‘I’ll go,’ volunteered Josh without a second thought.
‘No. I need you for another mission. I believe that the recovery of the engine is probably best left in the hands of the Makepieces.’ He handed the box to Caitlin’s parents. ‘I take it your timeship can travel back beyond the datum point.’
Juliana nodded. ‘It can go anywhere in the continuum. As long as we have an artefact to locate with.’
‘For that, you will need to find a friend of mine.’
55
Capture
The creature held him off the ground, razor-sharp talons gripping his throat. Dalton stared down into the many dark eyes and felt the alien mind probing his.
WHO ARE YOU?
The question appeared in his mind as it began to explore his timeline. The Nihil had none of the subtlety of a seer, and it raked over his life like a wolf devouring a kill, looking for some tasty morsel.
But Dalton was a master seer, and while it focused on pillaging his past, his mind skilfully delved into the creature’s timeline.
The Nihil’s chronology stretched far back into the distant past, its branches weaving across millions of years, creating a lattice more complicated than the continuum itself.
It was an epic history of conquest, shaped by the countless lives the creature had taken, every world it had destroyed. Dalton followed the roots of its devastation back into the maelstrom and beyond. Through the chaos and out into other timelines. As the scale of what this creature had experienced became clear, his mind struggled to cope with the wonder of it all. He witnessed so many alternate realities, some just like his own, while other civilisations were far more advanced than theirs — and all had fallen before the Nihil’s forces.
He learned from the lips of the dying why they called themselves ‘Nihil’, they were annihilation incarnate, but it was just one of a thousand names. They were a legion of nightmares that existed beyond the physical dimensions. To them, time and space were nothing but rooms in a house, and they showed no mercy, decimating everything as they ravaged time in search of their goal. Dalton could feel the hunger within the creature, the burning need for something that was just beyond its grasp, gnawing at its soul, driving it forward in search of the one thing it needed to survive.
Aetherium.
They craved the dark energy but had no way to collect it, relying on others to refine it for them. Their need for it drove them into a frenzy, and that was their weakness, one that Dalton could use to his advantage.
Dalton felt the creature becoming aware of his presence and withdrew, leaving the Nihil studying the moment he’d first met the Nemesis.
WHO IS THIS?
It demanded, replaying the moment over and over again.
NO ONE.
Dalton responded.
HE IS NIHIL?
It asked in a way that wasn’t entirely a question or a statement and opened Josh’s timeline — which seemed to also expand in many different directions.
‘I’, Dalton struggled to speak, putting his hand to his throat trying to loosen the claws that were sunk deep into his skin.
The creature tightened its grip further.
I CAN TAKE YOU TO HIM.
56
Armageddon Gallery
The founder looked deep in thought when Josh arrived. He was standing in the middle of a small circular room, one that sat precariously at the very top of the spiral staircase, the highest point in the Citadel. The chamber had twelve arched doorways, each with a number on the keystone above it, and looked out on a different point in time. The tenth seemed to be on fire.
‘They call this the Armageddon Gallery,’ the founder explained. ‘Each one of these is linked to the most likely event that could cause a crisis. Please take a seat,’ he added, waving to a chair.
Josh did as he was told and sat on the only seat in the room.
The founder swept his arm around the walls. ‘Nostradamus has spent many centuries studying all but one of the crises. Can you guess which one?’
Josh stared at each of the arched portals, trying to pick up any clues from their appearance. ‘No.’
The founder laughed, walking over to the door with the Roman numeral ‘I’ above it.
‘The first, strangely enough. No one has ever been able to identify the source of the Paradox. Not even I. Your existence has always been just a statistical probability on which everything else was based. Although there have been many theories, no one has ever proved how you came to exist.’
Josh looked down at his feet. ‘You asked me to find my father, and I failed.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. You’ve opened up many new lines of enquiry. From what you and Caitlin have told me, this professor may well be the missing link — he’s certainly experimenting with dangerous materials.’
Josh remembered the face of Fermi inside the glass tank, his eyes full of darkness, and wondered if he was nothing more than a science experiment. It worried him to think that he might be another one of the professor’s clones.
‘We can’t go back there,’ said Josh. ‘Something went wrong. The whole thing was going to collapse.’
Nostradamus entered with Caitlin following behind.
‘So shall we begin?’ he asked the founder, coming to stand beside Josh.
The founder nodded, and Nostradamus walked to the second portal, which was marked with the Roman numeral II.
‘As you know, twelve key crisis points have been identified within the Eschaton Cascade. We have divided these into four parts.’
‘The first three,’ he said, pointing to the arches on either side of him, ‘you all know. Prophecy, Division and Insurgency. We refer to these as the primaries. Joshua, you are quite literally the first proof we’ve ever had of the first; the other two were very predictable outcomes based on your existence.’
Nostradamus shut the doors to the first three and walked to the number IV.
‘The next section is more ambiguous. We have named these ‘environmental’, and they involve chronospheric abnormalities, temporal fluctuations and deviations in standard random.’
‘Like the Wyrrm?’ asked Caitlin.
