by Edward Aubry
All the advanced technology discovered thus far, Alec explained, was childishly simple to operate. Harrison had already guessed this, based in part on his experience with the Transit Worm, among other things. Although most of the technology was clearly from the future (or a possible future), it turned out that nearly every surviving human artifact was from the year 2003. There were a few artifacts from earlier times, but they were anomalies. No one had, as of yet, found anything at all resembling a gun, though swords and knives had turned up by the score, some with magical attributes, most without. Electrical power still worked in every building that was hooked up for it, a full year past the last time anyone had paid an electric bill, but attempts to reach the source of the power had all proved fruitless. Underground power cables simply ended, with no sign that they were drawing power from any viable source. All of these things Harrison had mostly figured out, though some not in as much detail.
Other things were more surprising.
The dinosaurs were not real. This was a total shock to Harrison, in part because it had been so long since he had seen one, so long since they had been the apex of his earthly dread, that he had begun to allow himself to forget them. He watched as huge image after huge image flashed across the wall, huge dead animal after huge dead animal. Tissue samples had been collected, DNA analyzed. They were lizards in disguise. It was pure and simple. That they had grown to monstrous proportions, and had been sculpted into the shapes familiar to any six-year-old boy, was the result of magical tampering. The beasts had been unable to survive in their new forms for any serious length of time, and now they were gone. No new specimens had been identified in over six months. Whatever effect had been creating them, it had dissipated. The dinosaurs seemed to be an abandoned project, or maybe a rejected rough draft.
The next item on Alec's agenda was Harrison's collision into the Milwaukee Worm Station, which had been investigated to an extent he hadn't realized was possible. Alec's people had been aware of it within hours, a team dispatched to inspect the site four days after that. Harrison and Mitchell had just missed them. There had been a shield in the tunnel, twenty meters from the door. It had to be a good distance from the airlock because it would have been impossible to hold the door shut with a spell of any sort. Technology confounded magic, just as Glimmer had said it would do to the avatars. The importance of this item was that the door had been locked and the brake system disabled, not by magical means, but by industrious hacking. The attempt on his life (and that of his two companions) had been a two-pronged assault.
Several other agenda items came and went. The running theme was the incompatibility of magic and technology. Alec went on, at length, and several times, about how casting a spell on anything more technologically advanced than, say, a bicycle, was impossible. He offered vague predictions of dire consequences, and Harrison expected him to describe experiments gone awry, but, strangely, he did not describe any experimental or observational evidence at all.
This nagged at Harrison, and he tried to think back on a year's worth of experiences to find a counterexample. Not the telekinesis; he knew that was science. Incomprehensible, but science. The compass problem? No, that had been explained as nonmagical. There was something, though. He grasped at it, almost found it, but couldn't hold on to it. He made a mental note to ask Glimmer if she would know what he meant. Less than fifteen minutes later, however, he forgot entirely what he had been thinking about.
At last Alec came to the end of his presentation. Harrison hoped, unrealistically, that the purpose of the meeting had now been fulfilled, that they had been brought in simply to get up to speed on recent discoveries, and that he might be able to get back to work or maybe even go home. Some of the attendees had been taking notes. Alec waited until everyone had stopped writing. He waited until all eyes were focused on him. Even then, he waited a beat before speaking again. Finally, he said, "Based on these findings, our analysis is that the May 25 event was engineered deliberately."
And there it was. The nagging, persistent, threatening suspicion Harrison had been nursing for an entire year was now given voice, confirmed by a professional suspicion confirmer. Others were already asking questions, but he couldn't focus on any of them. He looked around the room, expecting to see expressions of surprise and disbelief. Instead, most people were whispering and nodding knowingly.
Clearly, they had expected this news. Harrison felt the first moist itch of tears. He looked away, rubbing his eyes. They were tears of relief. He had begun to think that he had fallen into a paranoid fantasy. It was inconceivable that someone could have, or would have, done something of this enormity by design, and yet Harrison had believed all along that that was what had happened. Apart from mentioning it to Glimmer once or twice, however, he had been afraid to tell anyone what he thought. He had been sure he would be seen as paranoid, at best. More likely, psychotic. Now it appeared that he wasn't crazy, after all. He was just smart.
"The bottom line," Alec was explaining when Harrison pulled himself together enough to pay attention, "is that we simply don't know." He was answering someone's question, and Harrison was not about to draw attention to himself by asking for it to be repeated. Fortunately, he didn't have to.
"If I may attempt to summarize the answer to all of your questions," Alec said, "we do not know how, we do not know why, and, most importantly, we do not know who. What we do know is when. May 25, 2003. And where." He waved at the wall display one more time, and the map of New York with the violet dot on it came back.
"Thus we arrive at the central purpose of this meeting," he said. "The evidence overwhelmingly supports New York City as the origin of the event. Not a single survivor from New York City has yet turned up in New Chicago, nor have any of the survivors passed through New York. In point of fact, only one known survivor traveled here from a point east of New York." The few people in the room who knew that the survivor in question was Harrison turned to look at him.
