Golem 7

Chapter 10

“So we have our answer,” said Paul, leaning heavily on the desk next to Kelly. The two men had been perusing the history for some time now, comparing the narrative to what they had recorded as the actual history in their RAM Bank data.

“Tiger convoy was a tempting target,” said Kelly.

“But it doesn’t seem as though the captain of the Gneisenau was much aware of it until he was well out of port. Yet I suspected the answer had something to do with Sheffield. That ship was simply too vital to the sinking of the Bismarck. And now we’ve got a double whammy here—Sheffield out of action and another battlecruiser loose in the Atlantic.”

“You mean Gneisenau? I didn’t note anything on that. here let me see what happens.” He keyed in a specific Golem search and soon called up a document from the altered time line on the service history of the German battlecruiser.

“Well I’ll be—” he began. “She gets hit in the engagement too! Got a little too eager chasing Sheffield and Renown came up on the scene a few minutes later. The Gneisenau wanted no part of her, and turned away, but Renown got off three salvos from her forward guns and scored a hit high up on the German ship’s superstructure. It took out radar and fire control to one of her forward turrets and so the captain wisely turned full about and sped northeast, back to Brest. Then the damn thing gets hit in that same RAF attack that damaged her in our Meridian.”

“Wow,” said Paul. “The continuum is fairly elastic here.”

“More like quantum memory foam,” said Kelly. “The German ship never should have left Brest in the first place, and that’s exactly where she ends up again after this little sortie.” Kelly pointed to a passage in the narrative he had been reading.

“Yes,” Paul agreed. “I like that, Kelly. Time tends to resist change. We’ll have to make a new entry in the lexicon. Gneisenau was supposed to have been moved from number eight dock to a berthing out in the outer harbor and hit by that torpedo attack. Instead it suffers damage in this engagement and returns to port. The only difference is the life of that airman—what was the pilot’s name?”

“Campbell,” said Kelly.

“Well he’s one lucky man. I wonder what happened to him, as he was supposed to be shot down and killed in that attack. Yet he held the plane steady enough to deliver a torpedo before he crashed in the real history. The damage was enough to lay up Gneisenau, and the RAF got to her again in short order. She was out of commission for seven months, which is why she was unavailable to sortie to Bismarck’s aid.”

“Well that’s what happens after Gneisenau returns to port in this altered Meridian,” said Kelly.

“But while this big cat was out on the prowl she managed to at least take one good bite out of the history, enough to take out Sheffield,” said Paul. “Pretty amazing!”

“It was that damn fishing trawler,” said Kelly. “He made right for the spot where Gneisenau was to have been berthed in our Meridian—or at least in our old Meridian.”

“Yes, and it’s suspicious that the harbor police never apprehended the skipper of that boat either.”

“It does have a smell about it,” said Kelly.

“Well let’s see if we can put some flesh on these bones,” said Paul. “Suppose that was their intervention, to simply sail that fishing trawler in the night they were planning to move Gneisenau from number eight dock. How do we counter-operate?”

Maeve had been in the kitchen warming up one of the three loaves of freshly baked bread she had salvaged, and they decided to get her in on the discussion. Robert was off at another desk, doing further research comparisons between the new and old history data. Kelly took a moment to read Maeve some of the altered history they had uncovered concerning Sheffield.

“Well it’s pretty clear that ‘Old Shiny’ is a fated ship in this scenario,” said Maeve. “Was it badly damaged in the battle with Gneisenau?”

“Enough to lay it up in Gibraltar and take it out of Force H,” said Paul.

“Which is why it wasn’t there to be spotted by the incoming swordfish strike from Ark Royal,” said Kelly.

“Right, right,” said Maeve. “Sheffield is not on station behind Bismarck, and that means no case of mistaken identity and no knowledge of the faulty magnetic pistols on the torpedoes.”

“So the air attack on Bismarck fails,” Paul finished. “It’s a perfect little line of dominoes, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Maeve agreed, “but a counter operation is going to be difficult here as well. The trawler could have come from anywhere.”

“Well it would have to be within a reasonable distance of the harbor,” said Paul.

