Golem 7

Chapter 1

“I’ve found it!” Nordhausen exclaimed as he rushed into the lab clutching an armful of notebooks and several heavy volumes. “Spent all afternoon on the Arion system, and you’ll need to get over there soon as well,” he admonished with a wag of his finger at Kelly where he sat at a control console. “We’d better get the system up—turn things on, or spin out the singularity and all. Paul’s going to love this!”

Kelly Ramer looked over his shoulder at the professor, his attention diverted from the computer screen he was monitoring, eyebrows raised with a wry smile. “What are you talking about?” he said.

“The research, man! I’ve got the little devil! Oh they were real clever this time, weren’t they. But I found out what they were up to, and they can be damned. Now… We’re going to need to establish a Nexus fairly quickly. I’ve got this in my head now, with considerable data to back everything up, but this might create one of Paul’s certainty effects, and if they get wind of what I’m up to they could start a counter operation. So turn everything on, will you!” He rushed over to a desk near the history console and plopped down the stack of notebooks he was carrying. “Here, I’ll set up at the History Module. I need to run down a few details, but I think I have most everything we’ll need to get started.”

Kelly’s expression went from mild amusement to perturbed bewilderment. “Would you calm down and make some sense? What research?”

“Palma!” Nordhausen said, with obvious frustration. “What else, man? I’ve got the whole thing here on a disk! Now, where’s the drive? Ah, there you are.” He thumbed a button on one of the system computers and opened a Blue-Ray drive, eager to feed in a disk and get to work.

“I was using the Golems to scout out variation data on this altered Meridian. There were a lot of changes after Palma, as you might imagine, but I was looking at time stamped data from the hours just before the event. Everything seemed in order, until I got a strong warning signal from one of the Golem Banks.”

“Just one?” said Kelly. “I had the system threshold set to require three Golem Banks before an alert was issued.” Each bank was a designated cluster of thousands of remote installations of Kelly’s special search program, quietly running in systems all over the world.

“Well I wasn’t going to overlook anything,” said Robert. “So I took a closer look at the data from that lone sentry and began to get very interested.”

“Which Golem Bank was it?” Kelly had segregated the total cloud into nine clusters, and banked these as search teams that would act in unison on a variation, immediately focusing all their attention on that subject if the bank detected a sufficient percentage of deviation.

“What? Does it matter which bank it was?”

“Just curious, I suppose.”

“If you must know, it was Golem Bank number seven, if I recall correctly. Yes, number seven. So I decided to take my initial results and put the Arion system on it.”

“Golem 7…” Kelly thought for a moment. “Those were the lost sheep.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My lost sheep. When we lost contact with the Golem search cloud on the last mission I had a few stragglers that wandered in from new system boots after that event. They were instrumental in helping us continue that operation. So when I set up my Golem search cloud clusters, I banked that whole group as Golem 7.”

Robert raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t want to get bogged down with a load of computer mumbo jumbo here, and pressed on.

“Fine,” he said. “Well, you know the old mystery writer’s credo: who, what, when, where, why. The first thing you do is find out who was involved in the scheme and get your suspect list filled out, and that’s where the Arion system came in handy. It powered through all the searches and the pattern recognition software I was using did a bang up job as well. So I found the bastard! That was no plane crash! It was deliberate. They pulled another D.B. Cooper on us.”

“Robert!” Kelly shouted now, holding up his hand with some annoyance. “I can’t follow a word you’re saying. You’re talking to yourself half the time anyway. Now what in the world is this all about?”

The professor looked over the rim of his reading glasses, about to say something. Then he composed himself and spoke in a level, measured tone. “My Dear Mr. Kelly,” he began. “Now what have we all been about the last three days, eh? Paul’s been haggling all over the city for petrol, you’ve been in here nursing that bloody singularity back to life, and Maeve, God bless her, has managed to lay in a store of food and water, and a truckload of emergency supplies and wardrobe as well. So what have I been doing, you might wonder?”

“Yes, I do wonder,” said Kelly.

“Well, I’ve been at UCB on the Arion sifting through the history, that’s what I’ve been doing. I scanned virtually every news item and document on the whole damn Internet concerning this latest incident at Palma, and then some. And to put a fine point on it all, I’ve found the man responsible for the attack on Palma.” He paused, fixing Kelly with a steady gaze over his reading glasses.

“Ra’id Husan al Din?” said Kelly, confused. “We’ve known about him for weeks, but he doesn’t even exist any longer, at least not on this Meridian.”

“Not him,” said Robert, somewhat annoyed. “I’ve found the new agent responsible. Now… If you would be kind enough to spin up the Arch and establish a Nexus, we can get started.” He waited, folding his arms.

