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 a
stronomy 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.
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.: A Novel Page 62