“True, but what kind of cruising speed does it have? If it could make as much as ten knots then we’re looking at a lot of potential coastline here, either north or south of the harbor. You don’t have any idea when it started on its way either. Suppose the trawler left six or eight hours before it arrives at Brest? In that case we’re looking at over a hundred and fifty miles of coastline, so trying to shift in at its point of origin for an operation is out of the question.”

“Then we’d have to be at the destination, right there in Brest,” said Kelly.

“That sounds more plausible, but it will be dangerous,” said Maeve. “Wouldn’t that be a secure area? How would you get to the docks?”

“We’d just shift in there,” said Kelly. “It would be dark, quiet in the pre-dawn hour. I could put someone right on the money, close enough to that berthing site to intervene.”

“And do what?” said Maeve. “Are you going to hang a no vacancy sign?”

Paul pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting off a mild headache. What could they do? He went round and round with it in his mind, considering possible plans.

“Well… We could pose as fisherman,” he began, and sort of lay claim to the area—“

“Fat chance,” said Maeve. “You’ll need fishing tackle, rods and reels, bait, and a bad temper if you want to stop a trawler from docking. You’d only stir up trouble for a moment.”

“Then we’ll need to pose as someone with authority,” said Paul. “A gendarme or harbor patrol officer. We could wave the trawler off as it tried to berth.”

“And if he plays dumb and just forges ahead?” Maeve was a real devil’s advocate. “Remember, the fire starts when the boat nears the mooring, at least according to the narrative Kelly read me. He could just barge right in, no pun intended, and wait until that oil drum goes up. Then his purpose is achieved. I don’t think the presence of a couple policemen will dissuade him, particularly given the stakes involved.”

“You’re probably right,” said Kelly. “This is sounding more fishy all the time.”

“No,” said Maeve. “Methinks ‘tis neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring.”

“What do you mean?” asked Paul.

“Just an old English proverb,” Maeve explained. “Fish was eaten by the clergy, pious as they were. Flesh was eaten by those who could afford it, the wealthy classes, and the dried and kippered herrings were left to the poor. The expression lists the foods eaten by every class of society, and it was a therefore metaphor for something that encompassed every possibility. But I don’t see fish, flesh or anything else here. There doesn’t seem to be any possible intervention you could run, short of getting hold of a weapon and firing on the trawler while she was still out in the harbor.”

“Paul’s got a .22 rifle in the storage cabinet,” said Kelly.

“I know,” Maeve frowned. “Well you won’t sink it with that! Forget the rifle. That’s not what bothers me about this scenario. It has an odd smell about it. Maybe this whole thing is a red herring.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know… something with a ripe odor that pulls you in and turns out to be rotten,” Maeve said flatly, half serious, half joking.

“Oh, I know what a red herring is,” said Kelly, “but how does that apply to this situation?”

“OK, let’s start knocking down Paul’s dominoes,” Maeve folded her arms, the pose she often took when launching into battle over Outcomes & Consequences. “It’s clear that Sheffield is important to the outcome of the air attack on Bismarck, but this scenario is pretty shaky—don’t you agree? I mean, even if the trawler does force Gneisenau to berth elsewhere—“

“As it obviously did,” Kelly pointed at his computer screen.

“And even if the Germans do decide to pick this night, of all nights, to sortie out—“

“As they obviously did,” Kelly countered again.

“Then how do they have any control after that point? How do they assure that Sheffield is ordered to take the lead in Force H?”

“She had the damn radar!” said Kelly.

“True, but that’s still a very wide variable. Wasn’t there another cruiser in Force H? It could have taken the lead, or the whole fleet could have kept station together. Lots of possibilities there. And how would they have known Renown would develop a problem with her number nine bearing on the main turbine shaft and reduce speed? And how could they assure that Sheffield would not be informed of the speed change? That’s another variable a mile wide.”

“They could have sabotaged that bearing,” Kelly suggested.

“Which is another kettle of smelly fish altogether,” said Maeve. “Then, assuming all their educated guesses pay off here, how can they assure Gneisenau decides to even attack, and further, that Sheffield is actually hit in the battle that ensued—hit so decisively that she is put out of action.” She raised her chin, fixing Kelly with her patented “I dare you” stare.

He raised a finger, as if to say something, then simply said. “I’m hungry. Is there any of that bread in the kitchen? A peanut butter sandwich sounds really good about now.”