“Did any of the other eight Golem banks contribute to this data set?” The system as a whole was like a supreme court. When focused on a search, each of the nine banks would do independent analysis and return a weight of opinion. If conflicting data marred the results it would take at least five banks to confirm a result. If Robert was acting on the advice of Golem 7 alone, Kelly was suspicious of his findings.

“What? How should I know! I just fed the variations into my laptop and carted them over to the university to use the Arion system. That’s where I got my confirmation.”

Kelly pursed his lips, rubbing his chin and took a deep breath. His lost sheep had found something that all the other Golem banks had apparently missed. He had misgivings about acting on the advice of a single Golem Bank, but those units had saved them once already, and Robert did seem to have further analysis from the Arion system. “You’ve got hard data on this?” he asked.

“Right from the Horse’s mouth—the UCB Arion system. I confirmed it all this afternoon, but I need a Nexus Point here so I can sample resonance and get on with the final research.” He waited, tapping the stack of notebooks with his automatic pencil.

Kelly frowned. He had been spinning up a singularity in the quantum matrix, and was only just now seeing signs of stability. He had good speed, stable rotation and sufficient quantum fuel in the matrix as well. Yet the thought of activating the Arch impacted all this work and a range of other factors as well, and he hesitated, still uncertain of what the professor was saying.

“You think you’ve got the man responsible?” he asked, angling for more information.

“I do indeed,” said Nordhausen.

“What certainty factor?” He wanted a number, something he could quantify and weigh in an algorithm. Yet more, he wanted to give the professor a jab to be sure he was following sound procedures for a possible mission workup. If Robert had done clean research he should have run an integrity check on his final premise and generated a certainty factor. He was surprised when the professor answered with calm confidence.

“I make it 98.37% integrity—and that’s from the Arion system, mind you. Good enough for you?”

Kelly raised his eyebrows, impressed. Golem 7 had apparently been vindicated. “Alright, those are good numbers but—“

“But what, man? Let’s get started! As soon as you activate the Arch, Paul and Maeve will get the call on their cell phones and rush over here. So turn things on!”

“Well, hell, Robert, we’ve got any number of things to consider here—fuel being the main issue. PG&E was in here yesterday reading me the riot act. They’re going to deliver our next electric bill parcel post! Said we have to restrict operations to post peak hours or they’ll have to take us off the grid permanently.”

“Oh, they’ll get their damn money, tell them not to worry. Look here… We can spin up on internal generators, right? Then let’s get on that now so we can establish a Nexus Point here. We’ll want to get the call out to Paul and Maeve right away.”

“Well it’s not just the money,” said Kelly. “It’s the fuel situation. Paul was able to get all three generators filled, but he wanted to see about arranging a reserve supply.”

“He’s filled the generator tanks? Good man! That should be plenty to get us started. Then we can go back on PG&E power after six tonight, and hopefully the power will remain stable enough for us to run a mission.”

Robert waited, ready to overcome any further objection and watching Kelly’s closely. “I’ve got him, Kelly,” he said in a low voice. “Got him by the scruff of his neck. I know who he is and why he was born. And I know how he pulled it all off as well. I’ve got a paper trail on the bastard, even though he was trying mightily to keep a low profile, and I’ve even got him on surveillance cameras. Then I ran his whole genealogy, so I’ve got good numbers for Outcomes and Consequence to boot. Maeve won’t be a problem when she looks at the data, I can assure you of that much. Now… we can either sit here quibbling or we can do something about this situation out there.” He pointed at one of the walls where the world beyond the safe inner sanctum of the Arch complex was slowly spinning off its kilter and winding down into chaos.

The world after the tsunami generated by Palma’s eruption and collapse was now a wild and dangerous place. Even here in the Bay Area things were rapidly getting out of hand, though the West coast had managed some level of normalcy, being farthest removed from the disaster zones in the East. Now, a week after the tsunami struck, people were finally over the initial shock and had shifted into a low level panic mode. Markets were being stripped bare of food and the supply chain was working overtime to try and restock shelves. Crime was on the rise, and it was no longer safe after dark, even in relatively quiet neighborhoods. The professor had to brandish his umbrella to fend off a man on the way over to the Arch complex that very afternoon. Street beggars had become uncommonly aggressive.

Their last mission had managed to prevent a fate ten thousand times worse than all this when they intervened successfully to assure a victory in the pivotal Battle of Tours. Each member of the team had played a key role in achieving that outcome on a complex three part mission to the early eighth century. In doing so they had received some much needed help from their associates in the future. The Order had used some novel methods to overcome the challenge and obstacle of the Palma Shadow, now a near impenetrable barrier to Time shifts from their distant point on the Meridian.

