch clearly used some kind of mind-influencing technique on Sloane.

The tractor-trailer containing said witch was then shanghaied to Conley Terminal, given a false identity, and sent off to France. Major Sloane was maintained in an altered mental state for a full week while that happened; eventually she turned up unharmed in Julie’s hotel lobby, and I’m guessing the truck driver has turned up somewhere with a similar story.

BUT: after hashing this out ad nauseam, I need to change/add one detail:

The warehouse and all that’s happened since is clearly a Fugger operation—which means it must have been a (new-to-us) Fugger witch, not Magnus’s witch, who was controlling Major Sloane.

This in turn means that Magnus’s witch got “jumped” by some other (Fugger) witch who manifested in the ATTO at some point post–Walmart siege and Homed Magnus’s witch back to Viking-era Norway or wherever, with or without her consent.

No idea why the Fuggers stole the ATTO from DODO, or why they are getting it not just out of the country but specifically to France, which happens to have old, secret laws governing the use of magic for diachronic operations.

If this all seems even beyond the scope of the Fuggers, remember—DODO’s own Dr. Cornelius Rudge is a Fugger agent (hi, Dr. Rudge!), meaning the Fuggers know whatever DODO knows. And always have. Also: they are obviously waiting to collect ATTO #1 in Le Havre.

So we decided to beat them to it, so that we have a way to get Mel home.

Felix and I packed duffel bags with all the gear we could carry and found a chopper pilot who was willing to fly us and Rebecca out to the Alexandre Dumas. We circled the ship a couple of times and identified the ATTO. Even though it has a new paint job, it has some identifying characteristics, such as the side door, that make it stand out clearly if you know what to look for.

We hailed the ship on VHF. I gave the captain the same story we’d been telling the helicopter pilot, which was that this was an “enforcement operation” related to a “sensitive national security situation” and that it would be best if he just clammed up and didn’t make a fuss until I could come and talk to him. And then I requested permission to come aboard, which is the polite thing to do.

We landed on the top of the container stack and set a rope, which I used to let myself down to the door. I cut off the padlock with a battery-powered grinder and got it open. We let down a rope ladder and helped Rebecca and the chopper pilot get down and inside. I went back up onto the top of the container stack and walked forward to the ship’s superstructure, which projects up above the level of the containers. The captain was waiting for me. I was in full quasi-military tactical gear, and I guess I looked convincing. The captain is Spanish, the crew is Filipino, and, at the end of the day, none of them wants any trouble. They just want to drive this thing to Le Havre and cash their paychecks. I explained to the captain that there was a situation in the red container that he needed to see with his own eyes. It took a little social engineering, which Mel always says I’m not very good at, but after a few minutes he sort of rolled his eyes and agreed to come back and have a look.

So now it’s me and Rebecca and the chopper pilot and the ship’s captain all together in the red container, and I can tell that the ATTO system has been turned on. The first few times I experienced the inside of a running ODEC, I came out of it deeply confused, like a kid who’d been roofied at a frat party, but over the years I’ve become accustomed to it. I can maintain some level of conscious awareness and come out of it a little spacey, but basically intact.

The same was not true of the ship’s captain and the chopper pilot, who just became listless and generally out of it as soon as I shut the ATTO door. Felix, for his part, was smart enough to just hang out on top of the stack until this part of it was over.

Witches have no problem in ODECs/ATTOs, and Rebecca had been practicing enough with Erszebet so that she could give the captain and the chopper pilot a mild talking-to, there in the ATTO. Outwardly it just looked like a school librarian lecturing a couple of schoolboys who brought their books back a day overdue, but I could feel the GLAAMR all over the place as she made sure their memories of all this would be seriously muddled. Go Rebecca.

Then we opened the door and shut off the ATTO. The captain went back to his business without a word. The pilot climbed into his chopper and took off, headed back to Boston, taking Rebecca back with him (not that she isn’t game for an adventure at this point, but she’s exhausted after her first successful psy-ops mission and Frank will probably forget to eat if she’s not around).

As for the ship’s crew, all they know is that they saw some weird stuff happen, but it’s not in their interest to talk.

Felix and I went back into the ATTO, removed all of our ropes and carabiners from the outside, and locked the door behind us.

TL;DR Magnus hijacked the ATTO, the Fuggers hijacked it from Magnus, and now we have hijacked it from the Fuggers. As long as Felix and I keep it powered down, people can’t be Sent to it.

Now we wait.

ENTRY FROM PERSONAL JOURNAL OF

Karpathy Erszebet

BUDAPEST, TRAIN STATION, 28 JULY 1851

Dear Diary,

Today has been the most horrifying of my young life, although I fear it is only the beginning of many days, and weeks, and decades of woe.

This morning, Mother suddenly emerged from her room, descended the stairs, and called me into the great room, with a fierce determination on her face, but otherwise so wan as to look waxen, and so haggard as to be almost unrecognizable. “Erszebet,” she said, and seemed about to say more—

—so I stood there in a wholly receptive state awaiting her words. But she did not continue to speak to me directly. Rather she uttered ugly incantations I had never heard before, and a terrible feeling came over my body, as if I were bound with hot iron, while being frozen on the inside. I screamed in alarm and pain, but the sensation only grew more intense. It seemed to last for a very, very long time. Hours—

—and then suddenly, it stopped. And I found myself lying prone across the ottoman. My skin felt unnaturally tight on me and I felt somehow heavier. Mother was lying prostrate near me, in the doorway, as pale as death.

“I’ve done it,” she said grimly. “Better bad magic than no magic at all. Now you will be here for Melisande Stokes.”

“I will undo it,” I said between clenched teeth, fighting off panic.

“I do not think so,” she said. She turned away from me and tried to raise herself up but lacked the strength.

“Give me an hour to regain my spirit, and I’ll undo the spell,” I insisted. “And then I will leave here and you shall never see my face again.”

“In an hour, there will be no more magic, anywhere upon this earth,” said Mother hoarsely, sinking back onto the carpet and covering her pale face with one pale hand. “The solar eclipse has already begun. Somewhere in Prussia, this Mr. Berkowski has set up his photography equipment. In mere minutes it will all be over.”

