“Me? I’m fine. A complete recovery. Whatever you guys did it was pure genius. I think you’ve protected my integrity in this Meridian for good, but I’ll tell you, the thought that someone was digging up my grave…”
“I had the same feeling,” said Paul. “In fact… This may be my imagination, but I think I was being followed on my way over to the lab this morning.”
“Followed?” Maeve did not like the sound of that.
“Well, I may just be paranoid but I stopped for a Bagel and coffee at Peet’s, and there was this guy in a car parked across the street. He was just sitting there, smoking a cigarette, but when I came out he started his engine and I swear he was behind me all the way until I hit Cyclotron Road and the outer security shack.”
“Spooky,” said Nordhausen.
“It’s got me thinking about security issues now,” said Paul. “We’re going to have to be more careful than ever.”
“You think they may have spies right here in Berkeley—a permanent operation running here to keep an eye on us?” Kelly looked up from his laptop, clearly unhappy, as he had been the first target. “You think they may try a hit or something—on the facilities here?”
“I don’t know,” said Paul, “but consider this: Suppose that guy was an operative from the future. He could have been verifying something as simple as my arrival time for this meeting. You said it yourself, Maeve. Most of all the history is unknown to us. It’s made up of all the little nothings of the hour that surround the big moments—but that’s where the key Pushpoints are. Hell, Graves came back the night of our first planned mission intent on saving Kelly’s life. All he had to do was step in front of him near an off ramp and delay him for a few brief seconds. You can’t run an operation like that without knowing a lot of precise details.”
“Well, how would they know about this meeting?” Maeve asked. “We aren’t keeping minutes anymore, and nothing is hard scheduled.”
“How could they know? Just by watching the four of us arrive here, that’s how. That takes reconnaissance, surveillance, a lot of sleuth work. You follow me?”
“Right,” said Nordhausen. “Hell, they ran an operation last night to strike at Kelly. I suppose it makes sense that they might have someone posted here to do the equivalent of a damage assessment. You know,” he looked at Maeve now, “to see what the consequences of their mission were. They ripped off Kelly’s DVD and thought that would be the end of it, but the Nexus must have still been in force for a time, because Paul and I were here, and the Arch was spinning at near 100% after my mission.”
Paul smiled. “You’re getting the hang of this at last,” he said. “That’s just another positive outcome from your illegal mission. Yes, we were in the sphere of influence of the Arch, and that made us Free Radicals. We got Maeve’s call about Kelly while we were still in the Nexus, and we resolved to go to Kelly’s aid then and there. That resolve was enough to put the issue in doubt. Time was not ready to close the continuum, so she put Kelly into a Schroedinger’s Box and we made sure that cat stayed alive!”
“So now they realize their plot against Kelly failed,” Maeve breathed. “They know we are on to them, and if what you said is true they are looking for verification on the events surrounding this meeting.”
“Exactly,” Paul agreed. “They want clarity. It’s the only way they can plan any counter-operation against the action we decide to take here.”
“But they can’t have spies everywhere,” said Kelly. There’s no one here now but the four of us, for example, and this is where the real decisions will be made.”
“True, but you would be amazed what a good historian can dig up,” said Nordhausen.
“A lot of trouble!” Maeve harried him, and the professor waved her off.
“The point is well taken,” said Paul. “We leave subtle clues on the world, almost without a second thought. The phone calls we made last night make an easy example. There’s a record of them somewhere now, with exact times. The queries we run on the Internet can be data based.”
“Not!” Kelly protested. “I’ve got our systems locked up tighter than a witch’s—” He caught himself, realizing he was not just out with the boys. “Well you know what I mean.”
“OK, so our systems here are secure,” Paul continued. “Yet every time we spin up the Arch, Con-Edison knows about it, right? Our damn electric bill could stand as a record of our operation times. Last night we all signed in at the hospital registration desk to go visit you, Kelly. And Robert—didn’t I see you swipe a credit card for the meals we picked up on the way over to your place?”
“Well all I had with me were British pounds and shillings left over from my mission,“ said the professor.
“Fine, but there’s a record of that transaction—timed and dated. We drive, we buy gas, groceries, we go through intersections that have been rigged with cameras for years now. We pass through RFID chip readers every time we go into a store. Beyond that, we scribble notes and just toss them into trash cans like they were gone. Hell, we leave fingerprints on everything we touch. A good gumshoe and a forensics team could learn an incredible amount of detail about our lives if they set their mind to it. Look how we solved the spatial and temporal coordinates for the mission to the Hejaz? It was just an errant note scribbled on a receipt. And speaking of Mr. Graves: when he showed up seven years ahead of schedule what did he do? He holed up in a monastery to leave as little impression on the Meridian as possible. The almost invisible wakes we leave while going about ordinary activities could be the crucial elements of a breaching plan.” He halted, out of breath, but it was clear by the look on their faces that he had made his point.
“He’s right,” Maeve concurred. “If we’re going to take on a responsibility like this we have to start being very careful—very precise.” She looked at Nordhausen.
“And get the numbers right,” Robert whispered in Kelly’s direction.
“Oh, be quiet, or I’ll send you back to the dinosaurs again!” Kelly smiled, but his point was made.
“That opens another issue,” said Maeve. “Robert thinks he has the temporal and spatial coordinates figured out for this trip to Rosetta, but who’s going?”
There was a moment of silence and Nordhausen was the first to speak. “I’m the obvious choice,” he said. “I know the history and I can read the hieroglyphics.”
“And you have a strange propensity to wander about and tip brandy with Primes,” Paul put in.
“What?” Maeve was on alert at once.
“Never mind,” Nordhausen hushed her, covering his tracks. “He’s just needling me, and I suppose I have it coming. I can promise you that the events of recent days have made a profound impression on me. I realize what we’re dealing with now, Maeve. I’ll be very careful—very precise in anything I do.”
“Of course you will,” she said. “Because I’m going too.”
Nordhausen’s eyes widened. “What? Who’s going to run the monitors?”
“I suppose that gets dumped on me again,” Kelly complained.
Robert looked at Maeve and said, “Do you realize what you’re saying?”
“Of course I do.”
“But we aren’t just going to sit in a gallery and watch a play. This is going to be dangerous.”
“Of course it is.”
“But you’re a—”
“A woman? Yes, you’ve got that right as well. And don’t try to tell me that there was no place for a woman in this Milieu, because I know the history as well as you do.”
Nordhausen gave Paul a frustrated look. “Do we really need three people on this operation?”
“Three people? Hey, who’s gonna stay and help me here?” said Kelly.