Nostradamus smiled. ‘Exactly, and the creature that you captured during your second mission was a prime example. My abnormalists were very impressed with that particular incident.’ He closed the fourth door. ‘Although they’re still unsure as to how it will play a part in the crisis.’
He moved to the fifth door. ‘Which brings us to the fifth crisis — “the awakening of the elder gods” and something that I should explain about the cascade. Many believe they don’t occur in sequence, which is why we have always placed them on the round; it may well be the five is the trigger for four but has not occurred as yet — such is the nature of non-linear consequences.’
Caitlin saw the confusion in Josh’s face and tried to explain. ‘The crises are connected through quantum entanglement — they can happen at a distance and in different times,’ she tried to explain.
‘Like calling Australia?’
‘Kind of. They don’t occur one after the other, but they still affect each other.’
Nostradamus waited patiently for them to finish, and continued. ‘From what you have told us it is quite possible that the future is interfering with past events, and up until now we could never identify any kind of pattern.’
Josh thought back to the analogue computer they stole from the Romans. ‘Rufius stopped an attempt to give the Romans a piece of advanced technology, and I witnessed a whole different timeline based on gunpowder being used at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.’
‘Both of which were most likely initiated by your professor,’ the founder observed as Nostradamus moved to the seventh door.
‘Interventions from beyond the frontier,’ the curator intoned. ‘The details of what you saw in the future gives us a clue as to the source of the threat, but we still have no clear picture of what the final sequence will be.’ He nodded at the last two doors.
<
br /> They all looked at XI and XII, whose portals were dark.
‘No one is to enter those scenarios until we know exactly where they lead.’
‘So where do we begin?’ asked Josh impatiently.
‘What are they working on in the eighth?’ asked Caitlin, staring through the door at a Nazi base carved out of the side of a mountain.
Nostradamus consulted his almanac. ‘The eighth is investigating the Nazi Nuclear programme. There are signs that someone may be trying to help them develop an atomic bomb.’
‘Are we going to try and find the scientist from the Titanic?’ Josh whispered to Caitlin.
She sighed. ‘Kapteyn. Yes.’
57
Cerebrium
[Richmond, England. Date: 11.580]
Alixia stepped out of the Nautilus onto the marble floor of the Copernican Cerebrium. She was wearing the traditional scarlet robes of the guild, with her black hair tied tightly back, as was the requirement for Copernican women.
The ceramic tiled rooms of the subterranean basement were a restricted area, dedicated to the processing of members who bequeathed their minds to the Order. One wall was lined with shelves of glass jars, each one containing a brain preserved in formaldehyde.
She grimaced at the overpowering smell of sandalwood and camphor. It reminded her of the cholera epidemic she’d witnessed as a child in Lisbon, the town’s guards used it to hide the smell of decay and death, so much so that she had come to hate it as much as the odour it was trying to mask.
Juliana joined her and immediately covered her nose with her hand.
‘Holy shit, what’s that smell?’
‘The dead,’ replied Alixia.
‘But this is a Copernican archive. They deal with numbers, not corpses.’
Alixia turned towards her. ‘They also prepare their departed for the Intuit,’ she said, walking along the rows of mortuary drawers and pulling one open.
Da Recco and Thomas — both wearing the robes of master statisticians — appeared from the ship and came over to join them.
They all gaped at the sight of the body within.
‘What on earth have they done?’ asked Juliana, looking at the body of Professor Eddington.
‘Limited the threat of resistance,’ said Alixia stoically. ‘The Copernicans present the greatest threat to authority if their calculations don’t agree with the Protectorate plans.’
‘So they executed him?’
‘It would appear so,’ Alixia said, closing the drawer.
They walked silently along the avenues of minds until they reached a central elevator shaft.
‘Engineering is three floors up and two over,’ Juliana said, pulling back the metal shutters.
‘How do you know?’
‘The chief is an old friend of mine from the institute. If I know him, he’ll have crawled inside a bottle by now, better if we go in bearing gifts.’
58
Briefing
‘The eighth have lost a few members recently, so they’re likely to be a little tetchy,’ warned Nostradamus, ushering Josh and Caitlin to their seats in an auditorium filled with Augurs dressed in Nazi uniforms.
‘Permission to speak sir?’ said a young man, raising his hand in the row behind Josh.
‘Yes, Brother Bartholomew.’
The man stood up, cleared his throat and addressed the room in a polite German accent.
‘I believe I speak for all of us when I ask — who are these people?’
‘Quite right,’ agreed the curator. ‘Your work has been a closely guarded secret for so long it would seem strange to share it.’ He turned to Josh and Caitlin. ‘Our rules forbid us from sharing knowledge with another team, but in this case, I believe we can make an exception. Bartholomew, this is the Paradox — Joshua Jones,’ he said pointing at Josh, ‘and this,’ he added with equal sincerity, ‘is Caitlin Makepiece — who has some new information for us.’
Caitlin stood up and cleared her throat. ‘During a recent mission, we learned that someone might be altering the development of quantum research. We have reason to believe that Kapteyn may have been abducted and is working with the German Nuclear Research programme.’
