Nexus Point

25

Kelly watched the progress bar on the monitor, a pleased expression on his face. “Looks like my children have all come home for a visit,” he said. “The Golems have been filling the RAM bank for the last hour now. We’ll have a good read on things in a moment. In fact, you may want to start setting up some queries on the research system. I’m sending a good mirror of the primary data over to that terminal now.”

“What’s that?”

“The GUI will display a chronological time line for you over there.” He pointed at Research Terminal 3. “I’ve been comparing data blocks as they come in from the Golems—checking all key dates and events. If the information on this fetch seems consistent with the data I stored earlier, then I’ll have the system color that segment of the chronology green. When there’s variance, discrepancy or outright conflict in the data, the system will shade the bars in different colors: yellow for minor stuff through orange to red. If you see black, then we either have a data void on that period, or a major conflict. This way we can actually look at the time line and see where things start to go fuzzy on us. I’m going to keep my Golems very busy, so we’ll be getting a constant stream of new information from the net as it exists in real time—to use a phrase.”

Maeve was delighted. “Kelly, you’re a genius! Is it only history and political events, or can I query things like religion, literature, art, music and the sciences?”

“It’s the whole damn Internet—or at least the essence of what’s out there as we speak. Ask anything you like.”

“Sounds like this colorized chronology is a good place to start.” Maeve settled into the swivel chair, adjusting the armrests and stretching before she stared at the keyboard. “But how does it work?”

“Just hit the F1 for a general display and enter your dates. Use the TAB key to start a specific query on any given year or year grouping. A menu will come up and you can search for key events in any of the disciplines you mentioned a moment ago.”

“History first,” she rubbed her palms together, her mind beginning to feel its way through the situation, assessing what she needed to do. “I’ll have a look at the last two thousand years or so. Do I enter negative numbers for dates before the Birth of Christ?” A nod from Kelly confirmed that and she thought for a moment. “Let’s see… we had better check in on the Prime Movers first. I’ll go from –1 BC to the present. That will cover Christ, Muhammad, Luther’s Boys and most of the key history that would effect us here.”

“You’ll miss the Buddha,” Kelly noted.

“I’ll get back to him later. For now I want to see if anyone’s fooling around with Western Civ. I’d hate to see the look on old Professor Porter’s face if he has to re-write all his course notes at the University. Those dates will give me a good chunk of Rome, the Byzantines, Barbarian invasions, the rise of the Islamic Caliphates, the Medieval period and everything after.” She had the numbers in and was pleased to see the screen display as it began to trace out a green color bar starting with the first year BC and working forward. She sighed with immediate relief. “Looks like Christ was born in Bethlehem, right on schedule.”

“Halleluiah!” Kelly mimicked a typical television preacher, a bit of a Southern twang in his tone of voice. The chronology made its way slowly forward as the CPUs in the research systems ran comparison checks on the two data banks at the speed of light. The progress still seemed agonizingly slow to Maeve. After about five minutes she had worked her way through the first century AD, her mind ticking off events by recollection. “The Romans look solid,” she said. “Nero, Titus, Hadrian… all looking good.”

The time line continued forward, solid green, to Maeve’s great satisfaction. “Here come the Goths,” she said as the line swept through the second century into the third. “They’ll sack Athens and Sparta any second now.”

“Don’t forget the Persians,” Kelly put in.

“Oh, I won’t. Right now Rome has its hands full with the Lombards, Saxons, Franks, Picts, Scots, Germans and the Huns will show up soon enough. You say all is well as long as I get green here, right?” She pointed at the timeline. “You don’t have any surprises for me, do you, like shades of emerald to lime and so on?”

“Nope. Any variation will go to yellow at once. See that meter in the upper left hand of the screen? It will tick off calendar years, and you can toggle it down to months if you need to take a closer look at something. Any discrepancy will be flagged and put into this box here. Think of it like a penalty box denoting the bad years. You’ll be able to go right to that specific year and initiate a deep pattern search to vector in on the data.”

“God, I just love this Kelly! How did you dream this up?” Maeve was beaming as Alaric the Goth and Attila began to devour the fringes of the Roman Empire. Italy was invaded while she was warming up her coffee and barbarians clotted the Appian Way as she stirred in the cream. Rome fell while she struggled to get the cellophane off a bag of Fig Newtons. By the time she had returned to her seat the Western Roman Empire had come to an end, the Vandals moved in, and the value of real estate dropped considerably in Italy and Sicily. Her line looked perfectly normal, green and solid as the Byzantine Empire began to spar with Persia in the Sixth Century. The Persians soon moved into Syria and overran Egypt as the line moved into the Seventh Century.

