Secondhand Sorcery

Coming back to the States after deployment was always jarring for Keisha; there were a lot of abrupt shifts, not just in location and time zones but in expectations for behavior—how alert she had to be, and how free she was to move, act, and speak. It was like suddenly downshifting two gears while merging with traffic. The shift in tempo caught her flat-footed.

The lurch was worse after a long deployment. In this case, she’d been gone a bit more than two months, which wasn’t bad at all. Normally this was the point where she’d come back to her apartment, make sure there wasn’t any mold growing or holes in the walls, and crash to sleep for an unspecified number of hours. When she woke up and felt a bit more human she would check at the post office for her mail, and catch up with her sister’s family.

This time was different. She’d been stateside for most of two days now and spent the whole time in limbo, recovering from jet lag at a hotel in Baltimore. Both room and flight were at government expense, and she was treated politely—in fact, with a deference that bordered on annoying—but it was clear that she wasn’t at liberty, and that she hadn’t been charged with anything. Everybody she asked told her they didn’t know what was going on, and eventually she stopped asking.

Now she was in a place called Pickering Beach, a “town” composed of a single short row of houses along the shore just east of Dover, watching the waves churn the muddy waters of the Delaware Bay from somebody’s nicely furnished beach house. They’d driven her out here, offered her coffee from the kitchen—which she accepted—and retreated discreetly to the foyer, leaving her to sit on the couch by the window and wonder what the hell was going on.

Four days ago she’d parted ways with the Marshall children in a park in Homs, Syria, leaving behind a burning oil refinery, a dead comrade, and a heap of local casualties. They’d recalled her, Colonel Hampton, and Doctor Gus back to the US in a hurry twenty hours later, for reasons not given. She’d parted with the others at the airport, and not heard from them since. What was this about? Project Belvedere, and her undisclosed familiar? The Marshall defection? Ethan’s death? Some other trouble the children had gotten into since? She hadn’t seen anything on the news yet, and she’d been checking. Of course, it could be some other thing she hadn’t even heard of. Not much could surprise her, at this point.

“I’m sorry, I’ve kept you waiting, haven’t I?”

Keisha twisted around and saw a petite, elderly white lady walk into the room. She had a navy blue cardigan, a string of pearls around her neck, glasses with rectangular lenses, and absolutely immaculate hair and makeup. The woman could have been the model for a retirement home ad. Keisha stood up to shake the offered hand, feeling grubby and wrung-out. “Catherine Arnold,” the lady said with a smile. “You can call me Kitty. Everyone does.”

“Keisha Graham, Numenate. What can I do for you, Ms. Kitty?”

“A pleasure to meet you. And you can sit down and relax. This isn’t an interrogation.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Keisha said, sitting but not relaxing. “If you don’t mind my asking, why am I here? I haven’t been told anything.”

“Just a friendly talk. Informal, off the record.”

“Yes, ma’am. And what’s your position? Are you with the Numenate, or the FBI, or who?” She didn’t look it.

For a second, the old lady’s face took on a surprised, almost offended expression. Then she smiled again. “You don’t follow the news much, do you, dear?”

“I’ve been trying to catch up, but generally? That’d be a no, ma’am. I never have the time. Sorry. Should I recognize you?”

Kitty Arnold sat down on the recliner opposite the couch. “I’m the senior Senator from this state, and chair of the Armed Services Committee.”

“Oh. Yeah, I definitely don’t follow politics.” Just an informal, off-the-record talk with a senator, no big deal …

“That’s probably for the best. I sometimes wish I didn’t have to either. This is my home, by the way, so do make yourself comfortable.”

“It seems nice. Very quiet.”

“At this time of year, it is. In May and June the horseshoe crabs will come ashore to lay, and there will be tourists tramping up and down the beach being a nuisance. My grandchildren usually come by as well, running in and out of the house with beach muck still on their feet. It takes a week to get the house clean after they leave.” But she laughed as she said it. “I understand you were in the Marines?”

