“You found an industrial civilization that can shoot down high-altitude reconnaissance drones? With stealth technology? Oh sh—” She bit her knuckles again to stifle the curse.
“Stealth isn’t a magic invisibility cloak. It’s more like camouflage: it works best from certain angles. And it doesn’t work at all if your opponents are sneaky enough. It’s no good being invisible to radar if you fly through a storm by mistake—the bad guys can look for the hole in the rain that’s moving at six hundred miles per hour. We’ve spent so long snooping on jihadis in the tribal territories on the Afghan border, or rock-bangers with flint hand axes in undeveloped time lines, that we’ve forgotten how to deal with a real threat. So now we’ve got this headache time line and we’re having to relearn old skills fast.
“Now, we might be looking at a Victorian level of technology, given those railways—but it’s highly unlikely that we lost three UAVs by accident. It’s much more likely that we’re looking at, at a minimum, a time line with 1950s technology. That’s radar and surface-to-air missiles. Nuclear weapons are a distinct possibility. Which is why your superiors and mine are quietly screaming for intelligence that simply doesn’t exist. They’re looking in a mirror that’s showing them their own response to first contact with another para-time civilization, and they don’t much like what they see. Especially as there’s a risk that this time line is more developed than we are. Or that they’re being watched by the forerunners. We don’t know.”
“Oh Jesus.” Rita stared at Smith, her mind whirling. “So, um. That’s what you want me for, isn’t it? You think a mid-twenties female with acting skills can sneak in and quietly look around and report back on … everything?” He didn’t need to nod this time. She continued: “It’s not going to be quick. We don’t know what language they speak, do we? Or what they wear? What they look like, whether I’ll stand out because of my appearance?”
Smith nodded again. “If you take it on, it’s not going to be easy. In fact, it’s potentially extremely hazardous. If we had more time, I’d send you on courses in social anthropology and ethnography first. Also for training with field anthropologists. Not to mention more work on personal self-defense and espionage tradecraft, because you’re going to be unarmed except for your JAUNT BLUE ability. On the other hand, if you agree to do this for us, we’ll give you all the support we can provide. Clothing, money, covert recording instruments—”
“Money?”
“Well, assuming they use money and you can get us some samples, we have friends in the Treasury Department who spend all their time examining forgeries. This will be a nice change for them, don’t you think? And you’ve got another huge advantage over a conventional clandestine agent: you can choose your insertion point. It could be virtually anywhere, as long as nobody’s watching.”
“Wow.” It was an enormous picture. Assuming it was true, it also shed a new light on his willingness to manipulate her. And despite having hard evidence that he’d lied to her in the past to railroad her into this position, she couldn’t imagine why he might want to lie to her about this now. “It’s huge, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Rita, it’s an enormous responsibility. It’s the sharp end of a mission that, done right, could save us from a nuclear war. Done wrong—you don’t want to think about that.”
She bit her lip. “When do I start? And where?”
“Tomorrow morning you’re going to an installation outside Philly—as near as we can place it to that railroad yard. The Unit is setting up a forward support site right now, and once you’re checked in we’ll begin drafting an operational checklist and insertion plan. If, that is, you’re volunteering?”
The Unit. It had an ominous ring to it. Yet another sandbox, to keep Rita hemmed in and ignorant of what was really going on. “I don’t feel ready for this. There’s no alternative, is there?”
Smith spoke haltingly: “I am not … going to … strong-arm you into saying yes. If there’s one thing worse than having no agent, it’s having an agent who is scared out of their wits and doesn’t want to be there. So, uh. You are allowed to say ‘no,’ if you really don’t think you’re up to it.”
“But if I say no … there’s no one else who can do this job, is there?” she asked, deliberately pushing him toward another lie. Go on, tell me the truth, just this once. She knew it was foolish, but she found his evasion inexpressibly depressing.
“I wish there were. I really wish there were. But we’re out of time.”
Rita nodded reluctantly. So she was working for an unscrupulous liar. Worse: one who didn’t see anything wrong with lying because his motives were entirely pure. What should I do? she wondered. Then, What would Grandpa say?
PHILADELPHIA, TIME LINE TWO, AUGUST 2020
“Rocks,” Rita said disbelievingly. “Really?”
“Yup. Rocks.” Patrick, her supervisor from Camp Graceland and now, it seemed, her field officer, hefted a chunk of misshapen pink granite a couple of inches long. “Like this one.”
“What’s so special about them?” Rita shifted her weight. The cheap conference seat creaked unfairly beneath her. I’m not that heavy! she complained silently. Like everything else on this site—an office suite attached to a light industrial unit in Allentown, on the outskirts of Philly—it was secondhand and had seen better days.
“It’s instrumented. The batteries are good for seven days, during which it will continuously record meteorological conditions and high-definition video—optical and infrared—whenever anything moves around it. It can report over Bluetooth if you go within a hundred feet of it while carrying an active transponder that’s paired with it, but it doesn’t broadcast its presence. This one”—Patrick picked up another object, which resembled a battered length of two-by-four—“has a six-month life, and inertial sensors. It works with a transponder disguised as a different rock. You drop the transponder in the switchyard and toss the mobile unit on top of a caboose or a shunting engine and it builds a map of the track network as it gets pushed around, then calls in whenever it comes back to the same switchyard. Uh, you probably don’t want to put it on a goods wagon, though. Not unless you want it to go on an extended tour of North America.”