“Looks like Muhammad has started things rolling in his neck of the woods,” she said. “The Arabs will be militarizing by now and pushing north into Palestine and the butt of Asia Minor.”

“No problems yet?” Kelly came to look over her shoulder.

“Not if this thing works as advertised,” said Maeve. “Look. While Europe languishes the Islamic Caliphs are spreading their credo like wildfire. The call of the muezzin will be sounding in India to the East and echoing from the cobblestones of Lisbon in the West soon.”

Kelly squinted at the line as it traced through the eighth century. “Looks like Charles Martel stopped them at Tours and Portiers, “he said. “No variations at all, and those were some pretty significant years.” The line was still solid green as it reached 900 on the chronology.

“Expecting trouble?” Maeve gave him a quick glance, wondering what was on his mind.

“Well,” he explained, “given the fact that we set back the greatest blow ever conceived and executed against the West by the Muslim world, I was wondering about other crisis points in that conflict.”

“You mean Palma?”

“Sure,” said Kelly. “Just consider what the world would have been like in the future if we hadn’t stopped those wave sets from smashing the Eastern Seaboard.”

Maeve gave him a nod of agreement. “It’s conceivable that the United States would have been finally eclipsed on the world stage—assuming Europe got off with relatively little damage.”

“Europe would have survived, but with the US literally swept out of its position as the world’s imperial watchdog, the Islamic states may have consolidated in opposition to the European Union.”

“They would have lost their biggest customer,” Maeve put in.

“Hell, California and the entire West Coast would not have been affected by Palma. But they’d have their hands full rebuilding the East for decades to come. I suppose Graves could have told us all about it.”

“Did he?” Maeve raised an eyebrow, realizing that she had violated her own credo in asking Kelly about his brief sojourn with Mr. Graves in the future.

“Nope. He was very tight lipped about the history. In fact, I think they were totally amazed with what happened after the Palma mission. I mean, they were desperate, right? So we have to assume the world was spinning down into something really bad by then. Who knows what was going on. Maybe there was a nuclear war, or some bio-terror plague once these radicals got the bit between their teeth.”

“History is little else than a picture of human crimes and misfortunes, said Voltaire.” Maeve raised a finger, gratified that all the ill deeds and foul play were still in order on her screen.

“I like Henry Ford better,” Kelly offered. “History is bunk. He gets right to the point, and I suppose they must have had quite a shock when we ran our little mission. Imagine what it must have been like for them when everything suddenly changed! They would have had an entire new world to walk into, and hundreds of years of history to re-learn.”

“Were they that far ahead in time?” Maeve took one more step out onto the ice, and then promised herself she would stick with the past.

“They wouldn’t tell me,” Kelly finished. “I suppose you would be the first to understand why, Miss Outcomes and Consequences.”

As they talked the time line rolled on, passing one centennial Meridian after another. History receded in its wake, quietly unchanged and safe under the gloaming dust of memory. Maeve began to feel much better as she watched the screen.

“Can I assume that if the history database is unaltered, then most other key areas will have good integrity? I mean, do I have to run literature queries to check in on folks like Chaucer and all, or should I assume the Canterbury Tales are safely inscribed in Middle English somewhere as long as I get a good green line through the thirteen hundreds?”

“I would say so,” said Kelly, “but I’m sure you’ll want to run checks in the literature database as well when we finish this. The system can do your inventory on Shakespeare for you in about thirty seconds—line by line.”

“Love you, Mister!” Maeve’s eyes gleamed. It was as if a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Now she didn’t have to worry that the whole of the world was kept safe in her head, with endless hours ahead of her as she struggled to remember each poem, each novel, every page of the history she knew so well. Now they could check anything, at any time, from the safe sanctuary of the Nexus while the Arch spun out its quantum mystery below them. She felt wonderfully light, instilled with great energy and vigor as she watched the years tick by. So far there was not a single discrepancy between the two history data sets, and she was very relieved.

“Here comes the Twelfth Century,” she chimed. “At this rate one last cup of coffee should get me to the turn of the second millennium.”

“What fun that was,” said Kelly. “Y2K was a big no show, but the fireworks were great, and the stock market was even better.” He snatched up Maeve’s mug and went off to the kitchenette to see what was left in the coffee pot. When he returned he was surprised to see her leaning in to the screen and biting tentatively at the nail of her right index finger. He looked at the screen. “Something come up?”

