by Bob Mayer
“To fallen comrades,” Neeley repeated.
They both drained the beers in one long chug. Roland opened two more beers, handing one to Neeley.
“To Gant,” Roland said. “A righteous dude.”
“To Gant,” Neeley said.
They each took a sip.
“To Nada,” Neeley said.
“To Nada,” Roland repeated.
And then they began the list of names, fallen comrades from various units.
They ran out of beer long before they ran out of names.
Then Roland got Zevoned.
Assembling For The Missions
The Possibility Palace, Headquarters, Time Patrol
Where? Can’t tell you. When? Can’t tell you.
“YOU LIED DURING DEBRIEF,” Dane said to Ivar.
They were seated on opposite sides of a wooden table, inside one of the nondescript rooms off the spiral ramp at the top of the Possibility Palace. Perched to one side, like a referee between Dane and Ivar, was Frasier, the psychiatrist for the Time Patrol, although his job had nothing to do with mental health.
Ivar was tall and thin, with long, dark hair. He’d been drafted into this whole mess indirectly by being in the wrong place, a lab at the University of North Carolina, at the wrong time, when his professor opened a Rift, a rudimentary form of Gate.
At the moment, he was surprisingly calm, considering the Administrator of the Time Patrol was confronting him. He glanced at Frasier, who made everyone uncomfortable with his solid black, artificial left eye.
“Don’t look at him,” Dane said. “I decide what happens. We both picked up on the lie. I told you the number one rule of the Time Patrol is to never tell anyone about the Time Patrol. Yet you told someone. Not just someone. You told Meyer Lansky, a notorious gangster.”
“You told him,” Frasier added, “for the smallest of reasons. To save your life.”
“I think that’s a pretty good reason,” Ivar said. “I succeeded in my mission. Kept the Kennedys alive. Nothing changed. It wasn’t like I told him when and where he was going to be whacked and he avoided it. His history before I went back and after I came back remained the same.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Frasier said. “You broke the number one rule.”
“Why don’t you go back some time?” Ivar challenged Frasier.
The psychiatrist turned to Dane. “Curious. Not the reaction I expected.”
“I’m in the room,” Ivar said.
Dane leaned back in the old wooden chair. Dane was old beyond his years, which, given it was the Time Patrol, might mean anything. Short gray hair, face a little too lean for the bone structure, deep bags under his eyes.
“You’ve changed,” Dane said. “You’re not the same person who was recruited into the Nightstalkers.”
“I wasn’t recruited,” Ivar noted.
“They asked you,” Dane said.
“Right. As if it were a real question. What if I’d said no? After seeing the fun in North Carolina, you think they were going to just let me go back and finish out my PhD? I’ve heard about the Cellar. I like Roland, and I think Neeley’s neat, but she’d cut my heart out if given the order.”
A slight smile cracked Dane’s usually grim face. “You have a point.”
Ivar leaned forward and put his hands on the table. “Almost dying does change a person. It changed me, at least. When I was going down into Long Island Sound with my cement shoes, a few things occurred to me.”
“Such as...?” Dane asked.
“That nothing really matters except the next breath you take,” Ivar said. “Moms always makes her speech about how we’re standing on some imaginary wall, protecting all the ordinary people from the things they can’t conceive of, while they worry about their normal day-to-day crap. But now, I don’t care too much even about this stuff we’re doing here. Saving our timeline. Because it does occur to me that I told Lansky his future, and it didn’t change anything. I broke the number one rule, and it didn’t make a difference. So what does matter, except the next breath I take?”
Dane and Frasier exchanged glances.
“The 1929 Desk has been looking into what you did,” Dane finally said. “So far, they haven’t turned up any ripples emanating forward, but the possibilities are so vast, a change could be in our future, so we won’t know until it happens.”
“The vagaries of the variables,” Ivar said.
“Don’t get cocky,” Frasier warned.
“The team is assembling,” Dane said. “You’re going on the next op.”
