Undercover Mission
Being a time detective isn’t always about catching bad
guys. Sometimes it requires finding and
recovering the bodies of our travelling researchers. How hard can that be? When the body you are trying to recover has
been dead for three centuries, and local authorities may burn you as a witch if
you explain where you came from, and why, it adds some… complexity.
Jane called me to her office at 7:30 PM, well past normal
business hours. “Ryan, we have a
problem. One of our researchers seems to
have died in 1692 Salem Village. We need
you to either retrieve or burn the body.”
“Why? He’s dead. What can he tell them? Or is he carrying some modern technology that
might contaminate their time?” I was
having a nice pale ale with a very pretty redhead when Jane called me in; I was
not sympathetic to her plight.
“Depending on how he died, there might be a coroner’s
inquest. If they examine the body
closely, there is a problem. Dr.
Marchetti had a quadruple bypass a few years ago, and an appendectomy. The coroner or any curious members of the
inquest jury, is going to look at that roadmap of scars, and ask, ‘How did guy
survive this much cutting and recover?’”
“How do we know he’s dead?”
“We have started putting a tracking device on our
researchers for occasions like this.”
“So, how does GPS work 300 years before the satellites go
into orbit?”
“Langley usually uses GPS for their deep cover agents, but
somehow the technical boys were persuaded by some really lame excuse that we
needed a non-GPS solution. Maybe they
were told this guy was going into concrete ISIS bunkers deep underground. What Dr. Marchetti has transmits his pulse, a
compass direction, and a range, based on how much the signal has degraded on
the way to the relay box.”
“And where is this relay box?”
“At the drop point.
It encodes the signal in neutrinos to send to our time. We thought of just putting a display on the
box and watching it visually, but that seemed like a wonderful opportunity to
blow some 17th century mind.”
“So what do we know? “
“Dr. Marchetti’s pulse rose fairly rapidly to 140, then
suddenly went to zero, somewhere three miles from the drop 32 degrees north of
magnetic north. Magnetic north was eight
degrees west of true north in 1692, not 14 degrees west like today.”
“So….” Trying to recall my map of Salem Village in my mind,
“Marchetti is the other side of the center of town. How old is he?”
“Fifty-two. Old
enough that a heart attack is a likely possibility. We also considered the possibility that he
ended up in a fatal fight. Adrenalin
drives up his pulse fast and then a fatal cardiac artery cut causes sudden
shutdown.
“If he has died a violent death, an inquest is a
certainty. If it is a heart attack or
some other apparently natural cause, an inquest is unlikely. He died this afternoon. They are having a warm August. He will likely be in the ground within a day
or two. Embalming is a recent idea, and
they don’t want to handle a decomposing body.”
“So my mission?”
“Verify his state; recover the transmitter which is secured to
his groin, and make sure he is buried.
If there is an inquest, make sure that his body is misplaced or burned
first. His family knows only that his
work is slightly risky. They will be
told it is a closed casket because of the severity of the injuries. If you can identify where he is buried, we
can try and exhume him in our time.”
“So, should I leave now?
When it’s almost dark?”
“We’ll drop you a bit early in the evening so you have
enough light to get into town. We also
need to do so to keep you from landing in the Pyrenees; our rotational position
is a few hours out of sync with 1692 right now.”
“Should I go home and pack my bag?”
“No, we have one packed.
Yes, we know you have taken that cute little pistol the last few times,
which we ignored on the X-rays. But we
have a nearly era-appropriate repeater for you.”
I snickered. “A Colt
revolver?”
“No. It’s a flintlock
pepperbox. Six barrels that rotate and
fire one at a time. I’m told that it is
about 100 years too early, but at least it isn’t obvious witchcraft. They have been known to fire all six barrels
at once, by accident. As dangerous to
the shooter as the target. Go outside
for a few minutes to get used to it.”
She reached into her right desk drawer, and handed me the
pepperbox, with the aplomb of someone handing me a rattlesnake. I knew Jane hated guns, or at least expected
one to climb out of the drawer and shoot her someday.
“So, why are you issuing me a not quite era-appropriate
sidearm for this trip?”
“Because you may run into significant local official
resistance. They are doing their
job. Please do not kill anyone; threats,
and even a couple shots in the air should be enough. Sovereign immunity does not apply more than a
century before the federal government is created, and I’m not sure that they
find would your argument particularly believable. And Massachusetts doesn’t have insane asylums
until a century later.” Jane may not
like guns, but she sure knows a lot about the period that we are studying.
