Anvil of Fate

Chapter 10

Nordhausen was reading from a file he had called up from the RAM Bank. It was a description of the invading Muslim army as it advanced into Christian lands.

“That’s from Southey's Roderick,” he finished. “It’s referring to the defeat of the Visigoths on the Rio Barbate in 711, but it gives you an idea of the nature of the foe. Years later Abdul Rahman’s army was the equal of this force, in fact it was actually much larger. It took the western passes over the Pyrenees, and auxiliary incursions came by sea to Narbonne, then moved along the Mediterranean coast to Avignon, pushing inland through the provinces of Provence and Burgundy. This was no mere raid, as some historians carp. Abdul Rahman was intent on eliminating Odo as a threat on his northern border, and he was coming for plunder and land, all in the name of Allah. ”

“And Odo ran straight to Charles after his crushing defeat,” said Paul.

They were studying a map of the campaign now. “That secondary thrust pushed up through Lyon, Chalons and all the way to Dijon,” said Robert. “Cities were laid siege and stormed for pillage, notably Bordeaux, where Odo was defeated. The Mozarabic Chronicle of 754 states that they burned churches, abbeys, palaces, forts and any other places of importance. The whole countryside was scoured for loot, and as Abdul Rahman’s army approached Tours he had his eye on the Abbey at St. Martin as well.”

“Yes, and they were taking their time, burdened by ever larger hauls of plunder that the soldiery claimed as compensation for their service.”

“Without doubt,” said the professor.

“So how do we make this intervention?” asked Paul. “It’s clear that we need to be focusing on the Arab camp, wherever that may be. Information on the actual battlefield is sketchy. Many feel it occurred between two rivers south of Tours. That’s where it was in the simulation I played, and if I were to deploy a largely infantry force there, I’d put my main body close to the confluence, on any high, wooded ground I could find. That way the two rivers would protect my flanks. Get a Google terrain map of that area. Let’s see what we find.”

They called up the data, perusing the map until Paul laid his finger on a spot near the meeting place of the rivers. “This looks interesting,” he said. “The village of Cenon… Some accounts indicate there was marshy ground to one side of the old Roman road here. This low lying terrain with the small lakes south of Cenon may be where that ground was,” he concluded.

“You have a good eye,” said Robert. “The weight of opinion now believes the battle was fought here near Moussais. It’s a small estate today, with a golf course nearby.”

“Over 1300 years ago it was the anvil of fate,” said Paul. “And this adjacent high ground would be perfect for a large infantry Phalanx. Let’s get a Google image.”

The street view was very helpful. Right at the intersection of two roads a small white sign read: “La Bataille de Poitiers, 732.” The road it pointed to was named “Pied Sec.”

“You’d think the French would have a bigger sign, given that the whole of Christendom and Western history rides on the outcome of this battle. Look at it! There’s nothing here, no monument, no national park. You’d think they’d at least have the decency to put a statue of Charles Martel here. And what’s this road named, Pied Sec?”

“Dry feet.” said Maeve. “That’s what it translates to.”

“This was marshy ground,” said Paul, “and this is the only high ground around, though I doubt the road was even here 1300 years ago. There’s not much elevation, but it will do, and it was most likely wooded in the 8th century. I’ll bet Charles dug his defensive trench and established a shieldwall right along that road, or somewhere close to it. So let’s see…” He traced his finger along the map. “The Muslim camp would be back here somewhere,” he said. “Probably south of this little stream.”

“It was supposed to have been on a small hill, according to some scholars,” said Robert. “And it would definitely be in a clearing. They needed room for their tents.”

“Then it would have to be here, at or near Le Pugets, just south of the modern day golf course. Or possibly slightly east of that area.”

They agreed that they had a reasonable line on a breaching point as to location, somewhere right between these likely zones. Now the more difficult question of the temporal coordinates would have to be tackled.

“We’ve got the year,” said Paul. “It’s well recorded to have been 732 A.D. And I think we can safely say it was in October.”

“Accounts confirm that,” said the professor. “Watson has an interesting paper…” He clicked on a link and called up the file. “Here it is: ‘Thus, there is a consensus in most of the Latin sources that the battle occurred on a Saturday in October, 732.’ Later he narrows down the weight of opinion to late in the month and makes it October 25th, 732, coincident with the start of Ramadan.”

“That would mean the two armies met six days earlier, on the 19th of October,” said Paul. “I don’t think it will do us any good to arrive too soon. Both sides were harassing and probing one another throughout the week. The battle was fought on the seventh day, Saturday, October 25th, and that will probably have to be our breaching point. Let’s get Kelly working on some numbers.”