“So you’re not going to whack me?”
Dane grimaced. “Please stop using that word. Technically, the term is Sanction. Bluntly, we kill people when we have to. We don’t whack them.”
“And when we do kill them,” Frasier added, “they never see it coming.”
“Just like Lansky and the mob,” Ivar said. “What’s the date?”
“You’ll find out in the mission briefing,” Dane said. He changed the subject, indicating the backpack. “What did you learn when you went back to New York and ran your computer simulations?”
“It would be easier if you have a mainframe here,” Ivar said. He held up a hand before Dane could reply. “I know, I know. No computers. One day I’d like to know why.”
“Not today,” Dane said.
“Doc is on to something,” Ivar said. “Now that it’s been proven that gravity waves exist, we’re looking at a revolution in physics. The technology you’re using, we’re using, the HUBs that make the Gates, might be within our grasp of understanding.”
“How soon?” Frasier asked.
“It would go a lot faster if we took a HUB apart,” Ivar said.
“We might not be able to put it back together,” Dane said. “We can’t take that chance.”
Ivar spread his hands. “Then I got no clue. Einstein’s theory is a century old. But it was just a theory. Now we know it’s true. That makes a difference, but it took a hundred years to prove. Space and time are dynamic, interwoven.” He pointed down. “We know time is a variable here, and this process is somehow part of that physics. Now, in our timeline, in our present, physicists have opened up a new door of reality where some pretty crazy stuff is possible. The implications are staggering. In fact, reality as we know, isn’t reality.”
“It’s real enough to save it,” Dane said.
“The Shadow probably figured this out a while ago,” Ivar said.
“Why do you think that?” Dane asked.
“Because you told us the Shadow is the one creating the time bubbles that we go into on our missions,” Ivar said. “The furthest we’ve gotten in this field, in our timeline, our present, is opening Rifts, and that never turned out well. There’s a big jump from opening a Rift to opening a Gate. The Shadow can not only open a Gate, but when it does, it affects the entire timeline for that bubble. If we stop it from changing history, then it seems that the bubble snaps out as if it never existed.”
“Not quite,” Dane said. “We’ve had ripples from missions even though the mission succeeded. One of the men killed on Eagle’s mission on Black Tuesday would have had a son who was thus never born. We felt the effect. It was minor, and the 1980 Desk dealt with it, but it happened. So, the bubble isn’t one hundred percent contained. That’s the reason for our number one rule.”
“I get that,” Ivar said. “But that also applies to Doc’s Turing Time Computer concept; inventing a way to figure out what combination of events the Shadow is trying to accomplish. It actually makes it worse. Because even if we stop the direct attempt by the Shadow, there are side effects. You told us if the Shadow causes six Cascades, that would lead to a Time Tsunami and wipe our timeline out. But how many ripples lead to a Cascade?”
“We don’t know,” Dane said.
“Do you see how that adds possible branches to the missions?” Ivar asked. “I think it’s possible that the Shadow doesn’t even know the consequences of what it’s doing. Maybe we’
re both fighting in the dark here.”
“Maybe,” Dane agreed, “But they’re attacking us. We’re not attacking them. We can’t afford to lose.”
“There’s something else,” Ivar said. “I took all six missions for each date. Analyzed them via as many variables as I could think of. And then asked Edith for her thoughts. We found possible thematic trends.”
Dane frowned. “Meaning...?”
“Black Tuesday was their first six-day attack,” Ivar said. “Some of the attempts to change our history were obvious. Saving Walter Raleigh from the executioner’s axe, for example. Another was wiping out Joe Kennedy, along with his sons and John and Bobby Kennedy, a by-product being Teddy not being conceived. Some weren’t as obviously significant, but had potential: if that plane on Eagle’s mission hadn’t crashed, and the second Iranian rescue mission had gone forward, that could really have changed things, kept Carter in the White House and Reagan out.
