“Well, in fairness,” I said, “if it weren’t for their religion, none of this would exist right now. You wouldn’t be here.”
“I’d be in Virginia,” she agreed briskly. “Where the religion is mercantilism. It is a marginally preferable religion, although the Americans suffer more under it than they do under Christianity. Anyhow . . . we’ve finished dressing you, so let’s not tarry. Tell me directly what you need from me.”
“Most of all, I need you to send me back to where I came from when I return here,” I said. “And if you can point me the way to Cambridge, I’d be grateful.”
“Easily done. You’ll need toll for the ferry,” she said, and went to one of the chests against the wall. There was a small locked box sitting atop it, about the size of a breadbox; she opened this with a key that she wore around her neck on a thin leather strap. From the box, she removed two tiny spheres, one a lead musket ball, the other larger, much lighter in color and weight, and highly polished. “Each of these will suffice for the ferry toll in one direction. I would give you some commodity money, but my husband keeps track of that and he would notice the absence of a cabbage head.”
“Have you a shovel I might borrow?”
She thought a moment. “Yes. But ’tis a strange thing to meet a young woman roving the land by herself, stranger yet if she is brandishing a shovel. Say you are my cousin newly arrived from Shropshire and you are returning it to Goodman Porter in Watertown, you will need to take that road anyhow. There is none in Cambridge know me enough to ask questions that would get you into trouble. I think there be a cooper there, very near the bookseller’s shop. I can give you nothing to buy his services, though, nor any way to get the book.”
“I don’t suppose I could ask you to assist me magically?”
“You can ask whatever you wish, but I will not risk it. I would have in England, if I felt your cause was just. Not here. Still, I wish you luck. You must be desperate in your cause if it forces you to come here. Fortify yourself with the maize-meal and then be off.”
AS I ATE the tasteless, dry, crappy meal, which would make Cream of Wheat seem like a gourmet dessert, I reviewed what was to happen next. Which meant reviewing what had happened previously—in the distant future, I mean.
The day after I’d accepted Tristan’s offer, just after sunrise, the whole crew had come back together at Hanscom Field, an Air Force base–cum–executive jet terminal northwest of Boston. For me, air travel had always meant Logan Airport. But it turns out that the kind of people who fly around in private jets fly through Hanscom Field—as do air travelers from the parallel universe of the military. I, Tristan, Erszebet, Oda-sensei, and even, to my amazement, Rebecca piled onto a plane that fit somewhere in the Venn diagram crossover between those two worlds, being a small eight-seater jet with military markings. Before we’d even had time to explore the plane’s comforts, we were landing at Reagan National Airport across the river from Washington, DC. En route Tristan had monopolized the plane’s washroom for a little while and changed into his Army uniform—the first time I had seen him so attired. It was the dress uniform with necktie and all kinds of little badges and insignia that might as well have been a secret code to me. He looked, if I may say it, swashbuckling, in a repressed sort of way.
I had been assuming a government van would pick us up at the airport, but instead Tristan led us across the skybridge to the Metro station and dealt out keycards. “Faster than fighting traffic—it’s only three stops up the line!” he explained. We got on the next northbound train, passed through Crystal City a few minutes later, and shortly pulled into the Trapezoid City stop. I picked up my bag and got ready to detrain, but Tristan caught my eye and shook his head. “Trapezoid City is a shopping mall, Stokes—not the real deal. If we have time, we can go there when we’re done!”
Erszebet was bemused by the Metro, and the Metro was fascinated by her. To date, we hadn’t been out together much in public. So I’d had few opportunities to see how random strangers reacted to her looks. Reader, I don’t think it would be boastful for me to say that I am not a bad-looking woman. I get my share of looks and compliments. But sitting near Erszebet on a subway train was enough to make me believe that invisibility potions were a real thing and that she had slipped one into my coffee.
The next station was called simply TRAPEZOID, but I could have guessed as much from the fact that more than half the people getting on and off the train were dressed in military uniforms of one service or another. We all followed Tristan up the escalators to a bus terminal complex aboveground, and from there to a huge, modern security checkpoint—a separate facility in its own right, built far enough from the subdued limestone fa?ade of the Trapezoid proper to provide a security buffer. We’d arrived during the morning rush, and so ended up standing in line for a few minutes—long enough for me to stare across the parking lots at the front of the famous building, and to develop a sense of this-can’t-be-happening unreality every bit as strong as anything associated with the ODEC. As the headquarters of the American military and presumed ground zero for any hostile military strike, the Trapezoid had, for me, always been more mythic than real. Like Mount Olympus or the River Styx, it was a thing alluded to in books and movies, or used in synecdoche to mean the American military as a whole. The terrorists had targeted it on 9/11, and I could see part of the memorial that had been built on the side where the plane had crashed into it. In a weird way, it was almost a letdown to see that it really existed and that it was, at the end of the day, just another wartime office building with windows and doors like any other.