“Palma,” Paul finished, looking at Maeve now. “What we’ve accomplished here hasn’t changed anything on that score at all. We merely prevented the changes we saw forming in the Golem reports concerning Tours. The Heisenberg Wave emerging as a result of the Tours interventions just dissipated, that’s all. We stopped the change from rippling forward on the Meridian, but we’ve done nothing about Palma, and that means that in about an hour…” He looked at Kelly, who turned from his monitor with sudden realization.
“Crap,” he said eloquently. “I don’t have a ticket to this show.” He looked at Maeve, more worried for her than he seemed for himself. She averted her eyes, thinking.
Robert gave him a deflated look. “Paradox? But I thought you said Palma didn’t matter anymore.”
”In the face of the Grand Transformation at Tours that was true,” said Paul. “We’ve settled accounts on that matter, but that will still leave us with Palma here on this Meridian. We’ve done nothing to reverse that. The only thing different now is that we have Kelly back.”
“Yes, but for how long?” said Robert. “He was supposed to die if Palma happens. There’s no place in this Meridian for him now. Sorry, Kelly. Damn it Paul, I warned you about this!”
“Calm down, Robert,” Paul placated the professor. “What you say may be correct,” he went on. “But perhaps not. We’re assuming Kelly was essential to preventing Palma because the action we took on that first mission needed his participation to succeed. Mr. Graves came back to prevent his accident, and our team therefore remained intact. Instead of mourning Kelly, and settling for my little robotic probe later that night, we resolved to do something about Palma. And since we could do something about it with the Arch at our disposal, we entered one of those tunnels I told you about earlier. We created an Absolute Certainty with the combined force of our will power. Yet it’s now quite possible that the Assassins have found some other way to instigate and carry off the attack that caused the Cumbre Vieja volcano to erupt and collapse into the sea.”
“They were counter-operating!” Maeve was quick to grasp at any straw that might mean Kelly’s life was still viable here, though her inner judgment was in a real struggle now with her love. But Paul was quick to reinforce her.
“Yes, Maeve,” and we have yet to discover what it is they may have done to re-instate Palma. Their operation may have had nothing whatsoever to do with Ra’id Husan Al Din this time, which means our little visit with Lawrence of Arabia would have been rendered entirely null. We were trying to reverse Palma by eliminating the terrorist from the Meridian—striking at his ancestor, Mousaui. But if the Assassins have found some other way to collapse that volcano, some other nefarious outcast we’ve yet to learn about, all that is meaningless. In that case Kelly would not be involved either, nor would he be exposed to Paradox. We’re on another Meridian now if this is true. The only fact we have is that Palma happened. That could mean that Kelly’s death prevented our intervention, but it could also have happened as a result of an entirely new operation run by the Assassins. Look how complex this last mission was!”
“Then why are we wasting time here congratulating ourselves?” Robert waved his arm. “We’ve got to finish the job. How much longer can we keep the Arch spinning?”
“Do you realize what you’re saying?” said Maeve. “It took us six hours, multiple time shifts, and considerable help from god knows when to execute our first intervention against Palma. And look at what we just went through with this mission.”
“I hate to say it,” said Paul, “but I’m afraid she’s correct. We’ll need research, fuel, and time to plan a counter-operation against Palma now. I don’t think we’ll be receiving any more apples with notes in them either. If what the Abbot says is true, our allies in the future are having a rough time of it there. We’ve prevented the catastrophe a defeat at Tours would have unleashed, but the Order is still operating under the negative effects of Palma. We’ve all been at this for hours, with little sleep or food, and on top of that we’re all suffering residual effects of time shift disorientation.”
“Then what are you saying, that we do nothing?” The professor was still flush with his victory at Tours, and ready for battle.
“I’m saying we’ve done all we can for the moment,” said Paul.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to second that,” said Kelly. “The singularity has gone into a severe wobble pattern now. It’s dissipating. I can’t hold the spin. It will be all I can do to use the remaining power we have to assure a safe closure. Let’s face it, people, we aren’t doing any more Time travel this morning. We’ve reached the end of our resources here, and we’ll just have to stand and face the day—however it manifests out there after we shut things down.”
Nordhausen wanted to argue it further, but the lack of reliable quantum fuel was his undoing. Even if they somehow managed to isolate a new variation in the Meridian that could be responsible for Palma, and assuming they could coax the Golem supercloud to produce accurate calculations for a mission, they were out of quantum fuel, not to mention plain old petroleum. That thought took him back to his earlier argument with Paul when they were in the City having dinner in Chinatown.
“Christ,” he ran his hand over his brow. “I’ve been to the 8th century and back twice since I last had a good meal. But if we have to shut down now I guarantee you we’ll soon be wishing we had that gasoline back in your Honda, Paul. Things are falling apart out there, slowly but surely. We were forced to use our backup generators so the main power grid to the East Bay must have been down all night.”
“Right,” said Paul. “Then we’ll have to make fuel replenishment our first order of business.”
“And food!” said Kelly. “I’m famished.”
“Once we’ve secure fuel I can re-start the quantum matrix and generate a new singularity, but we’ll be very vulnerable until we can get the Arch up and running again, and establish a safe Nexus Point here.
“And then there’s the issue of growing civil unrest out there,” said Robert. “The system may not hold together much longer. Things were getting really bad down south in LA before Paul and I went into the City last night. The national guard is on the streets there, but hell, the whole damn U.S. army couldn’t lock down Baghdad during that war. It’s only going to deteriorate from this point on.”
He suddenly remembered something the Abbot had said to him just before he shifted back. “And another thing,” he said. “our lives may be in jeopardy now. The Abbot said we must be very wary, stealthy was the word he used. The Assassins have operatives all through the Meridian, and undoubtedly they have men posted to this milieu as well.”
“Right,” said Paul. “We talked about this before. We’ve been sloppy and careless after we thought we lost Kelly here, and we just can’t allow that to ever happen again. This is war now, and for better or for ill we’ve got to take a side, just as Rantgar said. We haven’t the resources to stand in the middle between them any longer, and given what we’ve just seen, the calamity they are willing to bring upon the world, I no longer have any doubt as to where I stand on this.”
He looked at the others, and they nodded agreement. There was too much at stake now for quibbling over who was right or wrong here. The Assassins had proved themselves to be merciless, and relentless. And they had to be stopped.
“So for us, if we’re going to do anything further with the Arch in the short run, it’s going to be all about food, fuel, and freedom when the Nexus dissipates here. We’ll have to bend all our energies to securing those three things.”