“And use the Julian Calendar,” the professor advised. “There’s as much as a ten day shift on the Gregorian calendar.”

They still had to work out the details of the mission, and Paul had some real apprehension about it. The sources on this battle were few, sketchy, and well scattered over the centuries after its conclusion.

“It’s as close as we’re likely to come,” he said with some resignation in his voice. “There just isn’t much data on this battle out there, no matter how decisive it turns out to be.” He looked at the time, well after 5:00 AM now. “Kelly… How long before we would have coordinates?”

“I could do it in an hour—with an Arion.”

“We don’t have one handy,” said Paul. “Unless you want to leave the Nexus Point with me and drive back into the City, and I don’t think we can contemplate that now. The risk of dissonance is too great, to say nothing of the fact that I siphoned most of the gas from my Honda and the other vehicles.”

“Then I need some bad ass computing power. We should have dedicated more budget to CPUs. I spent too much on RAM.”

“All water under the bridge,” said Paul. “Can we link up every desktop we have in here and do something that way?”

“Not nearly enough processing power,” said Kelly, then he stopped himself. “Hey, wait a second! The Golems! There must be an installed user base in the tens of thousands still left active out there. We’ve got the information we need on variations. We know where we want to go, and when. I can write a command prompt to tell all the Golems to join in a super-network cloud to do the calculations! All I have to do is write the algorithms with the variable data.”

“Go do it!” said Paul. “You just shifted in from ten thousand B.C., so you’re not a candidate for this mission. You get us those numbers and run the show from here.” He looked at Robert and Maeve. “I guess that leaves us to decide the rest.”

Even if they did have temporal and spatial coordinates nailed down to a reasonable breaching point, the prospect of shifting in to a Medieval battle zone was a bit daunting. Who should go? Paul was the first to volunteer.

“I’m fine now,” he said. “I’ll know the ground, and use my military horse sense to scout out this camp. You can dress me as an Arab. I’ll grab the first unattached loot I find and try to look like I’m a camp attendant.”

“Well enough,” said Robert. “I’ll be useful with the history, and I can manage a little Arabic now. I’ve been boning up, you see, and—”

“I’m the one who speaks French and Latin,” said Maeve.

Nordhausen frowned. “Now, see here, we went round and about on this the last mission. This will be dangerous, my dear, and if we’re going as Arabs we won’t need to speak French. Besides, the language of the eighth century wouldn’t sound anything like modern French. Latin, perhaps, and I can manage that as well.”

“I’m afraid he’s right, Maeve,” Paul weighed in. “I think it best that Robert and I handle it this time. And Robert… I’m willing to go this alone. No sense risking two of us.”

“Two of us doubles our chance of success,” said Robert. He was determined to get a look at the eighth century.

“It also doubles the chance that one of you gets killed,” said Maeve. “Remember, we’re not indispensable any longer. Time has shown us that she can get along without us quite well if we believe the possible outcome on the Golem report.”

“We’ll just have to risk it then,” said Robert. “Soldiers of Christ and all…” he smiled.

“And better if you stay here with Kelly,” Paul said to Maeve. “I think we owe you that much after the last mission.”

Maeve shrugged. “Alright,” she said flatly, “you’ve twisted my arm.”

“Good,” said Kelly over his shoulder. “I could certainly use the company.” He had been listening intently, his attention divided between the command prompt and the conversation they were having.

Maeve gave him a warm smile. “Then I’ll go down to the wardrobe and see what I can dig up for you. It seems to me that we sent the two of you through in Arab garb once before.” She was obviously referring to the initial mission, a lifetime ago, or several as it seemed to them now.

“Make sure the shoes fit this time,” Nordhausen complained as she went, still muttering to himself as he turned back to Paul. “I’m not blundering about in size eights again.” And for good measure he shook a finger at Kelly. “Plan it well,” he said. “Get the numbers right. I don’t want any visits to Jurassic Park again!”

“Rule number one,” said Kelly. “No coffee near the keyboard.” He reached out, picked up his mug of Peet’s, and plunked it firmly down on the desk, a safe distance away.

Paul could not help but smile, but the worried look returned to his face a moment later. “You’re sure about this?”

“Time and place?” said Nordhausen. “It’s as close as we’re going to get given the data.” He turned to Kelly again. “Make it dawn, October 25th, 732 AD.”

