She then revealed herself as working with a witch network. She shared as much as she safely could, and requested their permission to leave the kalonji seeds with them until her associate came to collect them, which she anticipated would be within a day or two. Persuasive narrative is one of her specialties; due to her innate charisma and agreeable demeanor, by the time she’d finished, the entire household had relaxed and adopted a more welcoming air. The family (as we knew from previous Strands) has a commitment to protecting fellow witches, and agreed readily to assist her. In fact, the daughter Rachel pressed her for more information about the witch network she was working with, and expressed a desire to go adventuring with Chira in other times and places, despite Moises’s quiet disapproval.
“When my associate Felix comes to collect the bag, you may speak more with him about it,” Chira suggested. “In the meantime, please be kind enough to send me back to my own home.”
“I shall do that,” said the mother.
“Oh, eema, please let me try,” said Rachel. “I would love to know I can help such interesting people to have such marvelous adventures out in the world.”
The mother was about to agree but Moises interrupted. “Your mother will do it,” he said. “You are too eager.”
Chira smiled at Rachel. “I was like you at your age,” she said. “Except I did not have the powers you have. You will certainly be a remarkable force for good in the world if you make your mind up to be so.” Rachel looked rapturous.
“You are welcome to invade our home but not our daughter’s mind,” said Moises curtly. “Sarah, send this woman back where she came from, before I decide to follow Bruno’s advice and sell her off.”
At 05:10 the morning after her departure, Chira was Homed to ODEC #2 uninjured.
Post by Dr. Roger Blevins to Dr. Melisande Stokes
on private ODIN channel
DAY 627 (MID-APRIL, YEAR 2)
Have reviewed your After Action Reports on Chira Yasin’s series of DEDEs in the Blachernae Palace. All are too long, editorialized, and frankly tawdry. Revise to reflect the professional standards of DODO, and see to it all future reports remain within department guidelines (brief, containing salient facts only).
Allowing a chatty tone, personal timbre, etc. to seep into your reports is unprofessional, Dr. Stokes. As such it is, by the letter of DODO policy, grounds for being placed on a Performance Enhancement Plan, which I need not remind you may culminate in demotion or dismissal.
It might behoove you to review the transcripts of the recent congressional hearings during which we were raked over the coals by various Red State senators for even suggesting that sexual activity might be involved in diachronic operations. In the future, any DOer actions of this nature are to be downplayed to the greatest extent possible that is consistent with accurate record-keeping. This is not a Nora Roberts novel.
—RB
AFTER ACTION REPORT
DEBRIEFER: Dr. Melisande Stokes
DOER: Felix Dorn
THEATER: Constantinople/Late Medieval Europe
OPERATION: Antwerp witch recruitment
DEDE: Retrieve and carry viable kalonji seeds across Europe for sowing
DTAP: Pera, Constantinople, September 1202; Peerdsbos Forest (Antwerp), Belgium, November 1202
STRAND: First (out of a projected three) repetition of this DEDE
Erszebet Sent DOer Felix Dorn from ODEC #2 at 08:10 of Day 627. DOer landed safely in Pera, retrieved kalonji seeds without incident, traveled for two months by foot, river, and stolen horse from Constantinople to Belgium. Many adventures. Did not die. Arrived in Peerdsbos Forest, sowed kalonji seeds, was Homed by Goedele, our KCW of that DTAP.
Note: Witch Rachel in Pera volunteered for diachronic engagement but father disapproved.
Dutifully submitted,
Dr. Melisande “Reads Less Nora Roberts Than Dr. Blevins Does” Stokes
INTERNAL MEMO
From: Dr. Roger Blevins
To: General Octavian Frink
Re: Melisande Stokes
Day 688, 14:12
General Frink—
[REDACTED]
…
INTERNAL MEMO
From: LTC Tristan Lyons
To: General Octavian Frink
Re: Dr. Blevins’s recent statements re: Melisande Stokes
Day 688, 15:02
Dear General Frink:
[REDACTED]
…
INTERNAL MEMO
From: Dr. Roger Blevins
To: General Octavian Frink
Re: LTC Lyons’s response to my (somehow leaked) memo re: Dr. Stokes
Day 688, 15:39
Okie—
[REDACTED]
…
INTERNAL MEMO/EMAIL
From: General Octavian Frink
To: Dr. Roger Blevins and Lieutenant Colonel Tristan Lyons
Re: Leaked memos, etc.