“With apple jelly,” said Paul, laughing. “Alright, Maeve. What you say makes sense. The angles on those variables are really too wide here. The dominoes appear to fall neatly onto one another when we look at the outcome of these events, but hindsight is 20-20, and as you so ably demonstrate, getting them to do so is another matter entirely when we push from the other direction. This could be a red herring after all, at least insofar as our efforts are concerned.”

That thought was very troubling, because this seemed the most obvious Pushpoint of all those Paul had identified in the Bismarck saga. The more they looked at the history, the more difficult things became.

“This is getting frustrating,” he said. “The history is a house of cards here. It seems all too easy to pull one out and send the whole lot tumbling down, but trying to put things back together again is daunting. For that matter, I still don’t see how they could have known Bismarck would sink the transport carrying Thomason either. The variance angles are just as wide on that as anything we’ve been discussing about Sheffield.”

“They may not have had a hard and fast plan,” Maeve suggested. “It could be that they are simply running scenarios—effecting alterations—and then looking at outcomes. When they get something they like, they let it stand.”

The comment spun Paul around, suddenly very interested. “Then you suggest they just decided to intervene like this and save Bismarck, then looked at the consequences? Why pick this battle? There are millions of places on the Meridian where they could intervene. Why Bismarck?”

“We’ve answered that,” said Maeve. “It’s in the genealogy of our suspected terrorist. “If they discovered how he died, as we easily did, then they would just have to try any intervention that might increase the odds of that ship being sunk, the Prospector. Who knows? Maybe they were just trying to save the German battlecruiser at Brest, and the effect it had on the fate of Bismarck was just gravy. It could even be that they selected this Berber scout—the father—simply because he died in WWII. If they could reverse that, restore him to the continuum and get a son, then they would have a person that simply didn’t exist in our Meridian. Ever try to track down a killer who never lived?”

“I see your point,” said Paul. “So how would they put things back in order if they didn’t like an outcome? Suppose they save him and he never goes on to sire the terrorist.”

“You’re worried he might impact future events if left alive? Well… don’t we call them Assassins? They’d simply eliminate the man and move on to another intervention scenario. They can always keep trying,” said Maeve. “We can only assume they succeeded this time. Who knows how many interventions they may have tried before they got this little nightmare to work.”

“But how could they know—“ Paul cut himself off, struck by a sudden realization.

“Resonance!” he said excitedly. “If they were in a Nexus Point, and it was deep enough, then we could have a situation much like the one we faced at Tours a few days ago. Remember? The Nexus was so deep that the Heisenberg Wave took a long time to build up. It didn’t take effect immediately. Eventually it became strong enough, as a potential energy, to begin influencing events very close to the intervention point on the Meridian. That’s why there was no battle underway when I first shifted into the historical site at Tours. The Heisenberg Wave was so big it had already altered that part of the continuum, but its main energy release was held in abeyance—perhaps by the very same Nexus Point we established during that mission!”

“Well if I were Mother Time I would shudder every time someone spun up an Arch facility,” said Maeve.

“Exactly!” said Paul. “We’re still in defensive mode here now, trying to figure out how they assured the rise of this new terrorist. But on offense it’s a whole different ballgame. We could spin up the Arch to establish a Nexus Point, then run any intervention we choose, sample the Resonance in the Golem Stream, and see if we like what we get. It’s as if you get to make a move against a computer in Chess, see the outcome, and then just reset things to that position again if you make a bad move.”

On their last mission Paul made the alarming discovery that Kelly’s Golem search programs were able to perceive and report on information from a potentially altered Meridian. Once the Nexus field was operating, they seemed to occupy a kind of safe zone in the stream of Time where they were immune to the effects of alterations. The Golems had access to information from all possible Meridians passing through that Nexus. In due course they would come to reach a “weight of opinion” about the outcome of an intervention, which was the most likely outcome based on the total information available. Paul got the idea watching various computer models try to predict the projected path of a hurricane. As the information grew more certain, the various paths converged, and the outcome became fairly predictable. And as they learned from their associates in the future, information was much easier to transmit across Time than objects of mass. The Golems were seeing information from potentially altered Meridians resonating in the data stream.

“But what if they kill someone—like I killed the bishop on that last mission,” said Maeve.