With the catastrophic effects of defeat at Tours forestalled, the project team closed ranks around their friend Kelly Ramer as the Arch spun down, its fuel depleted, and they feared that his life would again be forfeit in the world they would be left with. They had no time or resources to try and affect the outcome of Palma that night. Kelly would live or die, as fate judged him in that last hour when he reached for the power switch and turned off the Arch.

He lived because it was not Ra’id Husan Al Din this time around, the nefarious terrorist that had been eliminated from the Meridian by the first mission they ran. Another man had risen to take his place. The Assassin cult of the future had run yet another operation in their grand scheme, reversing both Palma and the Frankish victory at Tours in one throw. Their effort at Tours had been parried, but Palma remained in place and, as each day passed, its shadow on the Meridian intensified. This time it was someone else behind the eruption that had sent a mountain of ocean water hurtling at the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. And here was Nordhausen, his pencil still tapping nervously on a stack of notebooks, a Blue-Ray disk in hand, and a determined look on his face as he waited for Kelly to act.

“Well?” said the professor. “Do something!”

Kelly sighed. “Alright, alright. I made the call to shut down the last operation, and my life was on the line then. So I guess I can fire this baby up again if you insist. I don’t like operating on the advice of just one Golem Bank, but it was number seven, and well… I’ve developed a fondness for those little buggers. I’ll move into startup mode, but when Paul and Maeve get here you’ll have to answer for it if this doesn’t pan out, my friend.”

“Don’t worry about them,” said Robert. “Once they look at the data I’ve uncovered they’ll agree it was the only thing to be done. Get it all on-line, Kelly. We’ll be protected in a Nexus and they’ll be here in no time.

“Give me a second…” Kelly was already flipping switches, putting the number one internal power system on-line and setting up a backup generator as well. “I’ll get the Arch up in ten minutes, but as soon as the number one generator comes up to speed I’ll have to take us off the outside power grid or we’ll have cops here with a warrant in no time.”

“They threatened you with that?”

“Damn right. The silly PG&E rep was adamant. We get no more than basic kilowatt cycles here until post-peak hours or they are going to have the whole place shut down. Power is a big issue all over the state now. And we’re starting to get a huge migration of people from the east coast, as California is one of the few places left in the country with some civil order. So resources are really going to be stretched thin.”

“Don’t worry,” said Nordhausen. “None of that will matter soon enough. Just turn everything on.”

“Well, what in God’s name are we going to do? I don’t want to sit here wasting precious fuel like this.”

The Professor smiled. “You just get us safely into a Nexus Point here and I’ll tell you all about it, my friend. I’ll tell you all about it.”

Chapter 2

It was a hot July evening in 1940 at the port of Mers-el Kebir, just north up the gently curving coast from the great city of Oran, Algeria. The sun was falling slowly towards the horizon, and the quality of light was deepening to a rich gold, painting the sharp angles and squared turrets of the main French battle fleet which rode at anchor here, one of several naval flotillas scattered about the Mediterranean after France had capitulated and finally signed an armistice with Germany the previous month. Admiral Gensoul sat fitfully in his ward room, his discomfiture increasing hour by hour throughout that long afternoon. For even though hostilities with Germany had officially ended, the threat of war was still close at hand, only this time from their former friend and ally!

Even now British battleships were waiting just offshore, intent on forcing one of several possible outcomes they might deem favorable concerning the disposition of Gensoul’s powerful battle fleet. He had two fast battlecruisers here with him, the Dunquerque, where he kept his flag, and the Strausbourg, both sleek and powerful ships that had been explicitly built to hunt down and kill ships like the troublesome Deutschland class “pocket battleships” Graff Spee and Admiral Sheer of the German navy. And with them were two older ships, the battleships Bretagne and Provence, relics from the first war, with keels dating back to 1912.

The four big ships were moored side by side at the northernmost segment of the harbor, their bows pointed landward, an oversight that would soon prove most uncomfortable for the admiral. It meant that all the guns on his battlecruisers, being forward mounted, were pointing away from the sea, and half the guns on his battleships were equally disposed landward. Directly opposite them, closer to the shore, were a line of cruisers and smaller destroyers that comprised the remainder of his battle fleet. The sailors were restless in the muggy heat of the day, nervously manning their stations as the hours crept by.

A proud and experienced admiral, Gensoul had bristled when the British dispatched a mere captain to conclude negotiations, and he refused to see the man. Cedric Holland came in on the destroyer Foxhound and anchored a mile from the outer quay. He had been sent because he was fluent in French, not to snub or diminish the French Admiral. But pride goeth before the fall, and Gensoul was much irked by these developments. He ordered the man to return to his ship and leave the harbor, but the upstart British captain boarded a whale boat and rowed forcefully for the French Admiral’s flagship, the Dunquerque. There he waited, pleading to see the Admiral and hoping to convince him to negotiate and reach an honorable decision.

