scandalized.
“How long has that been true?” I asked, shocked.
He ran his hands through his short hair a few times roughly, and then returned to sit by us again. “Almost from the word go,” he confessed, pained. “General Schneider was excited for about thirty minutes and then he and Dr. Rudge wanted immediate gratification. They wanted her to start manifesting stealth bombers, or teleport invisibly to Syria, that sort of thing.”
This was the first time he had mentioned names. Until then, Tristan had maintained impeccable secrecy concerning his chain of command. Either he really was at the end of his rope, or else he thought he could gain Erszebet’s trust by personalizing the discussion.
If so, it wasn’t working. “And instead you had me turning sweaters inside out?” demanded Erszebet in disgust. “And you wonder why they do not value me? You are more of an idiot even than I thought.”
“Every task I gave you was a beta test for something else that would have obvious military use. They want you to turn a person inside out. Obviously I have to test that on a sweater and not a person, or even on a lab rat. And of course I’ll fulfill their agenda, but ideally I’d like to exceed it. I’ve got more scruples than they do, so I’d like to present you to them—brand you, so to speak—as being useful for something other than turning a person inside out.”
“Such as?”
“Turning lead into gold would be pretty awesome,” he said, sounding wistful.
She shook her head.
“Why don’t you suggest something, then,” he said to her. “Given that you can only work your magic inside the ODEC, you’re a little limited, you realize that?”
“She can turn rats into newts,” I reminded him.
“So can your average kids’-birthday-party magician.”
“Not for real. Anyhow, what about a person?” I said. “What if I let her turn me into a newt?”
“I would not turn a person inside out, probably,” Erszebet informed Tristan. “That would be tasteless. You Americans are so tasteless.”
“Turn me into a newt,” I insisted. “The bosses will like that.”
And that, as I recall, was the moment when Tristan’s phone began playing the “Liberty Bell March.”
He pulled it out of his pocket and double-taked, then used his finger to scroll down. “Snap inspection!” he announced, looking up to make eye contact with me and Erszebet. “Shine your shoes and polish your belt buckles!”
Diachronicle
DAY 304
In which General Schneider is impressed
NO MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES later we were joined by a broad-chested gentleman in uniform, trailed by a younger man, similarly attired, whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to open doors for, and to hold the hat of, the boss.
At the time, I knew nothing of uniforms, rank, or insignia. A few years later, having spent a lot of time around active-duty military, I’d have been able to recognize this man as a brigadier general (one star) and his aide as a lieutenant colonel. Both were wearing dress uniforms—the military-world equivalent of business suits. Conveniently, they were wearing name plates on their right breast pockets, and so I knew that their last names were Schneider and Ramirez even before Tristan made introductions, which he did with even more than his accustomed level of military crispness.
General Schneider moved about the room in an asymmetrical gait, shaking first my hand, then Erszebet’s. His manner was extraordinarily grim and formal. He paid only cursory attention to me. Then his gaze settled on Erszebet, taking her in head to foot, and for a fleeting moment he looked impressed. But then he frowned and turned his attention to Tristan.
“I assume that’s the Asset,” he said, pointing.
“Pointing is very rude,” said Erszebet.
Tristan hastily said, “General Schneider, yes. Miss Karpathy is the one I told you about.”
“This must be the one who wishes me to turn people inside out,” said Erszebet, looking away with wounded dignity. “Very tasteless.”
Schneider gave her a strange look, but then returned his attention to Tristan, who said quickly, “You came at a great time, sir. We were just in the middle of a very productive conversation.”
“You said a couple of weeks, Major Lyons. In my dictionary, ‘a couple’ means ‘two.’ It has been two.”
“General Schneider—”
“You’re not doing what we discussed, Major Lyons. You’re going off script. You’re giving us a science project.”
“Sir, I explained in my report—” Tristan began, but Erszebet talked over him:
“My powers are so little to a man who requires an assistant just to walk into a room?”
“She was just about to turn me into a newt,” I offered urgently.
General Schneider gave me a look and then turned condescendingly to her. “Yeah, I’ve been hearing about the newt thing all week. That might have been impressive a thousand years ago—”
“I was born in 1832, I was not alive a thousand years ago,” she retorted. “If you cannot grasp simple arithmetic, then you will never have any idea what Mr. Tristan Lyons is trying to accomplish here.”
Schneider continued speaking over her: “Those kinds of tricks are nothing in a world with drones, cruise missiles, and assault rifles. And according to Major Lyons’s reports, it takes you all day to pull it off. By the time you get that spell half out of your mouth, I can rack a round into my sidearm and put it between your eyes.”
“Do you need your minion to help you with that too?” she asked.
He looked back over his shoulder at Lieutenant Colonel Ramirez. “Have a look around the facility,” he said. Ramirez departed wordlessly.
“I liked the Maxes better,” Erszebet announced.
“Do you get my point?” General Schneider demanded. “If you want the taxpayers of the United States to go on subsidizing your beauty treatments, you had better impress me. Now. Today. Right now.”
“Very well, then,” purred Erszebet, so immediately cheerful that my skin prickled. I glanced at Tristan; he was looking at her keenly, and not in the usual slack-jawed way that men would look at such a woman.
Erszebet stood and gestured to the open door of the ODEC, smiling like a 1950s housewife on a television advertisement. “If you would like to step inside, General, I will demonstrate the kind of magic you desire. In fact I would be delighted to give you what you’re asking for.”
“General—” said Tristan tentatively.
“Good,” said General Schneider, all too obviously charmed by Erszebet’s physical endowments. I got the clear sense that in his world he dealt with a lot of submissive women who thought of nothing but pleasing him. “That’s what I was after, Major Lyons. Why did it take me coming all the way up here to get that kind of compliance? Where’s the whatever-it-is I have to wear?”
“In that corner,” I said, gesturing toward the rack of snowmobile suits.
Tristan respectfully asked to speak in private with Schneider. They stepped into the server room for a moment, and I could hear Tristan’s voice trying to explain something and the general’s interrupting him. The door opened suddenly and Schneider limped back in, rolling his eyes. I handed him the snowsuit, and then gestured with my head for Erszebet to step aside with me. She joined me by the console panel and—an occasional habit of hers, like a nervous tic—reached into her bag and