“Not sure…” Maeve was quietly watching the Meridian, and she squinted up at the lights. “The fluorescents are a pain on these monitors. Is that yellow, or just a screen glitch?”

Kelly felt a pulse of adrenaline. He knew at once that they had probably encountered their first variation. Sure enough, by the time he reached Maeve’s side and set down the coffee mug, the penalty box was filling up with numbers. He leaned in to spy the first crucial year. “Eleven eighty-seven,” he breathed. “Hang on a second. I’m going to shift some system resources your way and focus CPU power on that spot. Everything was green up until that year, right? Keep an eye on the line and we can switch to monthly data checks. What was going on back then?” He threw Maeve a question, preferring to have her musing on the history instead of worrying over the spots of yellow that were popping into the time line with increasing regularity.

Maeve closed her eyes a moment, running Golems through her own memory to recall the key events of the late Twelfth Century. Byzantine History was her old college major, so she found safe ground there at once. Isaac Angeles II was Emperor in Constantinople and he was already quarreling with the Pope by 1185. Frederick was consolidating his power in Central Europe, and Phillip II Augustus held France in the West. The Crusades were well underway, in fact most of Tripoli and Palestine as far south as Sinai had been in Christian hands for some ninety years. The Crusades! Her pulse quickened as she realized the year 1187 was a pivotal year in that history.

“Can we start a single year query on eleven eighty-seven?” She raised her voice so Kelly could hear her in the next room.

He huffed back, pointing at her keyboard, clearly excited. “Hit your F12 function key. I just put the Arion Mini on this baby and told the Golems to start honing on that time segment for live data feeds. No sense having them fetch stuff on the Romans when we have a clear violation right here. What’s up?”

“The Crusades,” said Maeve, folding her arms. “The Second has been finished for some time, but the Third is about to be born—unless this changes things.”

“What? I thought we went over this during the first mission run up. Nordhausen was adamant that the Crusades were too complex to tamper with. He said: History has it’s imperatives. I’m afraid they simply must occur.” Kelly mocked a bit to make his point, imitating Nordhausen.

“History is bunk,” she gave him back Henry Ford in reprisal. “We’ve all seen to the truth of that.” That look of self-recrimination was building in her eyes again, a yawning, vacant doubt that dispelled her elation and re-stoked the anxiety that had plagued her for months past. “When you get right down to it you can mess with something like the Crusades as easily as anything else, and apparently somebody is giving it the old college try.”

“Any idea what happened in eleven eighty-seven?” Kelly sat down in the chair next to her, unwilling to wait for the data queries to answer his question.

“For starters,” Maeve began, “the whole history of the Middle East and the conflict of the West with the Muslim world was about to be turned on its head—and it all happened over a forty-eight to sixty hour period, a real maelstrom at a place called the Horns of Hattin.”

“Where’s that? Here, I’ll get a map query running.”

“It’s near the Sea of Galilee, above Tiberias—the Gate of the West, as it was sometimes called from the Muslim perspective. The Christians called it the Horns of Hattin, after two prominent hill formations in the area.” She was already keying a specific search request on one screen while Kelly brought up a map.

“Here it is,” he said first. “A big battle was fought there in early July, 1187. Take a look at the map. Looks like old Saladin was about to lock horns with the Crusaders beneath those hills.”

“Here’s an artistic rendition of the battle—from the old database. I can’t get clean data yet from the new stuff.”

The image came up showing a battle raging in a sea of spears and lances. The two prominent hill features were evident in the foreground and background: the Horns of Hattin. Kelly noted the image and then returned to his map. “Looks like the Crusaders were hung out to dry,” he said. “Saladin is coming at them from one side and this other force is enveloping from the north.”

“I’m not sure on the details,” said Maeve, but I think the Christian Army had advanced beyond reach of good water, and Saladin’s army was baring the way to the Sea of Galilee. It was an awful mess in the end. Every castle in the Holy Land had emptied its garrisons to join in this battle, and they were slaughtered by superior Moslem forces. Look up Harold Lamb in the old database. He’s got good accounts of all this.”

It did not take long for Kelly to come up with some reference material. Lamb’s account was very colorful, and he read a passage or two quickly on screen, summarizing for Maeve. “Looks like there was some disagreement about whether they should fight this battle. Saladin had been consolidating the Turks and the Kurds under a truce with the Lords of Christendom up until now. Then some idiot, this guy called Reginald of Kerak, raided the Sultan’s caravan and got Saladin really pissed off.”