I have no words, dear diary, to express the feeling that came over me. I have refuted any connection to my parents; immediately I packed a small suitcase and left the house with no idea of where to go. Then I went to the train station and bought a ticket to Praha to stay with my paternal cousin, Dagmar, as I know a little bit of Czech.

Now even if I wished to help Miss Melisande Stokes to return to her time, I would be unable to. She is in part to blame for my predicament, for if she had not come, I would not have heard her remedy and then neither would Mother, and now I would be like Mother, or any other witch—a normal mortal woman. Such simplicity is to be denied me. It is a very bitter fate.

In the absence of any other remedy I suppose I must rely—as my foremothers have in the worst of their years—upon the mercy of the Fuggers.

Exchange of posts on

“Ops” GRIMNIR channel

DAY 1970 (20 DECEMBER, YEAR 5)

Post from Tristan Lyons, 05:30:

Anyone there? This is a burner phone I picked up in Boston, you’re just going to have to take my word for it that it’s me. Seeing one bar, apparently a cell tower in Penzance.

Reply from Mortimer Shore, 05:31:

Pirates of Penzance reading you. Welcome to the English Channel, bro!

From Tristan Lyons, 05:33:

They call it La Manche where we’re going, but thanks. Everything fine here in the ATTO. I think I read the entire works of Dickens and did 80,000 push-ups.

From Mortimer Shore, 05:35:

Heh I think I drank 80,000 pints in the local.

From Tristan Lyons, 05:37:

What is sitrep? Got numbers for me?

From Mortimer Shore, 05:40:

All good. BTW, I’m going to lose you in a short while but later in the morning you will come in range of the island of Jersey, which is where we registered our shipping company. Esme is hanging out there. And Julie’s en route Le Havre. Rebecca’s in London en route Gatwick (last I heard). Frank and Erszebet are at the house back home. Erszebet’s in charge of feeding the cats LOL.

From Tristan Lyons, 05:45:

Hang on, we have a shipping company?

From Mortimer Shore, 05:47:

we do now . . . it was the easiest way to manage the numbers. Turns out that you can’t just paint any old number on the back of a shipping container and have it work . . . there’s an owner code, and a check digit, and some other details . . . all covered by an ISO spec that I had to get my head around.

From Tristan Lyons, 05:51:

Figured. That’s why I asked Rebecca to put you on it.

From Mortimer Shore, 05:55:

So, before you get out of range, here’s the number: EHTU 314 1597.

From Tristan Lyons, 05:57:

You used pi? Really?

From Mortimer Shore, 05:58:

Just an accident:) The 7 is the check digit, if that’s not right the computers in Le Havre will reject it.

EHTU is East House Trust—all part of the shipping company thing—had to do it so it wouldn’t cause trouble going through customs in Le Havre.

From Tristan Lyons, 06:00:

So if I paint this on the back of the ATTO, everything is going to just happen automagically?

From Mortimer Shore, 06:02:

According to our modern standards of magic, yeah:)

See you in Le Havre.

Post by Rebecca East-Oda on

“Ops” GRIMNIR channel

THREE HOURS LATER, 09:21

Note: Spotty Internet so have written this in real-time commentary but will now upload all at once.

Have reached Portsmouth, which none of us was expecting. In the guise of dotty but vigorous spinster tourist (which isn’t too far off, in some sense), enjoyed a gusty walk from the railway station to the harbor, where I am now comfortably ensconced at a table in a waterfront pub. Will explain what I’m doing here.

Tristan, I expect you’ll be back in cyberspace by the time I upload this, and so you might be wondering what I’m doing on this side of the Atlantic at all.

Briefly, the answer is that I came over to London because we had to manage a number of legal and financial transactions related to setting up the new shipping company under the umbrella of the East House Trust. Frank and I are co-trustees and so a lot of documents needed to be signed. Our scanner was on the blink and apparently fax machines are no longer au courant. It was simpler for me to just be in this country. So I got on a plane.

Frank could not join me because he is still working on the ODEC in our basement—some parts unexpectedly came in.

I was planning to fly home today. I’d have liked that. But we’ve received some new information about ATTO #2 and I’ve changed my plans accordingly.

This is a long story, but via Chira Lajani, we received a “leak” from DODO two days ago suggesting that hasty arrangements were being made (presumably by Gráinne even if Blevins or Frink signed off on them) to get ATTO #2 moved into a cargo plane—a 747F capable of swallowing a whole shipping container.

It turns out that there are persons called “plane spotters” who have nothing better to do with their time than to keep track of the comings and goings of airplanes. They are all on the Internet, naturally. Thanks to them, Mortimer was able to identify a 747F that made a flight yesterday from Hanscom to Gatwick.

I took the train from London to Gatwick and arrived in time to watch from the roof of a nearby hotel as ATTO #2 was unloaded in plain view and placed on a tractor-trailer. I recognized it as an ATTO from the side door, which makes it different from other shipping containers. We don’t know why DODO wants an ATTO over here, but here it is.

Hailed a taxi and asked the driver to attempt to follow the rig. It left the airport southbound, as if headed for Brighton, but we lost track of it. Had the driver deposit me in Brighton and paid him a frightful amount of money, but there was little to see there—it’s a resort town, with not much in the way of port facilities.

On a hunch I took the train here to Portsmouth today. By hunch I mean common sense: there was a brochure about Portsmouth in the Brighton train station, complete with detailed map of its large port, with freight and passenger connections across the Channel (including a direct connection to . . . Le Havre. Maybe just a coincidence that DODO wants their ATTO directly across the Channel from where the Fuggers’ ATTO is bound, but maybe not.).

My perch here in this pub gives me a direct view through a chain-link fence, topped with copious snarls of razor wire, into a huge parking lot adjoining the ferry terminal. Several score tractor-trailer rigs and shipping containers are scattered about the place.

