by Simon Hawke
"What sort of birds are those, I wonder?" Argus said, looking up at the sky. "They do not look like any I have ever seen."
"It is a large flock," Mopsus said. "Perhaps they migrate."
"It is not the season," Argus said. The birds were almost overhead now and they could see how large they were, like frigate birds, with wingspans of forty inches or more. There were at least a hundred of them, flying in a V formation like migrating geese.
"See how they shine!" cried Hylas.
Indeed, the birds did appear to shine. Sunlight glinted on their feathers as they flew so that they almost seemed to give off sparks. Orpheus suddenly cried out and grabbed his shoulder. A steel shaft protruded from between his fingers, as if he had been shot with an arrow. Theseus carefully pulled it out.
"Why, it's a feather!" he said, astonished.
Something went "phfft" and thunked into Mopsus' forehead. For a moment, he stood there openmouthed with a steel feather protruding from his skull, then he fell back onto the deck, lifeless. More feathers flew down at them, embedding themselves in the deck and sticking in the mast. Hercules swore as one stuck in his leg. Another shaft struck Jason in the arm.
"Down!" shouted Steiger. "Down on the deck! Raise your shields, everyone!"
They all crouched down on the deck, grouped together with their shields raised over their heads as the steel feathers rained down on them, beating a metallic tattoo as they struck the shields and bounced off. The birds made a circle around the ship and came back again, loosing another deadly volley, firing their feathers like steel darts. Several of them found their way through gaps between the shields and struck a number of the Argonauts in their arms and shoulders. The birds made several more passes over the ship, then headed north, flying out to sea.
They remained beneath their shields until they were certain that the birds had gone, then they slowly lowered them. The entire deck of the ship looked like a bed of nails. Delaney pulled one of the feathers out of the wood and examined it closely.
"What strange manner of metal is this?" asked Jason, examining the feather he had pulled free from the deck. "Silver?"
Argus plucked another feather from the mast. "No, not silver," he said, puzzled. "I have never seen the like of it."
"Birds with metal feathers," Hylas said, with wonder. "How can they fly?"
"How can they shoot them as if they were arrows?" Theseus said.
As the Argonauts plucked the metal feathers free from where they had stuck in the ship, marveling at them, Delaney handed his feather to Steiger. "Take a look at this," he said in a low voice.
Andre came up beside them, also holding a feather in her hand. "It's nysteel," she said.
"Robot drones?" said Steiger, looking out in the direction the birds had taken. "Either preprogrammed or remote controlled." He looked down at the feather thoughtfully. "This could just as easily have contained an exploding warhead."
"I don't get it," said Delaney. "Why throw this kind of stuff against the Argonauts without going all the way? Why go to all this trouble to kill a few people indiscriminately?"
Steiger threw his nysteel feather overboard. "I'm fresh out of ideas. There's no rational pattern to any of this."
"Land!" shouted Orpheus, pointing to a fog enshrouded coast off the starboard bow. They could barely make out the peaks of a large mountain in the distance, looming up out of the mist.
"Caucasus," said Jason, excitedly. "The peak where Prometheus was chained. We have reached Colchis at last."
They sailed along the coast, looking for a place to anchor. As the sun went down, they discovered a small, marshy inlet. They pulled the ship in close to shore, took down the mast, lashed it to its crutch and covered the Argo with tall reeds that grew in profusion along the banks. Jason poured wine upon the ground, an offering to the earth and the gods of the land, then they buried Mopsus.
"Your vision proved prophetic, Idmon," Jason said. "The astrologer was indeed felled by a feather."
"I only wish I had been wrong," said Idmon, gravely. "Mine is, at times, a most unwelcome gift. I sometimes see things I wish I had not seen."
"Can you look into the future now?" asked Orpheus. "Can you see if we shall find the golden fleece in Colchis?"
Idmon closed his eyes and remained silent for a long time.
"I have the intuition that more of us will die here," he said at last. He opened his eyes. "Ask me no more. The gods are watching us, gods who kill and gods who create life and it frightens me to be so close to them."
They camped in a thick grove of birch trees so their fires would not be seen from a distance. After the Argonauts bedded down, the temporal agents took advantage of the opportunity to hold a conference during their watch. They sat around the embers of their campfire, speaking in low voices.
"We still don't have much more of a handle on this scenario than when we started," said Steiger. "We're going to have to take what we know and improvise a plan of action. The trouble is we don't know very much."
"We know there's a temporal mission being conducted here by people from the future of this timeline," Andre said. "We know events aren't following our myth exactly. Maybe their version is different. According to our version, Hercules left the voyage at Arganthus when Hylas was pulled into a lake by water nymphs and drowned, but we never stopped at Arganthus, Hylas is still alive and Hercules is still with us. There were a number of other events mentioned in the story that haven't occurred. In fact, if you eliminate everything the opposition has done to alter this scenario, what you're left with is a perfectly ordinary sea voyage. Ordinary except for the episode of the Clashing Rocks, which was undoubtedly the result of an earthquake or volcanic action, just the sort of incident that could give rise to a legend.