“Dawn?” Paul questioned the time. “The battle most likely started at dawn. Who knows how long these cavalry charges went on? The Arab tactics would be to mount rushes with the archers on horseback, then dissipate. They’d come in, fire, and fall back. Then, at some point, the heavy armored cavalry would charge. Well, the point is, the longer we are there the more time there is for something to go wrong. I’d like to push it back several hours, perhaps in the mid-afternoon.”

“What if we manifest too late?”

“Accounts are that Charles has a fairly disciplined army. You read the material. Even the Arab sources compared the Frank’s shieldwall to an implacable glacier, a wall of ice. It was one of the very few instances where infantry held their ground against a determined cavalry charge during this period.”

“You make a good point,” said Robert. “And the rout of the Arab army was supposed to have occurred near dusk. Alright then, let’s calculate the probable time of sunset. I’ve got a nifty site on the net… If it’s still there.”

It wasn’t.

“Damn,” Nordhausen swore. “Very well, let’s just get average times from recent years.” He had the information in due course. “I make it 6:40, or thereabouts. Suppose we shift in two hours before that. Would that be cutting it too close?”

“Remember we still have to find the Arab camp, in one direction or another, and work our way to this corral,” said Paul.

“Suppose one of us runs a Spook Job timed for about 4:00 PM, just to have a look? If we see too much chaos, and the Arab army appears in obvious retreat, then we’re too late, and we can still adjust.”

“A Spook Job is just a few seconds time,” said Paul. “You’d barely be able to get your bearings. I’m not opposed to the idea, but a Spook Job was designed to scout a location that was fairly fine tuned. We don’t really know what we’ll find there at all yet.”

Spook Jobs were the term they applied to a quick manifestation on distant time coordinates. Anyone there who might have seen them might think them a ghostly spirit, enfolded with the haze of frosty infinity. They would appear, then vanish, just there long enough to take a quick look and verify some important information about the potential breaching site.

“Well this is all speculation,” said Nordhausen. “I think we had better have some look at the milieu before we actually shift in. We’re not even entirely sure if the camp is where we think it is—or the battle, for that matter.”

Paul shrugged. “You’re probably right,” he said. “Alright. I’ll make the reconnaissance. I’ll shift in for ten or fifteen seconds and do a three-sixty. If the battle is there, I should hear it even if I can’t see it, and if the breaching point is near the camp I should see all sorts of wagons, tents and perhaps even get a look at the corral where they have the horses we’re hoping to find.”

“See here, Paul. No need to put yourself out. You’ve just had a bout of the willies down in the garage. Perhaps I should make the jump on the Spook Job.”

“You think Maeve is going to let you shift by yourself? After the two unauthorized missions you ran and that pot shot you were going to take at Napoleon?”

“What? I did no such thing!”

“Alright, but you did wander off your manifestation point almost immediately. On a Spook Job you can’t move at all. You’ve got to stay exactly on your breaching point coordinates so the system can maintain a hold on your mass pattern.”

“I promise you I won’t move an inch,” said Nordhausen, but Paul shook his head.

“I’ll go,” he said. “It may be that we need a few more Spook Jobs if this first look isn’t on target. You can take the second shift in that case, and we’ll alternate until we’re satisfied we have a good location. Then you’ll join me for the final shift. And Robert,” he said with an obvious note of warning. “This is going to be the most dangerous thing we have ever done in our lives.”

Chapter 11

Kelly was concentrating intensely on his math, rechecking everything to be certain he was correct. He had sent most of the primary breaching algorithms to the Golem cloud hours ago, along with the temporal data, and was just using the time to run verification checksums on the number sequences.

It was a strange feeling, being back in the lab again after the time he had spent in the desert, so very long ago. He could still hardly believe that he had lived several months there in that Meridian, chatting with Hamza the scribe, joining the regular prayer sessions, wandering the labyrinthine hollows of the hidden Sphinx, and standing on the apex of the Sun Pyramid each morning to greet the dawn. He remembered the vast, empty desert, stretching out to the horizon on every side, broken only by the wide gleaming course of the Nile. The sands were unspoiled, sere grey and white, baking in the hot sun as the day wore on. The air was absolutely clean, the night sky pristine and clear, with the amazing vista of the Milky Way often visible in the dry desert nights. It would not have been a bad way to live, he thought, praying and carving and dreaming away the days there in the desert.

Now here he was again, plugged into the technology he owed his life to several times over. He sat before three computer monitors, with software windows open all over the various screens. An ear bud fed music to his brain as he worked. He was listening to Porcupine Tree, his favorite band, and the song was titled “Stars Die.”

