“What fun that was,” said Kelly. “Y2K was a big no show, but the fireworks were great, and the stock market was even better.” He snatched up Maeve’s mug and went off to the kitchenette to see what was left in the coffee pot. When he returned he was surprised to see her leaning in to the screen and biting tentatively at the nail of her right index finger. He looked at the screen. “Something come up?”
“Not sure…” Maeve was quietly watching the Meridian, and she squinted up at the lights. “The fluorescents are a pain on these monitors. Is that yellow, or just a screen glitch?”
Kelly felt a pulse of adrenaline. He knew at once that they had probably encountered their first variation. Sure enough, by the time he reached Maeve’s side and set down the coffee mug, the penalty box was filling up with numbers. He leaned in to spy the first crucial year. “Eleven eighty-seven,” he breathed. “Hang on a second. I’m going to shift some system resources your way and focus CPU power on that spot. Everything was green up until that year, right? Keep an eye on the line and we can switch to monthly data checks. What was going on back then?” He threw Maeve a question, preferring to have her musing on the history instead of worrying over the spots of yellow that were popping into the time line with increasing regularity.
Maeve closed her eyes a moment, running Golems through her own memory to recall the key events of the late Twelfth Century. Byzantine History was her old college major, so she found safe ground there at once. Isaac Angeles II was Emperor in Constantinople and he was already quarreling with the Pope by 1185. Frederick was consolidating his power in Central Europe, and Phillip II Augustus held France in the West. The Crusades were well underway, in fact most of Tripoli and Palestine as far south as Sinai had been in Christian hands for some ninety years. The Crusades! Her pulse quickened as she realized the year 1187 was a pivotal year in that history.
“Can we start a single year query on eleven eighty-seven?” She raised her voice so Kelly could hear her in the next room.
He huffed back, pointing at her keyboard, clearly excited. “Hit your F12 function key. I just put the Arion Mini on this baby and told the Golems to start honing on that time segment for live data feeds. No sense having them fetch stuff on the Romans when we have a clear violation right here. What’s up?”
“The Crusades,” said Maeve, folding her arms. “The Second has been finished for some time, but the Third is about to be born—unless this changes things.”
“What? I thought we went over this during the first mission run up. Nordhausen was adamant that the Crusades were too complex to tamper with. He said: History has it’s imperatives. I’m afraid they simply must occur.” Kelly mocked a bit to make his point, imitating Nordhausen.
“History is bunk,” she gave him back Henry Ford in reprisal. “We’ve all seen to the truth of that.” That look of self-recrimination was building in her eyes again, a yawning, vacant doubt that dispelled her elation and re-stoked the anxiety that had plagued her for months past. “When you get right down to it you can mess with something like the Crusades as easily as anything else, and apparently somebody is giving it the old college try.”
“Any idea what happened in eleven eighty-seven?” Kelly sat down in the chair next to her, unwilling to wait for the data queries to answer his question.
“For starters,” Maeve began, “the whole history of the Middle East and the conflict of the West with the Muslim world was about to be turned on its head—and it all happened over a forty-eight to sixty hour period, a real maelstrom at a place called the Horns of Hattin.”
“Where’s that? Here, I’ll get a map query running.”
“It’s near the Sea of Galilee, above Tiberias—the Gate of the West, as it was sometimes called from the Muslim perspective. The Christians called it the Horns of Hattin, after two prominent hill formations in the area.” She was already keying a specific search request on one screen while Kelly brought up a map.
“Here it is,” he said first. “A big battle was fought there in early July, 1187. Take a look at the map. Looks like old Saladin was about to lock horns with the Crusaders beneath those hills.”
“Here’s an artistic rendition of the battle—from the old database. I can’t get clean data yet from the new stuff.”
The image came up showing a battle raging in a sea of spears and lances. The two prominent hill features were evident in the foreground and background: the Horns of Hattin. Kelly noted the image and then returned to his map. “Looks like the Crusaders were hung out to dry,” he said. “Saladin is coming at them from one side and this other force is enveloping from the north.”
“I’m not sure on the details,” said Maeve, but I think the Christian Army had advanced beyond reach of good water, and Saladin’s army was baring the way to the Sea of Galilee. It was an awful mess in the end. Every castle in the Holy Land had emptied its garrisons to join in this battle, and they were slaughtered by superior Moslem forces. Look up Harold Lamb in the old database. He’s got good accounts of all this.”
It did not take long for Kelly to come up with some reference material. Lamb’s account was very colorful, and he read a passage or two quickly on screen, summarizing for Maeve. “Looks like there was some disagreement about whether they should fight this battle. Saladin had been consolidating the Turks and the Kurds under a truce with the Lords of Christendom up until now. Then some idiot, this guy called Reginald of Kerak, raided the Sultan’s caravan and got Saladin really pissed off.”
“The Wolf of Kerak,” said Maeve. “I remember this now. Guy had just been crowned king in Jerusalem, but he took the crown from his newly wed wife, the sister of Baldwin—or rather she gave it to him. Men didn’t think women could run things like kingdoms back then. Well, Reginald of Kerak was instrumental in supporting that move in Jerusalem. Guy was a spineless little wimp, it seems, and Reginald wasted no time advising him.”
“Right,” said Kelly. “In fact he damn near twisted his arm off the night before the battle. All the other Christian Lords were against the attack, and Guy went along with them. Then, that same night, it seems that this Reginald of Kerak and the head of the Knights Templars came to the King and argued with him for hours.”
“Guy changed his mind,” Maeve put in. “He ordered the attack; the Christians got slaughtered, and Saladin had the whole of Palestine prostrate at his feet.”
“Nobody left to defend all those nifty castles,” said Kelly, arms behind his head as he leaned back heavily in his chair. His baseball cap was tilted off kilter as he spoke. “So who would be trying to tamper with that event?” He wondered aloud, looking at Maeve with a puzzled expression on his face.
“Let’s see if your little Golems can paint us a new picture,” said Maeve. “If an event of this magnitude changes, then the transformation will ripple forward from this point in the continuum and become a real tsunami by the time it reaches us here in the 21st Century. You were wondering what Mr. Graves and company felt like when our mission succeeded for them? We may be about to find out ourselves. We can’t keep the Arch spinning forever, Kelly. God only knows what the world will be like when we turn it off.”
26
The Sami brooded in the Eyrie of Sinan. It was the one place he knew he could linger undisturbed, for no man would dare to walk the gray stair that led to the door, or chance his life on entering. Here he could sulk until his master returned, and then he would undoubtedly be shamed before the Kadi, and severely chastised for all he had done. Yet that was the least of his crimes, he knew. The greatest measure was the cup he had spurned from the hand of Sinan himself! He had been told to do a thing, to kill a man, and just when he was ready to fulfill his charge, he had allowed the moment to slip from his grasp.