It was clear in her mind now that the man she had encountered was no simple farmer. He was Arabic, she decided, and had little doubt as to who this man might be, but she had neither the time nor inclination to find out more.
Chapter 18
“Another set of footprints?” Kelly registered surprise when Paul and Robert told him the story. “Then someone must have seen you manifest,” he said. “Not good.”
“Not good at all,” said Paul. “But there’s no helping it now. We saw no one else in the area, and the three of us immediately went north to approach the outskirts of the city. Maeve found a horse with no problem,” he beamed.
“That’s my girl,” said Kelly. “Well, if you were seen on arrival, then it would have scared the fellow shitless. He probably cowered in the hedge until you were long gone.”
“A story for his grand children,” Robert agreed.
“Let’s hope that’s the worst of it,” said Paul. “I don’t think we have any worry about contamination with this. But it’s Maeve I’m concerned about now.”
“She went south?” Kelly was adjusting the controls on the retraction module, carefully watching the status on his new program monitor. He still had a tenuous hold on Maeve’s pattern signature, and he could see that it was drifting well off the initial manifestation coordinates. He wondered how far she could go and still be tracked by the system.
“How’s the quantum fuel holding up?” Paul was looking at the chamber mix integrity, assessing numbers on the reading.
“Stable,” said Kelly. “For the moment. And the fuel on the number two generator is holding up well. That was fast work! You two were in and out. I had the system programmed to give you three hours there, but it signaled retraction after twenty minutes here. At first I thought something was wrong, but then I noticed the chronometer reading for the target Meridian was moving much faster than the time here. Three hours there was just twenty minutes here. At this rate Maeve should be ready to shift back in another twenty minutes.”
Something distracted him and his glance was drawn to another monitor. The Golems were active again, signaling another variation. “Would you check that monitor?” he asked Paul. “I want to keep a firm hold on Maeve here.”
Paul threw back his hood, still in his monk’s robe and looking strangely out of place in the modern environment of the lab complex. He activated the Golem module and called up the history time line. Something had changed, not greatly from the readings, but the history had varied. He clicked on the documentation button to begin calling up references. The Golems were still fishing in the data stream. In time they would reach a weight of opinion, and Paul could actually call up documents from other Meridian, altered and at variance with their touchstone data in the RAM Bank.
“Our lady has been busy. Something has already changed,” he said. “But whatever she’s about, it isn’t that traumatic—at least not to the projected outcome of the Meridian as I read it here.”
Robert was at his side, curious, and looking at one document after another as Paul clicked on various links. “See if you can call up anything from the Vita Landiberti Vetustissima. That failing, try searching for Carmen de Sancto Landberto. Those were the two primary sources on the life and death of Lambert.”
“Here’s an account from the first,” said Paul, reading quickly. “And look here—there’s no trace of the previous data. Do we have that document in a cache somewhere, Kelly?”
“Hit the number seven function key. That will compare the current document on the screen with the last cached version from earlier searches, and you can hit F8 to compare both to the RAM Bank data.”
“Nice programming,” said Paul, but when he hit F7 the variation was somewhat disturbing. “That bit about the horse and Dodo being thrown from the ‘wilful beast’ is entirely missing!” he exclaimed. “Here, Robert, make yourself useful and read this document.”
“Missing?” Kelly was looking at the screen now. “Well it hasn’t altered the outcome much. I mean, look at the chronology color bar. Nothing has really changed. It’s still shows first variation originating at this date on the Meridian and worsening as the time line moves forward. The outcome of the battle of Tours remains unaltered, a dramatic Arab victory, and it just gets worse from there. Maeve obviously did something to alter the Meridian, but what?”
“It looks as though she found the horse,” said Paul. “That would explain the missing data in the story describing Dodo’s mishap. Robert? Anything more?” He was hoping there might still be unseen effects emerging in the data stream as they waited.
Robert had been reading intently from the original source material in an on-line translation of the Carmen de Sancto Landberto, the “Song of Saint Lambert’, and seemed dismayed.
“Paul’s correct,” he said. “The story has changed, here and in the Vita as well. There’s no mention of the horse at all now, not even in the Arabic sources. Apparently Lambert was warned of the impending plot and escaped. Look here,” he began to read. “And one came in the middle of the night to give warning, causing Lambert to flee with his domestics, away over the river. And thus was Dodo’s revenge undone, and he was roundly condemned by the Saint, and banished from Pippin’s court.”
“Damn,” said Paul. “The history has changed again. Dodo was warned? By who?”
“Neither account provides any more details,” said Robert.
“The Assassins?” Kelly suggested. “You said they would most likely be operating with an agent in place on a night of this importance, perhaps even at the farm where Dodo was to have found the so called willful beast.”
“Right,” said Paul. “That was a fair assumption, but if Maeve got to that horse first, then she may have prevented the mishap. That said, it’s clear this Pushpoint was not decisive in altering any of these events.” Then his eyes brightened with recollection. “What about that loose twine? Search for that, Robert.”
A moment later the professor had found the entry. “It still reads the same—a loose twine, where the horses were brought to gather… But let me look at the image of the Rosetta stone again.” He opened a folder and called up the file he had stored there, searching the lines of hieroglyphics.
“Here it is… a loose twine…. then the wavy line separating the two stories, and it reads—damn! It’s not the same in this image! Now it reads: “a loose twine… where the horses were brought to gather at the water’s edge. What’s happened?”
Paul thought deeply, coming to some inner conclusion. “Alright,” he said. “So let’s assume Maeve got to that horse and made off with it. If you were the Assassins, what would you do in that instance?”
“They obviously had to do something else,” said Kelly. “And the data Robert found in the source material indicates that someone warned Lambert.”
“Undoubtedly the Assassins,” said Robert. “Damn, they must have perceived the variation the moment Maeve intervened. They ran a counter-operation!”
“Possibly,” said Paul. “Or their operatives on that Meridian must have decided quickly that they had to take some other action. They warned Lambert. That was very risky. It involves direct intervention to influence the behavior of a Prime.”
“Well they had no qualms about trying to knock Dodo on his ass,” said Kelly.
“We were talking about killing Lambert ourselves. Now that’s messing with a Prime, right?” Robert folded his arms.