Roger wilco.
LETTER FROM
GRÁINNE to GRACE O’MALLEY
A Wednesday of Late-Harvest, 1602
Auspiciousness and prosperity to you, milady!
So at last, the time ’tis for me to reveal my plan to you in full. As good as all these fellas have been to me both in London and in Antwerp, there’s naught of use that comes of my remaining a spy for Your Grace when I’ve lost the chance to dawdle around Whitehall, and it’s all these natural philosophers and bloody intellectuals I’ve got around me. And the Fuggers, of course, but they at least are clear-eyed, so they are, about how to get things done in this world. I know Your Grace grows weary of the world, and sorrowful I am to think of your moving past us to the realms beyond. I’ve no premonition at all of what shall come of Ireland once you’ve left us, and I fear the English will renew their bloody conquering schemes, especially with the urging of Sir Francis feckin’ Bacon.
So I hope it’s understanding that Your Grace will be, when I tell you that I’ve vowed to myself to look out for my own cause now: that being magic, and the fate of my sister witches. Sure Tristan Lyons trusts me as a sibling, and yet isn’t he always refusing to tell me what stymies all magical abilities in future. So I’m thinking the best way for me to be learning such a thing is to go forward into the future myself, and be looking at things from his vantage point. Glad I am to hear from within the net-work that Tristan’s bosses think to bring me forward anyhow, to help them with a thing they call an Atto, which is apparently exactly like the horrid little chambers their witches be spending all their days in, only not quite so little, and on wheels. As if wheels would make it any better.
I intend to use the resources of Tristan’s own guild, what calls itself DODO, not to restore magic, but to prevent its destruction in the first place, as soon as I ken what is the cause of such destruction. A brilliant plan this is, to my mind, and so obvious and straightforward, I wonder what bollocks excuse Tristan’s superiors have for not be doing likewise. I know not how long a stretch of time there is, between the death of magic and its rebirth, but that stretch is surely a boil on the face of history, and if it can be avoided, then it is my duty to see that happen. For surely the destruction of magic is not only bad for witches, but bad for Ireland and such like nations that are relying heavily on magic for self-defense from oppressors.
So here then is my plan: oft enough have I listened to Tristan and the other DOers lament of a certain officer whose name is Roger Blevins. This gentleman, although little enough he seems to do, yet has more power than all the others put together—even including Tristan Lyons himself! Rose is of a mind with me, and it’s Sending me forward in time she’s agreed to, so that I may ingratiate myself with this Blevins—and yourself knows well enough how easily I may ingratiate myself when it’s ingratiating that is called for! And then won’t I be in a position to be learning things Tristan wouldn’t have me learn. And won’t he be helpless to prevent my learning.
And so, my dear beloved Pirate Queen, I pledge my loyalty to you forever, and to the Irish cause, but it’s off to the future I’m now bound.
Whether I be near or far, may I hear only good things of you, My Lady Grace!
Yours ever, Gráinne No Longer in England
INCIDENT REPORT
AUTHOR: Esme Overkleeft
SUBJECT: Magnus
THEATER: Northern Europe, Early Medieval (NEEM)
OPERATION: Botanical Infrastructure Ops for Magical Enhancement (BIOME)
DTAP: Collinet, Normandy, 1205
FILED: Day 1857 (late August, Year 5)
Having completed my DEDE in Normandy 1205 DTAP (Iris germanica rhizome grafting along La Vie River), I went to KCW Imblen of Collinet to be Sent back to DODO HQ. I have worked with Imblen on several occasions and my Norman French allows us to have reasonably fluent conversations. As others who have visited this DTAP can attest, she is a calm, unflappable, good-humored woman.
However, on this occasion she was on edge. Magnus of Normandy, known to several of our DOers from DTAPs 1202–3 Constantinople, returned to his home village (some 50 km from Collinet) after many years gone, which was a cause of celebration. However, Magnus was excessively preoccupied with querying everyone about their memory of a local song or folktale, about a great hero who had, several generations earlier, saved the village from attack by a feuding tribe and later been canonized by the Church. The hero was named Tristan of Dintagel, an unremarkable enough name—except that Magnus met somebody named Tristan of Dintagel in Constantinople, 160 years after the events of the story.