“The Wolf of Kerak,” said Maeve. “I remember this now. Guy had just been crowned king in Jerusalem, but he took the crown from his newly wed wife, the sister of Baldwin—or rather she gave it to him. Men didn’t think women could run things like kingdoms back then. Well, Reginald of Kerak was instrumental in supporting that move in Jerusalem. Guy was a spineless little wimp, it seems, and Reginald wasted no time advising him.”

“Right,” said Kelly. “In fact he damn near twisted his arm off the night before the battle. All the other Christian Lords were against the attack, and Guy went along with them. Then, that same night, it seems that this Reginald of Kerak and the head of the Knights Templars came to the King and argued with him for hours.”

“Guy changed his mind,” Maeve put in. “He ordered the attack; the Christians got slaughtered, and Saladin had the whole of Palestine prostrate at his feet.”

“Nobody left to defend all those nifty castles,” said Kelly, arms behind his head as he leaned back heavily in his chair. His baseball cap was tilted off kilter as he spoke. “So who would be trying to tamper with that event?” He wondered aloud, looking at Maeve with a puzzled expression on his face.

“Let’s see if your little Golems can paint us a new picture,” said Maeve. “If an event of this magnitude changes, then the transformation will ripple forward from this point in the continuum and become a real tsunami by the time it reaches us here in the 21st Century. You were wondering what Mr. Graves and company felt like when our mission succeeded for them? We may be about to find out ourselves. We can’t keep the Arch spinning forever, Kelly. God only knows what the world will be like when we turn it off.”

26

The Sami brooded in the Eyrie of Sinan. It was the one place he knew he could linger undisturbed, for no man would dare to walk the gray stair that led to the door, or chance his life on entering. Here he could sulk until his master returned, and then he would undoubtedly be shamed before the Kadi, and severely chastised for all he had done. Yet that was the least of his crimes, he knew. The greatest measure was the cup he had spurned from the hand of Sinan himself! He had been told to do a thing, to kill a man, and just when he was ready to fulfill his charge, he had allowed the moment to slip from his grasp.

As he gazed out the high lancet window his mind returned, burning, to the man who had escaped his wrath, Reginald, Arnat, the Wolf of Kerak. Reginald was the oath breaker, who flouted the truce offered by Salah ad Din and set himself as the mortal enemy of every Muslim soul. It was he who had dared to set foot upon the sacred soil of the Land of Muhammad; it was he who raided the coasts of the Red Sea for months on end, burning the coastal towns of the faithful and raging inland with his host of ravenous knights.

Each time the warriors of Islam were able to challenge him in battle, he had escaped. Now he was harrying the faithful again from his outpost at Kerak: Reginald, Arnat, the Wolf.

Then, at long last, word came from Alamut on the mouth of a single courier in the night. It was written: Reginald must die. The charge was veiled in great secrecy and given to the Sami himself. “Work this thing well,” said the horseman. “It is the will of Sinan himself that this be done. The hour and the day will be revealed to you soon.” The man had given the Sami a ring of amethyst, marked with the carven seal of Sinan.

The hour and the day… The Sami had paced and paced as the time drew ever closer. He had trained the faithful Fedayeen in the manner of the deed, selecting out his chosen best. All was made ready. Fast horses were groomed in the stables, arrangements set and the route of approach was well planned. Then, a day before the death party was to leave the castle, the stranger had come upon them through the Well of Souls. The Kadi said he was expected, a messenger from Egypt bearing scrolls of fate—yet no message was found upon him when they pulled his chilled body from the waters and stripped away the peculiar garments he was clothed in, as was the custom.

The Sami was curious, and he allowed himself a moment’s distraction when the man arrived, for he had been told by Sinan that all who came through the Well were to be watched and closely guarded. So it was that he went to the chamber of greeting that first night, watching secretly from his place behind the lattice as the maids anointed the man’s body with scented oils and dressed him in robes befitting an Amir.

He remembered the strange light that seemed to surround the man, an unearthly foreboding sheen that shifted like a glowing mist. His eyes whitened at the sight, and he immediately knew that this man was not the messenger the Kadi had been told to expect. Who was he then? Surely not one of the faithful, for he called out in a strange tongue while he slept, possessed by the consuming fever of the elixir of returning that was poured upon his lips by the maids in the chamber.

It was not the words of the faithful that he spoke. Surely this man must be an enemy! The Sami sent at once to Alamut, describing his fear and seeking permission to kill the man while he slept. But it would be many days before the messenger birds could return. If he lingered, he would miss his charge against the Wolf. If he acted without sanction there would surely be consequences—unless the Kadi agreed. Then he might justify his deeds to Sinan. He was decided. He would have words with the Kadi concerning this man. He remembered how he had argued with him, warning him of the danger in their midst. Then he spoke of the Wolf, the devil at large on the land again, and a dangerous threat to them all.