One of them is ATTO #2. It has been dismounted from its trailer and is quietly sitting in a corner of the parking lot. I’m keeping my eye on it.

Update, forty minutes later:

I am still in the pub. Management have apparently decided I am a harmless trainspotter type. Which I suppose I am.

Here is where my story stops being about an old lady spy and adopts witchy overtones.

A few minutes ago I began to pick up a strong sense of GLAAMR from the ATTO. I can both feel it and see it (Erszebet gets credit for being a good teacher). Clearly, the thing has been turned on. Meaning there is a witch in there. Gráinne herself? Possible, but maybe she would want to stay near Blevins to pull his strings.

A white van has pulled up to the side of the ATTO, just next to its door. From it, men are unloading some kind of cargo and tossing it in through the ATTO’s side door. I gather it doesn’t weigh much—perhaps clothing, stuffed into garbage bags. I presume these people are from DODO/Gráinne since DODO/Gráinne caused this new ATTO to be here.

Hmm. Perhaps it is another coincidence, but the passenger ferry to Le Havre departs in one hour.

Update, twenty minutes later:

Oh dear, hang on a moment: Magnus just showed up in an Uber! How very confusing. I thought he and Gráinne were utterly at odds with each other re: Walmart shenanigans.

Supposition: in light of the Fuggers’ stealing ATTO #1, they (Gráinne and Magnus) realized they would have to make common cause to retrieve it. Still, I wonder what each of them intends to do with it once they have it back. Are they going to share it? Neither of them plays nice in the sandbox with others.

Update, a few minutes later (10:31):

Strong GLAAMR from the ATTO, and men are coming out of it now, one by one, every few minutes. Dressed in civilian clothing. But they are Vikings. I think it’s the same crew that sacked the Walmart.

Update, fifteen minutes later:

White van just took Magnus and eight of his Vikings over to the passenger terminal. They are getting on the ferry to Le Havre. I’m going to get on the ferry too, and try not to let Magnus see me. Going to click “send” on this now. Hopefully I will be able to update you all soon. If I do not, assume it is because the Walmart Vikings have gotten to me, in which case somebody please remind Frank to water the garden.

(If you had told me five years ago, when Mel and Tristan first knocked on our door, that I would find myself writing that sentence I’d have laughed you down the street.)

Scribbled addendum in pencil at the bottom of Melisande

Stokes’s Diachronicle, in her handwriting

After requesting a safety deposit box here at the private offices of the Fugger Bank on Threadneedle Street, and giving the agent my name, I was informed I already owned a box. Amazed, I asked it to be brought to me, and saw that it contained a sealed envelope. Addressed to me. In Mortimer’s gangly penmanship (albeit somewhat ink-blotted).

I have memorized its contents and will leave it here in the box, attached to my Diachronicle, for thoroughness.

I depart the bank in far higher spirits than I arrived.

Handwritten note on Fugger Bank stationery

Came back to 1848 to leave this for you to read in 1851—trippy, huh? We’re trying to Home you. If you’re reading this before July 28, 1851, cross the Channel ASAP to Collinet—aka Norman Language campsite. Near Le Havre, inland, on river Dives, if you don’t remember. The B&B in our era is Chez Envouteur and the family women were openly witchy (descendants of Thyra and Imblen, talk about clan loyalty w00t!) until magic stopped so if you ask for the witch’s house the locals may know where to send you. Fingers crossed witch of 1851 is cooperative—have her Send you to her own backyard in our time where (if you get this) there will be an ATTO waiting to receive you.

Keep your head down and stay low when you arrive.

Gotta go, writing this wearing nothing but Mr. Fugger’s greatcoat and he’s really not amused lol —Mortimer

Exchange of posts on

“Ops” GRIMNIR channel

1.5 HOURS LATER

Post from Esme Overkleeft, 12:17:

You there?

Reply from Tristan Lyons, 12:19:

Yeah. Just got bars.

From Esme Overkleeft, 12:20:

Welcome back to the world! I’m on Jersey.

From Tristan Lyons, 12:23:

Glad there’s a world to get back to. Didn’t know what I’d find on the other end of the ocean.

From Esme Overkleeft, 12:27:

It’s been a little hairy while you were gone . . . lots to report. But no major Shears as far as we can tell. In spite of Magnus’s best efforts.

From Tristan Lyons, 12:28:

Yeah . . . I’m reading the message from Rebecca . . . wow.

From Esme Overkleeft, 12:36:

The ferry with Magnus and the other Vikings (and Rebecca) is going to reach Le Havre shortly before you—you might even be able to see it out the ATTO door as you’re approaching Le Havre. Taking into account the time zone change, your ETA is around 5:30—a little after sunset. Then, unloading should happen as per usual.

From Tristan Lyons, 12:40:

Let’s talk a little more about “per usual.” Port operations isn’t my strong suit.

From Esme Overkleeft, 12:45:

Actual unloading of the ship probably won’t start until tomorrow morning. Your container will come off almost immediately because of where it is. The crane will set it down on the wharf. That’s when you disable the radio tracking device. A straddle carrier will pick it up and take it to a temporary storage location farther from the ship. There’ll be some customs formalities—we’ll take care of that, but if you have any contraband you should throw it overboard now. A forklift puts it on a tractor-trailer. The driver of the tractor-trailer works for us. He’ll drive it away and take it where we told him to.

From Tristan Lyons, 12:48:

And where is that? I’ve been a little out of the loop.

From Esme Overkleeft, 12:50:

Nice little town in Normandy. I think you have been there . . . many times as it were:)

From Tristan Lyons, 12:53:

:) What are the Fuggers going to think when their ATTO makes a wrong turn?

From Esme Overkleeft, 12:56:

We don’t know their plans of course, but presumably they were going to take it someplace safe. And Magnus and his crew mean to intercept it along the way although we’re not sure about the Magnus/Gráinne relationship at the moment. Neither Magnus nor the Fuggers know about us . . . hopefully. So when we get it to the farmhouse, we’ll have at least a few minutes’ breathing room to turn it on and open a window for Mel to come home.