“Roland’s mission prevented something that never happened in the first place. It didn’t change anything. He stopped a child being born that was obviously something which the Shadow wanted to exist. So a null. Scout’s was an outlier. Yes, the Shadow was trying to stop the first Internet message from UCLA, but the technology and theory was also up at Stanford. The message would have gotten sent eventually, and the Internet would still have been invented. It just would have been delayed.”
Frasier interrupted. “The real goal was Scout.”
Ivar nodded. “Yes. I think the secondary goal was the Internet. Almost a lure. They tried to kill Scout. Because she, herself, is an outlier with her Sight. Pandora showing up on her Ides mission indicated that. But the one that’s the oddest is Moms’s mission. None of those people who survived that crash in the Andes went on to really do anything significant in terms of what your analysts out there”—He jerked his thumb toward the one of four doors that led to the pit of the Possibility Palace—“would consider historically important. But Moms said it was about hope. That the story those survivors carried with them is an inspiration.”
“I don’t see how hope applies to the other five missions,” Frasier said.
“JFK symbolized hope in his time,” Ivar said. “What if he’d been killed by Lansky’s cronies as a kid?”
Frasier wasn’t buying into it. “That’s a stretch. And the other four?”
“I think Scout’s our hope,” Ivar said.
That led to a moment of silence as Dane and Frasier contemplated that.
“All right,” Dane allowed. “And the other three?”
“That’s the thing,” Ivar said. “I think the Shadow is learning, too. Because when we ran the data from the Ides missions, a theme got a little clearer.”
“And that was...?” There was irritation in Dane’s voice at having to pull for answers.
“God.”
Dane glanced at Frasier, then back at Ivar. “Explain.”
“Okay,” Ivar said. “Think broader than just God. Thematically. God, theology, mythology, fate. A higher power. Scout, Moms, and Roland all ran into women from mythology: Pandora, Pyrrha, and Diana. In Pyrrha’s case, she told Moms that Fate was more powerful than even a God. Roland came back almost born-again, staring at stars, saying they were God. And Mac also had what might be considered a conversion. He’s not the same guy who left to go back to 1493.”
Dane rubbed the stubble of his beard. “Interesting. But you could also say great leaders was the theme of Ides: Washington, Caesar, Tsar Nicholas, Leonidas, Odoacer. Even Columbus was a leader of a different sort.”
Ivar nodded. “I know. But Turing had to search for a commonality when he invented his machine to decode Enigma. Remember what Doc said: maybe the missions are lateral, but also linear. We only have two dates to work with so the data is scant. We need to be open to possibilities. Also, I think that the Shadow isn’t exactly sure what it’s doing yet. Or, worse, on the opposite end, it could have a very long, strategic plan, and we’ve only seen the beginning of it.”
A short silence followed as they all processed that.
A door opened. A woman in a drab gray jumpsuit walked in, handed six folders and a single piece of paper to Dane, a piece of paper to Frasier, and then left.
“These people speak?” Ivar asked.
“When they need to,” Dane said. He put the folders, paper on top, on the desk. “The others will be here shortly. I’ll brief you all in the team room,” he said, dismissing Ivar.
New York City, The Present
The Time Patrol, minus Eagle and Ivar, stood on the balcony and looked at the hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. About a quarter of the paintings were blank canvases. There were several empty pedestals where sculptures had once stood. Others were partly gone, as if melting away.
Yet the crowds on the floor were acting as if nothing were different.
“I don’t get it,” Roland said.
Everyone glanced at Mac, waiting for his usual repartee, but there was none forthcoming. Even Roland was taken aback, so he blundered on.
“Why can we see what they can’t see? Or,” Roland reconsidered, “Why can’t we see what they can see?”
Roland’s reconsideration was as surprising as Mac’s lack of comment.
“We’ve traveled in time,” Scout said. “It’s affected us.”
As simple an answer as any.
“Let’s get going,” Moms said. “This one is shaping up to be bad.”
