The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.: A Novel

by Neal Stephenson

  Erszebet said, “You cannot get rid of it, you can only uncreate it.” Then explained that the usual means of resolving such problems is to go back to an even earlier time and prevent the conflict, by slightly (and multiple times) altering something prior to the event in question. All shoulders in the room sagged at this notion.

  “Could we not simply go back to 1640 and try again?” I suggested. “There has only been one reality in which there was a maple syrup factory, and many more in which it didn’t exist, so perhaps we can simply continue the effort in another Strand without the factory—sidestep the problem, so to speak.”

  “You can try that, but clearly things are tending toward the factory being there, so I recommend that you address the factory.” She yawned expressively to make sure we’d noticed how dull this sort of talk was.

  “Why?” asked Frank, who was as usual the least exasperated person in the room. “Why are things tending toward the factory being built?”

  “Yes, what are the mechanics here?” demanded Tristan, almost interrupting him.

  “There are no mechanics,” said Erszebet disdainfully. “It is magic. Magic does not speak your language, Mr. Military-Physicist. Study it as hard as you wish, some part of it will always elude you. I am giving you the best advice there is.”

  “You are saying,” said Tristan (patience exaggerated), “that we must go back to a time before the factory was built, and prevent the factory from being built.”

  “Several times.”

  Tristan swore under his breath.

  “All of this effort for an unreliable result is why time travel has never been a smart use of magic,” she added in a superior tone. “I knew it would be a terrible way to try to influence anything.”

  “Why didn’t you say that when I first suggested it to Frink?” Tristan demanded.

  “Agreeing to try it was the quickest way to earn a salary, which gives me a chance to go to Hungary and spit on the graves of my enemies.” She added darkly, “Not all my enemies are in Hungary, you know,” and with that glanced briefly toward Mel, who was staring at her hands poised just above the flames and did not notice.

  I requested Erszebet to help me with the tea, and, once alone in the kitchen with her, asked why she had shot that look at Mel.

  She tossed her dark hair back over one shoulder. “I am only still alive because of Melisande.” She is so beautiful, and so very present in her young body, that it is continually difficult to remember how old she really is.

  “Is that such a bad thing?”

  “There is no benefit to my staying so long,” she said. “Now I am treated like Tristan Lyons’s trained dog. His Asset. If I had died in natural time, I would be at peace now. This”—gesturing out the window toward my ruined garden plot—“is not what I ever believed it would be like when I finally could perform magic again, and in the meantime I have survived one century and a half of unnatural alienation and boredom and loss.”

  I did not know what to say. I could not blame her the bitterness.

  “So,” she continued briskly, gesturing now toward her own splendid figure, in tight-waisted sundress and heeled sandals. “I am going to have some enjoyment now, to make up for all those years. But even so”—and here she darkened—“I am only making the best of a bad situation. And I am in that situation because of Melisande Stokes.”

  “Whatever it was that happened, I’m sure she meant you no harm,” I said quickly.

  “Neither did the first photographer,” said Erszebet, and walked briskly back toward the study.

  I feel for her, deeply, but I wonder if she is a reliable participant in this undertaking. Which is worrisome, as she is the only one involved who is irreplaceable.

  Diachronicle

  DAYS 335–352 (EARLY JULY, YEAR 1)

  In which we are London-bound

  I DO NOT KNOW IF the Boston Council for Boston was a going concern before I stumbled across that stone foundation on the Watertown Road. But since I’d discovered it, it existed historically. An upstart private company of enterprising Calvinists in the original Boston (in Lincolnshire, England), it was created twenty-five years before the founding of the New World’s Boston and actually had nothing to do with it; its purpose was to bring money back to its founders’ local economy. An odd mixture of socialism, isolationism, and snark, the Boston Council for Boston’s name really meant: “Our Council for Us.”