Instead Gensoul ordered a staff officer, Lieutenant Dufay, to take the British captain a message stating that his ships would not be surrendered and that any attempt at forcing the issue would be met with equal force. It was bad enough that his nation had been swiftly defeated by the German blitzkrieg, and now the humiliation of being ordered about by former allies was salt in the still bleeding wounds. The British were here for one reason, he knew. They wanted his ships! Their ultimatum had proposed several alternatives that each seemed fair enough on the surface. Either sail with the British in open alliance, or sail with them to a neutral port to be demilitarized. A third option was to simply scuttle his ships where they sat, removing them as a threat to British interests. Gensoul would have nothing to do with any of these propositions, and he said as much. His loyalty was to his nation, defeated as she was, and it was his to command and preserve the French navy here if he could.

Even as he waited, Gensoul learned that the British had already begun operations to seize French ships in their own waters, those which had fled to England after the disastrous yet miraculous British retreat at Dunquerque. And he also had a secret cable informing him that reinforcements for his battle fleet were getting up steam at other North African ports and preparing to join with him. Perhaps the British were aware of this threat, he thought, but it would make no difference. No reinforcement could reach him in time. The two sides, allies just weeks ago, now seemed implacable enemies, neither one willing to stand down in the confrontation that was looming as the sun fell on that fateful day. Gensoul was playing for time, and waiting for darkness to carry the negotiations over to another day. He was hoping the British would not make good on their threats, but in so doing he was betting against the wrong man.

Out beyond the far quays of the harbor, the British Admiral Somerville was holding station just offshore with a fleet of powerful ships in Force H. He had been sent to this place by direct order of the Prime Minister, and he too was impatiently waiting the outcome of negotiations aimed at neutralizing the French fleet and thus preventing its use by either Germany or Italy. By mid day, when it seemed the French were digging in and refusing to negotiate, Somerville ordered five Swordfish planes off the carrier Ark Royal to begin laying magnetic mines at the harbor entrance to deter the French from trying to make steam and leave. An experienced seaman, he could detect signs that they were firing up their boilers and making preparations to get underway, and he knew what he would soon be forced to do about it.

For Somerville, the assignment was most unwelcome, and it was one he had opposed in direct argument when it was first proposed. “Operation Catapult,” as it was named, seemed a distasteful and risky proposition to him. It would surely enflame the occupied French and curtail their much needed cooperation, particularly if he was forced to actually carry out the order before him now. The other side, led by the stalwart Winston Churchill, had prevailed. What if the French were allowed to retain their fleet and at some future time the Germans threatened to burn Paris unless they surrendered those ships to the Axis? It was purely hypothetical, Somerville knew, and he said as much, arguing that neither Germany nor Italy could produce enough trained sailors to even crew a third of the French fleet! But his arguments, and those of Admiral Cunningham as well, were not enough.

He read the last cable with great misgivings: “You are charged with one of the most disagreeable and difficult tasks that a British Admiral has ever been faced with, but we have complete confidence in you and rely on you to carry it out relentlessly.”

The Admiralty wanted him to settle the matter quickly, yet Somerville had a feeling of profound disquiet in his gut as he read the page. It was more than the stain of honor that would come from firing on a former ally, and more than the disheartening loss of his strongly held argument on the matter. He had the strangest feeling that his next actions would conjure up some great doom that would cascade through the ages, yet he could not see what it was. The feeling of presentiment hung like a shroud over his thoughts, and it was with great reluctance that he sent his final ultimatum to the French Admiral Gensoul: “Comply or I will be forced to sink your ships.”

Captain Holland was back on the destroyer Foxhound in short order, his eyes wet with tears as he made one final salute to the French flag. Two old allies, long comrades in arms against their mutual German enemy, were about to fire on one another.

At 5:45 pm that evening, Somerville gave the order to commence hostilities. He had three big ships with him, HMS Hood, the pride of the fleet, and two other battleships, the Resolution and Valiant. Together they turned and presented a combined broadside of twenty four 15 inch guns. Only eight French 12 inch guns could easily return fire, as their big ships were pointed the wrong way. Shore batteries would join in the action, but it would not be enough to seriously threaten the powerful British battle fleet. Ironically, when his flagship Hood opened fire, it was to be the very first time her guns had fired in anger.

Somerville watched from the bridge, a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach as he soon saw the French ships struck by fire and steel. The smell of the cordite was bitter in his mouth when he witnessed the old battleship Bretagne capsize and sink. Dunquerque strained against her moorings until they snapped, but she had already taken hits to damage her forward guns. Only the fast battlecruiser Strasbourg was able to make steam and navigate swiftly out of the harbor mouth, carefully avoiding the mines there. She fled with a gaggle of French destroyers, making it safely to Toulon when Somerville declined to chase her.