A humbling realization, he thought, but the music was nonetheless a comfort to him, engaging another part of his brain and soul as he worked. Music, books, computers, photography, these things had been the central interests of his life, and now that he was back in his own time again, he was immediately plugged, Borg like, into all the technology that characterized life in the early twenty first century.

He had just finished the last of his checksums and was satisfied that the data had good integrity when a low tone caught his attention through the music. He looked over at the right hand monitor and was surprised to see the Golem flag alert warning light on again.

“That’s odd,” he said aloud. He had ordered all the Golems to join in the network cloud and focus on solving his calculations. What would be feeding him this alert? He reached in, adjusting the monitor briefly before clicking on the Golem search application tied into the History module.

At first he was greeted with the same disturbing screen they had seen the first time. All the lines for Western history were blood red with variation: sciences, politics, arts and especially religion. He scrolled back through the data, noting the gradual shift through the orange and amber spectrum until he finally saw welcome green lines, right there in the early 8th century as he expected.

“Looks like I have some lost sheep here,” he muttered. A few of the Golems didn’t get the message, and they were still augmenting data on the variations in the history as compared to the RAM Bank. “Must be a glitch,” he said, resolving to round up his lost sheep later. Then he let the music flow into his tired brain again.

Hypersleep sounded appealing just now, though his mind remained remarkably sharp and alert in spite of the fact that he had shifted over ten thousand this morning. At least he had a full night’s sleep before Paul managed to locate him on the apex of that pyramid and bring him home.

Maeve had come up with costuming an hour ago and already had both Paul and Robert in their Berber robes. She had also raided the lounge and prepared a much needed breakfast in the adjacent kitchen. Kelly had just finished his scrambled eggs, realizing how much he missed them during his days in the desert. Now Maeve was still lecturing the would be travelers, especially Robert, trying to make sure he didn’t get carried away and do something preposterous once he shifted in.

Paul was right. This was going to be the most dangerous mission yet. In spite of his faith in his math, there were still so many uncertainties about the situation. It was going to be a wildly chaotic scene. Even the rear areas of a major battle like this could be perilous. Both sides had been raiding and harrying one another for days. Any hint of a spy in the midst of the Arab camp would likely be dealt with severely. Nordhausen claimed he could manage a word or two of Arabic to help them pass should they be confronted, but Kelly was still very worried about them.

And the scene was also likely to be very dynamic. Men and horses could be running everywhere. What you really wanted on a breaching point was a lot of nice empty space. The unsettling possibility that they would begin to manifest right where someone else was standing was a real concern in this situation. The magnetic corona around them would prevent their mass from merging with that of another person or thing, but it would also have a fairly rough repulsion effect on anything, they collided with on entry.

A second tone caught his attention. The Golems he had herded into the network cloud were signaling they had completed the calculations. The numbers were coming in to his laptop even now, and he called up the primary integrity number, relieved to see his breaching sequences had a high degree of accuracy, over 99.987% Anything in that range was nominal, and he was very pleased.

“Numbers up!” he shouted. “I can feed the Arch sequencer any time now, Paul.”

Paul rushed over, his long Arabic robes flowing behind him. “Clean numbers?” he asked.

“Immaculate,” said Kelly. “I can have the first Spook Job set up in ten minutes.”

A pulse of anxiety coursed through Paul as he realized what he was about to do. That inscription on the shrine of Athena in Sais returned to his mind with the edge of a warning: ”I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.”

He was about to lift Time’s veil again, and stare into her eyes, over 1300 hundred years in the past. What would he see there?

“I guess I should get down to the Arch then,” he said, and the two men shook hands briefly. “You sure about the Spook Job now?”

“I’ll give you fifteen seconds—you’ll be in and out. Be sure to close your eyes during the shift so you can minimize the nausea. When you feel your feet on solid ground again, you’ll have about another ten seconds to have a quick look around. How we doing on fuel?”

“The particle integrity in the quantum matrix seems very stable,” said Paul.

“Great, but I was thinking about the generators. Our first setup man has been pitching two innings now.”

“I think we can get another inning out of this one,” said Paul. Fuel reading on that generator is about 30%. Number two is ready on standby using power from the system, so if you need it you can probably get plenty of juice in just a few seconds. But this is just a Spook Job, a quick in and out. You won’t need more than eighty or ninety percent of full power on the shift.”

“No problemo,” said Kelly. “We’ll see you back here in about twenty minutes then.”

“Right,” said Paul, but the look they gave each other spoke to the grave uncertainty still inherent in this technology. Paul imagined they felt a bit like the Wright brothers on that cold day in December of 1903 when they made the first powered flight. The thought that the mission might come crashing down around them like a rickety bi-plane still plagued him. There had already been many mishaps over these first three missions, though he comforted himself with the thought that, in spite of it all, they were all still here in one piece, alive and well.