Day 689, 10:19
[REDACTED]
. . . Coming from an academic background, Dr. Blevins, you should know better than to consign anything to writing. I will have to redact most of this correspondence not due to security concerns but from sheer embarrassment.
So you will let it rest there, gentlemen.
General O. K. Frink
Post by Felix Dorn
on “Recreation” ODIN channel
DAY 617
As some of you have noticed, I am not much of a talker, but I just wanted to mention that if anyone wants to join a barefoot running group, meet me at 0430 tomorrow at the Harvard Bridge, on the Cambridge side.
Reply from LTC Tristan Lyons, Day 619:
Well, everyone, maybe this isn’t much of a surprise, but response has been muted to Felix’s “dawn barefoot running” group. Heavy spring rains, darkness, and muddy conditions have been cited as an excuse. I just wanted to remind everyone that when you are Sent, you arrive naked—which means barefoot. Your feet are probably larger than average for the DTAP, so stealing shoes isn’t as easy as people make it sound. And we do prefer nighttime arrivals because there’s less chance of being noticed. Participation in Felix’s dawn barefoot running group is a breeze by comparison, and will help you develop skills, grow calluses, and build up a tolerance to pain that will serve you well when sprinting away from an unsecured DTAP (or, worse yet, getting clear of a possible Diachronic Shear event). Cardio: it’s not just for knights!
DODO MEMORANDUM
CRITICAL UPGRADE TO JOB TITLES
BY MACY STOLL, MBA
POSTED Day 629
As those of you in management positions are already aware, it is essential that we move over to ISO 9000 compliant job titles for all current and future DODO staff. It is beyond the scope of this memo to enumerate all of the benefits that will accrue to DODO (and, by extension, the taxpayers) as a result of organization-wide ISO 9000 compliance, but those of you who are curious can find plenty of information about it on the non-classified Internet.
Making this especially urgent is that we are getting pushback from concerned parties in the Trapezoid about having a staff member whose job title is “witch.” The word simply looks bad when it shows up in a spreadsheet or official report. Moreover, since it is gender-specific, it is a violation of our Diversity Policy (or at least it will be when that policy is written!).
It’s time to nip this in the bud, since it will only become that much worse when/if we recruit more staff to perform the same function.
After lengthy consultations with Dr. Oda and others, we have settled on a new job title, which has been fast-tracked through the Policy on Official Jargon and Acronym Coinage. That title is . . . (drum roll) . . . MUON, for Multiple-Universe Operations Navigator. We believe that this acronym encapsulates the essential functions and duties of this all-important role without any of the backward and sexist connotations that have raised hackles within the Trapezoid.
Later on we may establish additional gradations such as Junior MUON, Senior MUON, etc. but for
now this is unnecessary as we only have one of them on payroll.
This title applies only to paid staff members living in our timeline. Terms such as KCW may still be employed when referring to individuals in past or alternate timelines.
Exchange of posts by DODO staff on
“Recruiting” ODIN channel
Post from LTC Tristan Lyons, Day 630:
I’ve been reading Stokes’s After Action Reports on Chira’s Blachernae Palace DEDE, and I want to start a conversation about Varangian Guards. For those of you who might not be up to speed on context, these are fighting men from Scandinavian or other Northern European countries who were recruited to serve as palace guards and elite troops by the Byzantine Empire. I had read of them in history books, so I knew of their existence, but reading these After Action Reports really drives home how pervasive their presence was in Constantinople circa 1200. Best of all, they tend to show up in important places like the Imperial Palace and key fortifications like the Galata Tower, city gates, etc.