Magnus called the village elders into council and described this remarkable coincidence to them. They did not share his obsessive curiosity. He then traveled to Collinet to query Imblen, formally seeking her advice and assistance as a witch to make sense of this. He was excited and aggressive and supplied many details about Tristan’s recent activities in Constantinople, making it obvious that he had observed Tristan closely and recruited other members of the Varangian Guard to keep an eye on him.
Imblen feels she said, “I can’t help you,” a little too quickly and firmly, because he became even more intrigued, and declared that he would go to Dintagel directly to seek the (parish? Church? Hundreds?) records and establish if “his” Tristan was a descendant of the hero . . . or if something stranger was happening.
For the record, this is the fourth Strand on which something like this has happened. Each time, Imblen seems more shaken and Magnus appears more clear-headed and determined. This time—given what he understands of witches’ powers—he hypothesized directly to Imblen that given Tristan’s archaic speech patterns, perhaps another witch had Sent Tristan forward in time, and if so, “he would hie himself back to Constantinople to learn more of Tristan’s doings, in case there could be profit for himself made from it.”
Respectfully submitted,
Esme Overkleeft
Exchange of posts by DODO staff on “Anachron
Management” ODIN channel
DAYS 1862–1870 (EARLY SEPTEMBER, YEAR 5)
Post from Dr. Melisande Stokes:
Welcome back from vacation, everyone. I am assuming you have all seen Esme Overkleeft’s incident report. It sounds like Magnus knows too much. Should we consider bringing him forward?
Reply from Macy Stoll:
Please keep in mind that the Anachron Management Team, which bears the brunt of looking after all of these people who are brought forward, is currently operating at capacity. Some Anachrons are easier to handle than others. If this Magnus is so burning with curiosity that he would traverse half the known world to pursue this matter, then he’ll cause just as much trouble for us here if we bring him forward.
From LTC Tristan Lyons:
Respectfully, Macy, if we bring him forward we will at least have some oversight re: his troublemaking. If that requires additional resources for the Anachron Management Team, then there are channels for requesting same.
From Dr. Roger Blevins:
Magnus’s psych profile suggests he will probably be considered a “nut job” (possessed by demons, etc.) by anyone in his era. While he might cause problems, they don’t warrant us spending the resources on housing him here for the rest of his life. He isn’t sophisticated enough to figure the whole thing out—or to be useful to us if he’s here. It’s not worth the resources to bring him.
From LTC Lyons:
Respectfully, I can vouch for Magnus’s abilities, having fought beside him on several occasions in Constantinople DTAPs. Contrary to Dr. Blevins’s assessment, I cannot think of a better soldier to help train DOers who will be operating in the Viking/Norman world. I should have proposed recruiting him already. My department has a number of physically active DOers who are currently in turnaround. If we bring him forward I’ll be his minder until we’ve taken proper measure of him.
From Dr. Stokes:
Just bumped into Esme in the cafeteria—she had to do one more Strand on DTAP 1205 Collinet, a
nd says Imblen reports that Magnus has now advanced his theory.
Given that Tristan of Dintagel of legend came to Normandy as a fortune-seeker, and then (as Magnus sees it) almost certainly came forward in time, he is evidence that time travel is an excellent way to seek one’s fortune. Apparently Magnus would like to employ the same method. He is asking Imblen what fee she would accept to Send him in one direction or another. She has reverted to typical witch maneuvers of requesting impossible-to-get things (in this case myrrh from the cradle of Baby Jesus). He threatened her—highly unusual behavior toward a witch—and she had to render him mute for an hour to put him in his place.
Esme hasn’t had time yet to file a full report, but I’ll link in this thread when she does. Please reconsider bringing Magnus forward.
From Dr. Blevins:
Anyone stupid enough to threaten an active witch will never get his head around what is really going on here.