He said his farewells to Maeve and Robert. “You’re on deck,” he said clapping Robert by the shoulder. “If this doesn’t look good we may have to recalculate the physical location for another look, but Kelly says he can do that right here in the system. He won’t need the Golem cloud again to nudge us a kilometer or so for another look.”

He gave them both parting hugs and went down to the Arch. When the elevator opened he could see the strange phosphorescent glow dead ahead, illuminating the thick event horizon line. Kelly was on the intercom.

“OK, I’m ramping up the power to ninety percent,” he heard him say. There was an odd echo in his voice. “Get on the ready line for a portrait…”

He was referring to the pattern signature the system would take of Paul’s mass. Something like an MRI, it would serve as a means of isolating him in the mass flux at the distant location in space-time. The data would be stored in the enormous memory bank to back up the signature in case of any power failures.

Paul stepped onto the yellow line and felt the turbines vibrating as the Arch spun up. The prickly sensation let him know he was being scanned for a pattern signature, and he could feel that same eerie charge one has when surrounded by static energy, a hair raising tickle that was the first caress of Mother Time.

“On my mark… Three… Two… One… GO!”

His heart leapt an extra beat and he took a single step forward, crossing the event horizon between this reality and another, eyes tightly closed, fists clenched with the stress of the moment. He could still perceive the whirling light show through his closed eyelids, and the awful roaring sound of a passing train drowned out his fearful pulse. The Arch howled like lost animal, resolving to a low growl. Then the queasy sensation of lightness swept over him, and he seemed to be floating, disembodied, a nameless spirit of the moaning winds of Time.

A moment later he felt gravity and solidity sweep over his slight frame and, as Kelly had advised, he waited until he could feel the firmness of ground beneath his feet before opening his eyes. The acrid smell of an ozone frost was still all around him, but he blinked, bleary eyed through the haze and stared with shock and wonder.

The seconds ticked off, each an eternity… Nine… Eight… Seven. Paul looked to his left, then quickly back to his right, squinting in what looked like a smoky fog. But he could clearly perceive the landscape about him, though still somewhat dazed and confused. Six… five… Four… What was wrong? By now he could also hear sounds, the faint call of a far away bird, the rush of wind past his headdress carrying with it the scent of freshly sodden earth, ripe and full. He looked this way and that, astounded. Three… Two… One…

There came a shudder, and the air around him seemed to ripple with a tinge of cobalt blue light, distorting the panorama of the landscape he was gaping at before him. The scene wavered like the glimmering sheen of a distant horizon, a false oasis in the desert of Time. Then the awful feeling of insubstantial lightness swept through his body again, and a strange sense that he was being pulled away. He shut his eyes tight when the roar of the Arch drowned out everything else.

“Three… Two… One…”

It was the voice of Kelly on the intercom again.

“And we’re secure with a solid pattern signature in the bay. Welcome home, Paul.”

Home, Paul…

Home….

Kelly looked over his shoulder at Robert and Maeve. “It was a good shift,” he said. “You two can go form the welcoming committee, while I ramp the power down.”

“Our pleasure,” said Maeve.

They were quickly through the great titanium metal pressure sealed door and into the long cylindrical tunnel, which angled ever more sharply into the depths of the hillside. The complex was buried deep underground, a precaution to help shield the environment against the strange effects that might be released should anything go wrong with the spin-out of the singularity. The tunnel led them to an elevator that would take them down to the Arch Bay. After the brief ride down they leapt through the doors, all smiles, and rushed to the Arch. Paul was there, but the look on his face clearly showed that something was very wrong. He seemed shocked and dismayed, a perplexed expression darkening his eyes.

“Problem,” he said quietly. “Big problem…”

Chapter 12

“I manifested as expected,” said Paul, “but when I opened my eyes to have a look around there was nothing to see, no sign of either army, and no battle underway at all, at least as far as I could tell. It was hazy, but behind me I had a good view of that high ground where we thought the Arab camp would be located. The area was well wooded so I couldn’t see as far as I hoped, but there wasn’t a soul around. It was deathly quiet. Why, I remember hearing the call of a bird, far off but distinct. Yet not a whisper else. No war drums, horns, clashing of swords on shields, and definitely no sound of charging cavalry. That would have made an enormous din.”

“Then we must have the wrong location—something off in Kelly’s numbers again,” said Robert.