Why is this of interest to DODO? Well, it’s no secret that we are having difficulty recruiting DOers capable of blending in in 1200 Constantinople. The required combination of physical appearance, cultural literacy, and language fluency needed to “pass” in that DTAP is difficult to pull off—occasional miracle recruits like Chira notwithstanding.
The ubiquitous presence of Varangian Guards suggests a different strategy, at least for male DOers: don’t worry about trying to pass as a native Byzantine. Instead, hide in plain sight. We can recruit DOers who can pass for Northern Europeans, then Send them back and look for ways to infiltrate them into Varangian Guard units. Their lack of fluency in the Greek language, ignorance of contemporary customs and etiquette, etc. then becomes a natural fit with their cover story.
This strategy presents two main challenges that I can think of:
1. We don’t know much about how the Varangian Guards were actually recruited. If we’re lucky, there’s a sort of labor market in this DTAP, such that big, healthy-looking Northern European males who show up in town with no past history or connections can get recruited into these units without going through the Byzantine equivalent of a background check. Now that Chira is finished with the kalonji-seed DEDEs and has established some familiarity with Constantinople, maybe we can Send her on some scouting missions to learn more about how this works.
2. Even if it works for a DOer to show up in Constantinople from parts unknown, with no connections or background, he’s not going to be able to pass for a Varangian Guard unless he speaks the language. Leading to the question: What is the language that these guys speak, and where can we learn it? Stokes?
Reply from Dr. Melisande Stokes, Day 630:
Tristan, the Varangian Guards were drawn from all over Scandinavia, Northern Europe, and Britain over a span of centuries, so it depends. In our era (1203) the majority were speaking Anglo-Saxon. But some of the ones Chira encountered were apparently speaking Norman, which is a transitional dialect, not a stable language as we normally think of it. As you probably know, the Vikings invaded France, were bought off with Normandy, settled there, then used it as a base for invading Britain and many other places. The most bad-ass Normans crossed the Channel with William the Conqueror; the ones that stayed behind in Normandy spawned the generations who mostly enjoyed jousting and courtly love, etc. . . . This + Normans and Anglo-Saxons obviously detesting each other = surprising to find Normans in the 1203 Anglo-Saxon-centric Varangian Guards. But actually, we can use it to our advantage:
If we train DOers to speak Anglo-Saxon, they will probably blend in just fine no matter their accent, but they do run some risk of being called out—Anglo-Saxon had a limited geographical spread and thus a limited number of dialects, most of which are probably represented in the 1203 VG cohort. Someone speaking an eccentric variation might arouse curiosity. Small chance, but a chance.
However: Variations of “Norman” were spoken from Greenland to the Volga and from Sicily to the Arctic Circle. If Normans were accepted into the VG, then a DOer could learn any kind of mash-up passing as some variant of Norman, and never run the risk of being called out for lack of fluency—they can just claim they’re from some other clan over the mountain. There would be too many variations of the language, and too few native speakers in residence, for anyone to get wise.
From Dr. Roger Blevins, Day 631:
I have been monitoring this exchange with some interest. LTC Lyons’s idea seems to merit further development.
LTC Lyons: please see me about deploying Chira Yasin on scouting missions to Constantinople so that we can better understand procedures for recruiting Varangian Guards. I only wish that she were less conspicuous. Can we put her in a burka? There must have been some Muslim presence in the city in that era.
Dr. Stokes: the obvious failure mode in your linguistic analysis—for Norman or Anglo-Saxon—is that our DOer, claiming to be a native of some specific region, might happen to cross paths with another Varangian Guard who actually was from the exact same location, and who would detect faults in our DOer’s accent, knowledge base, etc. and become suspicious. Agreed: less likely with Norman than with A/S, but not impossible. We can minimize the chances of that happening by developing a cover story according to which our DOer is from an exceptionally remote and obscure part of the Norman world. Please move this to the top of your priority list.
DODO REPORT
POTENTIAL KCWs, NORMANDY, 12th Century
BY MELISANDE STOKES, PH.D.
