“Ah, I see. Very good, Lyons. Ms. Stokes, the connection goes way back—Roger and I went to school together,” General Frink explained. “When we first began observing these historical anomalies, he—along with Dr. Rudge here—were part of the brain trust we brought together to seek explanations.”
I was thoroughly tongue-tied now, but the ice was broken as far as Frink was concerned. He pulled off his reading glasses and fidgeted with them as he went into a long mansplanation of what magic was and why the United States needed to avoid a “Magic Gap” with other nations.
“Excuse me,” Erszebet said sharply, as Frink began wandering into an explanation of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory that even I could sense was painfully cack-handed. “Have you taken up a day of my life and quite a lot of taxpayer money to bring me in your foul-smelling airplane, all the way here, to this room, where you do not have the courtesy of introducing yourself to me . . . just so you can inform me who I am, and why that is important to you? Is this what you have done here?”
It was the first time I’d ever been grateful for Erszebet’s . . . Erszebetness. Frink gave her a slightly offended look and tried to carry on his monologue, now aiming it exclusively at me, but she was having none of that.
“This is a yes-or-no question I’ve asked you,” she said, standing up and placing herself in front of me to intercept his gaze. “Are you incapable of answering yes or no?” She looked at Tristan, appalled. “Do not work for this man. This man is an imbecile.”
Within three minutes, she had berated Frink into a huffy submission, enough that he rose to his feet and gruffly shook hands with each of us. During this little outbreak of sociability, I also learned the name of the civilian aide-bro: Les Holgate, who went around and shook hands with the perky vigor of a man who had sat through one too many free webinars about the importance of networking.
Erszebet was unconvinced: Frink’s effort at politeness lacked the requisite enthusiasm, and Les Holgate overdid it. We all resumed our seats. Frink took the floor again, and explained to us about How Things Are Done In This Town, including brief introductions to the concepts of Belt Tightening and Fiscal Responsibility. This led to another brief vituperative interjection from Erszebet regarding taxpayer money being used to bring four people to him when wouldn’t it be cheaper for him to just hop aboard a civilian flight and take the T to Central Square, thus saving money that was better used for the collective good? I had not credited her with such socialist sensibilities before. Nor have I seen her express such sentiments since then, so perhaps she was merely being disagreeable for effect.
It was the kind of sermon that would only be delivered before bad news, and indeed Frink went on to explain that we would be given just enough seed money to figure out how to use magic to self-fund.
Erszebet, alarmed, put aside her ’tude to explain very plainly that there could be no changing water to wine or lead to gold—to say nothing of plutonium. She wanted it understood that magic could not be used that way in any era, or it would long ago have led to the self-destruction of the human race.
“I say, to heck with gold!” announced Les Holgate. “There’s something a lot more valuable than that: Microsoft stock. Why not go back in time to the 1980s and buy up some of that?”
Erszebet drew breath to burn Holgate to the ground, but was cut off by a few words in Hungarian from Dr. Rudge. “Miss Karpathy, if I may.” He turned his attention to Holgate. “Les, this is covered in the briefing documents. Maybe you didn’t get a chance to scan them. I know you’re more of a PowerPoint guy.” This was delivered in such a light tone that Holgate’s face didn’t start turning red until a few seconds later. “The Sending—the movement of the subject to a DTAP, or Destination Time and Place—is a magic-based process. As such, a DOer—a Diachronic Operative—can only be Sent to a place and time where magic works. Between 1851 and now, magic hasn’t worked anywhere. So the most recent DTAP we can Send people to is late July of 1851. The Microsoft gambit can’t work. And we can’t go back in time and kill Hitler either.”
Holgate hadn’t fully caught on to how deeply Dr. Rudge had just buried him, so he came back for another round. “Okay, well then, go back and invest in whale oil futures or something.”
“That is in essence what we propose to do, Les,” Tristan said. And he went on to explain the Bay Psalm Book gambit.
Some years earlier, a copy of this 1640 volume—the first book ever printed in North America—had been unearthed in a church basement, and sold for millions of dollars at auction. Tristan suggested we go back in time, find another copy, conceal it someplace where we could retrieve it in the present day, and put it up for sale. The operation would be relatively simple. It wouldn’t involve killing anyone, or any other heavy-handed intervention in history. It would be confined to the Boston area. And it would generate enough revenue to keep DODO afloat for the better part of a year.
General Frink liked this idea immensely. Dr. Rudge, acting in his advisory capacity, asked a couple of good questions about the money end of things, then nodded approval. Frink wound up the meeting briskly, and sent us all back to Cambridge to begin the research required for this escapade.
A few minutes later, having been reunited with our electronic devices, we were out-processing through the security checkpoint, and headed back down the escalators to the Metro stop. We even had time for a quick turn around the Trapezoid City shopping mall, where a young man in the food court approached Erszebet—fresh from raiding a high-end cosmetics boite—and asked her for her autograph. He had no idea who she was. He simply assumed that she was a movie star.
The Bay Psalm Book gambit had been news to the rest of us. But on the flight home, Rebecca became unexpectedly useful. I had considered her a reluctant soldier, signing on only because Frank wouldn’t do anything without her and she was too indulgent to deny him. But as we flew back, she volunteered a newfound suspicion that her accused ancestress from the Salem witch trials had, in fact, been a witch.