“Oh, no mister!” Kelly came quickly to this field of battle. “We were dead on. The system certifies that we hit the exact date and time you wanted, at the exact coordinates I entered. There was no programming error. I put Paul right where you told me to, so you must have had the wrong date.”

“That’s entirely possible,” said Maeve. “Some sources claim the battle was fought October 10th.”

“But the consensus was that the battle was fought on October 25th, 732” said Nordhausen. “Even the Islamic sources seem to indicate it was fought in the year 114, the first day of Ramadan, yuam-as-sabt. That’s the 25th in the Julian calendar… You did use the Julian Calendar, correct? Because if you put in Gregorian numbers Paul would have arrived at the wrong time.” He gave Kelly a suspicious look.

“Yes, I used the Julian calendar,” said Kelly. “You said it was on a Saturday, near the end of the month. In the Gregorian calendar that would be either the 22nd or the 29th. In the Julian calendar it would be the 25th, the day you wanted. Want to look at the algorithm?” Kelly anticipated a battle with the professor, and he was stealing a march on him, choosing ground where he had a decided advantage.

The professor pursed his lips. “Then they got it wrong,” he said dejectedly, waving his hand dismissively at unseen historians the world over.

“Notice he didn’t say “I” got it wrong,” said Kelly, taking a little swipe at the professor for the static he had received earlier.

“Well I can only report what is known about this period,” said Robert in a huff. “And the sources are pretty thin.”

“Look, this is getting us nowhere,” said Paul. “What do we do about this? Do we select another date and try again, possibly a few days earlier or later?”

“You’re saying you didn’t see anything?” Maeve asked. “No sign that an army had marched through that area? We put you right near the old Roman road.”

“Correct,” Paul confirmed. “The ground would have been rutted with the wheels of their carts and wagons. All accounts are that the Arabs were heavily burdened with their plunder. But the whole area seemed completely undisturbed. No horses, carts, tents, soldiers, campfires, banners, and no sound of fighting. Believe me, estimates are that there were upwards of 30,000 men on each side of this battle. You put 60,000 men into that location and I would have certainly seen something. And the Arabs brought wives, family, slaves, and personal possessions as well. It would have looked like Woodstock after the concert if they had been through that area at all.”

“Yes, if we shifted you in too late then you would have seen signs of the battle, not to mention dead bodies all over the place, even if it was fought as early as the 10th as one source suggested.”

“Right,” said Paul. “So we were early then. The battle had to be fought later. It’s the only thing that could account for the unblemished condition of the ground I saw—unless we’re entirely wrong about the location of this battle, and I think that is unlikely.”

“Then we’ll have to take a look at the following Saturday,” said Nordhausen. “Make it November 1st, Kelly.” He folded his arms. “I guess I’m up then,” he said with some anticipation. It was clear that he was eager to get a look at the situation first hand.

“Paul?” Kelly looked at the project team leader for confirmation.

“If that's the case both armies would still be on the field at that time.” Paul was obviously not happy, but there was nothing else they could do at this point. “I suppose we’ll just have to try again as Robert suggests,” he said dejectedly. “What other option do we have at this point?”

“Alright,” said Kelly. “This shouldn’t take long to program a small variation in the temporal coordinates like that—twenty minutes at the outside. I’ll set it up and get the Golems to verify the numbers ASAP… Which reminds me…”

He suddenly remembered those lost sheep in the Golem history variance module. A small segment of his installed user base did not respond to the command to join the network cloud. He assumed they must be from systems that came on line after his command was sent to the active units. While the others continued discussing the situation, he focused his attention on the alert system, trying to get a fix on how many sheep were still outside the pen. Something caught his eye at once, and he frowned.

“Hello?” he said aloud. “Now what’s this all about?”

Paul looked over his shoulder at him. “A problem?”

“Well I had a few Golems that didn’t join the Network,” said Kelly. “And they’ve been continuing to feed data to the alert module all this time.”

“Anything serious?” Paul came over and leaned in to have a look. They were looking at the 8th century, by decades, and the monitor still showed the obvious demarcation from green to lighter shades of avocado yellow right around the first three cells.

“Just for yucks, let’s zoom way in to the year itself and get a more fine tuned look at the data,” said Kelly. He keyed in 732 for the desired year, and now the screen put up the twelve individual months on the horizontal line. They immediately saw that something was wrong. The color had changed to amber as early as January!

“Hold on,” said Paul. “That was green when we looked at this earlier. We didn’t start seeing color variance until late in the year, right around the date of this battle.”

“Well now the whole year is grade 2 yellow,” said Kelly, “and this is grade 1 amber here.” He pointed to October on the line.