From Tristan Lyons, 13:05:

Okay, here’s where this time travel shit gets really mind-bending . . .

The Fuggers and Magnus might not know about us TODAY but they’ll sure as hell know about us TOMORROW when they notice that their ATTO has gone missing. And they have at least one ATTO of their own, dockside in Portsmouth. So what’s to prevent them from, I don’t know . . .

From Esme Overkleeft, 13:15:

Don’t torture yourself. The most they can do is Send a naked Viking into our ATTO when we turn it on to receive Mel. She already has instructions to hit the deck and stay safe as soon as she arrives.

From Tristan Lyons, 13:20:

Have re-read your last transmission several times, and don’t understand. How is “hitting the deck” going to keep her safe from a naked Viking?

From Esme Overkleeft, 13:22:

That’s your job.

From Tristan Lyons, 13:24:

????

From Esme Overkleeft, 13:26:

Keeping her safe. Got any weapons in there?

From Tristan Lyons, 13:28:

Tossed them overboard, as you just instructed.

From Esme Overkleeft, 13:30:

Hmm . . . how’s your hand-to-hand combat skills?

From Tristan Lyons, 13:32:

A little rusty, frankly. Fortunately I have Felix to practice on. Or vice versa.

ALTHOUGH THERE IS NO LONGER need of it, I suppose out of habit I shall write this in a tone akin to the Diachronicle, that is to say, in accordance with the literary inflections of my most recent (and enforced) DTAP.

I fell through fragrant darkness, and fell tumbling hard to ground on a painfully cold, metallic floor that shook and rumbled as if it were a truck being pulled down a country road somewhere, which meant—the ATTO! I had arrived! I was safe!

—No, I wasn’t!—there were three figures grappling violently above me in the eerie amber-green glow of the ATTO. Their efforts caused the rumbling. Two were clothed, and they were fighting with a third who was naked.

And who was winning.

“Stokes! Turn it off! TURN . . . IT . . . OFF . . .”

Tristan’s voice was familiar even though sounding a little strangled: as my eyes focused I saw that he was in a headlock, his neck crooked in one of the naked man’s massive arms. With his free hand, the man was swatting away Felix Dorn with an almost casual air. The stranger had tangled blond hair tumbling down over his shoulders, and a reddish beard. He was immense.

Being Sent is no picnic in the best of circumstances, and being in a working ODEC is always disorienting. I forcefully tamped down the part of me that wanted to celebrate my return to the modern world, trying to focus on the fact that my friends were losing a fight to a man-mountain . . . and trying to remember how the ATTO was laid out. I’d never had much to do with the ATTOs, as they were for psy-ops and I had always remained focused on diachronic work.

Still keeping Tristan’s neck in the crook of his arm, the Viking (I assumed he was a Viking) came toward me at a ponderous gait, kicking empty water bottles out of the way as he planted his feet. Tristan was flailing out, trying to grab anything that would serve as an anchor. Felix fell to his knees, staggered by an elbow to the face. The Viking’s gaze was fixed on something behind me. I turned and saw the control panel at the forward end of the ATTO.

I scrambled on hands and knees in that direction, hurled myself toward the panel, and mashed the big red button that served as the emergency “off” switch.

My own momentum then sent me sprawling back to the icy-cold floor, my head clearing now that the system was shut down. I drew myself up into a fetal position, spun around, and watched the progress of the fight.

Felix’s face was gushing blood, probably from a broken nose. He was getting unsteadily back to his feet, and seemed to have his eye on a fire extinguisher bracketed to the wall at the other end of the ATTO.

Tristan had managed to reach up and get one hand on the Viking’s face, and was now groping around trying to insert a finger in an eye or mouth, but the Viking kept jerking his head away. Tristan finally got purchase on a handful of Viking hair, but it was a feeble grip compared to what the other had on him.

I was struck by the Viking’s calm patience. This was not a berserker—indeed, he seemed more like a parent controlling a three-year-old throwing a temper tantrum.

The door of the ATTO was flung open from without, and slanting sunlight flooded in. Backlit and framed in the entrance was a female form; the ATTO light showed her to be a middle-aged woman, wearing a simple housedress with a heavy cardigan over it. She was brandishing a long, double-barreled shotgun. Her breath came out like clouds. I smelled apples baking.

There was a long moment while we all considered matters. The woman with the shotgun was clearly as surprised by the situation inside the trailer as we were by her sudden appearance. Certainly she had a lot to take in.

Felix stopped moving for the fire extinguisher and held up his bloody hands. Tristan couldn’t see what was happening. I watched the woman between the tree-trunk legs of the Viking, whose manhood hung down, somewhat obscuring my view. I do believe this organ contracted a smidge when the woman trained the shotgun at him. (In fairness, the cold winter air coming in the open door may have accounted for some of that.) Certainly the gun got his attention: this wasn’t the first time he’d seen a modern firearm. This confused me, for I knew all the DODO Anachrons by sight, and he was not one of them.

The sunlight glanced off his shoulder, highlighting a red scar—fresh and angry-looking—cutting horizontally across one of his cannonball deltoids.

The woman demanded, “Relâchez-le immédiatement!” Then getting no reaction, she tried in English, “Leave him go!”

Tristan, hearing her voice (he couldn’t see the door), said in a strangulated voice, in Norman, “She has a bang-stick!”

This was the moment I realized the man probably was a Viking, so I tried Old Norse (a recent, somewhat half-baked addition to my linguistic arsenal). “Whoever you are, that thing will kill you.”

The Viking released Tristan so abruptly that Tristan fell to the floor. The Viking turned around to face me, then reached up and patted the scar on his shoulder. “I know it,” he returned in Norse. “A coward hit me with one of those accursed weapons in the Walmart.”

“Walmart?” I repeated, flummoxed. “What were you doing in a Walmart?”

Tristan made a brief sound that might have been coughing or might have been laughter. “Welcome back, Stokes,” he said. “You have a lot to get caught up on.”