"We know from historical records that Theseus actually lived in our timeline. If we assume the same about the others, then we have a logical explanation for the origins of our myth. A sea voyage was made during which certain events occurred, such as the earthquake which resulted in the story of the Clashing Rocks. We saw how the story about Athena pushing the rocks out of the way so the ship could get through must have started. The figurehead broke off, struck against the rock at the same moment that it settled backwards in the water and Jason assumed that Hera moved the rock. So the name got changed. Or maybe in this universe, it was Hera who moved the rock instead of Athena. When they returned, the Argonauts told the story of the Clashing Rocks and added some other exaggerations or they were added later as the story was passed on in the oral tradition. Eventually, the myth was recorded according to that tradition. That tells us the Argonauts returned safely from their voyage, otherwise the story would not have been started in the first place. What we've experienced so far supports that. It's like Forrester said, a mirror-image universe, but the image is slightly distorted."
"That still doesn't tell us what the opposition is up to," Steiger said. "They're restaging the events according to the myth, or their version of it. The question is, what happens when you're confronted with a temporal scenario in which the actual historical details aren't known? If there's no known historical account of the voyage, you can clock back and gather intelligence so you can verify what actually happened, separating the facts from the legend. Once you have those facts, you could then stage a temporal scenario in which the mythical elements of the story are made into the historical elements, but that brings us back to the one question we can't answer. What reason would there be for doing it? It would have to affect the original historical outcome."
"Perhaps," Delaney said. "It's possible that it would only have a minimal effect, not significant enough to disrupt temporal continuity."
"How do you figure that?" asked Steiger.
"When I was studying zen physics in RCS, we worked with some hypothetical problem modules designed to break down our notions of common sense," Delaney said. "One problem module postulated an imaginary court case involving a murder. The defendant was innocent, but was mistakenly convicted on
circumstantial evidence and executed. Now suppose you clocked back and restaged the temporal scenario so that the defendant was actually guilty and the evidence was incontrovertible. You've changed the facts, but you haven't changed the outcome. History remains unchanged."
"That's hardly the same situation we have here," said Steiger. "People have died on this voyage, people who wouldn't have died if the restaging elements hadn't been present. That amounts to temporal interference."
"We don't know that for a fact," said Delaney. "It's possible they might have died in some other manner during the course of this voyage. What we're part of is no longer the original scenario. It's also possible that their deaths weren't significant enough to affect temporal continuity. It wouldn't have been difficult to assess the historical impact of the Argonauts. In some cases, it would have been fairly simple. Take Mopsus. He was getting on in years and had no children. All they'd have to do is evaluate his individual actions in terms of temporal significance. And don't forget that these men are all warriors. Some of them might have died in battle not long after this voyage took place. There are any number of variables that could result in a break of ancestral continuity. It's even possible the scenario was designed to control which people died. You can program robots and androids to recognize certain individuals and differentiate between them."
"So you still think they're conducting some sort of war game in preparation for an invasion of our timeline?" Steiger asked.
"I think it's a possibility," Delaney said. "It's the best explanation I've been able to come up with."
"There's only one thing wrong with it," said Steiger. "Us. If they've gone to all that trouble to verify the original scenario and conduct a controlled disruption, then they must have known from the beginning that we were never part of it."
"What if they didn't?" said Andre. "We've become one of the variable elements in this scenario. If we hadn't met Jason at the Anaurus River, he would have arrived in Iolchos alone. We don't have a record of the entire crew for this voyage. Even in the myth, not all of the Argonauts were named."
"That's right!" Delaney said. "We've been so concerned with the anomalous elements of this mission, we overlooked one of the most obvious ones. We must have displaced three of the original crew members! The hooded man might be among the Argonauts, but if he isn't, then he must be clocking ahead to all the significant points along their route. If that's the case, then they may not have realized that there were three people on the crew who weren't supposed to be there."
"At least not at the beginning of the voyage,'' Andre said.
Delaney glanced at Steiger. "I think we're onto something. It was the middle of the night when you were knocked out at Iolchos. In the dark, you might have been taken for Jason or one of the original crew members we displaced. During their secret meeting on Mount Pelion, the hooded man asked Chiron about the Argonauts who weren't among his pupils, the ones the centaur didn't know before. He asked Chiron to name and describe them all. That must have been when they first suspected something was out of sync with the original scenario. It was confirmed for them at Lemnos, but they had to check it out. We would have done the same. If we introduced variables into a temporal scenario and something popped up that didn't seem to fit the historical events, we'd try to make sure we knew exactly what the variable was and how it might affect the outcome."
Steiger nodded. "It makes sense. They must have scrambled to check us out against any possible historical variables. Were there any people like us around originally who might have been part of the crew? When they didn't turn up anything, they had to look for another explanation. They must have been as baffled as we've been. They couldn't learn anything from the centaur, because the centaur was one of their variables that they inserted into the scenario; and when the hooded man saw me at Lemnos, it must have tipped him off that I was from the future."
"Only which future?" Andre said. "There wasn't supposed to be anyone from their future on the scene they didn't know about."
"They had to check it out," said Steiger, nodding. "And they would have wanted another, closer look."
