Now he watched the bishop go, and spoke aloud again. “So we fill your cup in this chance, dear bishop, for I am no assassin.” He smiled. “We are gracious, and it is necessary to spare your life so that others might prevail in a time and place you can scarcely imagine. Yes, as God wills it! For there is no God but God, and Allah is his name.”
Miles away to the north, Maeve had her own visit from an angel and was back on Kuhaylan. The stallion chafed, sensing the emotion and urgency in her movements. Her mind outpaced her heart, with one question on top of another. What? What am I to do? She went round and round with it, but almost without realizing it she was riding again, south, down the old Roman road.
If Lambert was warned this night, she reasoned, then someone must have gone to the villa. They must be making another attempt at sparing the life of the bishop—this time by direct intervention! Yes, it was risky to so directly affect the behavior of a Prime Mover, but what else could they do if Dodo was not forestalled? Then, if Lambert flees, where would he go? And what does that last bit mean, about the river?
“Think, woman,” she said aloud, urging the Arabian faster yet. There is no way the bishop could come north, she decided, for he would immediately run afoul of Dodo and his men. He could flee south, but that road is 40 miles or more to Namur, and it is likely that Dodo, or at least one of his men, would overtake the bishop and his family, delaying them long enough for the others to catch them up. West lies open land, where they would surely leave tracks that could be followed, and it would be very trying and dangerous to go that way. East lies the river Meuse—then she remembered it with thunderclap surprise. The ferry! He’s going to run east and then turn north along the river to the ferry, just as I did when I fled the farm site!
It was the only scenario that promised a speedy escape. If the bishop could reach the ferry and get safely across the Meuse, he could ground it on the far bank and there would not be another way to get over the river for miles in either direction. The delay would give Lambert just the time he needed to make good an escape.
Her body had already decided this course, but now her weary mind joined it, melded with the flowing rhythm of the horse as she hastened south in the dark. It was clear now that she had to get to the ferry before Lambert did, and set it adrift. It was the only way she could extinguish this last route of escape and seal the bishop’s fate. Dodo and his men would follow the tracks east, and he would know of the ferry site as well, she reasoned. Once he determines where Lambert is headed, he’ll gallop there at full speed on whatever mount he can find. He’ll do everything in his power to get to that ferry, yet what if Lambert arrives first and escapes? It’s a horse race now, she thought. And I have just the horse to win!
“Ride with me, Kuhaylan,” she said aloud. “Ride with me this night and drink the wind!”
“She’s moving,” said Kelly, pointing at the line of latitude and longitude coordinates on the screen. “And from the rate these numbers are changing she’s going at a fairly good clip.”
Paul had returned, elated that Maeve had been right there at the breaching point, waiting for them when he appeared. The Spook Job went off seamlessly, and he was able to toss Maeve the apple with its hidden message.
“Can’t risk just fluttering a piece of paper her way,” Paul had argued earlier. “I’ll need something with some weight that I can throw and aim. I’ll want to get it well away from my manifestation coordinates, but yet close enough to the breaching point so that it might be noticed if she comes upon the scene later. And it can’t be anything modern that could contaminate the Meridian.”
In the end they had found the apples in the kitchen break room, and Paul decided they could slide a folded message neatly into a small slice in one side. Maeve’s close proximity when he appeared was just the icing on the cake. Paul knew she could not fail to see the apple now, and read the note it held.
“What is she supposed to do with it?” said Kelly. “Eat the damn thing?” They had no idea what the altered hieroglyphics might mean now, ‘by the river’s edge,’ but it was all they could do—just pass the information on to Maeve and hope for the best.
“Well, if she can’t make an intervention, then what?” Kelly asked, frustrated.
“Then you can send Paul through again to the villa and he can kill the bishop.” Nordhausen folded his arms and looked smugly at his friend.
“Hey, I just shifted in for the Spook Job, Robert. You’re up next.”
“That won’t matter,” Kelly waved at the two of them. “Lambert won’t even be at the villa. He was warned, remember? You think he’s just going to sit there waiting for Dodo and his men to show up?”
“He was warned, alright, and I would make it well after 9:00P.M. on that Meridian when we first returned,” said Paul. “But he had to be tipped off before midnight when we assume Dodo could arrive with his men from Heristal. Let’s say he flees at eleven then. In that case you’ll have to tell the Golems to reprogram that final worst case mission entry point for some time between ten and eleven. That would put Robert at the villa just before the warning arrives. Then he can break in and assassinate the poor man before he’s warned and makes off with the whole of Christendom and the fate of Western civilization in the night.”
“What?” Robert protested. “We haven’t drawn lots yet. Those little Spook jobs were nothing. You weren’t there but a few seconds, on either Meridian. It’s obvious you still have your wits about you, so take your chances, Paul. We’ll draw lots,” he insisted.
There was a shudder and they heard the telltale descending whine of a turbine. “That’s the setup man dying on the mound,” Kelly said quickly. “Somebody just singled to center field. I’ll have to bring in the closer, Paul.”
Kelly wasted no time getting the number three generator on line, but he had a worried look in his face. “How many outs can we get with this one?” He gave Paul a questioning look. “Cause there’s no one left in the bull pen.”
“I make it two hours fuel on that generator. That’s plenty of time in the altered Meridian, and I may be able to siphon some additional gas from the cars down in the garage if you can hold the Nexus steady. I could probably get another hour or two for us if I refuel one of the other two backup units.”
“I hope it’s enough time for Maeve to figure something out. As it stands now her retraction scheme is scheduled for midnight in her Meridian. So in… nine minutes now, our time, it’s going to be midnight there. The system is set up to look for her at the retraction point, and if she’s not there we’ll try pulling her out based on the tracking data we have, but it’s going to cost us fuel, both kinds, quantum and plain old petrol. We’re going to have to rev up the Arch to 100% power for a wide area retraction scheme.”
Paul sighed heavily. “So while we’ve been talking here hours have passed for her on the other Meridian. If she figured something out, and we have no idea what, then it’s very likely she would have done it by now.” At the same time the thought that they might pull Maeve out before she could take any decisive action rankled at him.
“Can we get a report from the Golems?”
“Yes, but remember there’s a time lag there. We may not see any variations until well after the deadline.”
“Can we abort at the last minute?”
“I need ninety seconds, minimum, for an abort,” said Kelly. “Otherwise I have to take the Arch up to 100% to be ready for the retraction. Yes, you can abort even then, but we lose the fuel in that instance, and get nothing for it in return. And…” He leaned on that word heavily, “there’s no guarantee I can get her out safely if we burn our candles at midnight as planed and decide to abort. We just may not have the fuel to run that kind of power again, so you can also forget your shift in to the villa to assassinate the damn bishop if I have to do a wide area search and retraction scheme. Neither one of you could do that anyway. You’re wonderful physicists and historians, but not murderers.”