Anvil of Fate (Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  “What if we manifest too late?”

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

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

  It wasn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “What? I did no such thing!”

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

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

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

  Chapter 11

  Arch Complex, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Saturday, 6:50 A.M

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

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

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

  “The moon shook

  curled up like gentle fire

  The ocean glazed and melted wire

  Voices buzzed in spiral eyes

  Stars dived in blinding skies”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Idle mind and severed soul

  Silent nerves and begging bowl

  Shallow haze to blast a way

  Hyper sleep to end the day…

  Stars die…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “On my mark…Three… Two… One… GO!”

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

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

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

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

  “Three… Two… One…”

  It was the voice of Kelly on the intercom again.

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

  Home, Paul…

  Home….

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

  “Our pleasure,” said Maeve.

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

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

  Chapter 12

  Arch Complex, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Saturday, 7:30 A.M

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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