“Scroll back,” said Paul. “Show me the previous year.”

Kelly scrolled the chart and the yellow remained all through the months of 731. “This is really odd,” he said. “Let’s zoom back out to individual years now.” When he refreshed the screen they could clearly see that the alert had migrated to the left of 732. There was yellow all through the 720s, slowly fading from chartreuse, to pear, then avocado, apple and shades of olive green.

“Can you fine tune this even more?” Paul asked. “I mean, can we see numbers to give us a sense of how much variance we’re seeing in these color shifts?”

“No problem,” said Kelly. “Here’s the data in decimal readout.” They scrolled back.

“Hell, we’re seeing variations much earlier now. When did it fall out of nominal ranges?”

Kelly ran his finger back. “Here,” he said definitively. “The year 705. It was holding well above 99% on all prior years. Then it starts to show variation in that year and it just degrades from there.”

“Why didn’t we see this earlier?”

“We’re lucky to see it at all,” said Kelly. “It looks like things have been changing all along. Tours was not the origin of the first major variance. At least according to my lost sheep,” said Kelly.

“How many? Is this based on one report or a stronger weight of opinion?”

“Let me see if I can call up some of the actual documents that no longer jive with our RAM Bank.”

“Maeve, Robert, you better come over here.” Paul waved at them where Maeve was fussing with Robert’s headdress across the room.

He explained what they had found, clearly concerned. “We have a problem,” he finished. “Apparently a few of Kelly’s stray Golems seem to think the variations begin here in this range now.” He pointed to the year 705 on the screen. “We don’t get a safe nominal green until August of that year. In September it begins shifting. The numbers confirm it.”

“Nothing really shifts out of yellow into the orange spectrum until the battle of Tours though,” said Kelly as he reviewed articles, “but we get precursor variations all through the years prior to the battle now… almost like foreshocks to the big one at Tours.”

“Robert?” Paul looked at the professor. “Could we have jumped the gun here and missed something? What was happening in the years before Tours?”

“Well…” Robert thought for a moment. “England is being converted to Christianity by St. Gregory the Great and the Benedictines as the century opens… The plague reaches Italy in 701… The Arabs cross at Gibraltar in 711, and they sack Constantinople some years later… There’s a lot of petty squabbling when Pippin the Fat dies a few years later—that’s Charles Martel’s father by Alpaida.”

“What kind of squabbling?”

“Eh? Charles was a bastard, you see, the illegitimate son of Pippin, who had been married to a wealthy woman named Plectrude, but later he took Alpaida as consort. It was Alpaida who gave birth to Charles, and upon Pippin’s death Plectrude and her clan claimed succession should remain with her bloodline, with Pippin’s grandson Theodwald. Pippin had two legitimate sons, but they were both dead, one killed the very year Pippin himself died, assassinated, if I may say—Grimwald, the father of this young Theo, also illegitimate.”

Paul raised an eyebrow at that. “Go on professor. This is starting to sound suspicious. Sounds like the succession was shaping up as a battle between two bastards!”

“Little Theo was just a boy, and uncle Charles was a young strapping man in his twenties when Pippin died… Alpaida’s family supported his succession, and he became the Mayor of the Palace and de facto ruler of the Franks soon after, his brother by Plectrude having been eliminated the very year Pippin died. This was in 714.”

“Anything significant in the year 705? Kelly? What do these lost sheep of yours find?”

“Well here’s a new card in the deck,” said Kelly. “Golems report that Pippin’s legitimate son, Grimwald took the throne after his death. He was already in office as Mayor of the Palace since the year 695.”

“He doesn’t die? That’s a big variation,” said Maeve. “What does the RAM Bank say about Grimwald, Robert?”

“He was assassinated,” said the professor after keying in a search. “On his way to visit his ailing father and pay his respects to the shrine of St. Lambert in Liège, actually called the village of Leodium back then, an old Roman settlement, but the entire city eventually grew up around this shrine. He was planning to visit the tomb of St. Lambert there, in the year 714. From there he was going to call upon his dying father.”

“Pious fellow, was he?” Paul tapped his chin.

“He was killed by a man named Rantgar,” Robert added. “Not much else on him, I’m afraid.”

“No mention of him here either,” said Kelly.

“Come on, throw some keywords together, people,” Paul urged. “What’s the common thread linking all these events and people.”

Maeve was at a history terminal as well, and they were all typing furiously. Paul began pacing, his eye on the wall chronometer, his mind ever aware of the distant thrum of the Arch. They should be well into their final mission planning by now, and here they were off on another branch of the history, years before their planned breaching point.

