The logistics of the whole thing made me uneasy. I didn't know what year the party took place, or where exactly to find the tea, or what kind of guards stood watch over said tea. I didn't even know what quantity of tea would be sufficient to make history. It seemed Old Ben planned to let the Redcoats take care of my execution. My first impulse: Pretend to do the job long enough to escape back to the TARDIS, then get the hell out of there.

When Mr. Franklin opened the cell, I figured I could run for it, but Eve had told me we had lots of guards, so instead asked Mr. Penny Saved if he could promise life in prison for my wife instead of execution.

He shocked me by opening her cell and letting her out.

"Are you sure that's a good idea? The American people probably want to see the president's killer face justice. Unless you throw some poor slob in here as a scapegoat..."

"She would never receive a fair trial, as she has no peers of her kind. Moreover, she claims to be your wife. From what I can gather from the circumstantial evidence, it was the Rolling Ironside that killed him, and you were attempting to stop it. You are both innocent until proven guilty, just as you suggest."

I could have damned Eve with a more detailed explanation, but I realized I didn't have a chance against a redcoat without her.

"Is the American public going to believe the story about the...ironsides?"

"They should. The infernal machines slaughtered everyone in Richmond."

I sighed. I appeared to be up to my asshole in proverbial alligators. "Richmond? So where am I?"

"Rhode Island, a few miles outside of Providence."

Not wanting to look like a totally ignorant spy, despite my failings at geography, I didn't ask for a map or an explanation, just nodded my head.

"I'm sending you to meet with with Mr. Revere in Boston. If you need help finding him, inquire at the local Lodge." He gave Washington's ring back to me.

I would have asked where to find the friggin' lodge, but figured I'd end back up in the cell and maybe get a rope necklace with the deal. "How long will this take?"

"Oh?" he paused. "It's a sixty mile journey, so likely a couple days, at least, if you leave now. I'll show you to the cab."

Sixty miles in a cab, I thought. I pictured a yellow taxi, though seriously doubting I'd get one in this backwards era.

"By the way, I will be sending my own spies to check on your progress. If you abandon your duty, I can and will have you executed for treason as originally planned. I don't take kindly to liars."

"Okay..." I swallowed hard. "No...pressure then."

I faced a prison larger than I imagined, convoluted as a hospital. I wondered if it actually stood in modern Rhode Island or if it burned down, or got created by all the Dalek things. I hadn't watched COPS enough to figure even that one out.

Here and there, rough cowboy types glowered in their cells, but the ones that scared me the most looked clean cut and dressed like country doctors and bankers. They jeered and yelled and shouted accusations, some spat on me.

We checked out with a guard at a desk somewhere at the end (a guard with Mason ring, no less), then Ben was chatted with a man in a suit next to a horse and buggy.

I looked around, but couldn't find anything to help me identify the area.

Ben motioned me over. "Hurry. Get in."

"That's the cab?" I asked.

"What were you expecting?" He opened the door, letting me in.

I caught a flash of a gold Freemasonry ring on the driver's hand.

I seated myself on a cushioned bench, silently watching the `nun' climbing in across from me.

The door closed, the vehicle rocking and clopping and banging around. "Please tell me Dalek 48 killed the president on his own."

Eve looked down. "I didn't fire the laser."

"Did you bring the TARDIS here?"

"No."

"You just told them to attack while I slept."

My wife flushed red. "No. I...I just got up, and, I kind of wanted to see what the man looked like, what all the trouble was about, so I told the Dalek it was okay to go there. The man...got upset, and scared...and..." She frowned. "Dalek 48 took over from there."

Not much for me to say to that.

We bumped along in silence for a long time. I don't know how many miles we rode, exactly. Outside the window, it looked like some huge Pioneer Village festival. I think I caught sight of a Sears and JcPenny's as pitiful western facades with pitiful selection, from what I could see from the dirty windows. I don't know if it even related to the famous guys.

Our ride suddenly stopped, and we got out.

Not a harbor. I found myself standing on a road along a row of plantations, black people harvesting tobacco and corn, supervised by by some unpleasant thugs with with whips.

Not overly surprised. I remembered that Washington owned slaves. I briefly considered a little underground railroading, but besides being weaker than the slave drivers, I didn't want to mess up history more, and see the inside of that jail again.

I did the next best thing I could think of, giving the workers a friendly wave. A slave laughed and pointed at me, he and his buddies had a good laugh about my spacesuit. I amused them with a dance.

The slave master, who hadn't been looking at me, cracked the whip down on them. I gave them an apologetic shrug.

A dappled mare came pulling a wooden cart full of hay up to me.