“The man holds forth once more at Kerak—astride the holy pilgrim’s road that leads to Mecca. No doubt he will soon cast his malice and ire upon the innocent who walk that road. His hatred of the faithful is boundless.”

“We are at peace with the Christians,” the Kadi reminded him. “Salah ad Din has made the peace himself! Raymond of Galilee has given his word: A three year truce.” The Kadi held up three fingers to emphasize his point.

“Yes, I have heard as much,” said the Sami. “Three years of waiting while Salah ad Din bends the ears of the Atabegs of his homeland and treats with the Sultan of the East. All the while the sacred duty of jihad is forgotten. Thankfully, the sand in that clock runs out now, and the truce will soon be at end. Who knows what mischief Raymond has been plotting at Tiberias? You think it was fairness and justice of heart that moved him to plead for this truce? We placed a dagger by his pillow while he slept, and the message was obviously received. He was frightened, and shown to be the coward he truly is.”

“You have already heard the ruling of my heart on that matter,” the Kadi remembered the anger in his words when he spoke. “You were told not to interfere with the Christian Lords, and yet you persist! You think it a small thing to ply your craft—yet it is not a small thing. You think to advance our cause, yet now you have seen what results when you act on impulse, and without guidance. If what you say is true, then perhaps this truce would not have been offered were it not for your meddling. So your own headstrong ways fold back upon themselves. Remember, it was you who dared to send men to the tent of Salah ad Din himself, and that nearly brought ruin upon us all when he marched his host to the very doorstep of this castle. No one has dared to invade the sanctuary of these mountains for a generation, yet you tempt the hand of a Great Mover, and bend his wrath upon us.”

“It was fitting justice for what he did to the brotherhood in Egypt. You, of all this host, should have seen the wisdom in my actions. Did he not lay waste to the lodge of the Ismaili brethren in Cairo? Did he not crucify their leaders and nail their broken bodies upon the gates of the city? Such insult and atrocity cannot be overlooked—not even by one you deem to be great, which has yet to be proven.”

“You see only with the eye of the moment!” The Kadi shook a finger at the Sami now, his anger rising. “Have you learned nothing?”

“We are here, are we not? Massiaf still stands. Salah ad Din has gone away to unite the tribes. We frightened him away as well. We have proven that not even a Sultan may trifle with us lightly. It was my strong hand that decided the issue that day. If we had followed your counsel we would all be beggars in the streets now.” The Sami smiled, clearly pleased with his boast. After the assassination plot failed, Salah ad Din had come to the high mountains to lay siege to the stronghold of the Assassins in Syria, Massiaf. But the strength of that castle lay not in its walls, but in the devious hearts and ways of the men within.

“I counseled the Fedayeen that day,” said the Sami, “and told them what to do. A dagger was thrust into the earth beside the sleeping pillow of Salah ad Din himself! The Sultan was so angry that he redoubled the guard around his tent. He even gave orders that flour should be spread beyond the edge of his camp so that the passing of any man would be clearly seen. Yet we came, and we left our footprints in the flour just to spite him. It was said that the guards outside his tent were white with fear when they found the mark of the Fedayeen upon the ground the next day—in spite of every effort they could not guarantee the security of their master. And we left a message that he has taken to heart: that his life is ours to grant or take, and we will hold him to account for any injustice pressed upon us here.”

The Sami took a moment’s comfort from that recollection. It reminded him what could be accomplished by a few determined men of skill, his chosen Fedayeen. They had been well trained and prepared to carry out yet another mission, only this time it was not to give warning and frighten, it was to bring death to a mortal enemy of Islam—Reginald, Arnat, the Wolf of Kerak.

Then a madness seemed to fall upon the Sami, and he was possessed by a compelling curiosity. This stranger had come in through the Well of Souls and all his plans for the Wolf had slipped from his grasp.

Why had he allowed himself to be so distracted by this infidel? He had been set to leave on the very day after the man’s arrival, a troop of Fedayeen traveling in his wake like shadows following after darkness in the night. He knew the time and the place where he would find the Wolf, a lonely stretch of road near an inn on the way to Tiberias. He knew Arnat would come to that place, swaggering with boastful pride, yet and bawdy drunk with the swill of his mead.

