“Hold on!” said Nordhausen. “Something’s up!”
Maeve was at his side immediately. They were looking at the chart again, and were relieved to see that the line of green that had been stubbornly stuck in the year 714 was now again on the move. The shades of green darkened and migrated further along the Meridian, passing through the years 720, then 725 and moving towards 732, the pivotal date for the Battle of Tours.
“This is looking very promising,” she said. “Any documentation on what has happened?”
“Searching now,” said the professor. “Let me see if I can get something from the continuation of Fredegar’s Chronicle… Here, I’ve got the file up…. “Grimwald was assassinated, poisoned, while praying in the Church of St. Lambert. This while his father lay ill at Jopille on the Meuse… By God, he’s done it!”
“Then our torpedo struck home,” said Maeve. “Paul made it through and delivered his javelin dart to Grimwald. God, I wonder how he managed it? So what about the battle?”
“Never mind that now!” Kelly shouted. “I’m pulling Paul out right away.” He was working feverishly at his console, checking readings, toggling switches, adjusting dials. “Someone get down there, will you!”
Minutes later Maeve watched Paul step over the event horizon and appear in the whirl of light and color, a thick acrid fog in his wake, resolving to blue mist. She went to the intercom to send up word that all was well, then came up and gave him a big hug, surprised to feel something hidden under his monk’s robe.
“Bring that bloodied javelin back with you?” she asked, curious.
“Well…” Paul gave her a sheepish look, opening his robe to reveal the .22 caliber rifle.”
“You took that through?”
“I had to be sure,” he said. “You made your point too well, Maeve. Was I supposed to rush the man and try to best him at arms? You should have seen him!”
“You killed him with the rifle? That will leave a slug in his corpse!”
“No, no, no,” Paul held up a hand. “I didn’t fire a shot.” He told her what had happened, and she slowly regained her composure, suddenly realizing what he had gone through, and remembering what it was like herself, at that very place, yet nine years earlier on the Meridian.
“So you’re Rantgar now,” she said softly. “Well you can join the club. I suppose I’m just another of Dodo’s retainers.”
Paul smiled, “It was risky, Maeve, I know. But it was all I could think of—all I could do.”
She nodded solemnly, understanding. They were about to leave when Maeve caught something out of the corner of her eye. She turned to squint at the Arch, advancing cautiously towards the event line, stooping to get a better look at something on the floor. “Now what in God’s name is this?” She could hardly believe her eyes.
Could there be a feedback loop in the system? She had no idea how the physics worked and the equipment had been running fitfully all night, relying on secondary power sources and invaded by a virus sent from the future, albeit a benign one if they were to believe Rantgar.
“Did you take that through as well?”
Paul turned and looked, puzzled, shaking his head in the negative. But what he saw, sitting square on the middle of the yellow event horizon line, set his mind spinning again, and gave rise to a thrum of anxiety in his chest. “It couldn’t be,” he said aloud. “It just couldn’t be…”
Maeve started to reach for it, her fingers enshrouded by the fading mist and pricked by the remnant of icy frost there, then she drew her hand back, afraid to touch the thing.
“What do you make of that?” She looked at Paul, extending her arm pointing at the floor in the arch. “It appeared just after your retraction,” she said.
Paul stepped over to the ready line again, Maeve advancing cautiously behind him.
“Be careful,” she whispered. “I went to pick it up and things didn’t feel right.”
Paul looked at her, then waved his hand cautiously over the object, as though testing the air. There was a residual feeling of cold there, but this was normal for the Arch just after a shift.
“Can we touch it?” asked Maeve.
“I don’t see why not,” said Paul, reaching. A second later he had hold of it, and they both stood up.
Maeve looked at him, eyes wide, arms crossed, and obviously curious. “Well?” she said.
“Let’s take it upstairs,” he said. “The others won’t believe this!”
Back in the main operations room Robert was still fiddling with the Golem module. “Getting up information on the battle now,” he said. “The system seems sluggish. Can you put more Golems on this Kelly?”
“No problem,” said Kelly as he grabbed a mouse and clicked on an icon to activate his primary Golem interface. The expression on his face changed immediately. “I take that back,” he said.
That got Robert’s attention immediately.
“Problem,” said Kelly. “Big problem…”
“Trouble getting data from the Golems?”
“Trouble finding the Golems,” said Kelly.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well I put the bulk of the installed user base to work as a remote supercomputer so I could process calculations we needed for the shift. But I can’t find the little buggers now. They don’t answer my command calls.”
“Maybe it’s the Internet,” said Robert.
“No, the network is wounded, but it’s still functional. I can ping lots of primary hub servers and the latency is still tolerable. Packets are moving on the net as normal, but I’ve lost contact with a huge chunk of my flock. All I seem to have control over now are those lost sheep that came on line after I gave the initial command for the Golems to begin processing shift algorithms. I banked then into one group but that’s no more than ten percent of the installed user base, now.”
“What about the worms and viruses Rantgar was talking about?” said Robert, wagging his finger excitedly.
“Good point,” said Kelly. “That pissed me off, frankly, though I’m glad we got the data that enabled Paul to shift in. But a virus is a virus, and it can do unexpected things if it tangles with security software. It’s designed to penetrate supposedly secure systems, and that means it has to be able to defend itself. The damn thing could have caused mutations in my Golem code, and that would be a real problem.”
“Could our friends in the future be using the Golems somehow?” Robert was considering every option. “Is there a way they could get control of them?”
“God only knows,” said Kelly. “All I know is that I can’t get control of them. All we’ve got now are those lost sheep.”
“Well, well, well…” The Professor was tapping his monitor now. “It’s not the little lost sheep I’m worried about, it’s the big bad wolves. It’s Tours. I’ve got an account of the battle here from the altered Meridian, and apparently Paul’s poison dart wasn’t sufficiently lethal. Abdul Rahman still prevails and the Franks flee north. Nothing has changed! We need to verify this. What’s wrong with the bloody Golem module, Kelly?”
Kelly gave him a blank look, clearly upset. “I tell you I just don’t know what happened!” Kelly had had enough with the speculation. He was tired and his temper always got the best of him when he was frustrated like this. Losing his hold on the Golems was a hard blow, coming at a critical time, and he felt like someone had severed his right arm. Now this! “Maybe the damn Assassins did something. They know how crucial the Golems are for us.”