Its driver, a short, squatty man with no neck and an impossibly dark tan, looked silly in his coat and knickerbockers. His stretched out facial features seemed to squash together as he stared at me.

Next to him sat a woman in a black dress, black hat, and a black veil. It seemed a little too hot for that outfit, but the woman didn't remove it.

"Uh hi!" I said. "Are you taking me to Boston?"

"You're a year early to the party," the guy with the potato shaped head growled. "Want to throw some spices and silks into the harbor?"

I felt like I had just been slapped in the face. "What?"

"The Destruction of the Tea in Boston. You're early. It's in December."

"Next year," the woman chimed in. "But you can still take out the Dartmouth a month before that...If you're into that sort of thing."

"Preferably with explosives! Can you imagine hot tea in the harbor! Oh, and the dead redcoats! Glorious!"

"Any more `glorious' than a Dalek blowing away the first president of the United States?"

"Ah." The man frowned. "Probably not."

I sat down on a hay bale and sighed. "Dammit!" I don't want to hang around this place for a whole year!"

"Who says you have to?"

"What, you got a time machine or something?"

The veil turned my way. "Perhaps. What happened to yours? Nice outfit, by the way. Very Skaro."

"You stick out like a sore thumb!"

"My TARDIS is in the Oval Office with the dead president. And my...daughter is in there. More's the trouble, because I just told Ben Franklin I'd dump the tea."

"I always thought the Doctor would have better disguises in there."

"Oh. The phone booth, you mean? The Daleks took that one. I've got the older model." I shook my head. "And that's probably why Richmond got obliterated." I did a double take. "Why do you know the Doctor?"

The woman pulled back her veil, revealing a green reptile face. "We're old friends."

My experience with dinosaurs left me with a terror of all things green. I jumped back in surprise, falling off the hay bale. Eve drew a flintlock out of her robe and growled.

The reptile woman raised her hands in surrender. "Whoa! Easy there! We mean you no harm!"

I nodded to my wife, and she stowed the weapon.

"Sorry. We've had some...disagreements with dinosaurs."

"I'm a Silurian. I'm not any more a dinosaur than you are an ape."

I frowned. "...I probably created you from messing up time."

"I somehow doubt that, for I existed before the Doctor died."

"How do you know I wasn't there...then?"

She stared. "I...suppose it could be a possibility, but I still think you inflate your own importance."

"Hmm. Guess you got a point." Feeling safer around the reptile now, I crept closer. "How did you get here anyway? You never answered my question about the time machine."

"We have a spaceship. It takes us to certain points of history. It's not as advanced as a TARDIS."

"I'm guessing that means you can't go back and fix all the ways I messed up time."

The Silurian gave me an apologetic shrug.

She had horns, but her teeth looked human, her green facial features somewhat eye pleasing. "Whatever you are, you look pretty darn cool."

That earned me an eye roll. "Thank you, I guess."

My wife took this opportunity to remove her habit.

The reptile smiled. "It's a shame to hear about the Doctor."

"Did you find if he was truly dead or not?"

"Sadly, he is. We checked."

"You didn't meet any Daleks along the way? You'd think they'd come to check too."

Her scaly eyebrows knitted. "We must have just missed them."

"Guess that explains why you don't have the TARDIS. Where's the body?"

"The Ood took it from that primitive excuse for a hospital."

"And what are the Ood?"

"Humanlike creatures, lots of tentacles, carry around orbs?"

I knew exactly what she described, and it scared me. "Shit! Those things are real?"

"I'm real, aren't I?" The woman put her veil back on.

"Those things have been stalking me. They're everywhere. They even watched me having—" Accidental overshare. I stopped myself. "Everything." I scowled. "Not sure why they weren't around when the Dalek killed the president."

"Difficult to say. But they're not angelic messengers of death. Dear, could you put your habit back on? There are people watching."

I sighed, staring glumly at a hay bale.

"Problem?"

"I have to spend an entire year in this place just so I can have access to the TARDIS and get everyone out of here."

"Does your...daughter know how to operate the TARDIS?"

"Yeah?"

"Does she know where you're going?"

"Um...to Boston harbor, I guess. At least I hope. Ben should tell her all about it if she ever meets him."

"Very well, then!"

The big man hopped into the driver's seat.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I'm Madame Vastra," said the reptile. "And he's Strax."

Strax snapped the whip, and the wagon rumbled down the road.

