Temperature 29F, damp, slight NE breeze. Barometer steady.
More firewood delivered and stacked (using area of garden that was dug up for Bay Psalm Book—eighteen months later soil has still not recovered). Expecting snowdrops soon.
Yesterday afternoon Tristan, Melisande, and Erszebet drove to the house with the new witch, Rachel, who will be lodging with us until appropriate quarters can be determined for her. A tiny, wide-eyed thing, looking like a rag doll in a dress that Erszebet picked out for her during a raid on Newbury Street. Predictably, there was disagreement about logistics. Tristan wanted Erszebet to return to the office to continue to Send people—they have quite the schedule there now, and are working her almost to exhaustion. He argued that Melisande is the only one who speaks medieval Hebrew and therefore Mel should stay with Rachel.
“We will both stay with her,” said Erszebet. “I was ‘on hold’ (with air quotes) for more than a century, you can be ‘on hold’ for overnight.”
“Erszebet, you can’t even talk to her, what’s the good of your staying?”
“I will talk to her through Melisande,” Erszebet said in her so-there tone. “Do you know how long it has been since I have had another witch to talk to?” Erszebet made a mock-surprise face. “Why, of course you do. You know exactly how long it has been. So you will give me this. If you refuse, I will understandably go on strike, which I would have done months ago if I were not so exceptionally generous and patient. I am giving you an opportunity not to force me to go on strike.” (Have been coaching her on her communication skills. Clearly mixed results.)
Tristan nodded. “Fine,” he said. “You’ll return at 1300 hours tomorrow.”
She rolled her eyes. “This is not an army barracks. I will return at one o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Major Sloane has vectored a couple of DOSECOPS to the house, to keep an eye on things,” said Tristan, to me now. “They’re on their way here.”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “She’s not a criminal or a fugitive.”
“It’s about security,” said Tristan.
“Felix,” Mel suggested quickly. “Rachel knows Felix from her native DTAP. He’s between DEDEs. He’s not technically a guard, but he’s qualified—in fact he’s overqualified. Surely you can arm him and have him bunk in the dining room.” A glance at me. “Would that be all right?”
“Only because Rachel knows him,” I said. “Being a den-mother to wayward witches is not in my job description, and I will not play along if it requires armed men in my living room.”
Tristan’s jaw worked silently for a few moments. I knew what he was thinking: It’s not your living room anymore—it belongs to the East House Trust. But he had the good grace not to say this out loud. He called off the two guards, placed a call to Felix, and left.
I confess I was surprised and touched by Erszebet’s cosseting young Rachel. Speaking to her through Melisande, she insisted Rachel spend the time giving vent to how very different and disorienting it is here. Melisande translating, most of the English-to-Hebrew being some form of “I know, isn’t it awful? I don’t know what’s worse, to have it happen all at once as with you, or to have it happen with gradual inevitability as with me.”
Diachronicle
DAY 1800 (SUMMER, YEAR 5)
In which the zenith becomes our new normal
I HAVE BUT EIGHTEEN DAYS left before the solar eclipse and there is far too much to cover in what time is left to me. I am more desperate than ever not to be stuck here for fucking ever. Therefore I shall resort to a compendious depiction of the next phase of DODO’s existence.
Two and a half years passed. Every day I rose and went to work. Many times I was Sent back to various DTAPs to perform missions. A lot happened, in other words. And yet those two and a half years flew by so quickly that when it was over it felt as if some witch had Sent me into the future.
The value of the Chronotron exceeded all expectations. With it at our disposal, we were close to gods in our omniscience. Over the course of those dazzling years, DODO expanded beyond anything even Tristan could have imagined that afternoon when he took me to coffee. We expanded both in our own DTAP and also throughout history. In the twenty-first century, we built training and research centers all over the globe, with ODEC-equipped facilities in Europe, the Middle East, and Japan. To guarantee the most authentic training, we lured experts in certain fields of importance to us forward through time. Our Fighters scrimmaged in top-secret dojos with Roman legionaries, Viking berserkers, and samurai. Their training gear was wrought by armorers of ages past, brought forward to toil in air-conditioned smithies. Per Tristan’s early joke to me years earlier, I did indeed have a chance, once, to practice my conversational Sumerian—with an actual Sumerian.
We could not bring people forward from the past willy-nilly, of course. Strict principles around Anachrons were codified, with each one being personally approved by Blevins. Generally it was safer for a DOer to train in a DTAP and bring that knowledge back to us, than it was to bring somebody forward, which would then oblige us to spend time, energy, and medical and psychological resources on keeping them from losing their shit having a difficult time adjusting to modernity, however carefully we tried to shield them. Our epidemiology unit ran around the clock checking samples and improving our vaccination protocols.