The Sami could see the moment of truth in his mind’s eye as he gazed at the blazoning dawn. Five of the faithful Fedayeen would fall upon his enemy there, all dressed in the manner of Christian commoners, their bodies smeared with the offal and mire of their hovels so that even their smell might not betray them. The long thin knives would whisk out in the dark, the blades shaped and honed to slip through the laced iron of the finest chain mail and strike the vile flesh beneath—each blade tipped with poison to hasten the death of their victim. He saw it all, for it was written, if anything could be inscribed and sure. While nothing was certain, the chance presented itself for a great success. Yet it was not to be.

Instead he had dallied a day, then two days, while he bent his mind to the stranger in the chamber of greeting. By the third day only the fastest horses would have carried his band of Assassins to the appointed place in time. Why did he tarry? Why did he not strike at the man and simply be gone? When the Kadi finally summoned the stranger to council chambers for discernment, the moment was lost to him, and the Wolf would prowl unfettered yet again. He had failed in his charge, and it galled him.

Undoubtedly Arnat was seeking parley with the strong knights of Christendom even now. The Sami knew what the Wolf would argue at council. Bloody war and havoc were his creed. He would galvanize the host of the infidels with his black ire and whip them to a frenzy.

Salah ad Din was aging, and sick. He was not the proud warrior of old and could not ride the great stallions of Arabia or carry the heavy armor and shield as he might in his youth. Salah ad Din sought to gain by truce and the feeble prattle of words what he might have taken by force of arms years ago. Salah ad Din was weak. He overstayed his place in the Sultan’s tent. The Christian host was a rabid animal, and he would not know what to do.

The Sami paced, his quiet feet shifting to and fro about the tower; the bile of deep regret thick in his throat. It occurred to him that the coming of this stranger was perfectly timed, like a stone unsettling the waters of a still pond, his fall through the Well of Souls was rippling out in every direction, and disturbing the surely guided eddies of the hours and days the Sami had labored over so long. It was as if it was all planned, some dark machination of the Order. In one fell move they defile the Well and scatter his plans to naught. Now Sinan himself was drawing nigh. The Sami could feel his wrath, a palpable heat, coming with the rising sun beyond his window.

As the muezzin began the haunting call to prayer from the minaret below, the Sami knew at last what he must do. Surely Sinan would bring the stranger here, to this very place, the eyrie where no man could come unbidden and live. He would summon also the Kadi, to hear his accusation and testimony of lies. No matter.

If he could not slay the Wolf, there was yet one thing he could accomplish. He would be called to stand in this very chamber as well, to answer for his failed charge and the strife he had worked here in the castle. He would be called, and he would bring with him his sharpest knife, tainted with the vile poison of an asp. One sudden move, one flick of his wrist and the stranger would lie dead. If indeed he was an enemy, as the Sami knew, then he could not be allowed to draw close to Sinan. If banishment or even death was his own fate, the Sami held the stranger’s death dearer. The Sami would have his vengeance. As surely as the sun chased the gray dawn, this man, the infidel, would die.

Sinan was coming, like a quiet wind, stealing into the valley on the heels of the great troop of horsemen led down by Taki ad Din. He moved quickly, yet with stealth, on a swift white steed, and only two guardians at his side. Even as he came home to the mountains of the Assassins, word of his approach seemed to travel before him, as rumor, omen, the presentiment of some great change that was working itself to life. The Sami pressed his hands upon his ears to shut the voices out, yet they spoke still, a faint rumble in the distance that promised war.

All about him the world was pivoting on the hinge. Christian Lords poured out the might of all their castles upon the land. The black stone walls of Marghab spilled forth a host of men at arms, and from the walled city of Tortusa long lines of peasantry marched about clusters of mounted Turcoples. He knew that all the Christian Lords were moving now. Thickets of spearmen came from Tyre, their leather jerkins wet with oil; gallant sailors from the great harbors joined the inland throng, filling the dusty roads with song and revelry. Lean archers came down from Sidon and Acre, and Ascalon sent forth her hardy men at arms, some with sword and heavy shield, others bearing long lances, javelins and pikes.

These were but the rank and file, he knew, for the real strength of Outremer lay in the hard stone walls of their great castles, and the dour knights that stood watch there, prowling the lands on great mailed steeds. The white mantle of the Templars emblazoned with a cross and the dark robes of the Hospitalers brought fear and awe to any who looked upon them. While their numbers were few, the hard iron of their chain mail and their incredible strength and skill in combat made them nearly invincible when they charged in battle. All of Islam had endured the blight of their march for nearly a century now, but the issue would soon be decided.

