"I'm tempted to just make a tiny spaceship and circumnavigate the globe real quick."

"If you could do that with a modicum of stealth, it might well give us some useful information. Would that be possible?"

"I'm not sure what kind of detection I'm trying to operate around, here. It can be quiet, it can't be invisible but it can be small, it can be immune to a bunch of sensors I bet you don't have, and I got absolutely nothing on any magical divination that may be flying around."

"If you can evade curious people with telescopes, you've defeated our most advanced detection technology and magic."

"Like I said, can't be invisible. If somebody aims a telescope right at me... Well, I guess I could make myself cloud cover as I go, if spontaneous clouds won't alarm anybody."

"That would probably alarm people less than an unknown flying object, yes. Strange meterological phenomena are less interesting than hyper-advanced rockets."

"All right. But this castle does some kind of weird multiple presence thing?" He gestures at the window.

"And this door will still be here in, say, an hour?"

"The door has been here for a decade and will continue to be here unless I tell it not to continue. I would very much like it to continue existing, therefore it will be here when you return."

The trip is about as uneventful as covert space reconnissance of an unknown planet can be. As expected, the planet is a mirrored earth - except for China and Australia, which appear to have become an enormous volcanic archipelago with highly unusual weather-patterns.

"Yeah, China - whence the language you thought sounded churchy and one of the ones you couldn't identify - and also Australia - have both been replaced with a lot of volcanic islands."

"Where did the church language come from?"

"It's hundreds of years old. Quite possibly as old as the Imperial Line. I would say 'Victoria' but that would be unhelpful."

"In my world Chinese in all its dialects is extremely old, but I'm not sure we're going to get anything much out of this kind of spotty view of history - no offense, I'm sure I wouldn't know much world history either in a world with no Internet and no casual intercontinental travel."

"History is not my field, no." Lioncourt smiles. "I would expect you might have better luck in one of the scientific libraries in Victoria."

"Quite possibly. But even down two wings and a tail I don't know if I could conduct myself inconspicuously."

"You might have to enlist me to borrow a card catalog."

"Yeah."

"At least looking like a child tends to make me beneath suspicion." She smiles lopsidedly.

"If it had no upsides at all that would just be unfair."