Submitted to ODIN archive, Day 645
OBJECTIVE: Identify potential Known Compliant Witches (KCWs) in remote settlements in Normandy during the approximate span 1050–1200, as a preliminary step toward establishing a DTAP there/then. Proposed function of that DTAP: to serve as “Language Camp” for Fighter-class DOers, giving them linguistic and cultural proficiency needed to pass as (Norman) Varangian Guards in the 1200 Constantinople DTAP.
GENERAL BACKGROUND: Normandy in this era had been colonized by transplants from both Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon-Danish-influenced regions of Britain for well over a century. It had not yet been incorporated into France but had been expanding its borders at France’s expense for some time. The linguistic environment was accordingly complicated and fluid. The population was largely Christianized, at least in name (nobility very much so by 1200). Since most were illiterate, essentially all of the available records fall into three categories. The first two are (1) legal records and (2) chronicles/accountings kept by the feudal lords’ stewards, but these rarely refer to women independently of their marital status. The more fruitful source therefore is (3) church documents, typically written by priests, friars, etc. in Latin or, less frequently, medieval French.
METHODOLOGY: Review medieval church documents for points of convergence per following criteria: (A) references to heretical leanings per church fathers; (B) family trees featuring illegitimate but non-ostracized daughters over the course of several generations; (C) recorded activity suggestive of magic, particularly pertaining to crops, livestock, weather, and ease of pillaging nearby adversaries; and (D) perceived non-conformity in local female individuals, especially those as found in (B) above.
RESULT: POTENTIAL KCW THYRA OF COLLINET
A: “And in June of this year (1027) was Thyra delivered of a girl-child of no known sire, as Thyra herself had been twenty-two summers earlier, and her mother Wilmetta before her, and yet was Emma the aunt of Thyra joyful to receive Thyra and her bastard child to her hearth, and the child was christened Beatrice.” (ref 2876)
B: “And in April of this year (1046) was Thyra again deprived of those villainous and Satanic objects with which she adorns her cousin’s chamber, and scorned to replace them with an image of Our Lord. For this she was given a penance of ten Hail Marys which she was loath to perform, but said she would rather receive a lash, at which the priest hastily did declare her free of all sin.” (ref 3486)
C: “And in this month (August 1050) did Thyra of
Herb-lore cause great sorrow upon the (mayor?) of the village of Collinet and the (lord?) of (? Illegible) for her scolding at their crossing her when she wished to forage upon their lands for select herbs.”
D: “And in this month (January 1061) died Thyra of Herb-lore, and the valley wept at her passing for fear of the famine returning that they credited her for keeping at bay.” (ref 6584)
Further research recommended, as incidental accounts in 1002, and throughout the 1100s, suggest an uninterrupted lineage of witches in Thyra’s family, all with strong local and familial authority. (Rec search words: 1137 Collinet:Maneld, 1191, 1192, and 1195 Collinet:Rikilde, and 1193 and 1197 Collinet:Imblen)
Exchange of posts between
Dr. Roger Blevins and Dr. Melisande Stokes
on private ODIN channel
DAY 650 (MID-MAY, YEAR 2)
Post from Dr. Blevins:
Dr. Stokes, I am hereby directing you to proceed with the recruitment of the potential KCW known as Thyra, circa 1045.
As much as we need your energies behind the expansion of the Diachronic Operative Resource Center, it is clear that you are the best qualified of our existing roster of DOers to undertake this mission, and so I suggest that you delegate some of your present responsibilities to others as you undertake the necessary training. Macy Stoll is an obvious candidate to shoulder routine administrative and managerial tasks and has expressed a willingness to do so.
Reply from Dr. Stokes:
Understood. As busy as I am here, I can’t dispute that I would be the best person to act as Forerunner in this DTAP, barring some recruiting breakthrough in the next couple of weeks.
I anticipate that getting up to speed on local languages and customs will occupy me for most of the summer, with the actual DEDE slated for August. Meanwhile Erszebet can be putting in the usual research needed to Send me to that DTAP with reasonable temporal and positional accuracy.
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Page 39