"The old blind king," Delaney said.
"Our hooded friend?" said Steiger. "Or someone else on their mission team," Delaney said. "It had to be."
"I'm keeping my eye on Idmon," Steiger said. "I don't know about these 'visions' and 'intuitions' of his."
"There is a chance they're genuine," Delaney said. "He could be a sensitive."
"And he could be planted," said Steiger. "I have a 'strong intuition' myself that the opposition is up to something tricky."
"If they guessed we were from another timeline," Andre said, "they must have started searching for the confluence, but if our original theory was correct that the centaur came through by accident, they wouldn't know exactly where and when to look for it."
"And if they haven't found it by now, it explains why we're still alive," Delaney said. "They need us to tell them where it is."
"It fits," said Steiger, nodding. "It finally fits together."
"That's right," Delaney said, wryly. "We've got them right where they want us."
"Perhaps not," said Andre. "One of us can clock back to the confluence point and warn Curtis to summon the Counter-Insurgency Strike Force. Then all we have to do is give them what they want. Lead them directly to the confluence. It'll be just like the Khyber Pass. The minute they come through, they'll be hit with everything we've got."
"And what about us?" said Steiger. "You figure once we tell them where the confluence point is, they'll be nice enough to let us go?"
"I didn't say there'd be no risk," said Andre.
"No, there'd be risk all right and not only to us," said Steiger. "We were damned lucky in Afghanistan. The confluence point shifted just in time or the battle would have lasted longer. It might have interfered with the action between the British and the Pathans, to say nothing of the casualties our people would have sustained. We've got a similar situation here. Hannibal and his Carthaginians on one side, Scipio and his Roman legion on the other. Fighting a temporal battle smack dab in between would be dangerous as hell. The object of this mission was to disrupt their timeline, not invite a situation that could disrupt our own."
"Do you have an alternative?" said Andre.
"I say we carry on with our original plan," said Steiger. "Let's take our best shot. If we blow it, there's still a good chance at least one of us can get back and warn the Rangers."
"What if they take their best shot before we take ours?" asked Andre.
Steiger smiled. "I didn't say there'd be no risk."
"Touche," said Andre, wryly.
"I'm in favor of it," said Delaney. "Now that we've reached Colchis, we're in a good position to cut and run. If we stick close to the principals in this scenario, it could make it difficult for the opposition to move against us. The minute we get a reading on the situation, we interfere, create the disruption and clock out fast. They'll be watching us every minute, but we might have a chance to pull it off."
"Maybe," Steiger said, "but there's still one option we haven't considered. It's not a very pleasant one."
"What? "Delaney asked.
"We could kill Jason."
9
They broke camp at dawn and headed inland, following a spirited debate about their plan of action. As usual, Jason had not given any thought to how they would obtain the golden fleece once they arrived in Colchis. Planning ahead did not seem to be his forte. He had simply assumed that they would come, pick it up and leave. Now that they had arrived, it occurred to him that it might not be so simple. This realization was brought home to him when the other Argonauts asked him how they should proceed. It was not until then that Jason realized he didn't even know where the Sacred Grove of Ares was.
"How are we to find it, then?" asked Orpheus.
"We could ask directions of people we encounter on the way," said Jason, pleased that a solution had been found.
"Did we not hide the Argo s
o the Colchins would not find it?" Argus said. "If we encounter people on our way and ask directions, word will quickly reach King Aietes that a force of armed men has arrived seeking the Sacred Grove of Ares. We would have no chance to take the golden fleece by stealth."
"By stealth?" said Jason, outraged at the suggestion.
"Would you have us act as thieves come skulking in the night?"
"In what other manner did you think to obtain the fleece?" asked Theseus. "Surely, you did not suppose King Aietes would simply give it to you?"
"Was not my father Aeson, cousin to Phrixus?" Jason asked. "Is not the fleece the rightful possession of my family?"
"As I heard the story, Phrixus gave the fleece to Aietes for his daughter's hand in marriage," Orpheus said. "If that is true, then the fleece rightfully belongs to him."
Jason bit his lower lip. "I had not thought of that."
"Why am I not surprised?" said Steiger.
"It changes nothing," Jason said. "We must bring back the fleece if I am to rule in Iolchos. It is the will of the gods. I will explain it to King Aietes and ask him for the fleece."
"And what if he refuses?" Orpheus asked.
"Then we shall take it by force," said Jason. "It cannot be called stealing if we are obeying the wishes of the gods."
"Interesting logic," Steiger mumbled to Delaney.
"You don't suppose there really is a golden fleece, do you?" said Delaney.
"Be damned if I know," Steiger said. "It's probably some old sheepskin painted gold. Or maybe high sulphur content in some sheep's drinking water altered the pigmentation and made the wool turn yellow. They'd probably attribute something like that to the gods. Hell of a thing to go to all this trouble for."
"I've seen knights in the Middle Ages hacking each other to pieces over a splinter alleged to be a piece of the true cross," said Andre. "The value of a sacred relic has less to do with what it is than what it's believed to be."
"The oftener a tale is told, the truer it becomes?" said Delaney.