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 astronomy 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.”