THE ATTO HAD been plonked down in the yard next to the same Normandy farmhouse whence I’d been Homed in 1851. Very little about the property had changed: there were now telephone wires connected from the road; a satellite dish; a sign reading CHEZ ENVOUTEUR, a bed-and-breakfast.

The woman had run inside to fetch ice for Felix’s nose, and white terry bathrobes for me and the Viking, who called himself Thord (the woman, Tristan said, was Anne-Marie).

I waited for my bathrobe to arrive while burying my face against Tristan’s chest. I never wanted to let go of him, and his arms gripped me tight. Having just been steeped in Victoriana for the past several weeks, I noted that his delight in seeing me once again (important detail: seeing me entirely unclothed for the first time ever) was reflected in every inch of his healthy and vigorous frame, not excluding the matrimonial organs bestowed upon him by the Creator for the propagation of the race. I put my arms around the small of his back and pulled him into me, just to give him a hint that I had noticed.

Pressing my head into his shoulder, he muttered, “Damn, I’m glad to see you.”

“Yes,” I said, then pulled away and looked right at him, eye to eye, nose to nose. “I can tell.”

He reddened a little, then a lot, then he started laughing and pulled me back against him.

We had been avoiding this for five years. Time to sort it out.

BUT NOT IMMEDIATELY. This was France, so first we all had to go inside for coffee, Felix trying to avoid water from leaking onto his jeans as he iced his swelling face. Anne-Marie offered me a woolen dress, which I accepted gratefully. She was nervous about Thord until Tristan took her aside and explained to her that “our Viking friend” would be docile now.

Most of the farmhouse’s ground floor was one great room, kitchen at one end, dining space at the other, the whole of it spanned with a huge plank table that looked like it was a thousand years old. We sat at one end of this as Anne-Marie prepped food and drink just beyond the other end.

Over croissants and tartine (which of course Tristan practically inhaled without tasting), Tristan and Felix caught me up on all the dazzling adventures and misadventures I had missed while I was in San Francisco and London, the chief topics of conversation being: the Walmart raid; the ATTO heist shenanigans; and word from Frank that a shipment of high-temperature superconductors had just appeared on the doorstep of the East House. (Given that the Fuggers owned the company, this put us in their debt.) To bring me up to the minute, there was this further summation: Frank was busy wiring up the superconductors in his cellar to create an ODEC; Julie had rented a hotel suite in Le Havre and was staying there to ensure a base of operations near the port; Rebecca and Mortimer were even now joining her there from their sundry deployments; and Esme was expected to arrive in Le Havre at any moment from Jersey.

Thord, amazed by the first-time effects of caffeine, was pacing agitatedly around the farmhouse (by around I mean circumambulating it barefoot despite the winter chill). Anne-Marie had fairly decent English, and as she moved from our end of the room to hers, she seemed so unfazed by what she was overhearing that I assumed (correctly) Tristan had already told her more than the average abettor would know.

“So if I’ve got this all straight,” I said, “now that you’ve stolen the ATTO from the Fuggers who stole it from Magnus who stole it from DODO, the Fuggers are wondering what became of what they thought would be their ATTO.”

Tristan nodded. “From their point of view, it vanished from the container port in Le Havre. They had a tractor-trailer ready and everything. They were expecting to tow it away from there and take it to . . . who knows where.” He waved his hand vaguely toward the interior of France. “Someplace safe, anyway. We still don’t know who their witch is.”

“It’s rather unsportsmanlike of us to deprive them of an ODEC on the heels of their making it possible for us to build our own.”

“Sportsmanship is for sportsmen,” muttered Felix, a bit nasally with the ice pack pressed to his face.

“Anyhow, it was all happening at the same time an ocean apart and we’re telling you to come here, so we had to be here,” Tristan added.

“What do you mean, telling me. You’ve already told me.” Then I realized something didn’t make sense. “Wait—how did you Send Mortimer back to tell me to come here?”

“We haven’t yet,” said Tristan. “Julie’s going to Send him when they get here.” Seeing the look on my face he added, “I know, it’s pretty freaky, don’t think about it too much.”

“I can’t even . . .” I shook my head. “Never mind. So who’s Thord, and what’s his involvement in all this?”

“Yes,” said Anne-Marie suddenly, from the kitchen area. “Who is Thord?”

“He’s obviously one of the Vikings Magnus recruited,” said Felix. “But no idea why he’s here now.”

“We could just ask him. I don’t think he’s used to coffee,” Tristan joked.

Tristan went outside to collect Thord, still clad in his terry bathrobe (which somehow simply made him seem even more naked). He arrived inside staring wide-eyed at the exotic domestication of the great room. Anne-Marie—whom he regarded with the greatest respect, even fear—gestured to the end of the bench, which he plopped down onto wordlessly and quickly, like a chastised child. I told him my name, and asked if we might interview him, explaining that Tristan and I both had limited abilities to speak his language (which had linguistic ties to what Tristan had learned in these very fields, when they were still woods, a thousand years ago). He agreed, and began by confirming Felix’s assumption.

“When we returned to Sverdvik after the raid, I was the only one without the scars in my back,” Thord said. “This was because I had been injured by the bang-stick. I said to Magnus, ‘Fuck you and your plan, Magnus, I did not want to come in the first place and now look.’ So I did not let them carve maps in my back because I knew that I would then be part of his plan forever.”

Anne-Marie had cleared the coffee and pastries, replacing them immediately with beer, and now was setting out plates of charcuterie and a fresh loaf of bread, which Thord began tearing into at an impressive pace. He chewed for a few moments, gazing out the window at the sun on the trees, while I translated for Felix (and Anne-Marie, who was swapping out ice packs for Felix’s nose). Thord swiveled his blue-grey eyes back to us, washed the bread down with a swig of beer, and continued: “Magnus after that began to have dreams. They were dreams of his past—of his boyhood in Normandy and his days as a Varangian Guard. But in every single one of those dreams, his life was cut short by murder. He consulted a witch who explained that he was in fact seeing other Strands, and that on each and every one of those Strands, the young Magnus had in fact been assassinated by agents sent back in time by his enemies. Magnus became like ice on a frozen river when it is being melted from below by the warming water of the coming spring, and becomes thin and brittle and you can almost see through it.” Having delivered this poetic metaphor, Thord belched, sighed, and speared a slice of ham. “He understood that he would cease to exist entirely, or be turned into a mere wraith, unless he made an alliance with others skilled in Sending and Homing. Thus he had the witch Send him forward to the ODEC in Boston. There, of course, he found himself in the power of Gráinne, who was most angry with him, but also satisfied, in a way, that Magnus had come crawling back to ask for her help.”