“Yes, ma’am. VRIL specialist.”

“And emissor, of course,” Kitty Arnold added for her. “We were Navy, my late husband and I. He was a submarine officer, so I hardly saw him for months running. I got an office job at the base just to keep myself busy. Secretary work, you understand, nothing terribly exciting. Typing up reports, transcribing dispatches. The kind of thing you would give to a young lady in the mid-Sixties. Still, I had a pretty high clearance after a while. Eventually they decided they might as well recruit me for Naval Intelligence.”

Here Kitty paused to look at her, like she was checking to see if Keisha was following along. “I can see how that would happen,” she offered carefully, and it seemed to satisfy the senator, who nodded and went on with her story.

“Even then, I spent a few years doing nothing especially important. Oh, I thought it was thrilling at first, but I was young and bored. Really I was only gossiping with minor embassy officials at parties, fishing for information they probably could have gotten another way. I might have confirmed a useful tidbit or two.”

Keisha nodded, wondering where she was going with this.

“It was around this time of year, maybe a little later, in 1969, when they called me into an office and told me I’d been selected for Project Chariot.”

This would have been a prime opportunity for a spit-take, if she hadn’t finished her coffee already. It would have freed her of the obligation to find something to say. For maybe five seconds she sat there, while Senator Kitty Arnold beamed serenely, struggling for an appropriate response. Who the hell disclosed something like that, to somebody they’d just met? “I didn’t know Chariot was still running in ‘69,” she said at last.

“I was one of the later inductees. It was running out of steam, and not very popular by then. There’d been a lot of bad press, as you’ve probably heard. Most of the services were moving their budget over to the new VRILs—the way of the future, they said. Much more precise. Or defensive clairvoyance training, that was a big one too. The Reds had just developed their counterpart to Chariot, you know. Mechtatel'nost', they called it.” She pronounced the Russian word very carefully, with a prim face. It put Keisha in mind of the old ladies in her Grandmama’s hearts circle, going over the latest news from town. “So we were all in a fever to build Stillwater, tearing up half the capital to do it, laying copper wire and relays everywhere.”

“Except for you.”

“Except for me, and a handful of other new recruits. They said there was still need for offensive capability. I was inducted, trained … and completed the training. Are you hungry, by the way? I have cookies.”

“No, thank you.”

“Let me know if you change your mind. I think I’ll get myself some tea.” She got up and went into the kitchen. The men in suits who had brought Keisha in were nowhere in sight now. They might not be cleared for what their boss had just said. She went on from the kitchen, “I’m sure you don’t want the details, but I did see some service in the field. Not the same as yours, but service all the same. So you’ll forgive an old lady for being long-winded, won’t you? Now that you know the point of all this.”

Keisha wasn’t sure if the woman actually expected an answer; the question hung in the air while she busied herself with an electric kettle. A minute later she was back, cradling the steaming cup and saucer in her thin hands. It was some kind of herb tea, and smelled minty. She held it up to her nose and let the steam fog her glasses while she savored the aroma. And waited.

Chariot—the precursor program to modern familiars—was ancient history, but still classified. As far as Keisha knew, six of its members were known to the public, and all six were posthumous, like Grigoriy Tzepora. Men (and one woman) who’d created such a storm of emotion that they themselves were killed. One of those men had died in the US, either shutting down or instigating a riot on the Berkeley campus. Details unclear. Classified.

That was one of the reasons Chariot was quietly phased out, and everybody switched over to VRILs until a decent interval had passed and the Chariot protocols, matured and refined by a decade of clandestine research, produced the first modern emissants in the early Eighties. It was accepted that an unknown but uncomfortably large number of Chariot alumni were still living in retirement, technically capable of starting a lethal mass frenzy on a moment’s notice if for some reason they wanted to.

And now this grandmotherly woman—this actual grandmother, in fact, and a sitting United States senator, apparently with a long career behind her—had casually admitted to being one of them. There were a number of questions Keisha could have asked, starting with whether Kitty Arnold had found her old talents useful in a political capacity since the days of her official retirement. It seemed better to sit on those questions.