  Research into the Boston Council for Boston quickly revealed that in late September 1601, the company (which was otherwise about to fall apart before it had so much agreed upon an initial investment) got backing from one of its native sons, Edward Greylock, whose father had adroitly married into a family of Continental bankers, and as a result, risen in prominence in Queen Elizabeth’s court—albeit on the outskirts. As of 1601 the son—Sir Edward Greylock—lived primarily in London. Further research into Sir Edward showed him (and his fortune) to have cavorted a good bit with the adventurer George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, founding member of the East India Company, which had been founded only at the end of the previous year.

  If Sir Edward could be persuaded to give the East India Company his coin, and not merely his society, then the Boston Council for Boston would never get the funds required to go to America, and thus never build their inconvenient syrup boiler on the road to Watertown. The next DTAP would have to be the city of London, 1601.

  This is how we met Gráinne.

  Journal Entry of

  Rebecca East-Oda

  JULY 10

  Temperature 81F, slight breeze from southwest. Barometer steady.

  Container garden on front steps: kale, lettuce have germinated. Tea roses doing well in their new setting. Flame azalea almost passed.

  It is decided: Tristan will go to Renaissance London. I find myself relieved to be off the hook now as I can be of no practical help. There have been long days of discussion and theorizing and research to establish a possible witch in that DTAP, but there is no way to know.

  In the absence of an individual witch to target, Tristan has proposed he be Sent to a setting that is likely to attract witches. Erszebet followed the development of this plan with some private amusement, it seemed to me. I am not at all certain that she cares whether or not we succeed.

  To determine the sort of place witches might be drawn to, it becomes necessary to psychologically profile the average witch. Having only Erszebet and a cursory experience of Goody Fitch as a sample population is hardly sufficient, but the only other source is secondary: Erszebet’s memories of other witches. These memories may say more about Erszebet herself, or her circumstances, than they do about her mother, her mentor, etc. But the general type we arrived at was this:

  A witch generally speaks her mind when she can get away with it, doesn’t care much about what men think, and is determined to have agency over her fate, even in a time and place when such a thing was hard to come by (which, Erszebet added, was most of human history). Based on Erszebet herself, and her claims of her mother’s behavior, it is also possible witches enjoyed the influence they had over men by their attractiveness, but this does not seem to be tempered by any fondness for the men whose heads they enjoyed turning.

  Sitting in Frank’s study—where I preferred we congregate when the ODEC or office equipment was not specifically required—the four of us, with Erszebet watching, sat musing upon this collection of traits, as the two household cats wound their way around Frank’s legs.

  “This isn’t flattering,” said Tristan, “but this also fits the psychological profile of a lot of prostitutes.”

  Erszebet laughed.

  “No disrespect,” Tristan said.

  “It is amusing that it has taken you so many hours to come to this conclusion.”

  “You mean you already knew? You could have told us this and saved us a lot of time.”

  “Yes,” said Erszebet, pleased.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “You put me through my paces to see what I could
do, I wanted to see what it was like to be in your position. I have enjoyed it.”

  A moment of Tristan silently grinding his teeth. “So you are confirming that we need to look for prostitutes.”

  “Not any prostitutes. But it makes sense, yes?” she said. “It is one way to have children without the bother of husbands.”

  “I don’t buy that,” said Melisande. “That’s a totally romanticized image of sex workers. They’re generally poor and disenfranchised, and a witch with any savvy at all would never choose such a life, for herself or her children. In the documents I translated, witches were considered powerful and valuable by whoever was in charge. Even if they were seen as dangerous, they were valued.”

  “That doesn’t mean they were married,” said Erszebet. “We didn’t need to be married to have power.”

  Mel looked doubtful. “So was that the norm for witches? Being, what, a courtesan, or at least someone’s ‘kept woman’?”

  Erszebet gave Mel a look. “I am only one witch and have lived in only one society of witches, at one moment in history. You with your translations have a broader knowledge than I do. But such a thing was referred to casually by my mother’s friends. If a witch wanted children, there were always the wealthy men around who can treat you well and support a bastard without wanting to have to publicly acknowledge it.”