The lizard lady pulled something out of her purse, sticking it under her veil. "Jenny, the TARDIS is in General Washington's secret cabin. Our friend's daughter is inside. Tell her to meet us at Boston Harbor. Old Griffin's Wharf." She paused. "Yes, I know. They're not actually going to dump the tea." Another pause. "It's a crime scene. We can't just walk in there. We were hoping that you could check and see if the girl is still there." After listening a bit more, the veil turned my way. "What's your daughter's name?"

"Riversong."

That seemed to startle her. "The Riversong?"

I shrugged. "I...don't think the name is very common, but I could be wrong?"

"Change of plans," she said into the phone, or whatever it was. "It's R.S. Just leave a message with the coordinates I'm sending. She'll know what to do." She put the device away. "I thought Riversong had other parents."

"She does," I said. "I adopted her because they're apparently dead."

"And you didn't let that stop you." A smirk appeared beneath the veil. "Brave boy."

"He's a man," said Eve.

The reptile woman's eyes rolled behind the veil.

"And why am I brave, exactly? What did she do, kill someone?"

"It's just that Riversong has many enemies, that's all."

"I think you're putting too much confidence in a child."

The woman chuckled. "You make it sound like she were a helpless little girl."

I stared. "She's not?" I stammered. "I mean, she's clever, I'll give you that, but I, we, had to save her from getting her brains sucked out by the Daleks."

"She's brilliant. She'll find us."

"What other brilliant things has she done?"

The reptile told me a few stories about how Riversong helped the Doctor save the universe.

"One problem with that. It sounds like everything you've described involves her being an adult when she's doing those things."

Vastra shrugged. "She's very precocious."

"I sure as hell hope so."

We rode on.

"Is there any way we can go back in time and stop Washington from getting shot?"

"We certainly need to try. Regardless of what we think about American history, the universe is completely out of balance. London is experiencing a negative butterfly effect from the results of the president's death. In fact, we've heard messages from the future telling us that the Doctor dies a lot earlier than he's supposed to if nothing is done."

"Will you help me fix it?"

She sighed. "We don't have a choice, do we?"

"Some things are better left to the pros!" Strax muttered.

Vastra glanced into the cart.

My wife took this opportunity to snuggle up to me and give me kisses. I really wasn't into the whole sexy nun shtick, so I pushed her aside. "Not now." Maybe not ever, I thought.

We didn't ride all the way to Boston on a hay wagon. About a mile down the road, we turned onto someone's farm property and parked in front of a barn.

"What's this place?"

"It belongs to a friend of the Sons of Liberty." The big guy took the horses into a pen, pumped some well water for them to drink, threw the barn doors open.

"What, are we going to hide in there?"

He replied by pushing something on his wrist.

A giant green UFO materialized, filling most the floor space.

A hatch opened, the man wordlessly leading us inside.

The layout reminded me oddly of the inside of the interior of the bottle from I Dream of Jeannie, the colors blue and green, the main room basically a table inside a ring of couch seats. A couple hatchways lead out, one apparently the cockpit.

We took our seats, and the big guy stomped up front to pilot. Everything vibrated and hummed.

As we took off, Madame Vastra removed her veil and activated a holographic map on the table.

"So where's the baked beans and cream pies?" I joked.

"Perhaps later." She said it with a complete lack of mirth. A green claw pointed to a spot near the harbor, along a wharf. "If Jenny has left her message as planned, Riversong should be awaiting us here."

She pushed another spot on the table, and images of the world outside appeared on the walls, trees rushing past, old style houses, and finally boats.

We dropped between a couple freighters, kind of surreal because we had to wait until no one was looking and march down a ramp attached to an invisible ship to the dock proper.

We quickly marched across the wharf, looking around.

I'd never seen giant wooden ships with sails except in a movie theater. The things stood tall as buildings, reminding me of pictures I've seen of the Mayflower, or wealthy merchant ships you see getting robbed in pirate movies.

We stood along sort of a boardwalk lined with rows of old world shops of a decidedly nautical theme. The fish market positively sprawled.

Lucky for us, our parking spot stood across from a windowless portion of a tavern.

As we strolled up and down the planks, staring at the various wares, our pilot stopped in at the pub.

I took a glance inside the place and found a guy that looked like a beer label. I figured the man's name had to be Sam. I almost fell over laughing when he held out a tankard in my direction.

If I had known better, I would have asked Mr. Adams about the tea, but such is the fault of public school education.

Not wanting to sit around and drink until December, I left Strax at the bar.

Hearing a high pitched shriek, I turned and saw a redcoat dragging a little kicking and screaming figure to the top of a ship's boarding ramp. They disappeared to somewhere above decks.

"Riversong!" I yelled.

Maybe the girl wasn't so brilliant, after all.