“You didn’t kill the damn bishop,” said Kelly, wanting to chase any vestige of recrimination and guilt from Maeve’s mind and heart. “All you did was restore the Meridian. Lambert was fated to die—and you were fate.”

“Small comfort,” said Maeve. “I suppose I can live with that, but how do they undo a major intervention if they don’t like the results? Look at what we went through at Tours, and what we’re struggling with now with this naval campaign. It’s not as simple as snuffing out the life of one man.”

“Suffice it to say they do find a way,” said Paul. “We have to accept some givens here. Knowing exactly what they did to change things in the first place gives them a real advantage, it’s much easier to set them right again. For us, it’s a huge guessing game. We can see where an intervention is occurring, but trying to nail down exactly what they did is tough work. This incident involving the fishing trawler is a perfect example. If they did send that boat into Brest with an agent, then they knew exactly where it originated. They can turn that operation off with a single message shifted in the day before the boat leaves. We have to guess, and cover every possible embarkation point—fish, flesh and good red herring, to quote Maeve’s old English proverb.“

“Damn,” said Kelly. “You’re right. The best defense is a good offence.”

Paul just looked at him, the light of yet another realization gleaming in his eyes. “That’s it!” he said snapping his fingers. “By God, that’s it!”

Chapter 11

Maeve sighed. “I don’t see any clear way we can intervene yet. We keyed on this British cruiser, but the Assassins could have operated against any of the other Pushpoints as well—like Lütjens’ decision not to refuel, or the faulty radar set on Bismarck that caused Prince Eugen to take the lead, anything.”

“That sounds suspicious too,” said Kelly. “Just like Sheffield takes the lead in the altered history line and runs into that German battlecruiser. Are we seeing a pattern here?”

“Wishful thinking is more likely,” said Maeve. “If you suspect tampering with Bismarck’s radar, then they would have to have an agent aboard the battleship.”

“Not necessarily,” Kelly argued. “They could have sabotaged it during construction.”

“And timed its failure specifically for this sea engagement?” Maeve didn’t buy it.

Paul waved his hand excitedly. “Hold on, people. This will lead us around in circles again. I think we’ve established that the Pushpoints involved here are not easily restored once they are disturbed. The campaign is too fragile. It seems like any little nudge this way or that results in a scenario that favors Bismarck, at least if we mess with the Pushpoints we’ve been focusing on thus far. It shows you just how lucky the British were in this campaign.”

“So what are we going to do?” Kelly looked at him, stroking his chin.

“We’re going on offense,” said Paul. “We’re going to attack. I said it earlier, and it looks like it’s coming down to exactly that. We’ve seen how futile it is to try and restack the cards defensively. Let’s face it, Bismarck had more than a good chance of making it safely to a French port. That she failed to do so hinged upon a number of very shaky events, any one of which may be sufficient to decide things in her favor if it fails to occur. It was sheer luck that the British got that hit on her rudder near the end. But, by God, we have to sink that damn ship—one way or another. It’s the only way we can reverse this intervention. We have to go on offense here and sink the Bismarck.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” Maeve gave him a salute. “But isn’t that what we’ve been trying to accomplish all along? You have a new idea here?”

“That I do,” said Paul. “It occurred to me when I realized that bit about Resonance. If we can sample Resonance filtering in from other possible Meridians in a Nexus Point, then the Assassins can too, just as you suggested. And if this is the way they ran this mission, then we have to fight fire with fire here. We can’t go about trying to uncover and snuff out their intervention. We have to counterattack, and we use the Golems to sample Resonance until we come up with something that sinks her.”

“But what, pray tell, do we use for ammunition?” Maeve was still playing devil’s advocate, but Paul gave her a knowing smile.

“Information,” he said quietly. “Knowledge is power, right? And we know the entire history of this very famous battle, from one end to another. Remember that movie called Final Countdown? It was about a modern day aircraft carrier that gets transported back in Time to the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor. They knew exactly where and when the Japanese were going to attack, and with that knowledge that single ship could have taken out Nagumo’s entire carrier task force.”

“That’s the flick with Kirk Douglas!” said Kelly. “But they don’t do that in the movie.”

“The point is, they could have,” said Paul.

“Well we don’t have an aircraft carrier to spare here either,” said Maeve, “at least I didn’t see one down in the garage.”