Alec got their attention back. "Tomorrow morning, a fact-finding expedition will be leaving New Chicago and traveling to New York City. Only the people in this room right now will be aware of this expedition. You will be assigned to one of two teams. The primary team, including myself, will depart tomorrow. The backup team will remain here. The backup team will be our only contact, and I must emphasize that the very existence of this expedition is not to be revealed to anyone, not even to your own superiors. Until we have an answer to the who question, we are not willing to assume the risk of discovery. In the event that the primary team is unable to complete the mission, or does not return, the backup team will be expected to launch a second expedition." He frowned. "The primary team has certain advantages that the backup team will not have, so it had better not come to that."
Harrison hoped he would ask if there were any questions. He didn't. Instead, he looked about, gravely, and continued.
"Right. So. In addition to myself, the primary team will consist of the following individuals," he said. He began to read from a list.
"Dr. Hadley Tucker." The thin man with large glasses and long blonde hair seated across the table from Harrison looked up in evident alarm. Harrison had met him at his initial meeting with the president and knew him from his work with telekinetics. He also knew that Tucker had been working for Esoteric lately, presumably on the question of magic and technology.
"Dr. Jeannette Lee." Harrison turned to watch her reaction, which was virtually nonexistent. She had likely seen this coming. Was this why she had resigned so abruptly? If so, she had been let in on something that Alec had just gone to quite a bit of trouble to explain no one knew yet. Harrison felt a twinge of irritation. And jealousy. He disliked the idea that some of these people had been brought in earlier, but he had not.
"Harrison Cody."
The adrenalin rush caught him totally off-guard. He had half expected his name to be on this list and had been half hoping it would be. Now it was. His fear and excitement began to wage a battle with each other, a c
onflict he expected to last for a good long while. It would be no secret to anyone here why he was going. They were heading into the unknown, and his uncanny talent could, potentially, expedite a great number of foreseeable problems. A few people looked at him. He tried not to make eye contact.
"Claudia de Queiroz." This name didn't surprise him, either, although hearing Alec read it bugged him. He pronounced it Cloudy-Ah, and made a point of flipping the R in her last name. That he would make a fuss over speaking her name with a Portuguese accent, when she herself never did, was the height of pretension, and Harrison already considered Alec's English accent, which was real, to be pretentious enough. Claudia's parents were Brazilian, but he knew that she had been born in California and had never left North America. What did surprise him was that her inclusion on this list appeared to surprise her. He saw her eyes go very wide, very briefly, before she saw him looking and turned away.
"Lt. Roland Anderson." Alec pronounced it Lef-tenant, and Harrison inwardly groaned. He looked around at the uniforms. None of them moved.
"Sgt. Michael Smith." This time, one of the uniforms, a young black man with a shaved head sitting at the end of the table, sat up straighter, just enough for Harrison to notice.
"And Susan," said Alec, with apparent finality. Harrison glanced over at the naiad. She was entrancingly beautiful, and he was secretly very happy that she was coming along. Well, he admitted, perhaps not all that secretly. He wondered what her contribution would be that Alec was willing to risk the inevitable disruption her presence would cause among the men. He tried to offer her a smile of camaraderie, but unlike everyone else whose name had just been called, she was visibly afraid.
"No," she said, and this one word was, in and of itself, remarkable. In the half year Harrison had known her, he had heard her speak maybe a dozen words. At first, he thought it was a naiad thing, but then Glimmer told him it was just her. Glimmer thought Susan was playing a game, and she had no patience for it. He had heard Claudia offer similar complaints; she referred to Susan as Silent Bob. Predictably, none of the men who knew Susan ever had any problems with her manner.
"I'm sorry," said Alec. "Did you just say no?" He was flabbergasted, not only by the fact that she had spoken, but by what she had said.
"She can't leave the lake," said the centaur sitting beside her on the floor. He stood, and added, "The lake you call Michigan. She can't stray from it, or she'll die."
Alec exchanged helpless looks with several of his staff and the president. "Well, bloody hell," he said. "This is what happens when departments don't communicate." He tossed a meaningful glance at Tucker, who was staring at the table. Susan was the only naiad living in New Chicago, and the topic of her leaving the environs of Lake Michigan had never come up. In not preparing anyone at the meeting for what they were going to be doing, Alec had inadvertently made an impossible assignment. "Well, this may pose a problem," he said. "We were counting on taking a representative from the magical contingent, and Susan is the only spellcaster with a high enough clearance to even get in this door."
Harrison spoke up. "What about Glimmer?"
The silence that followed gave him ample time to realize what he had just done. What he thought he was asking was would Glimmer, who was obviously coming along with him anyway, be a sufficient representative. As the stares grew more and more awkward, he realized that what he had really asked was, could Glimmer come along, please? Then he remembered, way too late, that Glimmer wasn't in this room. He felt like a complete idiot. If there was some sort of problem with Glimmer and her security clearance, he could understand why everyone looked so uncomfortable that he had brought her name up. The idea that she hadn't been invited to this party began to take hold, and Harrison tried to imagine heading for New York without her. It was unbearable, even hypothetically.