Against them came Salah ad Din, with all his host. The warriors of Islam answered the call of jihad at last. There were scores of Mamlukes with their brightly colored garb and gleaming scimitars. Bedouin fighters drifted in from the deserts, riding camels and braying horns on the wind. Ghulam cavalry rode with tall Amirs, proud and haughty in the saddle. Swarthy Turks and Kurds thronged from the east, and down from Aleppo came Taki ad Din with a host of twenty thousand Saracen horsemen, veterans of many battles.

In the face of all this commotion and turmoil, the Sami’s own personal fate seemed a small thing to him. The day of reckoning would soon be at hand. He hoped he would live to see it, and continue on in the service of his master. Yet there were some things he could not set aside, and his honor and pride demanded a death in place of the charge he had allowed himself to despoil. The Wolf had escaped him, but the infidel would die in his stead.

27

Kelly wasted little time getting a focused data search set up for Maeve. He would begin on the first offending year, starting in January, and have the system run detailed comparisons of all matching data files from the two banks. Maeve worked on the keyword set, compiling a list of every important subject she could think of. She followed her hunch and focused on the conflict between the West and the Muslim world where the two cultures had been grating against one another for nearly a century in Palestine. Her list culled the obvious keywords to spearhead the data search: Crusades, Palestine, Outremer, Islam. She also threw in all the names of Christian and Muslim Lords from the period, major principalities and cities in the region and a few associated subject areas like castles, trade, relics and shrines.

“What am I leaving out?” she said aloud. “Ah, how about the Assassins? They were probably causing a little trouble in the region.”

“Who were they?” Kelly looked over his shoulder as she finished.

“A nasty little cult that was hiding out in the highlands of northern Syria,” she explained. “They finagled their way into a few decent castles and used them as outposts and training centers for their corps of secret operatives. A bit like Osama bin Ladin and his terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.”

“You mean they were terrorists?”

“In a manner of speaking. They were few in number, but used subterfuge, sleight of hand and threat of assassination to exert influence on both the Christian and Muslim lords in the region. In fact, the word Assassin, as it’s used in the West today, dates from this period. Here, let me show you.” She keyed the word and ordered an origins search to get a number of reference links immediately.

“See here,” she pointed reading aloud:“For 800 years, the sect has been largely shrouded in mystery and still is glimpsed through a mist of rumors, charges and speculations. But it is known that the word assassin, still used to describe a political murderer, was applied to members of the sect…” She selected a second reference and read it aloud.

“The origin of the organization’s name is unclear. Maalouf follows a number of Ismaili sources in affirming that ‘assassin’ is derived from the Arabic assass (foundation), via assassiyun (fundamentalists); they were simply believers in a purer and more basic form of Islam. A more highly-colored derivation, favored by Western writers, points to the Arabic hashshashin (eaters of hashish) to explain both the name of the Assassins and their fanatical devotion to their leader, the Old Man of the Mountain, as their sanguinary tactics were fueled by narcotics.” ⁽¹⁾

“How strange,” said Kelly. “Bin Ladin’s group, Al Qaeda, was also supposed to mean ‘the base’ in Arabic, and I ran across references associating the word for ‘foundation’ as well.

“Birds of a feather,” said Maeve. “I guess these Islamic fundamentalists all tend to think alike.”

“Well,” said Kelly, “we had better get the comparison run going. I’ll have the system flag any data that has a variance rating of .05 or higher—that was my threshold for yellow on the color bar. It will extract any dating information on the reference materials and we’ll do a scan by month beginning with 1187.”

He had the job ready to run a moment later, and Maeve watched while the familiar green line started across her screen, month by month. All was well until late in June when the solid green line suddenly changed to yellow near the end of the month.

“Bingo!” she chimed. “We get our first deviations in June of 1187, just as I thought. The Battle of Hattin was in early July, right on the 4^th or so. Seems history has a thing for that week: the Declaration of Independence and the end of the battle of Gettysburg, to name a few choice moments in our own affairs. Let’s see what’s wrong. You better pull up a chair and help me out. I’ve already got over a hundred files that show alteration.”

Kelly settled in next to her, and they began to work down the list. The system was designed to display red text for any word in a file that did not exactly match the corresponding text from the primary data, the signature files that Kelly had stored in the RAM bank last month. They were getting little things at first: changes in grammar, sentence structure and choice of words in the documents, but no real alteration of key facts. A half hour passed like this, and Kelly began to get frustrated.

“This is going to take forever,” he breathed. “Here, I’m going to ask the system for data flagged with greater deviation values. Just for yucks, I’ll query for outright anomalies.” He entered a few commands and squinted at the screen.