“But we do have information,” Paul said coolly, “information vital to the outcome of this battle. You’ve heard the expression ‘loose lips sink ships?’ Well we’re going to loosen up these lips, ladies and gentlemen. If we get the right information to Royal Navy Intelligence, at the right time, then my bet is that they’ll do the rest of the work and sink the Bismarck.” He looked directly at Maeve, because he knew his suggestion was fairly radical. It was her watch on Outcomes and Consequences that had set the rules and parameters of past operations. What he was proposing now was probably going to sound treasonous to her, perhaps even insane.

She thought for a minute, saying nothing. Kelly looked at Paul, then Maeve, but neither one spoke. Paul had learned a good lesson selling shoes as a very young man. In any sales situation there comes a moment in the pitch where you toss the question to the customer, and then shut up. Nine times out of ten the person who speaks next loses. He had made his proposition and he simply folded his arms, waiting.

Kelly was just about to say something, but he saw Paul move a hand slightly as if to wave him off. Then Maeve broke her silence and weighed in.

“Explain,” she said, angling for more clarity. “How do you propose to notify British Intelligence?”

Paul had not thought through all the possibilities, but he was relieved not to hear a flat out NO on Maeve’s part. This was a fairly direct tampering with the course of events. He was amazed that she held her composure, and he crept carefully into a few possibilities, hoping he would not end up in a long argument.

“Most signals traveled by wire,” said Paul. “Agents and operators were all over Europe—coast watchers, the Free French underground, and British and American agents as well. They sent lots of coded messages by cable, and there were also established telephone links. The Admiralty had a direct secure line out to the Admiral of the Home Fleet where he rode at anchor in Scapa Flow.”

“You’re suggesting one of us goes back and cables the Admiralty?”

“That’s about the size of it,” said Paul. “Would you like fries with that?”

Kelly smiled. “It’s a good idea, Maeve,” he chipped in. “Doesn’t sound dangerous, either. All we’d have to do is get to a telegraph station—anywhere. We could shift into merry old England and waltz over to the telegraph office, send a nice cable to First Sea Lord Pound, then find a good pub and have a few brewskies!”

Maeve angled her head to one side, lips pursed with a look of admonishment that soon gave way to a smile.

“For that matter, we could even run a Spook Job,” Paul suggested. “A quick in and out.”

“You want to toss the First Sea Lord an apple or two?” said Maeve.

“Well, we’ve seen the technique work once already to save all Christendom and the Western world,” Paul smiled.

“With a little help from yours truly, and a good Arabian stallion,” Maeve returned.

“Right,” said Paul. “And look how we received that invitation to send Robert back. You see what I mean? A message can travel much easier than a person—and with very little risk.”

“Assuming it gets to the right hands,” said Maeve. “The Admiralty doesn’t have a working Arch, do they?”

“No but they’ve got working telephones. The key thing here is that it’s the information that’s decisive. In this campaign a little foreknowledge goes a long way. Our adversaries knew exactly where to aim their kick. They took out Sheffield in this instance, with a very simple intervention using that fishing trawler—I’m sure that’s what they planned. They may not have known what the actual outcome would be in the beginning, but my guess is that they thought it would weaken Force H in some way, or simply strengthen the German hand by sparing Gneisenau. They probably had no idea it would even work—“

“Until it did work,” said Maeve.

“Right you are,” Paul continued. “They got the result they were hoping for and we got Palma. Now… there are loads of other vital points in this battle that we could impact with crucial information delivered at a key moment. We can operate just as they do. We get information to key players in the scheme of things, the Primes, and then we sample Resonance from here to see if it has the desired effect. When we get an outcome that ends up sinking the Bismarck, we can go have a good pizza and hopefully get some rest before the next alert goes off.”

Maeve shrugged. She realized what this meant—direct intervention, providing information that the Prime Movers in the scenario would not have been privy to. It had real risks, but the more she thought about it the more she came to conclude that the impact would probably be limited. It might affect the outcome of this battle, and then stop there, at least she hoped as much. And how was this any different from making sure a bishop and his family get cut down by Dodo and his armed thugs while you stand there watching, fully responsible? Kelly was correct when he said this was wartime now. The gloves were off. Bismarck was fated to die, and all they would be doing is making sure she meets her appointment with a couple of British battleships.