They trooped back to the elevator that took them six hundred feet below the Met. Moms passed the eye and DNA tests until they were in the large cavern holding the HUB, the device which projected a Gate for them to travel through. As always, Moms led the way.
They exited a Gate into a bland room with four doors. Moms went to the one directly ahead and opened it, revealing the massive open space in the interior of the Possibility Palace. Despite having been here several times, none of the five team members was quite used to standing on the balcony on the outside of the massive pit that descended over a mile down into all of recorded history.
Ivar was waiting for them. He greeted them with the truth. “I lied during my debrief after Black Tuesday. Dane and Frasier know.”
“You’re not dead,” Moms said, “so they must be okay with it.” She nodded toward the door where their team room was, indicating they were moving on and his indiscretion was already in the past.
She led the way along the spiral track that rotated down into that pit and was crowded with desks manned by Time Patrol Analysts responsible for every era of history. They didn’t go below the top spiral, since it seemed all the admin offices of the Time Patrol were up here.
“Whoa,” Scout said, stopping everyone as Moms got ready to open the door to their team room. She was looking up.
Normally the ‘roof’ of the Palace was a dark, gray cloud, the unknown future that was yet to be made into history. It was still there, but there were streaks of red in it.
“That’s probably not good,” Roland observed. The big man was on a roll with his observations.
The Possibility Palace
Where? Can’t tell you. When? Can’t tell you.
“I don’t like Ivar’s attitude,” Frasier said, but he was reading the paper which listed the six dates for the missions, his mind already processing the team members and the likely requirements of the missions.
“Ms. Jones used to recruit members of the Nightstalkers for various attributes,” Dane said. “You were part of that process. Did you like everyone’s attitude?”
“No.”
“All right, then. He answered honestly as soon as we confronted him. We have to remember he was pretty traumatized coming back from Black Tuesday.”
“Since when do you cut operatives slack?” Frasier asked.
“Since we need him, with Eagle out of commission,” Dane said.
“We need to work on getting replacements in the pipeline,” Frasier said.
Dane had the six folders, one for each mission, in fr
ont of him. “There’s been a development in that area. Doc called while he was on the flight back to New York. He was approached in Russia. The Russians intercepted Ivar’s computer work in New York and then tracked Doc down.” He quickly updated Frasier on General Serge’s offer to Doc. He finished with, “I’ve contacted the General. We’re getting three of their people as candidates for the Time Patrol. They’ll be met by Colonel Orlando at Area 51. He’ll start Selection and Assessment.”
“Why use the Russians?” Frasier asked. “Their Time Patrol team went rogue.”
“Their Time Patrol team got fried when the Shadow attacked Chernobyl,” Dane noted. “They went rogue to stay alive. As Ivar noted, that’s a powerful motivation. Besides, the Russians have agreed to help fund the Patrol. We do need to be practical. We have overhead in the real world. Also—” He paused.
Frasier waited.
“The Russians,” Dane said, “have always been on the cutting edge of exploring the boundaries of the human mind. They were far ahead of the CIA in parapsychology. They might bring something interesting to the table.”
“You let them catch Ivar’s computer work,” Frasier conjectured. “You invited them without inviting them.”
“Perhaps,” Dane allowed. He tapped the paper on top of the folders, ending that discussion. “The first year is”—He paused, searching for words, a rarity—“unique. Outside the parameters.”
“Scout,” Frasier said, recognizing that mission right away because it was so different. “She’s the one with the Sight.”
Dane shook his head. “No. Scout’s mission is dictated. Back to Greece, just two years after her last trip. That can’t be coincidence.” He scribbled her name on one folder and pushed it to the side.
“The first year is too vague,” Frasier said. “We have no clue what that mission entails. There’s no precedent, no data.”
“Who is the most adaptable?” Dane asked.
“Moms.”
“Then she gets it.” Dane wrote on another folder then put it on top of Scout’s.