After another pause for him to eat (and belch) and me to translate, Thord continued: “Gráinne and Magnus made a pact to fight the Fuggers and get this ATTO back in their possession.” He waved in the direction of the yard. “Magnus cannot do magic, but he can fight, and is a good leader. Gráinne can do magic, but only in an ODEC, and she is otherwise helpless and weak in this world of Walmarts and so on. So, they could help each other. Magnus supplies muscle so that Gráinne can get things done. In exchange, he becomes rich by raiding gold from wherever he chooses to go, back in the old days. So, Magnus came back to Sverdvik saying, ‘The Fuggers have stolen the ATTO from us, now we are going to steal it back, I need volunteers.’”

Tristan nodded. “Gráinne, through Blevins of course, made arrangements to fly ATTO #2 over to Portsmouth on a cargo plane. Magnus and a bunch of Vikings manifested in that ATTO yesterday—those must have been his volunteers from Sverdvik.”

Thord listened to my translation of this, then nodded. “He tried to recruit me. I repeated to him that he could go fuck himself. The others went, as you said. They would cross from England to Normandy on a big ship and then follow the ATTO from Le Havre to the fortress of the Fuggers, wherever it might be, and then slaughter them and get it back. Or perhaps hijack it en route.” He shrugged. “Like we do.”

“But the plan failed,” Tristan prompted him, as I quietly translated for Felix.

“The plan failed, as you know, because you stole the ATTO and so it did not go onto the wagon that the Fuggers had waiting but instead departed by some other way. There was a big mess, and what it came down to was that Magnus begged me to solve his problem for him. ‘When the ATTO is turned on—which it must be, so that they can save the woman Melisande—then you, Thord, can be Sent there at the same moment. They will try to turn it off as soon as they have Melisande back. You must prevent them from hitting the red button. Then we can Send more fighters, and witches, and fill the whole ATTO with our people in a short period of time, and then it will be ours. It’s just a bit of wrestling, after all, and you’re good at that.’”

I saw a little grimace on Tristan’s face, and a shake of the head, which I took to mean: Actually you’re a crap wrestler, you’re just overwhelmingly strong.

“This plan almost worked, as you saw,” Thord continued. “But when I saw Anne-Marie with the bang-stick pointed at me, I thought to myself, ‘Fuck this, I have a wife and children in Iceland, I don’t need to pry any more bang-stick rocks out of my body or even perhaps die just to make everything perfect for Magnus.’ So now I will just wait here in this future until someone can Home me.”

At this moment we heard car tires crunching the gravel on the drive outside.

“That’ll be Julie,” said Felix. “She can Home Thord.”

“She should take you to the hospital first,” said Tristan. “So you stop bleeding all over Anne-Marie’s furniture.”

“It’s just a broken nose,” said Felix. “I can go to the local walk-in clinic.”

Tristan gave him a look, which he did not see because the ice pack obscured it. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s one car, and it has to end up back in Le Havre. Go the hell to Le Havre.”

Felix was so startled by Tristan’s intensity that he removed the ice pack to give Tristan a WTF bro? look. Tristan immediately stared at the floor. Felix glanced at me, then back to Tristan, back to me. He looked around the room, noting who else was here—just Thord—and figured it out.

“Right, I should go to Le Havre,” he said. “Julie can Home Thord tomorrow.”

“Right, by tomorrow morning everyone will have congregated in Le Havre and you can all pile in the car and come back out here together,” said Tristan in a rapid monotone, as if needing to rationalize being alone with me overnight as nothing more than a matter of logistics.

DEAR READER: It was not a matter of logistics. But you knew that.

When you know something is going to happen but it hasn’t happened yet, there is a surfeit of tension, both pleasurable and otherwise. So it was for several awkward moments, as Julie came in to greet us, registered my presence—and Thord’s—and helped Felix into the car. She was about to ask if I wanted to return with her to Le Havre—Tristan alone needed to stay here, to handle Thord—but then she, like Felix, understood the circumstances, and turned her head away trying to hide a delighted little smirk.

Tristan felt compelled to see the Viking settled in for the evening, to unburden Anne-Marie of her hostess duties. She vanished into her private rooms, clearly relieved.

Other than the room where Thord was to stay overnight, there were two guest bedrooms upstairs. They both had double beds. I chose the cozier room with one small dormer window. I half-closed the door and turned off the lamp, leaving the small nightlight on. I began to undress, then hesitated, feeling self-conscious, and sat on the bed, waiting.

Eventually I heard Thord’s door open and shut, and Tristan’s slow footfall on the landing between rooms. Seeing the dim light from my room, he entered and stood in the doorway. Ever the gentleman. Even when I did not wish him to be so.

“Just come in,” I suggested. “Don’t pretend there’s anywhere else you’re planning to spend the night.”

He strode up to the bed and hovered beside me a moment, his arousal nearly in my face even as his own face, absurdly, attempted to remain subdued. “We should have some understanding of—”

“After five years, if there’s anything we still don’t understand, fuck it,” I said, and ran my hand up the front of his body. Then back down it.

He grabbed me and in one smooth movement picked me up and then tossed me face up onto the bed, settling his weight carefully upon me, nudging my thighs apart with his knees. It felt so good to be trapped beneath him I almost fainted. Except—

“This generally works better when there are no clothes in the way,” I pointed out.

“Jesus, Stokes, it’s been five years, why the sudden rush?” he shot back, with a very rare impish grin. “On some other Strand I’ve probably already torn your dress off.”

