He tapped Kelly on the shoulder. “You’re supposed to be dead, if you’ll forgive my saying so again, my friend, but you are not just anybody. Orwell was correct, some animals are simply more equal than others. You’re a Prime Mover, Kelly. We all are. While that does not make us invulnerable where intervention is concerned, Time has difficulty getting its change orders filled when a major Prime is involved. Prime Movers and Free Radicals are particularly problematic where Paradox is concerned. They weigh heavily on the scale of possible outcomes. Time tries to balance her books, but sometimes she simply cannot do so. In that instance Paradox does what it can, an annihilating force. But we have clearly seen that certain factors can stand, even in the face of that awesome power.”
“You mean us?”
“Not just us, but any major Prime has power to resist change—even face down Paradox itself. Remember all those near miss assassination attempts against Napoleon in the mission we ran to uncover the Rosetta Stone? Remember how they took shots at him, but each and every one misfired?”
“Remember all the knives that went into Julius Caesar?” Maeve jibed. “He didn’t get a hall pass.”
“True, but we do not know his true status. We may think of him as a Prime Mover, but Time may regard him otherwise. And everybody dies, Maeve. That was his fate. Yet this I do know… A Prime Mover, particularly one protected in a Nexus Point, is like a rock in the stream. This is not always the case for Free Radicals like Ra’id Husan al Din. Given the intervention we made, Time looked at what was left of the situation, and sometimes she just has to take what she gets. She’s not all powerful. The alteration we worked was achieved by Grand Primes in a Protected Nexus. We have power too, and we’ve proved that over and over again. You are here, Kelly. Your life persists, in spite of the fact that Paradox would rather have you dead.”
Kelly shrugged, “I’m a Zombie!”
“Yes, but you’re a fairly good looking one as Zombies go,” said Maeve, relieving the tension. “Alright. It’s clear that we have an altered state now. We’re starting from an altered Meridian, and struggling to make changes that suit us to create yet another altered Meridian. Yet we’re slowly losing integrity on the Time line we came from, what we like to call the Prime Meridian. There have been so many interventions since we let this genie out of the bottle that I doubt if we will ever be able to put things back the way they were on the eve of the first experiment. And may I remind you that by attempting to reverse Palma we are not restoring anything, we’re simply creating something new. We knew that the minute Kelly stole up on us at his own memorial service. We’ve known it all along, so let’s dispense with this notion that we are the defenders of the continuum, trying to preserve its integrity. We’re not. We’re simply trying to push reality into a shape we like, relying on the nostalgic memory of that old world and the data in out RAM Bank to guide us. It’s as if we were dreamers, concocting our own private world.”
“All men dream,“ said Paul quoting T. E. Lawrence, ”but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible… We are the dreamers of the day,” he concluded, “and that,” he pointed at the massive titanium security door that led down to the Arch, “that gives us the power to make our dreams come true. Yes, we cannot imagine every circumstance, or foresee every consequence of what we do, but we act because we can, and then we, like Mother Time, will have to simply look at what we get and live with it.”
They were silent for a moment until Nordhausen cleared his throat. “Alright, then how are we going to proceed? Do we back out of this intervention or do we go forward? And if we proceed where to we act—with the convoy captain, with Darlington Court, with the U-boat and torpedo thing, or something else? Or do we just blow this whole thing off and go back and arrange the death of Kenan Tanzir’s father?”
“Something tells me that last option is off the table,” said Paul. “A man’s life has roots where he is planted, yet sometimes they become entwined with the roots of other events and become so knotted that to change his fate you must confine your gardening to a given plot of holy ground. That’s all we really are in the final scheme of things, gardeners. We water here, prune there, pull up weeds when we find them. These events all seem knotted together with the history of this battle and the fate of the Bismarck. The vengeance that was born in the heart of Kenan’s father resulted from a bombardment by British battleships—some of the very same ships, commanded by the very same officers in this campaign against Bismarck. I don’t see all the connections yet, but there is obvious entanglement here, even on a quantum level, and there may be something else involved that we have yet to see, some worm in the loam of the soil we are all tilling at that has some profound effect in the future.”
“He waxes poetic,” said Kelly. “But I suppose Paul has a good point. Our research led us here, to this campaign. If the Assassins and the Order are also running interventions in this history, then their research led them both here too. We can make all kinds of assumptions, but this appears to be where the action is at the moment, and so I say we march to the sound of the guns. Let’s kick some ass! Bismarck is supposed to be sunk, whether our take on reality is valid or not. It’s a ship full of Zombies, Maeve. We’re Prime Movers, and we think she belongs at the bottom of the sea, so let’s put her there!”
“Bravo,” said Paul. “We’re in an altered state to begin with, an altered Meridian, but as long as we’re here, we may as well be comfortable. I simply will not accept the world out there if we let Palma stand. So let’s change the history as best we can here and see what we end up with. We may not ever again get all the pieces of this puzzle put back together again, Maeve, but we can try. I vote we let the intervention we’ve made thus far stand and continue to try and sink the Bismarck. I don’t know what we can do about Hood if she survives—all those lives moving into the continuum—another ship full of Zombies. I don’t know what we can do about Arethusa and the lives lost there, may they rest in peace. That’s up to the Heisenberg Wave and Paradox to decide when we finish.”
“Yes,” said Maeve sourly. “Let’s hope nobody aboard Arethusa goes on to have any significant ancestors—is that what you’re saying? And let’s hope everybody off HMS Hood goes on to lead saintly lives. It would be a shame if we inadvertently set loose a future axe murderer, right?” The sarcasm in her voice was obvious. “I vote we swat down Lonesome Dove and see if we can start over.” She folded her arms, frowning.
Everyone looked at Robert.
“I take it Kelly and I want to operate further,” said Paul. “That’s two votes. So it’s all on you for the moment, Robert. This is your research. Do we proceed now or turn this off and try for something better? If you vote no, then we have a stalemate here, a 2-2 deadlock, and we’ll just have to talk it through until we reach a consensus on some other way to operate.”
“Well… I hate to incur the wrath of Maeve,” said the professor. “But I’ve invested a lot of time digging in this little garden already, to use your own metaphor, Paul. I say we pull the weeds, dig up this worm Kenan Tanzir, and then see what we get. I vote we proceed now, one way or another.”
“Then it’s decided,” said Paul looking at Maeve. “We’ll act from where we are, as discretely as possible, Maeve. I understand how you feel, but we’re in this far and we need to follow through. Here’s how I see it. I don’t see how shuffling the shipping order on these steamers in Convoy HX-126 is going to help us, or anyone else, for that matter. Wohlfarth has demonstrated himself to be an unstable variable here, a Free Radical. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. We could line all the ships up for him and he might just decide to take a pass. Nor do I think we’ll have much luck if we try to sink or eliminate U-556 from the scenario. It’s Bismarck we’re after. If she survives she’ll cause havoc to the history. This we’ve already seen. We have to sink her, so it’s time for another intervention. We may not have the Golems to guide us, but we can send practical and sound information as to her movements as we know them now.”