  A heavy thought came over me. “Did you do that?” I asked. “I mean . . . did you have children?”

  Erszebet gave me a look that scorched my liver. “Of course not,” she said after a moment. “I could not bear the thought that I would live to watch them age and wither and die and I would still be here and have to bury them.”

  There was a long and uncomfortable pause. Mel looked down, seemed almost to huddle over herself.

  Tristan coughed. “So we need to look for . . . courtesans? High-ranking mistresses, that sort of thing.”

  “I would say so,” said Erszebet loftily.

  “Hang on,” said Mel, looking up. “This DTAP was near the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, right? I don’t know how much autonomy attractive, powerful women would be allowed in courtly circles, I think Elizabeth was increasingly paranoid and jealous as she aged. So maybe common prostitutes after all.”

  “No,” said Erszebet. “We would not tolerate being common.”

  “Maybe an uncommon prostitute, then, who had her own reasons for staying away from the court,” Mel suggested.

  “There were a lot of brothels in Southwark, where the theatres were,” I offered. “I read that in the program notes for Henry IV when Boston Shakespeare did it.”

  “What do you think?” Tristan asked Erszebet. “Does Southwark sound right to you?”

  She sniffed. “I have never heard of this place. But if it is full of troublesome women then you might be in luck.”

  Diachronicle

  DAYS 335–352 (CONTD.; EARLY JULY, YEAR 1)

  In which Tristan learns a euphemism

  THIS PEN WRITES NO FASTER, the eclipse is now just twenty-three days away, and I continue to entertain foolish fond thoughts that somehow I may yet escape 1851 London. I am sure I have already complained in these leaves about the stench, but as summer ripens, so too do its smells. No pension plan is worth this shit, in quite the most literal sense. I must tell this story more quickly and elide some details to get it all down.

  I pled travel fatigue, and Tristan honored his word to take the next DTAP. He required a specific place to land in London, September 1601, during the week before the investor, Sir Edward Greylock, agreed to put his money into the Boston Council for Boston. This was an event we were able to date with precision from legal records. Finding a suitable landing place in that DTAP was more of a project.

  During the course of our research, we obtained scans of city maps that had been drawn up circa 1600 and printed them out on huge sheets of paper that we taped up all over the walls. There, they accumulated sticky notes, pushpins, and written annotations. It was while studying one of those that Tristan let out an oath much more explicit than we usually heard from him, and jammed his finger into a smudge on a map so hard that it must have hurt. The smudge, magnified and examined, turned out to be the words YE TEAR-SHEETE BREWERY.

  As mentioned previously, Tristan had a sentimental regard for Old Tearsheet Best Bitter, the flagship product of Tearsheet Beverage Group Ltd., which claimed to be one of the oldest continuously operating breweries in London. He’d spent a semester abroad in the city, and thought himself sporty for having acquired a taste for something so obscure—not quite a microbrew but neither a household name anywhere. Bottled, it was available at a select few package stores in New England. On tap, it could be had in some pubs that catered to Anglophiles and expats.

  Improbable as it might sound, further research bore out that Tearsheet Beverage Group Ltd. really was the survival into modern times of the enterprise labeled on that old map. To Tristan’s delight, TBG Ltd. were proud enough of their heritage, and savvy enough with their marketing, that a section of their website was devoted to the history of their plant in London. In the early seventeenth century, the brewhouse proper had boasted an adjacent public house. It was at most two hundred yards from the Globe Theatre. Though the site did not mention it, the area had famously teemed with brothels.

  I went back into the Widener Library stacks. Where I discovered—to no great surprise—that the adjacent pub was too large, with too many upstairs nooks, to have been merely a pub. Given the neighborhood, it probably wasn’t merely an inn either.

  “So there it is,” said Tristan, pleased, when I showed him a map I’d scanned at Widener. “That’s my ground zero. What else do we know about it?”

