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.”
“I’ll tell it to the hundreds of millions of people who would be dead without basic antibiotics,” he retorted impatiently. “This is a ridiculous conversation.” He got up from his seat and paced in the small triangular space described by the table, the hearth, and the kitchen door.
Then the doorbell rang. Everyone looked surprised except for Tristan, who invited the rest of us to remain seated while he took care of it. Through the windows we could see a FedEx truck idling in the street. A little surprising, on a holiday, but we had been receiving deliveries at the strangest times as rush orders came in for the ODEC project, and so we all assumed it was another shipment of exotic superconductors.
“Erszebet,” said Rebecca, speaking for the first time. “Are you arguing against fighting Gráinne?” She asked it in a very neutral tone, simply a request for information, all judgment reserved.
“No,” said Erszebet. “I am happy to fight her. She is too powerful. Every witch is enthralled with Gráinne, except Julie and you, who are still learning how to do good magic. I myself was in thrall to Gráinne, and I almost did her urging, even though I knew it was evil. Luckily for you, I am too good a person and too loyal a colleague to kill you off.”
Tristan came back in carrying a small package that he had received from the FedEx man. He carried it into the kitchen, set it on the counter, and carefully slit it open with his pocketknife.
“Give me an ODEC,” Erszebet was continuing, “and I will help you to preserve the world as you know it, which you seem to think is the best world.”
“Even though you don’t agree,” I said.
“I do not think there is any ‘best’ world. I am not judgmental that way.” But there was a hint of a smile in one corner of her mouth, as if she understood, and enjoyed, how maddening she was.
“With all respect, it seems to me,” said Mortimer, “that the operative part of this conversation is: give Erszebet and Julie and Rebecca an ODEC and they’ll help us stymie Gráinne. We have the ODEC. We have the three weird sisters. No offense.”
“None taken,” Julie said. “I like being weird.”
“Am I right? And then if you guys want to get into philosophical bickering, you can do it on your coffee break or something.”
Erszebet’s face suddenly fell. “Only we do not have a Chronotron.”
Frank nodded. “I can reproduce some of its functions with my old code base—the iPad app I wrote years ago. But you’re right. It is absolutely no replacement for the Chronotron.”
“And before you ask,” Mortimer said, “there’s no replacing that. We may be able to build a makeshift ODEC in the basement, but the Chronotron is a multibillion-dollar project.”
“It’ll be fine,” said Tristan, still working on the package in the kitchen. “We’re not trying to launch any new campaigns. We’re not being proactive. We’re being reactive now—reactive to Gráinne. We wait for her to make the first move, by sending DOers to the DTAPs we know so well. Then we go to those same DTAPs and stop them.”
“Fuckin’ A!” Mortimer said.
Tristan came in from the kitchen carrying a white plastic bag that he had extracted from the package. He continued, “We start by going back and talking to our KCWs, explaining how it is, asking them if they are willing to come over to our side. I think many will say yes. So we can develop our own witch network, our own system of safe houses. And in the present day, we still have friends within DODO.”
“How can you be so sure?” Erszebet demanded. “Gráinne is subtle. These people who claim to be your friends may in reality be her agents, trying to win your trust.”
“Then explain this,” Tristan said. He reached into the plastic bag and pulled out a dingy, tangled jumble of yarn, which I did not immediately recognize because I hadn’t seen it for years. Erszebet knew it before it was half-revealed.
“My számológép!” she cried, with the wide-eyed wonder of the girl I’d only ever seen in 1851. She began to scramble to her feet, but Tristan saved her the need by tossing it to her over the table.
“Merry belated Christmas! It occurred to me you might need something like this. I’ve spent the past month tracking it down.”
“How?” I asked, amazed.
“Classified,” Tristan said. “All bureaucracy, no cloak-and-dagger. It’s been stuffed in a filing cabinet for five years.”
“You are a good man,” said Erszebet almost tearfully. She clutched the számológép to her, cradled it against her heart as if it were a delicate pet. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“Ask and it shall be given!” said Julie. “Tristan, your timing rocks.”
“Do you know how to use one of those?” asked Rebecca quietly, to Julie. “I have no idea.”
“Mortimer and I can work together to rebuild the app,” Frank assured her. “It will never be the Chronotron, but it will be more powerful than the számológép and easier for those of us not used to the analog models.”
“Is there enough room left in the cellar for that project?” asked Tristan, wresting his attention from the cooing Erszebet.
“We have a guest room upstairs,” said Oda-sensei.
“You
’re all fools,” said Rebecca. “This cannot be the headquarters for a new diachronic endeavor. Besides the fact that I want it to be safe for family to visit, Blevins will be after all of us. I’m surprised they haven’t already knocked our door down.”
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that,” Tristan said, and finally sat down again. “It’s the dog that didn’t bark. Why hasn’t Blevins sent a DOSECOPS squad to knock the door down? What’s holding him back?”
“Probably not Gráinne,” I said. “Gráinne’s pretty hawkish.”
“Let’s cut to the chase: it’s the Fuggers,” Tristan said. “They made sure we could build an ODEC in the basement here. They’ve obviously made a decision that it’s better to have us around as a counterbalance to Gráinne than to cede total control of history to her and her minions. And so we are protected, somehow. We can stay here as long as we want.”
“Until the Fuggers change their minds,” Rebecca said, in a tone that made it clear this wasn’t good enough.
“I don’t think they’ll do that, though,” Tristan said. “They’ll protect us—they might even fund us, indirectly, untraceably—as long as we’re holding up our end of the deal.”
“Which is . . . ?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.
“To figure out what Gráinne’s up to, somehow—then go wherever she’s sending her DOers, and fight them. With wit and words when we can, with swords when we have to.”
“Yesss!” Mortimer said
“Works for me,” said Esme instantly.
“Me too,” said Felix.
“I’m in,” Julie said.
“Excellent,” said Frank, looking pleased, as Rebecca made a well-fine-be-that-way gesture of allowance.
“I have already agreed,” Erszebet contributed moodily.
Tristan glanced at me. “Stokes?”
“As if I had a choice,” I said. “Of course I’m in.”
And that, dear reader, is who we are, and what we now are doing.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Page 66