I went outside to a makeshift gun range behind the
building. The Sun was already setting,
but I fired a shot, rotated the barrels, and fired another shot. It wasn’t very accurate compared to the
flintlock pistols I have previously been issued, but six shots in an era of
single shot firearms made me feel pretty safe, and not much inferior to my
Walther until the first magazine change.
I spent a couple minutes figuring out how to reload it. Not something to do in a hurry, or a dark
alley, even if one existed in 1692 Salem Village.
A few minutes later, I was squatting in 1692; hiding my
atomic bomb goggles under the leaves in front of my hatchet marked tree. I’ll let the official report tell the rest of
the story.
To: Inspector General
From: Ryan Martin
Subject: Recovery of Dr. Simon Marchetti’s Remains
Inquiries in Salem Village about a stranger in town soon
informed me that he had been seen chopping firewood for the Widow Peabody, who
lives north and east of the Meeting House.
“How Christian for a stranger to take an interest in helping a widow in
need of a man’s help,” one woman told me.
I soon found the Widow Peabody’s farm. Approaching the front door, I heard a moaning
sound. Concerned that Dr. Marchetti’s
death might be at the hands of someone committing another violent act, I cocked
my pepperbox, and entered the front door (no one seems to lock doors
here). The moaning noise seemed to be
diminishing but I followed it to a door off the main room. Opening the door quickly, I found Dr.
Marchetti quite clearly alive under the comforter with a pretty brunette in his
arms. He looked at me with considerable
irritation.
“A little privacy, please.”
I withdrew from the room and uncocked my pepperbox since it
was clear that there was no risk of harm.
A few minutes later, Dr. Marchetti came out of the bedroom.
“Sorry, Dr, Marchetti, your pulse stopped yesterday, and I
was sent to retrieve your body.”
“Understood. In
yesterday’s… passion, the sending unit ended up in the deepest part of the
bedding. I just noticed it when I
started dressing.”
“Is this the level of detailed
research you were doing?”
“I was surveying how consistently late 17th
century Puritan women conformed to the dominant sexual morality.” Then he laughed. “Actually, I started out doing some of the
physically demanding chores that Patience needed done. After chopping an enormous amount of firewood, we went through a fair amount of
ale. Patience lost her husband to a
fever two years ago, and has been very lonely ever since. One thing led to another. They may be Puritans, but they are still
people like us, with emotional and sexual needs that sometimes lead them to
sin.”
“What shall I say?”
“Tell them the truth.
‘While measuring to what extent Puritan women conformed to the cultural
and sexual norms of their society, Dr. Marchetti’s sending unit became
separated from his body. He is well, and
will return from his research mission at the planned time.’”
I returned to the dropoff place in the forest, verified that
Dr. Marchetti’s sending unit was showing a pulse and returned home.
Dr. Marchetti is a researcher determined to get to the bottom of the matter under investigation, and deserves commendation!
ReplyDeleteI'm still wondering how the pepperbox would have fared if it had been needed, though.
Well done, Clayton!
Pepperboxes, I think, were like motorcycles, I think. If you are so unafraid of death that you ride one, you are not afraid of anything.
ReplyDeleteForensic medical journals at the end of the 19th century are still giving examples of criminal use.
‘How did guy survive this much cutting and recover?’
ReplyDeleteBecause he was tougher than a two-dollar steak and lucky to boot. (The man in question is middle-aged, and unfit I guess, but he could have been a real hard case when young.)
There is a case from the Civil War of a man who was shot in the abdomen, and written off as doomed by the Army surgeons. He had some medical training himself, and with the aid of a very brave nurse, he opened his own abdomen, extracted the bullet, stitched up his damaged bowel, then closed and stitched the abdomen. IIRC, he passed out several times, but the nurse roused him with smelling salts. He survived - the story is in his memoirs.
If he survived, lots of other men survived comparable injuries.
In any case, surface scars only indicate the person was cut on, not necessarily cut into.
As to the pepperbox - almost certainly dangerously unreliable, and poses a major risk of anachronism. I would take a two-barrel derringer pistol (or two - if the agent needs more than four shots, he's screwed up badly).
Rich: Good point. Revising to clarify risk is if a doctor opens up the body and sees how deep.
ReplyDelete