“I’ve got something!” said Maeve. “I threw together a whole salad bowl: Charles, Grimwald, Pippin, Plectrude, Alpaida, Lambert, Tours, Rantgar. And I threw in the dates 705 and 714 to boot. Listen to this! The trouble doesn’t start in 714. It starts with St. Lambert…”

She began to read: “After seven years in exile at the new Abbey of Stavelot, Bishop Lambert returned, having the favor of Pippin for a time, until he, being inflamed by the zeal of religion, roundly condemned the affair of Pippin and Alpaida as scandalous.’ Coincidentally, this Bishop Lambert was somehow related to Plectrude, or at the very least enlisted by her to reprove Pippin’s infidelity.”

“Sounds like a nice family squabble,” said Paul.

“It gets better,” Maeve continued. “Reproved and disgraced by the prominent bishop, Alpaida appealed to her brother Dodo and, in the complicated political struggle that evolved, Dodo is said to have led the plot to murder Lambert out of revenge, on his estate, the Gallo-Roman villa that has since become the city Liège.”

“Looks like Lambert and Plectrude were hammer and tongs with Alpaida and her family,” said Paul.

“It appears so,” she continued. “Now here’s where it gets interesting. All this happened in the year 705.”

“That’s the demarcation cell now,” said Kelly. “We have good solid green through most of that year, but it starts to wane around September of 705.”

Maeve went on: “A cult quickly grew up around Lambert, seeing his death as martyrdom. It was largely pushed by his successor, the Bishop Hubert, who had his remains returned to the place where he was killed and enshrined there. This shrine soon became a chapel, and then eventually a cathedral that became the center of Liège. It was to this very chapel that Grimwald was bound when he was assassinated by an ‘impious wretch’ named Rantgar. Just as Robert said.”

“But the Golems say he lives and consolidates power in 714?” Paul’s eyes sharpened. “Then it looks like Plectrude’s side wins the battle of succession in the altered timeline, and the bastard Charles is thwarted. I agree, Maeve, this is important. It’s critical. How did we miss it earlier?”

“The Battle of Tours still took place,” Nordhausen put in. “Didn’t you say Charles was there earlier, Kelly?”

“Yes, he was there, but seems to drop out of the history after that.”

“We assumed he was killed, then,” said Paul “but we didn’t read much of that altered history in the Golem reports. We just fixated on the battle.”

“The Kelly chimed in with this story about the scribe carving that period of the history,” said Robert. “He’s the one who insisted the stela they found at Rosetta was a reference to the Battle of Tours, and it certainly seems that way after translating it.”

“Damn,” said Paul. “We just assumed Charles was in charge all along. Isn’t that what you said, Robert? You told us that after the Moors defeated Odo he went to Charles for aid and support.”

“Well he did!” Nordhausen complained. “In our history.”

“Not in the Golem reports,” said Kelly. “He beseeches Grimwald for aid, and is made to pledge his fealty in return.”

“Good Lord,” said Paul. “Did we miss this or has something changed? Kelly, do you have a log showing what this data looked like a couple hours back.”

“Sure, he said. It’s a layered database. I can call up a time stamped report for you.” He looked at the clock. “I’ll make it two hours back.”

They examined the year 705 in that data and found it solid green. Nothing had changed until late in the year 732, and it seemed to confirm Paul’s worst suspicions.

“Then we’re at war, my friends. Time war. Our adversaries must still be operating even as we speak. It’s clear that they initiated yet another operation aimed at the year 705.”

“Or perhaps that was their target year all along,” said Kelly. “There’s a bit of a lag while the Golems search and sift available data. But it’s clear that we’ve been barking up the proverbial wrong tree here.”

“We just assumed Charles was a Prime and couldn’t be meddled with, and that he was leading the army that met Abdul Rahman at Tours. But this is indicating that he never took office as Mayor of the Palace when his father Pippin died. His brother Grimwald was in charge! He would have led the army at Tours. We jumped to conclusions too quickly, assuming Tours was the critical point on the Meridian. But it’s obvious that they found some other way to influence the outcome of the battle, much earlier in the time line.”

They all looked at one another, and Paul discerned a mix of frustration, embarrassment and anxiety in their eyes. History was a labyrinth of possibility, and they all seemed like so many blind mice trying to find their way through the maze, blunting their noses on every obstacle and corner they found.

“Damn!” Paul swore. “OK… Robert, you get on the RAM Bank history console. Kelly, you stay with the Golem variation data. We’ve got to find out what happened here—and fast!”