But since he is now a threat to one of our human assets, and Tristan seems to think he can contain him, I’ll (dispassionately) second Melisande’s suggestion to bring him forward.
From LTG Octavian K. Frink:
Have been monitoring this thread.
Bring Magnus forward. Even if he doesn’t figure anything out, we’re dealing with the specter of Diachronic Shear if he says something to somebody more clever than he is. If we keep him busy as a combat instructor he’ll probably think he’s died and gone to Valhalla.
Private message from LTC Lyons to Dr. Stokes:
Don’t correct him about Valhalla, Stokes. I know you want to. Don’t.
GRÁINNE’S
FINAL LETTER
to GRACE O’MALLEY
PART 1
Summer Solstice, 1603
Faith and Auspiciousness to Your Grace!
It’s a very long letter I’ll be writing you this day, and the last one ever, for certain this time. I’ve been to the future and back again, so I have, and am about to go again—and this time, I am quite certain there’ll be no returning. So you’ll never know the end of my story, Your Grace, but now in your closing weeks, before you cease to draw breath, it’s a remarkable adventure I’m leaving you to dwell upon, that you might not forget your little Gráinne as the veils lower between the worlds to receive you.
So to get on with the telling:
Rose Sent me forward, to the same place we have both so oft sent Tristan and the others. I arrived in a place so shocking that I doubt our fair language has words harsh and perverse enough to do it justice. As Tristan had already revealed to me, in this future day there’s only a small, airless chamber where magic’s working, with just enough room for two people, barely larger than a garderobe it is. The walls are slick and peculiar, like tiles made of painted wood. And no smells in it at all, not a one. How can that be?
But ’tis nothing compared to what happens when the door of the chamber opes. ’Twould take me half a lifetime to describe to you the wonders and the horrors of the future world. The garderobe, what they call the ODEC, is housed within a large chamber—a strange room with mechanical monstrosities and a dreadful buzz in the air as if lightning were always just about to strike, a sound they are all indifferent to, much as I became indifferent to the odors of Southwark. And this chamber in turn is inside a vast building, which is on a street full of vast buildings, in a city of streets with vast buildings. Larger than cathedrals some of them, but without ornament or even shape. Like building blocks for giants, so they are. No imagination or love of beauty at all.
Everything functions without human or magical assistance, but I confess most breathlessly that whatever power keeps humanity and its many mechanical servants humming . . . it is far more dazzling than any magic I have ever seen performed.
And I tell you straight out: suspicious this makes me, for what is the cause to bring magic back when it has been replaced by something clearly more serviceable? So the first riddle I put my mind to was this: in a world where carriages travel without beasts to pull them, and food is effortlessly abundant, and there is ample light to sunder any darkness, from all manner of peculiar torches, none of them given to burning down a place even if it is all wood, and where all and sundry wear grander clothes than most anyone in London and an astonishing variety what’s more . . . something there must be, some commodity or advantage, that magic can attain but mankind cannot yet. Nothing material can it be, for no magic I ever knew summoned such luxuries for royalty as everyday folk here take as commonplace.
The environs are not the point of my tale so I shall omit most of the gobsmacking details, but please know I will happily discourse upon it if you’re requesting it of me, Your Grace. To the Kingdom of Heaven I know you are bound soon, but it might not contain half the wonders of yon twenty-first century.
So to get to the telling at last:
Greeted I was by the lady-in-waiting of the ODEC—the first woman ever I met of that time, in that time, and wasn’t she strangely dressed! With teeth every bit as fine as Tristan’s. When I gave her courtesy, why, she was astonished, for isn’t my name one of glorious renown in the future? It is, sure. She proffered me a thick white cotton shift with a belt sewn into it, from a pile of them beside the door, and then a set of absurdly short stockings from another pile (socks, she called them), instructed me to don it all, and asked me to wait—as if I’d anywhere to go now that I’d arrived. Then she spoke directly to her desk, so she did, asking it to send her Lieutenant Colonel Lyons on account of Gráinne had arrived from London.