She looked at Paul and decided. “Work up a scenario,” she said. “I’ll go get Kelly his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and check on the professor.

Paul exhaled with relief. This just might work, he thought. He had a sudden thrill that he was about to assume that omniscient-like role that he often took when playing one of his war game simulations. Every time he played he realized that he was acting with full knowledge of the history involved, the mistakes and successes of both sides, and the outcome. As a game designer he was always trying to create rules and systems aimed at frustrating or neutralizing the human player’s inherent advantage of historical hindsight. He had played many games where the computer AI was programmed and given special bonus skills to try and offset this advantage, but no computer had been able to beat him yet. His knowledge of the history, combined with good strategy and tactical sense, made him a master of the board. Computers could beat human chess players because the outcome of each new game was completely unknown at the beginning. But Paul knew how this game needed to end, and he was determined to win it, one way or another.

“Let’s get busy, Kelly. Those damn Assassins just messed with the wrong guy.” Paul pulled up a chair, ready for battle. “Now the British knew Bismarck was out. She made stops at Grimstad Fiord and at the Norwegian port of Bergen, where they photographed her earlier. Naturally they kept flying recon missions over those locations to see if she was still there, but the weather was bad, and by the time they got a break Bismarck had already left. They overflew both targets and saw no sign of the Germans, but this was a full thirty hours after Bismarck steamed.”

“So they were late getting orders out to the fleet?”

“Correct. It was no small matter to send thousands of tons of military shipping out, packed to the gills with fuel, ammunition, not to mention thousands of sailors. They would only act on reliable information, and this is our first opportunity to get it to them.”

“Lay it on me,” said Kelly. “What do you suggest?”

“This may be a stretch,” said Paul, “but what if we rigged up a short wave to broadcast, perhaps using Morse code, and also using code words we know were viable at that time given our hindsight on the data. Now we just shift that baby in on a Spook Job—just long enough to broadcast its message—and then we yank it back here.”

“I’ve got some cool radio equipment down in the computer lab,” said Kelly. “One has an audio dock and I can load MP3s into it, and time them for playback.”

“Maeve is going to be a problem on this one,” said Paul. “We’re talking about a solid state component here, with transistors, not tubes, right?”

“And on-board microchips, a gig of RAM, a USB port with MP3 dock, and an account with iTunes,” Kelly smiled. “That’s going to be a real problem with Maeve, believe me.”

“Well it would only be for a very few seconds—in and out. We can select an isolated area as well to prevent any chance of it being seen during those few seconds. Hell, the damn Assassins don’t have these qualms. The Order thinks they have some kind of mobile equipment they can deploy and interface with natural power sources like the Oklo reaction I stumbled upon in Wadi Rumm.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know if they’re taking it back in Time. That was in our era. Remember, Maeve will have to sign off on this, and we’re talking about a woman who fed your apple to her horse and then ate the damn message you sent to make sure nothing would be left behind.”

Paul raised his brows, a pensive expression on his face. “I see what you mean,” he said. “She gave me a pass when I smuggled that .22 rifle in on the Grimwald mission, but she’ll go ballistic if we try to shift in modern equipment like that.”

“Well…” Kelly thought for a minute. “Rantgar made a point of saying it was easy to transmit information through Time. Suppose I set the thing up and we place it just behind the event horizon line in the Arch Bay. Then I open the continuum and we broadcast a coded message—we just send the information through! Hell, if it doesn’t work then we can always fall back on my plan to shift in and send a cable.”

“I’ll bet you’d love to get your hand on a pint or two in a pub,” Paul smiled. “Alright, my friend, can you set this thing up to transmit Morse code?”

“I can transmit it myself, right here from the console. I know the code. All I have to do is plug a Wifi adapter into the USB port on the radio, and we can link it to our system here easily enough.”

“Cool! Let’s do it,” said Paul.

“Then what’s the message?”

“I’ll need to do some research first,” said Paul. “Let’s see if we can call up some records of wartime signals traffic and codes.”

Chapter 12

Nordhausen had been pouring over history files, comparing RAM Bank data to new Golem reports on the altered Meridian they found themselves marooned on now. He was looking at all the Pushpoints in the campaign as Paul had described it, frustrated to find it still so difficult to piece together a coherent picture of events, even these very significant actions from recent modern history.

