Chapter 1

9 January 2017
Washington DC

Snow swirled down outside the bulletproof glass of the Oval Office as the President watched for the brief time he had between meetings. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead, then turned as the door opened to admit the people he had scheduled for his next meeting. He nodded and waved them to seats. “Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Lowe. What do you have for me today?”

Dr. Morris Carpenter, the Presidential Science Advisor, was still vigorous at seventy-six, though the bright blue eyes looked out of a face that grew craggier year by year. “A preliminary estimate of what happened in this year's Shift, sir. Minor in one way, but...”

“Simultaneous power outages across the world does not strike me as 'minor', Morrie. What happened?”

“Well, it was a minor -change-, Mr. President. But it had major ramifications. As we suspected from what we were told four years ago, electrical conductivity in metals is slowly decreasing, and now that we have the ability to measure it, the mana permeability of crystals is increasing. The problem is that a small change in conductivity has major effects on the electrical grid due to increased resistive losses, and the same small change in conductor and semiconductor behavior has a major effect on computer performance. To make a long story short, the grid losses surged at the same moment that a lot of the computer control was disrupted, and...” He flipped his hands up. “Poof. Lights out. Fortunately, we were expecting something of the sort, and got the grid back up quickly enough. Nobody in the US or Canada was out of power for more than a half-hour. And we should be good for another year before it happens again.”

Lowe nodded. “On the downside, sooner or later it'll cross a critical threshhold and we won't get things back up. By that time, we'd best have the parallel systems in place.”

The President nodded. “Any change in the time frame for that?”

Carpenter shrugged. “Still not easy to tell if it's a linear curve, exponential, or asymptotic, sir. But we should have a minimum of twelve years yet, and probably more like twenty.”

Boehner nodded. “Use the low end for any press releases you want to make. We have to keep people moving on this, and we don't want them thinking we have more time than we might. The last thing we need is for the power to die in mid-winter and not have a backup ready to go.”

Carpenter nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Now, how about some good news? How are the steam vehicles coming?”

Carpenter smiled. “Very well, actually. We have the first working models using magic heat sources ready to go. All we need to do now is to figure out a way to do recharging easily and we're all set on the transportation front. Once we realized that standard steam turbines would work, it was easy to adapt existing designs to use an alternate heat source. The only tricky part was doing the instrumentation without electrical power...”

* * * *

New York, New York

The occupant and owner of the penthouse office and living quarters sighed as he surveyed the computer screens that monitored his financial empire. The so-called Convergence was causing problems in several ways, not the least of which was the sudden change in usable technology which had caught all of them flat-footed. Upstart companies were successfully competing for Federal contracts, and established firms were having trouble keeping up. Too many of his underlings were unable to show the needed flexibility to take advantage of the current chaos.

He let himself smile as the hidden camera in the access elevator showed one of the exceptions boarding. Julian Valezquez had become one of his most trusted aides since the changes had begun, not least because of his continuing suspicion of Loki – something he understood completely.

The elevator to his penthouse suite chimed for attention as it arrived on his floor, and he pressed the button that released the door. Julian stepped out, and gave him a quick bow. “We have the preliminary report on the last election, sir. Something very odd seems to be going on.”

“Five of my most reliable votes were unexpectedly defeated, Julian. Four Congressmen and a Senator. All from districts that should have been completely safe. And while I did not think Ms. Clinton would win – there is a limit to what reasonable adjustment can do in the face of public opinion – she should not have lost several of the states that she did.” The old man's voice showed no hint of emotion. “I would say that 'odd' is a fair description.”

Julian nodded. “I had the information double-checked, against what we arranged to happen and what our private polls suggested would happen without interference. It took this long because we wanted to limit the number of people who had access, and because we wanted to do as much of the work as possible by hand. The wolf who runs NSA is far too suspicious, and her people have shown far too much ability to break into -any- computer net they want to.”

“That is not a new development. What did you find out?”

“Two things. We arranged to have a few of the voting machines checked by one of our operatives with... special abilities. All of them, she said, showed residual traces of protective magic.”

“Protective, how?”

Julian pursed his lips. 'That would relate to the second item, sir. The reported and official results from the elections were statistically identical to the -real- polls, as near as we can determine. Somehow the system refused to count extra votes, altered votes, or even illegal voters. And...”

The old man cleared his throat at the extended pause. “And what, Julian?”

“One of the officials in Chicago noticed something when he put the desired results into the computers to count up the final tally. No matter what he typed in, the numbers that came up on the screen were the numbers that had been reported to him, not the numbers that he had given it. And after three tries, the computer accepted those numbers without his authorization to do so.”

The old man got up from his seat and walked over to the windows looking south over Manhattan. His aide waited patiently for instructions. At length, he turned his back on the view and returned to his desk. “Was there any indication as to who might have done this?”

“Only one, sir. There were a number of veiled warnings given to various election officials between Thanksgiving and Christmas in districts where your preferred candidates narrowly won. They were generally delivered by employees of the FBI, but the original orders came from Washington and were not apparently given by the Director of the FBI, but came from other officials.”

“Not the President?”

“No sir. Not that we can trace, at least. From the intelligence community.”

“The NSA?”

“Possibly, sir. We have, so far, been unable to find out. We are still rebuilding our sources in the higher levels of those agencies. The attack on the White House four years ago and the subsequent unexpected changes due to the Act of Succession removed some of our best sources from access, and it has been very difficult to get new people into the current administration.”

The old man raised a rather sardonic eyebrow. “Money no longer works? Or blackmail?”