At last the Senator decided to speak for herself. “Times have changed, of course. We’re a long way from the days when a major weapons development program could be named for a tarot card. But not everything has changed. My loyalty hasn’t.”

“Loyalty to what, ma’am?”

“Loyalty to comrades. New and old alike. I know, I know, you don’t know me. And of course, I’m a politician, as they say—when I’m not a ‘distinguished elder stateswoman.’ I don’t think I’ll get called that again until they print my obituary. I’ve been a senator for thirteen years now, and before that I was a representative at the state level, a few miles from here. But you can’t ever really retire from the service, can you? Well, you wouldn’t know; you’re still young. You’ll have to take my word for it.”

“No, I can believe that. I can’t leave my talents behind now that I’ve got them, any more than you can. I’ll be an emissor until the day I die.”

“Exactly! But even more than that … haven’t you ever been told that you’re in the best years of your life?”

“Not often. And I’d hate to think it was true.” She thought of Ty’s last text, and the layer of dust she would have to wipe off her kitchen counter when she got back.

“Oh, but it is! You don’t think it at the time. You don’t appreciate it. It’s stressful, and you get no sleep, and they want this, and they want that, and you can’t talk about it to anyone, and it all seems so unfair. And yet, looking back, I sometimes feel that my Chariot years were the last years of my real, waking life. Everything since? My years of so-called public service? Just a dream. Anyone else could do this just as well. I’m playing a role, and nothing more. Which isn’t to say it’s not important, you understand. I’ve made a difference. But, all the same … “ She sighed. “It does depress me, sometimes, to know that I can’t ever go back.”

Keisha stared. Go back to Chariot work? She didn’t know this woman, but it didn’t seem to be an act. “Maybe I’ll feel the same way someday, if I’m lucky enough.”

“If you survive, you mean. That is always the question. It’s a more dangerous battlefield for you than it was for me. That makes it all the more important that you have someone watching your back, doesn’t it?”

“It would be nice, ma’am. But the kind of work I do—“

“It was a metaphor,” the old lady huffed, before smiling again. “I mean to say that, whatever has happened in my life over the past thirty years, I will always be … oh, what do they call you? A ‘paraphysical operative,’ isn’t it?”

“PPO, for short. Or just ‘operative.’”

“We need to change that,” she declared. “We have soldiers, and sailors, and airmen, and marines, and … operatives? It sounds like something from algebra, for heaven’s sake. But never mind that. Whatever you’re called, you’re a valuable, an indispensable part of this country’s defenses. I need you to know that I haven’t forgotten that.”

“Understood, ma’am, and thank you. So … what comes next?”

“Oh, the usual, I’m sure. The media will continue making noise until something else comes along. Thankfully this all ties into the broader war in Turkey, and nobody wants to hear about that anymore. We can bury it quickly.”

“That wasn’t the impression I got, ma’am.”

Kitty Arnold daintily squeezed out her teabag with a spoon, and set it down on the saucer. “You haven’t worked in politics, dear. Nobody relevant comes up for re-election this year, and November 2014 might as well be the end of time where the news cycle is concerned. There will be ten more crises at a minimum by then. More importantly, this is purely a matter of prestige; it won’t hit anybody in the pocket or get anyone here physically hurt. So it won’t move the needle far. Tempest in a teacup.” She hoisted hers with a smile, then looked at Keisha’s face. “Is something wrong?”

“I suppose I’m not used to thinking like a—senator, ma’am.”

“I see. You think I’m cynical. I’m not; quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve been working for the public, in a variety of roles, for long enough to assess quickly what actually matters, and what doesn’t. I’d never get anything done if I hadn’t learned that little trick. And this?” She made ripping-up motions with her hands, and scattered the imaginary shreds. “It doesn’t. Our country is safe. Our citizens are safe. We will have continued freedom to act overseas, so our interests there will be safe. What else is there?”