“I want to go to that Strand,” I said at once. “Take me there.”

I WAS AWAKENED by a deep, subsonic throbbing that I felt through the frame of the bed before I heard it. I rolled over on my stomach and buried my face in a pillow, but the sound didn’t go away. I groped out with one hand and found a warm, rumpled place where Tristan was supposed to be.

The noise got louder. Was it a wave of Diachronic Shear cresting over Normandy? I rolled onto my side, opened my eye, and saw Tristan in the dawn light gazing out the little dormer window, watching events in the yard. He looked interested, but not alarmed.

Finally I got up, pulled a robe around myself, and went to look.

IT WAS A helicopter. A preposterously large helicopter, bug-like, with a round cockpit in the front and nothing behind it save a long skinny spar running back to its tail rotor. It was hovering over the yard. Dangling from it were four cables, which were being attached to the corners of the ATTO by men in black.

The roar of its rotors grew even louder, the cables grew taut, the ATTO rose off the ground and ascended for perhaps a hundred meters. Then, slowly, it flew off. An unmarked van pulled out of the yard and drove away, carrying the men in black.

It was just past sunup.

Tristan and I dressed and went downstairs. Anne-Marie didn’t seem to be around, and neither was Thord.

Beyond the head of the table were windows looking out onto the farmhouse’s kitchen garden, currently bare and dead, and rolling fields and hedgerows beyond that. Seated at the head of the table with his back to that view, enjoying a cup of café crème and reading a French newspaper, was our old friend Frederick Fugger. As before, he was dressed in an impeccable grey suit, though as a nod to the rustic setting he was wearing a turtleneck sweater instead of a shirt and tie.

“Thord’s been seen to,” he said. “We Homed him before moving the ATTO. Anne-Marie is in town shopping for groceries, at our suggestion.”

“At five in the morning?” I said, dumbfounded.

“It’s after eight,” protested Frederick pleasantly.

“You own the grocers,” Tristan guessed.

“Not literally. Please, make yourselves comfortable. The coffee is nice and hot and the cream is fresh.”

My eyes met Tristan’s. He shrugged. There was no reason not to. For a minute or two we busied ourselves pouring coffee and cream, then took seats. Frederick finished the article he was reading, then folded the paper neatly and arranged it on the cracked and weathered planks of the old table.

“I wanted to be the first to congratulate you on the rescue of Dr. Stokes,” he said. “The two of you look very happy together. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a bottle of 1851 Château Miqueu, to be delivered to your room—a very old vintage, obviously, but it’s been well cellared and I hope it is still drinkable.”

“We’ll let you know if it passes muster,” Tristan said drily.

“Please do,” Frederick returned. “The winery has been a property of the Fuggers since Roman times and has a high standard to uphold.”

“Does it?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”

Frederick smiled. “You wouldn’t have. It is a private concern. Its proceeds are consumed entirely within the bank and do not appear on the retail market.”

“Well, thank you for the gift,” I said. And I was tempted to add something like, It’s the least you could do after stealing our ATTO, but I held back. It wasn’t really our ATTO, after all.

Frederick cleared his throat. “I’d like to bring to your attention certain perhaps unintended consequences of your recent actions that you might have overlooked, given the rush of events and given, if I may speak frankly, a certain naiveté about matters financial that is entirely understandable given that you have devoted your lives to the study of other topics. Fortunately, the world contains some people who specialize in such matters, and I happen to be one of them.”

“All right,” Tristan said, “let’s have it.”

“Briefly,” Frederick said, “it’s unthinkable for the ATTO to be floating around loose. Dire consequences would ensue.”

“For whom?” I asked. Not disagreeing with him, just wanting details.

“Dire. Consequences.”

“For us? For the Fuggers? On this Strand? Other Strands?”

“It’s all the same,” he said. “Surely, after all you’ve been through, you have arrived at a level of sophistication where this is obvious to you. You simply haven’t admitted it to yourself yet.”

“I’ve been a little preoccupied, as you pointed out,” I said, “and the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.”

He picked up his newspaper—one of those financial rags only read by investment types. He unfolded it, thumbed to the back pages, and then with a big dramatic movement snapped the whole newspaper inside out to display a page completely covered with numbers so tiny that they just looked like a grey fog from this distance. “Look at all of this information,” he said. “Where does it come from? What does it mean? The changes in the prices of these stocks and commodities and bonds all reflect flows of information. Information about the weather, politics, trends in what consumers want, discovery of new oil fields, invention of new technologies. You grew up, like most people, believing that it was all confined to a single Strand. That there was only one copy of the world. Now you know the truth: that information flows not just along a particular Strand but between them, all the time, in subtle ways known only to a few.

“We’re bankers. That is really all we are. If you’ve been imagining some sort of fabulous conspiracy, you are in for a disappointment. Bankers, you see, don’t actually do very much. We take our percentage. That is all. We subsist on movements of money—across space, across time, and between Strands.”

“How does money move between Strands?” Tristan asked.

Frederick looked a little pained. “I’m not going to tell you everything.”

“Ooh, a riddle!” I said. “Let me think. Information moves between Strands. Prices change in response to information. Money moves in response to prices.”

Frederick had a good poker face.

“And right now,” Tristan said, “a big chunk of information has moved into the past, in the form of treasure maps carved into the backs of Magnus and his crew. Longships are going to be heading across the Atlantic to raid Mexico and Peru and bring their gold and silver back to Europe. The changes made to history will be incalculable. And the Fugger policy on all of this is what, exactly?”

“There’s no point in getting emotional about it,” Frederick said. “Money will flow where money will flow.”

“And you’ll collect your percentage,” I said.

“The most we can really do is manage these things as best we can,” Frederick said. “Magnus’s ship has, quite literally, sailed. We cannot undo that. But for a legion of ATTOs to be moving freely about the world, and witches and Normans and SEALs popping in and out of them”—he shuddered—“there would be Shear all over the place, and Shear destroys things.”

“And destroyed things don’t make money,” Tristan said.

“A burning factory cannot ship product.”