Facts were jumbling up in his head, and he could see no clear way through them. They stretched out like stepping stones across a fast running stream. He would get one bit of seemingly useful information here, another there. But finding a way to jump from one to the next and cross the stream was proving more difficult than he thought. On more than one occasion he had worked forward from an assumption based on some information he had uncovered, only to find other facts rendered his assumption invalid.

Maeve found him working at the History Module, sipping at a lukewarm cup of coffee and jotting down notes on a lined paper notebook at his side. Even in the computerized world, where everything had its digital expression, he still found something about a good pen and clean white paper to be comforting.

“Any luck, professor?” She came in with a pot of fresh coffee and warmed his mug.

“Thank you—but no, I haven’t come across anything significant yet. As well documented as this campaign was, the waters can still be fairly murky.”

“Paul’s on to something,” she said, telling him about the new tack in their thinking about Resonance and simply working up a scenario by way of offensive operations.

“That’s our war game designer,” said Robert. “I thought Paul would love this mission the minute I found the trail on Kasim al Khafi ended at that raid on Bardia by the Royal Navy Commandos. Finding that service log from the section leader, Thomason, was a stroke of luck I suppose, but suddenly the whole affair is wrapped up in the battle for the North Atlantic. So what is Paul planning?”

“He’s thick as thieves with Kelly on the main console. They must be planning a mission scenario on how we can get key information back safely. I’m going down to wardrobe to see about costuming in the event we need to send anyone through.”

“Well remember, I’m size nine and a half. Find me some decent shoes this time, will you?”

He went back to his computer screen, grateful at least that they had some sense of direction now, and the burden was off his shoulders for a moment. He had carried the ball from the moment he shifted back to meet with Abbot Emmerich at the Abbey of St. Martin, and right on through the discovery of this new plot involving Palma. After digging up Kasim al Khafi and his terrorist son Kenan Tanzir, he somehow felt that he now had to work up some scenario to get rid of them. Yet modern military history was not his forte, and he was thankful that Paul was well engaged.

He leaned back, noting a passage on the screen he had been reading about naval events just prior to the Bismarck campaign. He had been looking at the career of Vice Admiral Holland on HMS Hood, and the service records of that ship in particular, struck by an odd discovery that the Hood had only fired her guns in anger one time before her fateful engagement in the Battle of the Denmark Strait.

The pride of the British fleet for many years, she had shown the Union Jack all over the empire, and the world. She was at Mers-el-Kebir off Oran when the British Force H was ordered to fire on French ships there. And the next time her guns roared their fire against an enemy ship, she was in the Denmark Strait tangling with Bismarck. It was another eerie connection between the father of the terrorist and the Bismarck campaign.

The British were to lose a knight when Hood sunk, in more ways than one. Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland was aboard her during the battle, and went down with the ship. Yet he struck one last blow from the watery grave, of his shattered ship, or so it seemed.

The Bletchley Park code breakers had a windfall earlier that very month when H.M.S. Bulldog forced a German U-Boat (U-110) to surface and captured a working Enigma code machine! A few days later this prize was augmented when one of the Bletchley Park savants suggested German weather reporting ships at sea might also possess code equipment, and become far easier targets.

Vice Admiral Holland aboard the cruiser Edinburgh led a carefully planned raid on the weather ship München on station in the Atlantic, and captured more valuable information that was subsequently used to find and sink all the German oil tankers and supply ships their surface raiders would have to rely on after a successful breakout. In effect, Sir Lancelot’s joust in this small adventure put an end to the German surface raiding campaigns, even though his much more famous battle with Bismarck had overshadowed this fact. It would take until June to account for all the German oilers, so Bismarck’s sortie still had potential and dangerous energy about it.

It seemed to the professor that Vice Admiral Holland was going to stop the Germans one way or another, yet he achieved more leading a cruiser against an unarmed weather ship than by leading Britain’s pride of the fleet against its German counterpart in the Denmark Strait. History was often like that, full of ambiguities, ironic twists of fate, hidden heroes, unknown little actions that were often lost in the shadow of greater events. Like this very moment, he thought. Here I am plotting away to save the Western world, and only three other people on the planet know about it! He was just another unsung hero, like Odo of Aquitaine in that last mission, he thought.