“I’m concerned for some of the people I left behind in Turkey.”

“The children, you mean? Yes, that does sound horrible. I’d hate to think of any of my grandchildren in that kind of situation. How old are they?”

She should have been briefed on this. Probably had been, and knew their names, ages, and abilities perfectly well. This was just the politician at work, expressing polite interest, and Keisha was too tired to indulge her. “The youngest is twelve. I’m not going to be able to go back, am I?”

“Not right away, I don’t think. I take it you’ve grown attached.”

“I don’t like leaving teammates behind in the field. They fought for us.”

“Yes, I see what you mean.” She sipped her tea and looked out the window with a distant look on her face, as if she were really thinking hard about the question. “Well, nothing comes to mind at the moment. Barring a brilliant plan or extraordinary circumstances, you’re going to have to stay in the country for at least a month—“

“A month!” Would any of them be alive in a month, unsupervised?

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Just for decorum. I know, I know, it’s obnoxious. Limited mobility is the price you pay while you wade through scandal. Even if the public will never know your name or your face, the people who do know are going to want to keep very close tabs on you for a while.”

This was probably an accurate assessment, given this lady’s experience. Keisha only wished it didn’t make her sound like a grounded teenager. Or that Kitty Arnold wasn’t sufficiently accustomed to scandal to think of it like a bit of bad weather. “What exactly are you offering me, ma’am?” she asked, before realizing the question might be considered rude, then realizing she wasn’t in a mood to care.

“This isn’t a shady backroom, Ms. Graham. It’s a beach house in Delaware. I’m not offering any kind of quid pro quo. Everything here is above board as far as I’m concerned, and I wouldn’t hesitate to describe everything we’ve said or will say—except for my membership in Chariot, of course—to the Ethics people. But just so I understand your perspective: what would you ask me for, if it were?”

“I want to be back where I can keep an eye on Nadia, personally. But … if this were a backroom deal, I don’t think I could accept it at the wrong price. I don’t think she would forgive me for that, if she knew. And I don’t know that I could forgive myself, either.” Belatedly, she added, “I’m sorry for implying this was improper, ma’am. I’m just very tired, and stressed out.”

Kitty Arnold laughed the apology away. She had a very warm, pleasant laugh. “Oh, I understand. You don’t know me. But I’d be interested in meeting … Nadia, you called her? In person. She must be quite a character.”

“Oh, she is.” Keisha didn’t want to talk about her with this woman. “So, if this isn’t anything improper—“

“At some point in the next couple of days I’ll be having another meeting like this with Art Dawes.” She name-dropped the president like he was her neighbor. But then, he’d been a senator before. “I’ll want to know who it is we’re talking about, and what she wants.”

“You’re going to be talking about me with the president?”

“He might want to speak with you himself, if he finds the time. Why does this surprise you? He’s our commander-in-chief. Shouldn’t he know something about who’s controlling one of our best and most powerful weapons systems?”

Keisha shook her head. “This isn’t just about that.”

The Senator pursed her lips. “Ms. Graham, you aren’t some sergeant who drives a tank for a living. You have power, power which cannot be separated from you. That is a fact we have to deal with, and we will. I’d appreciate it if you’d kindly come to terms with that, and stop implying that there is something indecorous about our living in the real world.”

“I’m still just a warrant officer!”

“Yes, and I’m a humble public servant and doting grandmother. Stop being silly. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’—except that they aren’t, or we could select our leaders by lottery, men being conveniently interchangeable—and people like you and me were very deliberately made not equal. And you are less equal than me. Chariot officers all do much the same thing. We couldn’t make another Adesina if we tried.”

“I know I’m unique, but that shouldn’t privilege me.”

“But it does, because it has to. The world has changed, dear, for better or worse. Let the schoolchildren talk about the three branches and checks and balances—as if any of that matters anymore. I’m in the business of keeping this country safe and stable, and to an ever-increasing extent that is going to mean keeping people like you safe and stable, able and willing to do your job, your goals as precisely aligned with those of the United States as we are able to arrange. And I will not be ashamed of that!”