“Here we go,” he smiled as he read aloud. “Archeologists unearth strange find in hidden archive. It’s a newspaper article. How’s that for a headline?”

“What was it?” Maeve asked as she paged through a file on her terminal.

“That’s odd,” said Kelly. “Hey it came up under that last keyword you threw in, the Assassins. Listen to this: ‘A team of Harvard based scientists rushed to the site near a ruined medieval castle in Syria today as construction crews working on a restoration project for the Aga Khan Foundation unearthed a hidden vault in a cave near Masyaf. A sealed iron strongbox there contained a number of items, most significantly, a copy of the Holy Koran, believed to be well over a thousand years old. That in itself would make the typical historian’s day, but an odd find, hidden behind a sealed leaf of the volume, had researchers quite perplexed. It was a portion of a laminated playing card from a typical modern deck—the King of Diamonds, to be precise.”

Maeve gave him a frown. “We’ve got to hit the event data harder than that, Kelly. Come on, will you?”

“Well this file had a super high anomaly rating,” said Kelly. “Sure, it sounds ludicrous. It probably migrated down from the construction crews—a typical example of site contamination.” He glanced at a few more lines of the article and saw something that jarred him. “Workers at the site insist the box had remained locked and undisturbed before the researchers arrived. ’We have no idea how a thing like this could be authentic,’ said Professor Sims of the Harvard-MIT institute, ‘unless, of course, the occupants of this library were fond of playing poker or bridge in their spare time.’ The site was the location of the nefarious group known as the Assassins, a cult of fanatical fundamentalists who terrorized both Muslim and Christian interests alike during the twelfth century, AD.” They even have a picture on file—” Kelly cut himself off, leaning forward suddenly to squint at the screen. “It can’t be…”

“You will be if you don’t get down to some serious work, Mister.” Maeve protested again from the next terminal.

Kelly said nothing. He was fishing for something in his wallet, his face furrowed with concern. Maeve turned to see him holding something up to the monitor screen. “Weird!” He exclaimed. “It’s a perfect match! The King of Diamonds—or at least the top half of it.”

Maeve gave him a frown.

“Look,” said Kelly. “It’s the top half of a laminated playing card.“ Kelly was shaking his head, the bill of his baseball cap swinging back and forth, but slowing as he continued to stare at the screen. “We cut the damn thing in half years ago,” he whispered.

“What are you talking about?”

“The card. It was our Red Arrow. I’ve carried this thing around for over two decades and…”

Maeve was looking at him like she was about to reach for something sharp, but he held up a warding hand, begging her forbearance. “Remember your Tolkien, Maeve? Gondor sent the Red Arrow to Rohan as a sign of great need. It was only to be used in the last extreme—a call for all the muster of Rohan to ride to Gondor’s aid.”

“Kelly,” Maeve nearly shouted at him. “The whole world is spinning out of control and you’re wasting valuable time here.”

“You don’t understand,” Kelly defended himself. “Paul and I had this ritual. We took a playing card, the King of Diamonds, and cut the damn thing in half. He kept one half; I kept the other. We made a promise that if we ever received the other half of the card in the mail, it would indicate dire need. It was a token of our friendship, and a summons to render immediate aid—our Red Arrow.”

“Lovely,” said Maeve. “Truly endearing.” She gave him a withering look that said her patience had finally run out.

“Well there’s the top half,” Kelly pointed at his screen. “And I’ve got the bottom half; laminated too… a perfect mate to the card shown in this article!”

“That’s impossible. It’s got to be coincidence.”

The argument was suddenly interrupted by Kelly’s cell phone ringing. He craned his neck toward his briefcase, worried that another alert was coming in from the Golems, but this time it was his green cell phone, jutting from his jacket pocket on the next chair. He reached for it, flipping it open while Maeve folded her arms with a disapproving glare as Kelly listened, his face registering surprise and dismay, then outright shock. He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it with a perplexed look on his face.

“That was Nordhausen,” he said. “He sounded really strange. Here, listen to the playback!”

He handed the phone to Maeve and she pressed the replay message button, raising the receiver to her ear. “Kelly? This is Nordhausen. I’m in trouble. No time to explain. It’s Paul! He’s shifted in time! I’m not sure how, but he’s gone. Look up something called the Gate of the West. Can’t say any more. Rasil is back—” The message cut off abruptly and the two of them locked eyes, the surprise and shock flowing from Kelly to Maeve.

Kelly held out the bottom half of his playing card and, for the first time, Maeve looked at the image on the screen. It was a perfect mate.