"That's better!" She took a deep breath and began to unfasten her gloves as he attacked the straps holding her backpack in place. "Are you sure the real thing will be lighter?"
"No," Huw admitted. "And that's if we can get our hands on one in the first place. I think we're going to end up having one custom made." Pressurized suits with self-contained air circulation weren't widely sold, and some of the suppliers he'd approached had responded with alarming questions; the line between civilian and certain military uses was rather thin, it seemed. "Here, you should be able to get your helmet off now."
"Oh, that's nice." Elena began to work at the high-altitude suit's catches. It had been a random find in a somewhat peculiar store, and had taken almost a week to restore to working order; so far it was the only one they had, which had put a serious cramp on experimentation until Huw had bitten the bullet and decided to work with an oxygen bottle and goggles as minimal safety precautions. "How do you feel?"
"Head's splitting," Huw admitted. "Hmm. Let me just check again." He ran the blood pressure monitor again. It was roughly the same-alarmingly high for a fit twenty-something-but he was standing up and moving, rather than slouched over a computer: Good. "I think I'm coming down."
"It was definitely a tingle? Stronger than the last?"
"I think," Huw paused for thought, "I'm going to skip forward a couple of notches, see how far this sequence runs. I got two weak ones, then this"-he winced-"like tuning in an old radio."
"A radio? A radio tuned to new worlds?"
"Maybe." He detached the blood pressure cuff and walked over to the archway leading to the kitchen. "I'm more interested in knowing what class of knot we're dealing with."
"What kind of?… But it's a knot! How many kinds are there?"
"I don't know." Huw glanced at the coffee machine, then the wine bottle sitting next to it. "Huh. Where's-" The door chime pinged for attention.
"I'll get it." Elena was out of the boots and gloves; she'd managed to unzip the pressure suit as far as the crotch, revealing the rumpled tee shirt and jeans she was wearing inside it. Huw shook his head. "That'd better not be the Jehovah's Witnesses; they're going to think we've got a really weird family life."
"You say that like it's a bad thing-oh hello there!" Her voice rose to a happy chirp as Huw looked round. "Come in, be you welcome! He's in the kitchen, over there, Huw-"
Making a snap decision, Huw palmed the corkscrew and picked up the bottle. Turning, he paused in the doorway. "Sigfrid? What are you doing here?"
Sigfrid-lanky, tall, with a mustache that resembled a corpulent caterpillar asleep on his upper lip-unslung his shoulder bag and grinned. "Eh, his lordship the major sent me. Said you needed spare hands for some kind of project?"
"Well." Huw raised the bottle. "It's about time. Do you know if he was sending anyone else?"
"No." Sigfrid looked uncertain. "At least, he didn't tell me."
"Right." He turned to Elena: "Can you phone Yul? Tell him to pick up food for four this time." Back to Sigfrid. "So what have you been doing in the meantime?"
"Oh, you know." Sigfrid shrugged his jacket back from his shoulders and let it slide to the floor. "I was with his lordship of Markford's household when the pretender went on his rampage? So I had a busy couple of weeks. First a siege, then an evacuation through the backwoods, then lots of running around, hurry up and wait, until they stuck me in Castle Hjorth with the guards detachment."
"But you're here now." Huw nodded to himself. "Want to fetch some glasses?" Elena was on her mobile phone. "Top cupboard, to the left of the kitchen sink." Sig was never the scholarly sort, but he was bright enough to learn. "Let me fill you in on what we're trying to achieve here."
"Surely. The major said something about trying to find other worlds. Does that mean?…"
Huw nodded. "Yes. And tomorrow we're going to try to open up another one." He pulled the cork free with a pop. "We live in interesting times!"
On their first day in the enemy capital, the reconnaissance team checked into their hotel and commenced operations. Disguised as a family of Dutch tourists, Sir Gunnar yen Hjorth-Hjalmar, accompanied by his married younger cousin Beatrice and her infant son (the elder was back at the family estate, in the care of his nurse), purchased day passes on the double-decker tourist busses that rumbled incessantly through the boulevards and avenues of the city. Sitting on the top deck with a camcorder glued to his right eye, his "wife" gaping in bucolic awe at the colonnaded classical buildings and low office blocks to either side, Gunnar found it amusing to contemplate the police and security checkpoints that swarmed defensively around the federal buildings. They call this security? he asked himself ironically. Hmm. Target-rich environment, maybe.
"What's that?" asked Beatrice, pointing at the Washington Monument. She spoke hochsprache, the better to aid the disguise; a strawberry blonde with a two-year-old on her hip wasn't anybody's idea of an Al Qaida terrorist. She hadn't spent much time over in the Anglischprache world, beyond the minimum required for the corvée, and her emulation of an awestruck tourist was entirely genuine-because Niejwein, the largest city with which she was familiar, was less than a tenth the size of downtown Washington, D.C.
"It is a memorial to their founding king-emperor, the duke who led their armies during their rebellion against the rightful king over the water." Gunnar sniffed. "He refused to take the throne, but their aristocrats honor him to this day."
"How very stupid of him," Beatrice agreed. "Was he mad?"
"I don't know." Gunnar zoomed in on the monument, then panned slowly sideways to take in the neoclassical palaces of bureaucracy to either side of the wide plaza and the shallow pool. Eight and nine stories high, none of them exceeded the height of the spire. Interesting, he noted. "Mark a waypoint, please."
Beatrice fumbled obediently in her handbag, then produced a tissue and wiped little Anders's nose. Anders bubbled sleepily as his mother wadded up the tissue with mild distaste and stuffed it back in her bag, along with the GPS machine. "He will need cleaning soon," she told Gunnar.
"It cannot be helped. A single man, making notes and filming, would attract attention."
"Of course, cousin. But we will need to stop the carriage to do so."
Gunnar panned back across the Mall, slowly scanning a frontage of museum buildings. "There are public toilets in all the museums and public buildings here, well-kept and as luxurious as any palace back home."
"Good." She glanced behind her. "These buildings. The people own them?"
"Only indirectly. Just as they rebelled against their king and replaced him with none, so they tried to abolish their aristocracy. It grew back, of course, but not in the same image-so there is a ruling class here, but its members are not named count this or lord that."
"How very confusing! How is one to recognize a superior?…"
"You don't." Gunnar ignored her evident discomfort. "It's very confusing at first. But eventually you learn to spot the signs. Their wealth, for one thing. And the way the laws that leash the ordinary people slip past them. They don't carry arms; other people carry arms for them, it's a sign of how rich and powerful this empire has become." Too many words, he thought. The words wouldn't stop coming; relief at being here, at not worrying about being murdered by the bitch-queen back home, had loosened his tongue.