Something had happened on that muggy July evening that he could not quite comprehend, yet Somerville, and others who took part in the action, would carry the odd feeling in the back of their heads for years thereafter. Something snapped just now, he thought. He could feel it, sense it, yet he could not see what it was. The words of Tennyson’s Locksley hall echoed in his mind as the action concluded: “Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.”

The admiral himself considered resignation, certain he would suffer consequences for failing to pursue the Strasbourg. And afterwards, every ship that took part in the battle seemed beset with a bad luck that came to be called “the curse of Mers-el-Kebir.”

The French would have their revenge on battleship Resolution when the submarine Bevezier torpedoed her off Dakar later that year. Battleship Valiant would be struck by two bombs in May of 1941 off Crete, and then suffer further damage when she was mined and torpedoed by the Italians some months later. And the very next time the mighty Hood would fire her guns in anger, the pride of the fleet would see a cataclysmic end on the surging grey swells of the cold Atlantic. Oddly, another man named Holland would command her at that time, unrelated to the French speaking officer that had come in on Foxhound to try and prevent, quite unknowingly, a disaster that no man of that generation could ever imagine or foresee.

Paul sped up Hearst Avenue to Cyclotron Road, accelerating up the hill until he reached the hairpin turn at the lower visitor parking area. He cornered sharply around the turn, and continued up the hill to the squat blue security booth, stopping briefly to flash his facility ID. The guard recognized his white Honda and waved him through with a smile. He checked his rear view mirror as he entered, but there was no sign of the vehicle that had been following him, so he bore right onto Chu Road at the fork ahead, and within minutes he had keyed his security code and was through the last facility gate, taking the driveway down to the underground garage beneath the Arch Complex.

The Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories were just beyond the campus, up a winding way called Cyclotron Road. Born on the Berkeley campus, the facilities had grown considerably over the years, and eventually moved to the rolling green hills that overlooked the university. A host of scientific disciplines were rooted in the lab, which was a major center of research and a place where some of the most profound questions imaginable were asked, and sometimes answered, with the secret arts of Quantum Science. Things that were once thought to be impossible, even unimaginable, suddenly became odd realities. Travel in Time, long debated by physicists, was one of those unimaginable things.

The project team held forth on the old site of the venerable Bevatron complex. Built in 1953, it was once one of the world’s leading particle accelerators but was deemed seismically unsafe and completed demolition in October of 2011. As no other facility was immediately scheduled for construction there, Paul and his project team members had formed a joint private company to purchase the site and build their independent Physics Center.

The public knew it as a basic physics research lab, with a primary focus on magnetic resonance and quantum theory. A segment of the facility served those general scientific studies, with a small lecture center, a section of labs for graduate student research, extensive computer facilities and a library. But the hidden heart of the complex was deep underground, where Paul had guided the slow development of the Arch Matrix for experiments that had remained confidential and closely guarded secrets. At any given time the lab could be used for general experiments in quantum physics, and conveniently passed inspection every year in spite of the fact that its real hidden purpose dappled in the nascent art of singularity generation studies, the scientific effort to create a tiny quantum singularity. This would be called a “Black Hole” in layman’s terms, though the principles involved were much different from the massive natural phenomenon astrologers had seen in distant space.

To create the Arch it was necessary to complete the last leg of a physics problem that had never been solved—how to relate all the fundamental forces in some unified theory? Paul had begun with Loop Quantum Gravity theory, working with the Schrodinger equation and testing a number of new analogues built from Ashtekar variables and simple spin networks. Spin was in for a good many years, and Paul had a major breakthrough that eventually allowed him to create a controlled quantum singularity within a low gravity environment.

It was an arcane science bridging electro magnetism, special relativity, quantum field theory and finally quantum gravity was demonstrated to exist—and more than this—Paul discovered it could be controlled. These breakthroughs led him to experiments in space-time applications, and the Arch was quietly built to begin testing. The first object that had been successfully moved in space-time was an apple, but Paul soon found that technology had enormous new potentials where Time theory was involved.

His unique view of Time was that any given moment was simply a specific arrangement of every quantum particle that made up the universe. The particles, always in motion, created the perception of a forward progression in the flow of Time, which was really nothing more than the constant variation of those particles, morphing from one state and position to another. To be in any place, or any moment, all one had to do was find a way to tell all the particles of the universe to assume a given state or position in relationship to one another. Any reality that was ever possible could become this moment; this reality. The realization of the theory seemed impossible, however, for one could never know how to arrange each particle of the universe just as they were at a given event in history. It was challenge enough to understand even one particle of the universe—but science held that the whole of the universe had sprung from one single point. If that were true, then any possible universe might arise in the same way.