Alec had a brief, whispered exchange with the president. "What exactly," he asked, "is your relationship with the pixie?" The stares had briefly tracked to Alec. Now they were all pointed back at Harrison.
The implication was obvious. And appalling. Harrison had swiftly gone from feeling like a fool to feeling like a pervert. This was clearly not the first time Alec had considered this issue, but it was the first time Harrison had, and it bothered him in ways he would not have been able to explain.
He wisely resisted the temptation to say he was her sidekick.
"She's my friend," he said calmly, in as nonconfrontational a tone as he could muster. "And she helped me through all kinds of situations I never saw coming. She's smart. She's resourceful. I don't know what you're looking for to round out this team, but I know she has a lot to contribute." He was trying to sound confident, maybe even a touch indignant, but it wasn't taking the edge off his uneasiness.
Alec and the president were whispering again. Finally, she said, "We don't doubt any of that, Harrison, but there's a problem. There's a lot about Glimmer we don't know, and she's not talking."
Now Harrison was getting pissed. He was also feeling defensive. "What could you possibly need to know about her that you don't already know?"
"What happened to her hand?" Hatfield asked without missing a beat.
Harrison's stomach rolled over. I don't know, he thought. Don't ask that damn question, because it's the one thing she won't tell me, either. "Does it matter?" he asked.
"It might," said Alec. "Glimmer is the only pixie in New Chicago, and apart from Susan, the only variety of faerie at all. From what we understand about faeries and their kin, the type of injury she seems to have sustained should be impossible. She cannot, or will not, account for her whereabouts during the five weeks between your crash in Milwaukee and her arrival here."
"Are you saying you suspect her of something?" He was getting steamed. Although he was directing his anger at Alec right now, the truth was that he was upset with Glimmer. Her inability to answer a simple question without changing the subject or mocking the questioner had finally turned into a liability. Harrison's own forthrightness had made him, over time, easy to trust, whereas her indirectness had cast suspicion on her.
"Not at all," Alec replied. "I agree with you that she could be a valuable part of this team, and I believe she has already been a positive force in what we're building here. The problem is that this mission is extremely sensitive. If what she's hiding is somehow magically significant, which we believe it might be, she could leave the whole team vulnerable. We can't have that."
Harrison could feel something unraveling in his world. It hadn't even occurred to him that Glimmer would not be a part of his adventure, and now it turned out that she had been omitted deliberately, not just through oversight. He rubbed his temples and looked around. People were starting to look away, as though they had something else important to do. "What if I find out?" he finally asked. "What if I get the skinny on what happened to her? If you're satisfied that it's the truth, and that it doesn't open us up to danger somehow, we let her in. Does that work for you?"
"Mr. Cody," said Alec, "this isn't a negotiation. She-"
"Yes," said President Hatfield. "That would be all right."
The room froze. Alec fumed. After a few seconds, he spoke into his hand. "I need someone from Esoteric to bring the pixie to my office, straight away." He put his hand down. "While we're waiting for that to be sorted out, we'll move along to item two on the agenda." He looked at Hatfield. "Madame President," he said, and he sat down as she stood up.
"At three o'clock this afternoon," she began, "pursuant to Article 39 of the New Chicago Constitution, I will announce my intent to take an executive leave of absence, effective immediately, to extend until July fourth." From their expressions, Harrison gathered that no one apart from Alec had seen that coming. "I will be joining the primary team."
Harrison was about to say something. Probably, he thought, a lot of people were about to say something, but they were all beaten to the punch by Claudia. "What are you saying?" She stood up, wide-eyed and furious.
Alec tried to redirect h
er. "Miss de Queiroz, please." He gestured for her to sit down, but she didn't even spare him a glance.
"I don't need your protection, Louise!"
Harrison had the unpleasant feeling he was being treated to a very personal conflict that was none of his business. The upside was that scrutiny of him was subsiding as Claudia became the center of negative attention.
President Hatfield remained calm. "This is not the time, Claudia," she said.
Looking thunderous, Claudia crossed her arms and sat back down. "This is bullshit." She said it quietly, but it was by far the loudest sound in the room.
As Hatfield continued to explain how the announcement would be made, and when the vice president would be sworn in as acting president, Alec stood up and walked around the table to Harrison. "Come," he whispered. Harrison got up, and they left the room.
Alec's office was up one floor from the conference room. They did not speak in the elevator. Once they got to the office, they spent about twenty minutes waiting for Glimmer to arrive. At one point, Harrison broke the silence to ask whether Hatfield was really allowed just to take a break from being president for a month, and Alec explained that yes, the executive leave was built into the Constitution for just this kind of situation. He declined to comment, however, on whether he thought it was a good idea for her to exercise the privilege right then.
At last, one of Alec's people brought Glimmer to the door. Although he invited her in courteously, she seemed suspicious. She was wearing a rose kimono with a floral print and a wide, white obi tied in a bow at the back. Her hair was done up in a silver bun, held in place with a pair of slender black sticks. Her feet were bare. Harrison thought she looked lovely, but shrewdly kept his mouth shut. Despite the warm spring weather, her hands were still encased in mittens.