Paulie opened her mouth, then shut it again.
Fleming sighed. "I can see we're going to be here some time," he said. "Any chance of a coffee?"
Two days after Huw and Yul hiked into Springfield to post a letter at great personal peril (two days in which six more ClanSec world-walkers and a full half-ton of requisitioned supplies reached the safe house, two days during which the neighbors kept a remarkably low profile), Miriam was sitting in the makeshift living room, single-mindedly typing up her to-do list, when something strange happened.
With no warning, the bulky wooden cabinet in the corner of the room crackled into life. "This is the emergency widecast network. Repeat, this is the emergency widecast network. The following message is for Miss Beckstein, last known in Springfield. Will Miss Beckstein please go to the shop in Boston where her sick friend is waiting for her. Repeat—"
The repetition of the message was lost in a clatter. "Shit!" Miriam applied some other choice words as she bent to pick up the dropped laptop and check it for damage.
"What's happened?" Brill called from the direction of the kitchen.
"Dropped my—we've got contact!"
"What?" A second later Brill pushed the door wide open. "The radio." Miriam pointed at it. "Huw didn't say there's an emergency station! Erasmus wants to see me. In Boston." Brill looked at her oddly. Miriam realized she was cradling the laptop as if it were cut-glass. "Are you sure—"
"This is the emergency widecast network. Repeat—"
"I told you!"
"Okay." Brill nodded, then paused to listen. Her face tightened as she unconsciously clenched her jaw. "Oh yes. It worked. Well, my lady, you got what you wanted. What do we do now?"
"I'd think it was obvious—"
The other door opened; it was Sir Alasdair. "Hello? I heard shouting?"
Miriam stood up, shut the laptop's lid, and placed it carefully on the side table. "We're going to Boston," she announced. "Erasmus has made contact—"
Alasdair cleared his throat. "Made contact how—"
"Now look here!" Miriam and Huw both stopped dead. "Have I your full attention?" Brilliana demanded. "Because as your loyal retainer I think we should consider this with care. My lady, what do you intend to do? Need I remind you these are dangerous times?"
"No." Miriam looked at Sir Alasdair, who was watching Brilliana with the patience of a hound. "But this is exactly what we should have expected, isn't it? Erasmus is high in their ministry of propaganda, and we didn't tell him where I was. How else would he contact me, but a broadcast? So now the ball's back on our side of the court. I need to go visit him at the shop, because that's where he'll be. Unless you've got any better ideas?" Alasdair cleared his throat again. "Yes?" she asked.
"My lady d'Ost." He glanced at Brill. "What is your threat assessment?"
"Hard to say. Getting there—dangerous because all travel in this land is risky in the season of civil war. Once there . . . I do not believe Burgeson means ill of my lady; he is as close to a friend, in fact, as any in the world."
"But?" His word hung in the air for a few short seconds.
"Assuming the message is from Burgeson," Brilliana said reluctantly. "There is no word of his disposition. Should he be the victim of an internal plot, this might be a trap. I'd think it unlikely, but stranger things happen. And then, should he in fact be the speaker—what then?"
"Wait a minute." Miriam raised a hand. "The idea is to make contact. Then put my proposal to him and see what he thinks is achievable. At that point, once
we've
got a channel, it's down to diplomacy."
"And capabilities." Alasdair lowered himself onto one of the wooden dining chairs Huw and Yul had scared up in the furniture-hunting expedition. "Their expectation of our abilities must view us as a potential threat, just as the Americans do. They will want to know why we seek refuge here. If we tell them the unvarnished truth—"
"We
must."
Miriam was forceful. "Yeah, we may have to admit the Clan fucked up royally in the United States. But you know something? It's nothing but the truth. If we tell them we fucked up and we want to start afresh and turn over a new leaf, it's not only believable—it's true, and they'll get the same story from everyone they ask. If we start telling white lies or trying to bamboozle them . . . how many of our people have to remember to tell the same lie?
Someone
will get confused and let something slip over a glass of wine, and then Erasmus's people get to let their suspicions run riot. And let me remind you this country is in the middle of a revolution? Maybe they're going to come out of it peacefully, but most revolutions don't—we have a chance to try and influence that if we're on the inside, but we won't have a leg to stand on unless we're like Caesar's wife, above reproach. So my goal is simple: get us
in
with the temporal authorities, so deeply embedded that we're indispensable within months."
"Indispensable?"
"I've been doing some reading." Miriam turned tired eyes on Alasdair. "Revolutions eat their young, especially as they build new power structures. But they
don't
eat the institutions that prop them up. Secret police, bureaucrats, armies—that's the rule. They may hang the men at the top, and go hard on their external enemies, but the majority of the rank and file keep their places. I think we can come up with a value proposition that they can't ignore, one that would scare the crap out of them if we didn't
very obviously
need their help."
Sir Alasdair looked at Brill. "Do you understand her when she starts talking like this?" he grumbled.
"No. Isn't it great?" Brill flashed him a grin. "You can see why the duke, may he rest peacefully, wanted her for a figurehead upon the throne. My lady. What do you propose to do? Let us say we get you to Boston to meet with your man. What do you need?"
"I've got a list," said Miriam, picking up the laptop. "Let's get started. . . ."
BEGIN RECORDING
"—Latest news coming in from Delhi, the Pakistani foreign minister has called off negotiations over the cease fire on the disputed Kashmir frontier—"
(Fast forward)
"—Artillery duels continuing, it looks like a long, tense night for the soldiers here on the border near Amritsar. Over to you in the studio, Dan."
"Thank you, Bob Mancini, live from the India-Pakistan border region near the disputed Kashmir province, where the cold war between the Indian and Pakistani militaries has been running hot for the past month. A reminder that the catastrophic events of 7/16 didn't stop the shooting; may in fact have aggravated it, with rumors flying that the quantum effect used by the attackers is being frantically investigated by military labs all over the world, we go to our military affairs expert, Erik Olsen. Hello, Erik."
"Hello, Dan."
"Briefly, what are the implications? Mr. Mukhtar's accusation that the Indian secret service is sneaking saboteurs across the border via a parallel universe is pretty serious, but is it credible? What's going on here?"
"Well, Dan, the hard fact is, nobody knows for sure who's got this technique. We've seen it in action, it's been used against us to great effect—and nobody knows who's got it. As you can imagine, it's spoiling a lot of military leaders' sleep. If you can carry a nuclear weapon across time lines and have it materialize in a city, you can mount what's called a first strike, a decapitation stroke: You can take out an enemy's missiles and bombers on the ground before they can launch. Submarines are immune, luckily—"