While it was impossible for humans to physically re-arrange the particles of the universe into a new pattern, a quantum singularity achieved this result effortlessly. Humans only had to tell the universe what they wanted—what shape and time to assume on the other side of the singularity. Mathematics was their voice, and the universe, being about nothing of any particular importance at any given moment, was kind enough to heed them and comply.

Yet from the first moment they eagerly spun up the Arch in Lawrence Berkeley labs the project team had been locked in a life and death struggle, engaged with two opposing forces in the future who were now using the same theory to wage war. Paul’s team had first thought they could remain stubbornly neutral, taking some moral middle ground between the two sides and striving only to preserve the history they had stored and preserved in their RAM Bank data library. But when they discovered the true scope of what the enemy was planning, and beheld the merciless nature of their designs, they decided that they had to take sides after all.

Yet their sole ally, a future group they had come to call the “Order,” had suffered a severe blow when their enemies, the Assassin cult, had managed to reverse the intervention Paul’s team made to prevent the collapse of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of Palma—the very first intervention run by the Berkley Arch facility. Now Paul and his small project team found themselves manning a front line outpost, a temporal fortress from which they, and they alone, could act to defeat the enemy plan. Recent missions to the past had achieved much, but the disaster of Palma still stood as one last obstacle to be removed. They had all spent the last three days desperately trying to gather the resources they would need to continue the struggle—food and fuel becoming really urgent needs now as the nation reeled from the shock of a devastated eastern seaboard.

Paul had been out negotiating delivery of a small cache of gasoline for their emergency generators when his Golem alert cell phone call came in. “Not now,” he said aloud, opening the phone. They were tired, and hungry, and needed rest. But time would not wait on the weakness of human frailties. Something was happening in the deep recesses of the Berkeley Hills, and he had to get up there as quick as he could. Something has come unglued again, thought Paul. Someone is up in the Arch complex at this very moment, spinning up the Arch. What is it this time, he thought as he rushed up the steps from the lower parking garage, a sick queasy anxiety building in his gut again. He wondered whether he really wanted to know.

Chapter 3

Paul arrived moments later, somewhat bedraggled and out of breath after rushing up from the underground garage. He threw off his leather jacket and draped it over the back of a chair, reflexively running a hand through his hair to chase the wind from his locks as he did so.

“It’s crazy out there,” he said.

“Fearless leader!” Kelly greeted him.

“You’ve got the Arch up,” Paul noted. “I heard the generator down in the garage. What is it this time? And why aren’t we on city power? Hell, it took me all day to arrange a fuel shipment, and the bastards hit me for $20 per gallon. But at least I got hold of a hundred gallons, which is more than I expected to find. There isn’t a station open within ten miles of here now.”

“Wow… two grand? That’s going to put a real crimp in the budget, but thankfully, we’ll be back on the grid in a few minutes. It’s after six now, but I’m just giving it a few more minutes to be sure we don’t catch any more flack from FEMA or the local power Nazis. Don’t worry about the generator. I had ten gallons stored in a survival jug at my place and I brought that in this morning. We’re covered.” Kelly rubbed his hands with satisfaction. “But the professor here insisted I establish a Nexus Point, so I did. Feel anything coming in through the perimeter just now?”

“What? No, I didn’t notice anything unusual.” Paul was at the main consol now, settling into a chair next to Kelly. “So what’s up? My alert cell call came in just as I was finishing up this fuel delivery deal. I got over here as fast as I could. Christ I hope we don’t have to save Christendom and Columbus all over again… Do we?”

“We’ve done that,” said Maeve as she entered through the main door. “And I managed to save the three loaves of fresh baked bread I had in the oven as well before I rushed over here. So what is it this time?”

Kelly looked at Robert, then simply extended an arm, pointing at the professor where he was busy with something on a computer screen at the Golem module.

“Robert?” said Paul. “Care to tell us why we’re here?”

“Oh, he says you’ll love this one,” said Kelly with the hint of a spoiler in his voice. “But I better let our Chief Historian tell it.”

Robert looked over his shoulder at them. “Give me a second here.” He waved at them to be quiet.

“Is he monitoring variation reports?” asked Maeve.

“I have no idea what he’s monitoring,” said Kelly. “He just wanted me to fire things up and establish a Nexus.”

“Then there’s no alert?” Paul had a peeved expression on his face. “And you went up on auxiliary power?”

Kelly extended his arm yet again, pointing at Robert, unwilling to take the heat this time, and they all looked at the professor where he was still squinting at the computer monitor over his reading glasses. The silence pulled at him, and he looked over at the other three, raising his eyebrows with an obvious ‘I have news’ in his eyes.

“What?” said Paul, still upset over the fuel situation.

