Miss Thorold glared at her: if looks could kill, Rita would have been incinerated on the spot. “Why don’t we stick to business?” Olga suggested grimly.
Mrs. Burgeson, for her part, looked uncertain. She spoke, haltingly: “Listen, Rita, I know you’ve little reason to trust me, but it was more complicated than that. And I was younger than you are now. If you ever want, want to—” She stopped and dabbed ineffectually at her eyes. “I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath. “Stick to business.” Another deep breath. “I want you to take a sealed letter to your boss.” She picked up a plain white envelope, utterly prosaic, that had been sitting on top of an out-tray. She pushed it across the desk toward Rita. “Also, this.” A plastic screw-top sample tube, with a swab in it. “Please witness.”
Rita watched as the evil queen uncapped the tube, removed the swab, took the end of it into her mouth, then placed it back in the tube and sealed it. “This will serve to confirm my identity,” she said, placing it on top of the letter. She took a deep breath. “Olga, the contact protocol…?”
“I don’t have it with me. I’ll see she has it before she leaves,” said Miss Thorold. She added, for Rita’s benefit: “It’s a set of times and GPS coordinates you can use to visit this world safely. The locations will be secured at this end and I’ll be available to meet you—no risk of getting run over by streetcars, and no handcuffs.”
The evil queen leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, and for a moment Rita felt a stab of apprehension. “Last time I spoke to them, they tried to murder me,” she remarked to nobody in particular. She opened her eyes and looked at Rita, her face composed and clear of emotion. “I want you to understand this very clearly, Rita. The history of dealings between the Clan and the US government is toxic. You must be clear with your superiors: we are not the Clan. The Clan tore itself apart after the Family Trade people stuck their oar into Gruinmarkt politics by nuking the Hjalmar Palace—which they did before 7/16. I’m not going to get into tit for tat or recriminations here. What happened, happened. The world-walkers here in the Commonwealth are refugees. We earn our keep as far as the Commonwealth government is concerned, but we don’t set policy.”
Olga cleared her throat.
“We mostly don’t set policy,” Mrs. Burgeson amended. “But here’s the thing. The very first time the United States made contact with another time line, it ended in a nuclear holocaust. I want you to tell your superiors that it had better not happen again. My superior—the First Man, the head of state—is of the opinion that the least bad strategy to pursue is one called Mutually Assured Destruction. It’s an old cold-war trade-off: both sides know that if they launch a preemptive attack they will destroy their enemy, but only at the cost of being destroyed themselves. The New American Commonwealth has an arsenal containing more than nine thousand hydrogen bombs, because we are locked in a cold-war standoff with the French Empire. More than a thousand of those weapons”—her voice wavered—“are targeted on US cities right now. God knows we don’t want to use them—but if we are attacked, retaliation is certain to follow.”
“You’re—” Rita boggled at her. “That’s insane!”
“Tell me about it.” Mrs. Burgeson smiled weakly. “Which is why that letter is so important. It’s an invitation to discuss the ground rules for diplomatic engagement, so we can find a way to step back from the brink. Before some idiot on either side starts World War Four by accident.”
Olga cleared her throat.
“Oh yes.” Mrs. Burgeson was weaving the shreds of her dignity into a cloak of confidence, collecting herself visibly from second to second. “Of course this has to happen at the worst possible time. Rita, the other thing your bosses need to know is that the First Man, Adam Burroughs, has terminal cancer.”
“So there’s going to be an election soon?” Rita asked. “Or does he have a vice president?”
The evil queen shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way; the Commonwealth is only seventeen years old. They had a revolution, and before that, it was an absolute monarchy—think North Korea, not Disney. The Commonwealth’s constitution is only fifteen years old and it has never been tested by a peaceful transfer of leadership. Adam has been the First Man since the very beginning. In theory, we know what’s supposed to happen and how to do it. In practice…”
“Nobody knows,” Olga said darkly. “Most likely there will be a peaceful transfer of power to the new First Man, or perhaps even a First Woman. But that’s far from certain.”
Mrs. Burgeson picked up the narrative: “The point is, we have weeks—not months—to sort out an agreement that cools everything down. If we don’t get there while the First Man is well enough to sign off on it, everything goes back to square one—only in the middle of a succession crisis. Which is really risky, because war planners love to take advantage of succession crises, never mind the fact that one possible outcome is that our own hard-liners could end up running the show.”
She met Rita’s eyes, and Rita froze. She felt as if the evil queen could see right through her: and for a sickening moment she wondered if she’d fallen into the wrong fairy tale by mistake. “But we’re out of time now—you’d better be going before the Specials arrive with an arrest warrant. If you change your mind, if you want answers—I’ll be here for you.
“Goodbye, Rita.”
PHOENIX, TIME LINE TWO, AUGUST 2020
Another morning.
Kurt Douglas yawned as he shuffled around the kitchen. His feet, back, knees, and hips ached. The kettle on the stovetop was beginning to steam as he added coffee grounds to a filter cone, measuring them carefully. Two and a half precisely heaped spoonfuls was his habit. He had a rigid idea of how best to greet a new day: he would brew his coffee, then he would retreat to the downstairs bathroom to take his morning medication, shave, and read the news on his tablet while he threw off the early morning lassitude.