“I wasn’t … “ The old lady waited, but Keisha couldn’t come up with an ending for the sentence.

“I did my last mission in Laos. October, 1975. We’d already chased the filthy Reds out of Vietnam, but some miserable cult version of their deranged ideology was taking root next door. They sent me in with a big silly peasant farmer’s hat, in a traditional outfit, but I was scared silly; they’d have shot me in the head if anybody bothered to look close. It was just luck that nobody did, and I was able to … well, let’s not go into the details. The People’s Revolutionary Movement died a very unpleasant death, and I went home.

“Nobody knew what I’d done, or ever could. Matt was already gone by then, off on the tour he’d never come back from. In the meantime, I couldn’t even talk to a psychiatrist, unless he was one of the handful working for the government with special clearance. And those were booked for months. Nobody on the street had any notion that anybody had done anything at all. The commies went under in another third-rate Asian country, as everyone was used to third-rate commies doing by then, and it barely made the news.”

She got up from her chair, leaving the empty teacup behind, and stood by the window. “As far as my family, and Matt’s, knew, I’d been off doing courier work with classified dispatches that had to be moved by hand. Nobody knew why I was so moody. They thought I was pregnant again—which I had been, as it happened, but I’d lost it—or had the holiday blues. They told me to pull it together; my crying was frightening the children.

“By the time I got the news about Matt, the following January, I was a wreck, and hearing about him made it worse. I simply melted down, and they hauled me in in a hurry for fear I would go off, like a bomb, and start a massacre. Mommy spent several months having a nice long talk with a special doctor, as hysterical women did in those days. At the end of it they decided on my retirement, but as a kind of consolation prize they recommended me for our city council vacancy. They felt I needed a regular outlet for my energies outside the home.”

She turned around at the last words, raising an eyebrow at Keisha, who had nothing to say. “The other councilmen—and they were all men—were very kind. I’d been recommended as a sailor’s widow who’d been very helpful to the Navy. They told me they would show me the ropes, and help me get used to my new duties before they saddled my pretty little head with any real responsibility. I managed not to laugh. And that’s been the story of my life ever since.”

Keisha allowed a decent moment of silence to pass before getting up and standing beside her at the window. “So, what are you saying, ma’am? That the work of the elected government doesn’t matter anymore?”

“Of course it matters. Everything everyone does matters, in some sense. We just aren’t the whole story anymore. The rules were written for a world where power was a matter of population, where you need a certain number of people on your side to do anything, and the only way to get those people on your side was to persuade. If you didn’t want to persuade, too bad! Violence only worked with numbers, too. Big battalions and regiments of men with guns. Not anymore.”

“I get what you’re saying,” Keisha said. “I’ve heard other people saying similar things.” Including a dead traitor. “I’m just not sure I’m ready to accept that yet.”

“Do you know who else wasn’t ready to accept it? The Soviets. No foreign bourgeois Western individualism! Marxist-Leninist thought wasn’t going to accept soldiers who could infect crowds with potentially reactionary ideas. They thought they could use good proletarian armies with VRILs instead, and only a few carefully vetted people like you, most of them made from politically safe lunatics. You know how that turned out. A long string of humiliating losses, before the few men who really had power used it.

“And that’s the choice we face today, Ms. Graham. Do we create more demons for ourselves, and run the risk of them taking over or breaking loose? Or do we refrain, and simply wait for the enemy’s demons to overwhelm us instead? They will, you know. Moscow is making up for lost time. We don’t have the option of getting off the train; it’s not slowing down. The fall would break our necks. One way or another, we’re heading into the future.”

Keisha stood next to her, watching the waves thrashing the dirty water against the cold shore. “But where’s the train headed? That’s what I’d like to know.”

Senator Kitty Arnold laughed again. “Wouldn’t we all, dear. Wouldn’t we all.”