There was a collective intake of breath from the crowd, followed by half-whispered conversations that Josh couldn’t quite catch.
‘Now, they’re merely joining as observers,’ Nostradamus added, raising his voice over the hubbub.
Josh realised they seemed to be more interested in Caitlin than him, a fact not lost on her as she started to blush.
Nostradamus turned his attention to Bartholomew, who was still standing. ‘Perhaps, brother, you would like to brief our guests on the current situation of the eighth crisis?’
The young man nodded and stepped down onto the floor.
‘We have been plotting the rise of the atomic age. Since many believe the eighth predicts the use of nuclear warfare, we have concentrated on the latter half of the twentieth century. Our previous mission was to study Oppenheimer and the Los Alamos laboratory.’
‘The Manhattan project?’ asked Caitlin.
Bartholomew nodded. ‘Yes. The development of the atomic bomb.’
‘And quantum tunnelling.’
He looked impressed. ‘Indeed.’
Josh always felt a small twinge of pride when they realised how smart Caitlin was. He, on the other hand, had no idea what they were talking about.
‘We recently detected a slight fluctuation in the timeline,’ continued Bartholomew. ‘There are signs that Germany may be closer to developing their own fission bomb than was originally speculated.’
‘But that didn’t happen!’ Josh interrupted.
Everyone smiled politely.
‘Nor will it if we do our job correctly,’ said Nostradamus, joining Bartholomew on the floor once more. ‘If someone is manipulating the past to their advantage, we must understand how, and ascertain how it could escalate in the future. A crisis doesn’t just appear out of thin air.’
Bartholomew motioned to someone at the back of the auditorium, and a black and white film flickered into life on the screen behind him. It was grainy footage from an old newsreel showing a group of German generals being taken around a scientific institute by a team of bespectacled, white-coated scientists.
‘The year is 11.944 and Uranverein, the Nazi uranium programme is close to a testable weapon.’
The camera focused in on four men. ‘This is Kurt Diebner, Abraham Esau, Walther Gerlach, and Erich Schumann,’ — he pointed at each one in turn — ‘the lead scientists on the project and the current focus of our investigation. Schumann in particular.’
The film ended with a flicker, and a photograph of Schumann’s case file appeared in its place.
‘He was born in Potsdam, Brandenburg and went to study under Max Planck at the Humboldt University, from where he went on to become an extraordinarius professor of experimental and theoretical physics at the University of Berlin. In 11.933 he joined the Nazi party.’
The image was replaced with a propaganda film of one of Hitler’s massive rallies, thousands of soldiers marching in ranks ahead of tank divisions and missile launchers.
‘In 11.934 he was commissioned by the German army to research nuclear energy.’
Bartholomew waved his hand and the light from the projector faded.
‘Based on our latest calculations there is an eighty-three-point-four percent probability that he has been adjusted.’
‘Adjusted?’ asked Caitlin.
‘A term we use for individuals who’ve been given knowledge from the future.’
‘By what means?’
Nostradamus took over from Bartholomew. ‘We don’t know for sure. The last team that was sent in have gone dark — we’ve heard nothing from them in over a week — protocol dictates we send in a recovery team.’
Caitlin didn’t reply. She seemed lost in her thoughts.
‘What happens if Schumann has been adjusted?’ asked Josh.
&nb
sp; ‘A war to end all wars,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘The Third Reich would use their weapons to obliterate the Allied forces. The US would respond in kind and Hiroshima would be nothing more than a side-show compared to the devastation that followed.’
‘So, if you would like to get changed,’ Nostradamus said, waving at a door to his left, ‘we would like to be on our way.’
59
Chief MacKenzie
Chief MacKenzie sat with his feet up on his desk and cradled his tin cup, debating whether to pour himself another Cognac. It was a Remy Martin Black Pearl Louis XIII — worth a small fortune in the linear world, and something he’d been saving for special occasions.
Professor Eddington had presented it to him as part of his twenty-fifth anniversary, along with a gold tachyon, which he cherished, keeping it safely locked away in the velvet-lined presentation box in his drawer for the last four years.
One year away from retirement, he thought. One year, and he would have been bored out of his mind playing golf and restoring antique steam engines with all the other grumpy old farts.
He took the bottle and pulled the fancy fleur-de-lis stopper out with his teeth, pouring a large measure into the tin cup. It probably deserved a cut glass tumbler, but such delicate things tended to get broken in his workshop. He rolled the amber liquid around the bottom of the enamelled cup before knocking it back in one go.
MacKenzie chuckled to himself. He was celebrating a minor victory. He could still picture Ravana’s face: her cheeks burning with rage at the news that the Infinity Engine was missing.
She would never guess where it was; the founder was too canny. He’d been careful to plan for just this kind of scenario.
A polite tap on the door broke his reverie.
‘Enter,’ he called out, putting down the cup and taking a steel spanner from his workbench. Everyone on his detail had left for the day, so whoever wanted to speak to him wasn’t going to be from engineering.
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 79