“Well I’ve got him,” said Nordhausen. “And it seems he had a bone to pick.”

“Got who?”

“The man responsible for Palma this time around. His name is Kenan Tanzir in data I gathered on this altered Meridian. It took a while, even using the Arion system at UCB, but I eventually ran him down.”

Paul thought for a moment, wondering if this was going to be another Nordhausen wild goose chase. But he remembered how he had worked to convince the professor that Kelly was alive just days ago, grateful that he finally had his support, albeit grudgingly at first. He decided to return the favor and give the man the benefit of the doubt.

“Go on,” he said, wanting more information.

“It was really fairly basic,” said Robert. “I scoured everything I could find on events leading up to the eruption of Cumbre Vieja—down to the most minute and seemingly routine occurrences—news bits, blog entries, even the nonsense sites like GodlikeProductions with all their intimations of doom. Eventually I culled the search down to the last 24 hours before the eruption, and then used pattern recognition software with the Arion to isolate any oddities. My attention was drawn to that story of the Algerian air charter that overshot its approach to La Palma airport that very night, and I became convinced that it was no ordinary flight. Well, I couldn’t recall any such news, though I admit that we were a bit preoccupied that night.”

“To say the least,” said Maeve. “If I recall, you were kibitzing with Paul over whether the mission to see Shakespeare’s The Tempest was going to happen, and scheming on how to get backstage if it did.”

“Right you are, my good lady. But that said, I decided to see if we had anything on that story in the RAM Bank here, and was very surprised to find the plane was reported to have landed safely at La Palma an hour before the eruption—the incident we prevented perpetrated by Ra’id Husan al Din. Yet the history as it stands now reports that flight crashed. The Golems put me on to it. Useful little creatures, eh?”

“Golem Bank 7,” said Kelly. “The same group I called my lost sheep on the last mission. They’ve been pretty industrious these last few days.”

Maeve raised her eyebrows, immediately interested. “You’ve got my attention,” she said, waiting.

“So I got data on the passenger manifest and began checking all names against established records. In our RAM Bank data there were fourteen passengers on that flight, and they all seemed to be checking out—a few business travelers, tourists and all. But on this altered Meridian there were fifteen passengers, and the odd man out turned out to be a Mr. Kenan Tanzir, an Algerian Berber. So I immediately focused all my search efforts on him.

“A proverbial Person of Interest if ever there was one,” said Maeve.

“Exactly!” The professor’s cheeks reddened with obvious excitement. The search quickly produced conflicts between data in the altered Meridian and information we have in the RAM Bank here. Thank God for Golem 7 and the RAM Bank.”

“Well, you can thank me first,” said Kelly with a smile.

“It seems there is no Mr. Kenan Tanzir in our RAM Bank data—at least no inkling of the man as he presents himself in the altered Meridian. He was supposedly just another business passenger, a realtor actually, representing a buyer for a villa on the island. Yet in the history we know, what we want to call our Prime Meridian now, this man simply doesn’t exist—and I found out why.”

Paul swiveled his chair, directly facing the professor now, as Maeve folded her arms, waiting.

“I had to do genealogical searches, and I was vexed by the possibility that this name was merely an alias, but enough clues turned up in the data stream. I followed him backwards from the time of the flight. It originated in Oran, you see, and that evening he spent the night in Le Méridien Oran Hotel.”

“Le Méridien?” said Paul. “How ironic.”

“Yes, I found that amusing as well,” said Robert. “It’s a fairly new property, an elegant hotel and convention center owned by the Starwood group. Well he booked a room there, suite 911—another little twist in the gut, eh? I worked backward from that point—meals, phone calls, the works. It seems he was telephoned by a Mr. Kasim al Khafi that very night, and his data trail also had no corresponding information in our RAM Bank for the time period in question. It was as if he was a ghost.”

“You’re suggesting he was an operative from the future?” asked Maeve.

“I had my suspicions,” said Robert. “No one lives and moves through the world these days without leaving some kind of data trail. And there was nothing whatsoever on the man in the data stream the last six months or so. I thought he might be an Agent in Place, but I kept digging and that did not turn out to be the case.”

“So we apparently have two conspirators here,” said Maeve, “and neither man existed in the Meridian prior to Palma?”

“Not exactly,” said Robert. “The man who called Kenan did have a history in our RAM Bank, only it ended in November of the year 1942—with an obituary.” He let that sink in, folding his arms with some satisfaction, pleased that he finally had the undivided attention of everyone present.

“Well don’t leave us hanging,” said Paul. “You’re saying this Kasim fellow died during the war?”