Julian shook his head. “It still works, sir. But everyone we have recruited either does not get promoted to positions of access, or finds themselves shunted out of critical areas into useless bureaucracies. Again, statistically speaking, this seems... unlikely to be coincidence.”

“No, it doesn't, does it?” He stared out over the city for some minutes, while Valezquez waited patiently. “Boehner spends more time with that wolf than with any other two of his subordinates. Whoever is helping them, she seems to be the most likely link. Perhaps that link should be... severed.”

Julian nodded. “As you say, sir. Shall I arrange for an unfortunate accident?”

“Make sure it cannot be traced.”

“Of course, sir.” He turned at the old man's dismissal and left to return to his own office to start making the arrangements..

* * * *

Francois de Revol was not a happy man. “Six years!” He threw the folder at the hapless doctor, who fumbled the catch and nearly scattered its contents all over the ornate office. “Six years and you didn't find out a single useful thing about him? Four years since this Change thing happened, and you didn't even realize what he was!?”

“Monsieur, there is no proof that--”

“He vanished from a guarded suite, in a secured compound, without even leaving tracks in the snow, you idiot! How could he have done that without some kind of magic? Mon Dieu, even his name... even his name...” De Revol sighed and sat down again, his anger dissipating as rapidly as it had built up. “Oh, yes. You remember the stories they told us as children, of Reynard? We had the Fox himself, the original of the stories, and he tricked us just as surely as he tricked the farmers in those tales.” He scowled, his mood turning thunderous again. “But next time we will know him for what he is, and he shall not take us by surprise a second time. You still have the tissue samples, Doctor?”

“Of course, sir. Surprisingly easy to maintain those samples in vitro.” He paused. “It probably has something to do with his being an Immortal if that's the case, I would think.”

“Continue your work, Ducos. The Americans have a project of this sort going on as well. We have not been able to get hold of their results to date, but it is known that they have a number of genetics experts working on it. Perhaps you should try something along those lines yourself.”

“Are they indeed? Then perhaps we should, yes. I will need to recruit someone with that specialty, sir.”

“Get me a list of names, then. I shall find you a genetics expert that we can trust.”

* * * *

Reynard took a week to get to the Italian border, leaving a string of irate farmers and pillaged chicken coops in his wake. He was quite happy to be a fox again for the first time since the reign of Tiberius, and he wasn't really in a hurry. The longer he spent not registering on mortal databases, the smaller the chance that 'Richilieu' would be able to find him again when he did reappear. He crossed the border within sight of the guard station, amusing some travellers waiting in line by pouncing around in the snow and then trotting off in triumph with a mouse in his jaws and his brush held high.

Another week brought him to the outskirts of Turin, where he shifted back to a human form and retrieved a safety deposit key from a well-concealed panel in the back of a mailbox. A quick stop at the appropriate bank provided him with cash, keys, and identification under the name of James Foxx. A morning's train ride from Turin deposited him in Zurich, where identification, a key, and possession of an account number allowed him access to yet another safe deposit box. This one contained yet another set of documents, and an ancient copper pendant, Celtic knotwork in a pattern reminiscent of a fox head. He smiled as he withdrew it from the box and fastened it around his neck. <And now I am ready for Monsieur de Revol, whether or not he wishes to match wits with me again. I shall have to come up with a suitable revenge. And since he was so insistent on discovering the secret of my eternal youth, that will be the bait in the trap. But first I shall find his weaknesses.>

* * * *

The Potomac crossing always made Whitford nervous. There were any number of routes that could be taken from Jandi's Fairfax home to the White House, but there were only four bridges across the river, and all of the routes had to use one of them. Anyone seriously interested in doing something unpleasant to the changeling Director of the NSA could wait along one of those four routes and be rewarded by a target opportunity sooner or later. He sighed as he watched their surroundings as they approached the Arlington Memorial Bridge, today's chosen route.

He would have been even more nervous if he had been aware of the nondescript man who was taking reports from various people who had been paid to note when certain vehicles passed their locations. They had been told that they were gathering data for a traffic study. What they were not aware of, of course, was that their employer was only interested in one of the dozen vehicles each had been told to watch for.

* * * *

A small fox scratched a hole into the side of a hill outside Padirac, France. An hour of industrious digging, aided by a judicious bit of spellwork, found him inside the entrance to a cave that had as yet remained undiscovered by the local archeologists, at which point the little quadrupedal fox shifted to the form of a bipedal Changeling fox and summoned a pale yellowish light.

Reynard had kept an eye on the ongoing discoveries of the ancient painted caves ever since the caverns at Altamira had been opened in 1880. They had, for the most part, been treated carefully, but even though the old spells were probably still active even in Lascaux and Chauvet, he had no wish to try to use them in a cave open to the public.

He made his way deeper into the cavern, stopping to admire ancient paintings every so often, until he came to the central gallery. Here, a series of animals had been drawn on the walls in loving detail – bison, mammoth, horses, deer, elk, even a woolly rhinoceros. There were still blank spaces, though, and the fox-morph settled himself down to paint a picture of Monsieur de Revol in careful detail, using natural pigments and light from a small stone lamp burning the appropriate animal fat... in this case, obtained via a rather distasteful visit to a cosmetic surgery establishment.

It took some time before he was satisfied, and his lamp was running low on fuel by the time he was finished, but at length he was able to extinguish the lamp, and cast the spell. The painted rock wall in front of him faded into mist, and he felt his awareness flashing over the landscape to the location of his chosen prey, to watch and study his habits.