  “The very word ‘Tearsheet’ was a slang term for a prostitute,” I said.

  He pulled a face. “I had no idea.”

  “The place was famous for always having ‘six comely maidens’ working there,” I said, with air quotes, “‘serving the customers ale and aught.’”

  “What’s aught?” asked Tristan.

  “Whatever you want it to be,” I said. “Their names are not recorded, but as of 1600 we know that one was Irish and two were Scottish. If we’re looking for loose women who would never fit in at Elizabeth’s court, those three fit the bill. Especially the Irish one, she had to travel by sea to get there, and the seas between Ireland and England were full of pirates. And she would have almost certainly been Catholic—so why would she go there unless she had a very good reason?”

  Tristan sat at his desk examining the papers. The Tearsheet website had airbrushed the map a bit. In reality, not only was the “pub” next door bigger than the brewery claimed, but it was connected, by an underground tunnel and secret passages on every floor, directly to the brewery itself—thus allowing johns who needed to remain anonymous a way to escape if the brothel were raided by the constables. Too bad none of that was on the website. I think their sales might have improved if they’d shared all the dirt.

  Over the next two weeks, Tristan was on a crash course in preparing to pass as a visitor to Elizabethan London. We knew he would never get the accent right, but as with myself in Boston forty years later, this was not an urgent issue: London’s population was exploding, and the city was babbling away in different accents and dialects from all over.

  A benefit to choosing this DTAP was that it corresponded with the height of William Shakespeare’s career, and American theatres are simply obsessed with Shakespeare. Therefore Boston, despite its small size, was crawling with fight choreographers who specialized in the swordplay and knife skills common in Shakespeare’s time—or at least in his playhouse. Tristan learned drills he could do on his own and then honed his skills for hours each day in the one still-separate office space in the DODO building. He also practiced bowing, cap-doffing, eating without a fork, and sundry other small niceties, whilst I drilled him on Elizabethan turns of phrase. Our costumer friend helped again with clothing, renting us a variety of different men’s outfits so that Trista
n could practice putting them on and off, as we had no way of knowing what clothes he might eventually find himself in. He would be enormous by the standards of the time; the chances of his actually blending in were slim to none.

  I enjoyed watching him at his drills even more than I’d enjoyed watching the ferryman row me across the Charles. I truly did not want to enjoy watching him. It seemed incestuous. I thought Tristan was a looker from the moment I’d laid eyes on him, but all of that had been swept to the back of my mind immediately because of the peculiarity of our meeting and then our unceasing work. Except for the small talk of our first meal together, we had barely ever “chatted.” Tristan, as a general rule, does not chat. I knew him so well and trusted him quite literally with my life, and yet I hardly knew him at all.

  When he had been the brains of the operation, the guiding hand, the commanding officer, I somehow hadn’t noticed that . . . but now as he was in training, I became the guide, and the dynamic shifted. I became his equal, in some ways his superior, and this in turn made me proprietary. I felt secret jealousy toward the rest of his life—how absurd, as he had no “rest of his life,” and in fairness neither did I anymore. He seemed to have no friends locally, never mentioned his family, and I can’t remember him referring to any memories or relationships. He was an unformed block, from which he was now laboring, literally, to sculpt a Renaissance Man.

  Reader, that was an attractive thing to watch.

  It felt like failure and betrayal to admit this to myself.

  But the truth is, I had a fucking crush on somewhat fancied him. Always had. How ridiculous. Anyone could fancy Tristan Lyons; it took no special qualities. I wished to demonstrate, at least to myself, that I was made of special qualities. So I chose to disregard my sentimentality.

  This was hard because: first, he looked pretty hot when he was thrusting that rapier, and second, I was aware he was about to go away to a place far more dangerous than my DTAP had been, and while it was possible he would return immediately, it was also possible he would not return at all. That he would be really, truly, not just Schrödinger’s-cat-like, dead.