“Precisely,” said Robert. “In the Meridian we come from, he dies. And the interesting thing is that he’s alive and well in the altered Meridian, and then I discover that these two men are connected by much more than apparent conspiracy. Kenan Tanzir is his son. Yes, the name was altered, probably to try and foil this sort of research, but with enough computing power it’s amazing what you can find. I’ve got a certificate of birth on this Kenan, in the city of Oran, some twenty two years ago.”

“Then he was born well after his father died!” Kelly objected. “How is that possible?”

“Yes, I immediately asked myself the same thing, and so I focused all my attention on the father after that, Kasim al Khafi, and I discovered some very interesting facts. He was an Algerian Berber, living in Oran as a younger man during the second world war. I said he had a bone to pick earlier, and this is what I meant… In July of 1940, just after France capitulated and signed an armistice with Germany, there was a question of what would happen to the powerful French fleet. It was scattered over several North African ports, but it’s nucleus under Admiral Gensoul was at the harbor of Mers-el-Kabir at Oran.

“The British commander, Admiral Somerville, received instructions to deliver an ultimatum to the French fleet to either join Britain and fight on or pursue any of a number of options to demilitarize the ships. Somerville was forced to take reluctant action, and he ordered his battle fleet, Force H, to bombard the French ships at anchor in the harbor. Needless to say it precipitated a lot of bad blood between France and England for a time, but it prevented the Germans from eventually capturing those ships.”

“So what does this have to do with this Kasim fellow?” asked Paul.

“Well he was there,” said Nordhausen quietly. “Yes, he owned a small shop near the harbor, and his home was just a few blocks away when Force H opened fire on the French fleet—and the harbor area as well. There were shore batteries there that responded to the British attack. To sum up, the man’s wife and daughter were killed in their home when a fifteen inch shell obliterated the place. And there you have it.”

“Have what?” asked Kelly. “The guy lost his wife and kid, but I don’t see the connection to Palma.”

“Patience, my good man. There’s more. You read mystery novels, do you? What we have here is motive. Kasim was justifiably embittered over the loss of his family, and he left Oran and became an Axis sympathizer. More than that, he went so far as to sign on with Rommel’s Afrika Korps as a Berber scout the following year. I dug up everything I could find on the man, and it seems he was killed in action at Bardia when Royal Navy commandos launched a raid there during Operation Crusader in November, 1942. You’ll be familiar with this history, Paul. Well, to put a fine point on it all, I did exhaustive research on that incident in our RAM Bank data. I traced down every man from officers to enlisted ranks, and again found that one man assigned to the Royal Navy Commandos was a replacement who shipped in on a steamer the previous year, in August of 1941.”

“What were you looking for?” asked Paul.

“Why, the man who killed Kasim, of course, as least as our history records it. And it seems that a squad leader by the name of William Thomason was responsible. Kasim was with a detachment of German light armored cars who were responding to the raid, and he was gunned down. The narrative indicated three German vehicles, seven men and a Berber scout were KIAs in that action. The Royal Navy Commandos ambushed the lot of them.”

“So our data shows this man Kasim dies in 1942,” said Maeve, “but the data from the altered Meridian has him telephoning his son at a hotel in Oran on the eve of the Palma attack? You’re sure it is the same man?”

“I knew you would tip toe into that,” said Robert. “I can show you at least twenty data points on that. I’ve got passports, photos, fingerprints, bank records, deposit trails—even a DNA record from his blood. It’s the same man, my good lady. Yes. That’s about the size of it. But the point is, how did he survive to make that telephone call?”

“Do go on, my friend,” said Paul.

“I thought this would interest you. Yes… If Kasim al Khafi is alive and well then it practically seals it that there was some deliberate intervention to spare his life. So I kept looking, and it gets even better.” The professor rubbed his hands together.

“Suffice it to say I wanted to immediately know something more about this Lieutenant Thomason and his background. He was late to the party, as I say, shipping out from Britain on a steamer in August of 1941. In our history his convoy makes the journey to Alexandria uneventfully. But in the altered Meridian, the world we’re living in now after Palma, the data shows that his convoy was attacked by a German surface raider, and this ship, the Prospector of Convoy OS-85, was one of four ships sunk on August 11, 1941. The raid occurred in the Atlantic, just two days sailing time from Gibraltar. There were twenty-seven survivors, but Thomason went down with the ship.”

“So he never reaches Alexandria,” said Maeve.

“Quite the case,” said Robert. “And he never leads that squad of Royal Marine Commandos to lay in ambush for the Germans during the Bardia raid. In short, he never kills our Berber scout, who goes on to lead a humdrum life, excepting one small contribution to the world. He has a son, mother entirely unknown, but the son’s name is Kenan Tanzir, our fifteenth passenger on that charter flight that crashed just before Palma blew its top, undoubtedly with a little help again this time. And I think I know exactly how he did it.”

The room was completely silent, and the professor just smiled.