Empire Games Series, Book 1(110)
“The DNA results won’t be ready for another day,” said Miss Thorold.
“I don’t need them.” The commissioner, Mrs. Burgeson, stepped out from behind her desk and slowly approached, staring at Rita. “I spent the eleventh of May 1994 in a bed in the Obstetrics Department at Mass General.” Her eyes were very dark: pupils dilated, staring at some inner vista. “And you’re a world-walker.”
Rita stepped out from behind Olga’s wheelchair. “Yeah, right,” she said, crossing her arms defensively. The evil queen looked as if she’d been punched in the gut. You’re not getting to me that easily, Rita thought silently, even though she felt shivery, gripped by a nameless emotion that she wished she could banish. “Miss Thorold here says you’ve got a message for me.”
“Yes, I do.” Mrs. Burgeson swallowed. For a few seconds she looked as if she was choking, but the moment passed. She turned and walked slowly back behind her desk, as if ten years had landed on her shoulders in an instant. “Come here and sit down. Both of you.”
Rita wheeled Olga up to the front of the desk, then perched on the edge of a spindly visitor’s chair that looked like it belonged in a museum. Mrs. Burgeson, she couldn’t help noticing, had a very modern laptop occupying pride of place on her tooled leather desktop, leaving the hulking CRT terminal and its oddly unrecognizable keyboard to sulk in a corner.
“Rita—” Mrs. Burgeson stopped, then shook her head as some internal censor brought her tongue up short. “I’m sorry, there’s so much to say and so little time. I wish we had longer—”
“Why? So you could explain why you dumped me?” Rita asked, keeping her tone light, even though her words filled her with nausea. “Don’t worry, there’s nothing to talk about. I get that you didn’t want me: I’m chill; I’ve got a real family back home who love me anyway.”
Miss Thorold glared at her: if looks could kill, Rita would have been incinerated on the spot. “Why don’t we stick to business?” Olga suggested grimly.
Mrs. Burgeson, for her part, looked uncertain. She spoke, haltingly: “Listen, Rita, I know you’ve little reason to trust me, but it was more complicated than that. And I was younger than you are now. If you ever want, want to—” She stopped and dabbed ineffectually at her eyes. “I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath. “Stick to business.” Another deep breath. “I want you to take a sealed letter to your boss.” She picked up a plain white envelope, utterly prosaic, that had been sitting on top of an out-tray. She pushed it across the desk toward Rita. “Also, this.” A plastic screw-top sample tube, with a swab in it. “Please witness.”
Rita watched as the evil queen uncapped the tube, removed the swab, took the end of it into her mouth, then placed it back in the tube and sealed it. “This will serve to confirm my identity,” she said, placing it on top of the letter. She took a deep breath. “Olga, the contact protocol…?”
“I don’t have it with me. I’ll see she has it before she leaves,” said Miss Thorold. She added, for Rita’s benefit: “It’s a set of times and GPS coordinates you can use to visit this world safely. The locations will be secured at this end and I’ll be available to meet you—no risk of getting run over by streetcars, and no handcuffs.”
The evil queen leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, and for a moment Rita felt a stab of apprehension. “Last time I spoke to them, they tried to murder me,” she remarked to nobody in particular. She opened her eyes and looked at Rita, her face composed and clear of emotion. “I want you to understand this very clearly, Rita. The history of dealings between the Clan and the US government is toxic. You must be clear with your superiors: we are not the Clan. The Clan tore itself apart after the Family Trade people stuck their oar into Gruinmarkt politics by nuking the Hjalmar Palace—which they did before 7/16. I’m not going to get into tit for tat or recriminations here. What happened, happened. The world-walkers here in the Commonwealth are refugees. We earn our keep as far as the Commonwealth government is concerned, but we don’t set policy.”
Olga cleared her throat.
“We mostly don’t set policy,” Mrs. Burgeson amended. “But here’s the thing. The very first time the United States made contact with another time line, it ended in a nuclear holocaust. I want you to tell your superiors that it had better not happen again. My superior—the First Man, the head of state—is of the opinion that the least bad strategy to pursue is one called Mutually Assured Destruction. It’s an old cold-war trade-off: both sides know that if they launch a preemptive attack they will destroy their enemy, but only at the cost of being destroyed themselves. The New American Commonwealth has an arsenal containing more than nine thousand hydrogen bombs, because we are locked in a cold-war standoff with the French Empire. More than a thousand of those weapons”—her voice wavered—“are targeted on US cities right now. God knows we don’t want to use them—but if we are attacked, retaliation is certain to follow.”
“You’re—” Rita boggled at her. “That’s insane!”
“Tell me about it.” Mrs. Burgeson smiled weakly. “Which is why that letter is so important. It’s an invitation to discuss the ground rules for diplomatic engagement, so we can find a way to step back from the brink. Before some idiot on either side starts World War Four by accident.”