“What does this mean for us?” I asked.

Frederick shrugged. “Some Strands will go the way that Gráinne and Magnus want them to go. In other Strands, their plans may be frustrated. Your level of involvement is up to you.”

“Now that we have our own ODEC, you mean,” I said. “In the East House basement.”

He made the slightest of nods. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“SO WHAT DO we do with it, now that it works?” asked Mortimer.

We were all sitting around the dining room table at Frank and Rebecca’s—the original quintet, plus Mortimer, Julie, Esme, and Felix. Coals gleamed in the hearth and the air was fragrant with pine branches, frankincense, and lapsang souchong tea. It was New Year’s Day.

“We figure out what Gráinne’s doing and we undo it,” said Tristan. “Or we prevent her from doing it to start with.”

“And how do we figure out what she’s doing?” asked Julie.

“You might start by asking me,” said Erszebet. “I was her co-conspirator, you know.”

“What is Gráinne planning to do, Erszebet?” I asked immediately.

For one breathless moment every one of us stared at Erszebet—who was now, for the first time in years, uniquely qualified to help us move forward. The hopeful tension around the table was palpable.

“She wants to undo technology,” said Erszebet, in the same tone, examining her manicure. “Tch. Obviously.”

The hopeful tension collapsed. Tristan clenched his jaw a moment and then said, in a controlled voice, “But how, exactly, Erszebet?”

Erszebet waved her hand at him as if he were a bug. “I was not involved in the tactical details, my involvement was entirely spiritual.”

“Thank you,” said Tristan, grinding his teeth to keep his sarcasm in check. “Glad we asked, that was really helpful.”

I pressed my hand over his as a silent suggestion to shut it. Erszebet noticed—and was immediately more interested in that intimate gesture than she was in the future of humanity. “Ah!” she said, her eyes darting between my hand, my face, and Tristan’s face. “I knew it! Did I not say this would happen?” she demanded of Rebecca and Frank, triumphant. And then to me, blithely self-congratulatory: “I always knew you were a good match.”

“Are you sure you have no clue what Gráinne’s next move might be?” I asked, squeezing Tristan’s hand now in a signal to remain quiet.

Erszebet shrugged scornfully. “Do I look like I would dirty my mind thinking the way Gráinne does?”

“Ah,” said Oda-sensei peaceably. “Of course, that’s how we sort it out. We think like Gráinne. We peel away the leaves of history that uncover photography. Where does it start?”

“Camera obscura?” I suggested. “Da Vinci?”

Frank Oda shook his head. “That merely redirected light in action, it did not collapse the wave function, it did not embed any given moment in time.”

“Daguerreotypes,” said Erszebet, with distaste. “I remember those becoming so popular so quickly. Like this social media obsession just after the turn of the millennium, or automobiles a hundred years ago.”

“But what led to daguerreotypes?” asked Oda-sensei. True to form, despite the urgency of the moment, he was enjoying this as an academic exercise.

“Photosensitive paper,” I said. “That’s silver nitrate, right? Lenses. Mirrors, maybe?”

He nodded. “These are the things she will undo. If you kill Louis Daguerre, you trigger Diachronic Shear, but if you undermine the development of lens-grinding technology and you do it on enough Strands, then Louis Daguerre will turn his innovative brilliance in some other direction. The same with photosensitive chemicals.”

“Now that you say that, it does sound familiar,” said Erszebet—Gráinne’s erstwhile deputy.

“But the technology behind grinding lenses applies to more than just the development of photography,” said Tristan. “The development of optical technology has influenced the course of human history—it’s given us telescopes and microscopes and spectacles—”

“Well, if she is successful, now it won’t,” said Oda—still as if this was nothing more than a most interesting theoretical problem set. “So if she is successful, human history will retroactively alter.”

“And silver nitrate,” said Tristan, looking a little spooked. “That was discovered by Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth century.”

Oda nodded. “She can’t kill him off, but she would have to interfere with his accomplishments and discoveries. And he was one of the greatest thinkers of his age, so that, too, would alter what we believe to be our heritage and destiny.”

“Undoing photography from the roots up essentially undoes the development of science in general,” Esme said.

“Well, I’m not going to stand by and let that happen,” said Mortimer drily. “That would totally mess with my undergraduate curriculum.”

No one laughed. There was a pause. A long pause. Outside, I heard someone knocking on a nearby door.

“If we really think she’s going to do this, we have to stop her,” I said.

“Of course she is going to do this,” said Erszebet. “I would do it, in her position.”

“Would you really?” I asked. “It’s pretty evil.”

She gave me her signature cutting side-eye. “Why? History evolves one way or another, history itself is not evil, even if there are evil people in it. I know what you are about to say,” she said, as I held up a protesting hand. “You are going to say, just to name one example, slavery is evil, and to that I say, perhaps it is, but we would not have this world without it.”

“That doesn’t make it acceptable,” I said.

“If I could rewrite the world so there was never any slavery, I would do that, yes, absolutely, but then human history would be unrecognizable to us, and you would not like what replaced what you already know, because everyone wants familiar things. You want to stop Gráinne, not because she is trying to do something evil, but because she is trying to make things unfamiliar to you. And that is inconvenient for your view of how life is to be lived, with Walmarts and cotton underwear and things for which you need this so-called rare earth. You want to have always had those things. That’s all. Gráinne’s plans are inconvenient to your lifestyle. You have no valid complaint beyond that.”

“If she interferes with the development of science,” said Tristan, “we have a very valid complaint.”

“No,” said Erszebet stubbornly. “Humanity existed without making much of science for a very long time. This is true regardless of what magic ever did or did not do. Science has brought good and evil to the table, in equal measure. I have watched that happen. To have the world without scientific developments is not to have a better world or a worse world—just a different world from the one we know.”

“That’s such bullshit,” said Tristan harshly. “Come on, Erszebet, you’re being . . . academic. Obviously science and technology has improved the existence of humanity.”

“Tell that to the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” she said. “Tell that to the atmosphere that is choking on carbon emissions.”