“Now,” she continues, “say that your group is able to secure a majority of seats in the lower house, and at the same time gain influence over a large number of those in the House of Lords.”
She looks at me, waiting.
“You would control the government,” I reply.
“Completely?”
“Not completely.” By that point in history, much of the power of the British Empire was held by Parliament, but it didn’t control everything.
“If you wanted it all, what would you need?” she asks
“You’d need to control both Parliament and the Crown.”
“Exactly.”
It takes me a second, but then I get it. “The Home Party,” I say.
The Home Party has controlled the empire without a break since right after Queen Victoria’s death. While other political parties do exist, none ever gain enough seats to make a dent in the Home Party’s rule.
Marie smiles again. “Then you have your answer.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Don’t sit down,” Marie tells me as I enter my study room.
We have just started the fifth week of my individual training, but this is the first time I’ve arrived to find no books on the table. Instead, there are two leather, over-the-shoulder satchels.
When I reach the table, Marie pulls one of the bags forward and says, “This is a standard mission kit.”
My skin tingles with excitement. We’ve discussed the kits before, but this is the first I’ve seen one in person.
“Open it,” she tells me.
Like a child on his birthday, I throw open the flap.
“Now carefully remove the contents and lay them on the table,” she instructs.
A sweater is on top, brown and nothing fancy. It’s designed, I know, to blend in with whatever time period this kit has been prepared to visit. There are other clothes, too — a shirt, a pair of pants, and one pair each of underwear and socks. Marie has told me that at most a kit will contain two sets of clothes. If in the very unlikely event a trip would last long enough to need more, items could be locally obtained. Next comes a plastic food box.
“What does that tell you?” she asks as I open the box.
Inside is enough room for several prepackaged meals, but it contains only one and a couple energy squares. “This isn’t for a long trip,” I say.
“And?”
Her question trips me up for a moment, until I realize the answer is the box itself. “And the trip can’t be going very far back, thirty years at most, I would think.” Any earlier and the box might draw unwanted attention.
She nods. “Keep going.”
I set the box down and pull out a notebook with attached pen, a cloth pouch that holds the medical kit, and a second pouch that contains several tools — knife, wrench, small screwdrivers, and a measuring tape.
The final item is inside a padded sleeve. I remove it from the box and pull off the sleeve.
A Chaser device.
When Marie showed me one at the beginning of training, I had no idea how to even turn it on. But in the weeks since, she’s taught me the meaning of every button and dial, gone over the steps for various operations, and tested me repeatedly until I knew it all by heart. I look at it now with educated eyes but it still holds so much wonder.
“This is yours,” she says.
“Mine?” I say, still looking at it.
“It’s the same one as before, but is keyed to you. Can you open it, please?”
After I unlock the latch, she takes it back and turns the power on. Once the screen comes to life, she navigates through several displays until she comes to one with the heading TRAINEE SETTINGS. There, she touches a button labeled SLAVE. Immediately a box pops up, with the word AUTHORIZATION at the top, an empty entry line in the middle, and a row of numbers, 0–9, at the bottom. She quickly taps in seven numbers, and as the last is entered, the authorization box is replaced by another with the word LINKING glowing in the middle.
“Right now it’s trying to link with my Chaser.”
She sets it on the table and removes her device from the other satchel. When she turns it on, the word LINKING on mine begins to pulse. After about five seconds, the word is replaced by READY.
“Repack the bag,” she tells me. “All but this.” She touches the Chaser.
I carefully put the items back inside.
When I’m done, she says, “Strap it on. You may need some of it on the trip.”
My hands begin to shake. Trip? Now?
She pulls the strap of her satchel over her shoulder, and after I did the same, she hands me my Chaser. “Technically, the two of us could jump with just mine if you held on to me tight, but you need to get used to what it feels like to be alone. After training is done, you’ll always leave from the departure hall. But we don’t have to worry about that at the moment. All set?”
I nod, though how can one ever be ready for this moment?
“We won’t be going far. Five years only. So the most you may feel is a mild headache, and likely not even that.” She pauses. “What is the mission?”
“To observe and record,” I say automatically. It’s a phrase that has been drilled into us during both mental and physical training. It’s also printed on a banner in the dining hall and a plaque above my bed. As Sir Gregory has stressed countless times, “It’s not just what we do. It’s all we do.”
“All right. Then I guess we should go.”
She pushes the GO button on her Chaser, and—
A dark gray mist surrounds me, but it’s there only long enough for me to register it before a different kind of darkness replaces it. A starry, moonless night.
I gasp. I don’t know if we’ve really gone back in time, but we have gone someplace other than my training room.
“Steady,” Marie says from beside me. “On first arrival, what do you do?”
On first what? My head aches with dull pain.
“Denny, take a breath and tell me what you’re supposed to do.”
I take three, not one, each slower and deeper than the last. Finally, the pain fades enough for me to answer. “Check your surroundings.”
“Then do it.”
I scan the area and see we’re in what appears to be a deserted alley.
Our location and time of day fits standard Rewinder procedures. First arrivals should occur at an out-of-the-way spot in the dead of night, suggested time between three and four a.m. This rule allows a Rewinder to get the lay of the land before daylight hours.
My Chaser displays a local time of 3:21 a.m. on May 16, 2009. The actual location is given as a string of numbers that can only be deciphered using the device’s calculator program, so I ask, “Where are we?”
“Chicago,” she says.
The Midlands, I think. Though I flew over this part of the continent on the way to New York, I have never set foot in it before. But the same could be said for anywhere that’s not New Cardiff.
“Come on,” she says, and then leads me to where the alley dumps onto a road lined with parked carriages.
I’m not an expert on vehicles, but none looks like any of the newer models I’ve seen advertisements for. The buildings on either side of the street are apartments, some with businesses on the ground floor. It could be 2009, and it could be 2014. Nothing stands out. There is one fact, though, I can’t ignore. When we left my training room it was morning, and here it’s middle of the night. Given that there’s only an hour’s time difference between New York and Chicago — if this is indeed Chicago — then I’ve either been unconscious for several hours or we’ve really traveled through time.
Marie turns down the sidewalk and I quickly step after her to catch up.
“I assume you saw the date?” she asks after a few minutes.