“How did people stop them before? Do you have any advice?”
Hugayr pocketed the multi-tool again and straightened her shoulders. “Kill them, obviously. Find the men and kill them.”
A glass shard lodged itself in my gut. “We can’t. Killing might make things worse. There must be some other way.”
“Don’t be stupid. There is no other way.” Hugayr was losing patience. “Do you want to imprison us in a history that cannot be changed?”
“We aren’t murderers.” The words ached in my mouth. I wanted so much for them to be true.
“Killing for al-Lat is not the same as killing for yourself.”
I started to say something else, but Anita pinched my arm. “Thank you, Priestess. You’ve given us a lot to think about.”
As we left through the tunnel, none of us wanted to talk about what Hugayr had said. It was almost a relief when C.L. started griping about our conversation with Ahed after the sacrifice. “I thought al-Lat was some kind of fertility goddess. That’s what Wikipedia said. She’s not an engineer.”
Anita gave C.L. some side-eye. “I think you’d better quit while you’re ahead. Pretty sure you’re starting to be offensive with all that explaining of things you know nothing about.”
“Offensive, yes. I think Hugayr would be displeased.” Morehshin took out her multi-tool and shook it like a kid turning a soda bottle into a spray weapon. “Look what she showed me.” Ball lightning cracked five feet ahead of us, and every hair on my body stood on end.
“What the fuck, Morehshin!”
“What?” She shrugged. “It’s harmless at that distance.”
I decided not to say anything about the scorch marks she’d left on the walls.
A representative of the Order accepted Soph’s sacrifice as legitimate, made some marks on a tablet, and gave us the next AGU slot on the Machine. After some debate, we decided to return to 1893 to deal with the Comstockers nonviolently. All of us except Morehshin instinctively recoiled from Hugayr’s advice; there had to be a way to defeat them that didn’t involve death.
Six slaves pounded with stone and bone on the floor to activate the interface, and two added a quick rhythm with small iron mallets. Morehshin used her multi-tool to send a bright finger of blue plasma into the control panel that hovered overhead.
Emerging from the wormhole with a jolt, it took a moment for me to realize there had been no unexpected trip to the Ordovician. Morehshin gave a triumphant whoop. “Much easier with those settings! Hugayr is a genius!” My neck ached. The memories of Beth felt closer here, harder to push aside. A muted clang of cable cars came through the windows and into the Machine chamber. The slaves had been replaced by steam-driven tappers, and the bureaucrat with his tablet and clubbed beard had morphed into a tidy row of four wooden tables staffed by people in a range of nineteenth-century fashions, from white robes to tweed suits.
We returned to our quarters in the scholars’ neighborhood and had a late meal of goat cheese, lemon-scented chickpeas, flatbread, and dates soaked in wine. Then we washed it down with more wine. It started to rain, and someone cursed loudly outside as a cart splashed through manure-laced puddles. It reminded me of Chicago when I’d arrived in early spring.
“I think we should target the Expo,” I said. “That’s where Elliot and the other saboteurs are. Plus, I think we have a chance to get abortion legalized if we can do another big anti-Comstock protest.”
Morehshin nodded eagerly. “Comstock must be stopped. His laws are at the root of the divergence. He’s going to inspire similar men in Europe.”
“I still don’t understand why Comstock is so important to these travelers.” Anita fiddled with a cube of cheese.
“He’s some kind of inspiration to them—”
I had more to say, but Morehshin cut me off. “He put men in charge of reproduction. Do you understand? That is too much power for any one group.”
Her point wasn’t nuanced, but I knew what she was getting at. “Morehshin is right. Comstock is making it illegal for people to have agency over their futures. Over the future of the species, even.” I thought back to Elliot’s pamphlet about how women’s inferiority was simply a matter of evolutionary biology. According to Morehshin’s hints, her present was ruled by people using science to control reproduction in line with the Comstock Laws.
C.L. sipped wine and shook their head. “None of this will matter if the Comstockers destroy the machine at Raqmu. I think they’re back there in the Ordovician, hacking on it.”
At that moment a spray of water hit the window, and I felt a burst of excruciating double memories. Beth was dead, her suicide a needle in my gut; and she was alive, saying she never wanted to see me again. Calling me a liar. An unfamiliar feeling of shame burrowed into my chest. Was I really going to organize anti-Comstock protests while the Machines were in danger and the timeline froze?
I pondered our options. I understood edits and reversions, merging conflicts and orthogonal deletions. But I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around how a Machine shutdown would propagate across the timeline. “Aren’t we technically in a version of the timeline where they failed?” I asked. “I mean, C.L. saw the cuts and the Machine is still working.”
“It’s a good question, and all I have is a hypothesis right now.” C.L. set down their wineglass. “What I saw is probably part of an extreme kind of merging conflict. My guess is that there are many divergences that split at some point before those cuts were made. We’re in a version where they fail but we’re getting closer and closer to one where they succeed. That’s why we’re seeing those interface bugs with increasing frequency. Essentially, those are signs that we’re living in a timeline where the Machines are being damaged. Soon, we could be in one where the Machines don’t work at all.”
“How soon?” Anita was troubled.
“Based on my readings, I’d say six months to a year. There seems to be a regular progression to their edits. But they could accidentally hit the right button tomorrow. I suspect the mechanism is a lot more complicated than that, but you never know.”
Anita put her chin on her fists. “We have to travel back to the moment right before they make those cuts and stop them. That way we revert back to a timeline where the Machines are undamaged.”
C.L.’s face was grave. “Are we going to do what Hugayr told us?”
“No,” I replied firmly. “We can stop them some other way.”
Morehshin gave me side-eye. “What will we do? Talk them out of it?”
“I think we can agree that whatever we do, a mission like this could be a one-way trip for some of us,” Anita said. “Or all of us.”
As her words sank in, I realized this might be our last chance to stop Comstock. “We wouldn’t need more than six months to do our edit here in 1893. Once we’ve done it, we can face whatever meets us in the Ordovician.”
“None of that will matter if the Comstockers control the Machine.” C.L. was getting angry.
“It will matter if we don’t make it back from the Ordovician.” Emotion had winnowed my voice down to a whisper. “I want to leave a better timeline behind. Not just an open timeline, but one where people who are not men can control the means of reproduction.”
Morehshin grabbed my hand inside her fist and I felt a hardness in her palm. “I will go with you. Let us defeat Comstock before dealing with the men who are sabotaging Machines.”
“It’s risky.” Anita exchanged glances with C.L.
“All of this is risky. Let’s finish the edit that we began at the Expo.” I was pleading now. “Maybe that will propagate forward and eliminate our Comstockers.”
“That sounds like a Great Man view of history. Stopping Comstock doesn’t mean you destroy the social movement that made him. We have to tap down to the Ordovician in six months.” Anita sounded doubtful, but I could tell she was coming around.