Within moments there he was, my handsome fella, looking at me through a wall made of the most perfect glass that can be imagined—so smooth and flawless as to be invisible. He looked ever so bizarre in the weeds he must wear in that future time, monotone and snug but shapeless, not glorifying his marvelous shape and yet neither hiding it for modesty as priests are wont to do. ’Twas incredibly dull he looked. After giving me a look up and down, he nodded as if to say “Sure that be Gráinne” and then went to a door in the glass wall, out of my view.
Meanwhile I was hustled away by another young man with gorgeous teeth, who smelled like something I might like to lick (but refrained), escorting me out of the room of the ODEC, he did, under horrible illumination that buzzed fiendishly and made everyone look dead, along a corridor covered in some kind of short, stubby pelt, very firmly set upon the boards, and then into a room tiled with a marvelous substance such as my stockinged feet had never felt before—it both gave way and yet slightly gripped the stocking. This room was blindingly bright and cold, everything made of metal like an armory, but even brighter somehow, as if everything were the color of a new sword—whole walls like silver. Most peculiar it was. At this point, Your Grace, I wouldn’t be lying to say that I was that fatigued and weak, as if all my humors were being slowly drained from me. It occurred to me that a good slumber would be most agreeable. As if he were reading my thoughts, the young man led me to a peculiar piece of furniture, something between a couch and a throne, a sort of upright divan I suppose it was. ’Twas soft and padded and strewn about with blankets and in other ways most inviting for one about to swoon.
But then Tristan came into the room, and that brought me back to my senses.
“God ye good morrow,” myself said gaily. “There’s no need to be looking so surprised, Tristan, sure Rose is attending to my duties in Southwark, and I’d a mind to see for myself the Great Work I am helping build with my journeyman’s efforts. I know you were wanting me to come, so I thought I’d better leg it to you quick as I could.”
“You’re two weeks early,” he said.
“’Twas a change of scene I was wanting, all them natural philosophers were growing dull enough to dry snot. Isn’t it right glad you are to see me, so? Sorry my togemans are so homely, they’re all your maid had to offer me. ’Tisn’t even my knees these stockings reach to, I never knew how tawdry your costume was in this era.”
“Listen to me,” Tristan said in the stoic soldierly way of his, which was grand
with me as the whole point of coming here was to hear what he had to say. Besides which, I was growing weaker almost every minute. “There are things in the air here that can kill you just from what you breathe or touch. There is an entire protocol you must go through,” and then he went about using lots of words what sounded Latin and of many syllables, and I wasn’t especially interested in them as I was suddenly fain to sit in the divan. Happily ’twas exactly there he placed me, and talking without pause he was, saying he would have to talk to his superiors while I was going through the ordeal he was about to put me through.
A woman dressed all in white appeared in this room, like a religious acolyte of some pagan creed, and didn’t she and the young man begin to work with some alarming mechanical objects, the which seemed to be alive all on their own, with mysterious eyes and lights and noises and movements, full of hoses and tubes they were, transparent like fine glass but bendable like straw, most confounding. And they were bringing these monsters close to me, and I saw all manner of needles at the ends of the tubes. The woman was introduced to me as a physician (truly! A woman physician!) and the young man as her “nurse,” and they explained in a most unmusical and peculiar kind of English that they had to pump me full of medicine to prevent the invisible airborne humours from imbalancing my own. They had nothing practical there, no leeches or poultices or charms or herbs, nothing but these strange mechanical curiosities. The fellow explained they had to stick needles into my arm to fill me with the medicine—in the form of potion it was—and sure it was the closest I have ever come to panicking. Only Tristan’s familiar presence kept me from something near hysteria, and Your Grace knows I am not easily unnerved.
Things were so clean, you could smell the cleanliness, cleaner than soap it was, and very cold to the spirit. The needles did not hurt, and were bound to my arms and the backs of my hands with some kind of sticking tape, and I felt a cold drowsy feeling in my veins, as if someone were binding me with a spell of lethargy. These first moments of my arrival, to speak true, were not even the slightest bit resembling what I imagined.
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Page 49