"—you want sixty years of Others' time in the future, okay. That's probably easier to do than now while pretending I don't exist."

"Yeah, now would be an unnecessary risk, and we can afford to be slow."

He nods. "So, supposing I accept this and you find a way to get me back... I go to Toronto and Montreal and how do you contact me there?"

"Telephone or telegram. I'll write down how to contact me and you can tell me where to reach you when I have something."

"Sounds good."

"Are you going to want to stay here for a bit while you get more used to the century? You'd be well advised to keep your head down in Jacob's Bell, but you're welcome to stay with us if you want to."

"...thank you. Yeah, I think so, and at least get some clothes."

"Clothes, colloquialisms, and maybe even a halfway plausible backstory. That last one might be pushing it."

"Colloquialisms... are going to be difficult. The backstory can remain mysterious, I think."

"You'll pick up language over time. Blending in completely is a lost cause, but you don't need to be perfect."

"I can be eccentric, sure," he shrugs.

"You'll pass well enough as merely that, probably. For now, back in and we can worry about lying low for a bit?

A few days of Sadde getting acclimated go by uneventfully, that being most of the point. It's not hard to come up with excuses for "Sam" to talk to random people, get used to avoiding anachronisms, and make some progress toward talking like a local. Malcolm does advise Sadde to avoid practitioners, but that's hardly a setback.

Yeah. And eventually she should probably go, yes?

Whenever he's more or less acclimated– wait.

"Sam?"

"Yes?"

"You're dressed as a girl. Why are you dressed as a girl."

Sadde's appearance is very convincing, too, which doesn't make it less...everything.

"My gender identity is not entirely fixed and static," she explains.

"Those words made sense individually. How does it add up to you dressing as a girl?

There are some who might even see it as a lie."

"I mean, they can feel free to see it as a lie that I dress however I like. It so happens that about fifty percent of the time I prefer dressing as a girl and being called 'she' pronouns and wearing makeup."

"Okay. Um, you'd probably already know about the honesty-related risks. You in particular have to worry about being too memorable. Can you pass for less, deviant, if you try to look the same around the same people?"

She slowly mouths the word "deviant." "I'm not sure I can keep track, and I think part of the reason I'm going elsewhere is exactly so I can be memorable without that being so problematic."

"Definitely. It's just that safety is relative; this is going to cut into your admittedly very large margin of error."

"—say, what's California like nowadays?"

"An American could probably give you a real answer to that one. Most of what reaches international news about California is that some of the States' most controversial war measures center on there."

"Ah. I see. When I'm from, California—and particularly the Bay Area—has become sort of a... cultural centre for, what did you call us, 'deviants.' Although Canada as a whole is pretty okay with all sorts of deviancy."