He stared at his computer screen, reading something there that confused him a moment and set him to flipping through pages of the notebook he had been scribbling on.

“Now that’s odd,” he whispered to himself a moment later. He felt a strange vibration, heard a thrumming sound and the rotation of power turbines below. At once he knew that Kelly had fired up the Arch system.

“What’s going on,” he said aloud. Have they got a mission up already? Why wasn’t I notified? He sat up straight, setting his notebook aside as the vibration increased and the telltale sound of the Arch was clearly audible.

Up in the main lab room Paul and Kelly had worked something out, and Kelly was already down in the Arch Bay setting up the equipment while Paul discussed things with Maeve.

“I found what looked like an old steamer trunk on eBay last month,” she was telling Paul. “It was apparently owned by an American naval officer, complete with uniforms, papers and personal effects as well—right down to the matchbooks. I don’t know what compelled me to buy the damn thing, but I did and it’s been added to the wardrobe below. So if we have to go in, the cover of a uniform might give us some latitude. There were American liaison officers involved with the Royal Navy, yes?”

“True,” said Paul, “but we may not have to shift in just yet.” He told her what they were planning, emphasizing that the radio equipment would be placed behind the event horizon line, with no danger of shifting.

“It had better not!” she said, predictably. “That’s all we need is for a microcircuit board to turn up in 1940. It would change everything!”

“Well don’t worry,” Paul assured her. “We’re going to transmit from that location and see if we can just get a Morse code message through.”

“Better idea,” said Maeve. “No one takes in a radio from our time. War or no war, we have to exercise some caution here. Information that may impact the outcome of this particular battle is one thing, but modern day computer equipment in that radio is quite another. It would have much greater impact if ever left behind.”

“Our first message for the Brits will be sent in the early evening of 21 May. Bismarck sailed from Bergen at that time, but it wasn’t confirmed for another 30 hours due to bad weather. We’re sending confirmation, in the guise of a coast watcher’s report. We’ve had a look at existing records of the forms and codes, and we’ll sign on as ‘Lonesome Dove.’ Hopefully it will compel Admiral Tovey to put to sea earlier with the Home Fleet.”

“Hopefully,” said Maeve.

They heard a buzzer and saw the red warning lights flashing near the heavy titanium security door. It edged open on its great silvered hinges and Kelly came rushing through, half winded, back from the Arch Bay.

“We’re ready to set sail, Admiral,” he said with a smile. “The whole thing is set up, and I even put a pre-amp in the mix to give us some additional power. I have no idea how the magnetic aura of a breaching operation will effect everything, however, but its well behind the event horizon line, so no danger of losing it.”

“Let’s get to the bridge!” Paul was eager to get their little campaign underway. Moments later they had established themselves in the main lab, Kelly at the shift monitor with Paul, and Maeve standing by at the Golem module. Her job was to monitor anything she could find in the Resonance stream that might indicate the British reacted favorably. To that end Paul had links established to the service records of several major ships involved. The exact times they pulled up anchor and set sail were clearly documented. Hood was to have set sail at exactly 2356 hours, a whisker before midnight on 22 May. Her task force departed Scapa Flow enroute for Hvalsfjord.

“Keep an eye on these records,” said Paul. You may have to refresh the pages after we transmit.”

“I’ve got some custom Golem searches pre-programmed for you as well,” said Kelly, pointing at her screen. “There’s a menu in your upper right corner.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Maeve.

Paul looked at Kelly. “Well, in honor of another famous Captain who went on to make Admiral… Engage!” He lowered his voice, doing his imitation of Star Trek’s Captain Picard.

Kelly began toggling switches, bringing the Arch up to speed. “Quantum fuel is stable,” he said. ”Taking her to 80%. That should be all we need for a simple breach. I should be able to hold open a window to the designated coordinates for several minutes. There won’t be any pattern recognition sweep either, so we’ll conserve power that way too.”

The Arch thrummed to life, peeling back the layers of causality as the singularity formed and spun out. “I did not have to be too specific on spatial location, he said, and I networked the Golems into a computation cloud for fifteen minutes to nail down the temporal coordinates. This was a fairly easy algorithm sequence. The equation is re-usable as well, so we can try several times on these coordinates. Shifting the temporal variable is easy.”

“Where are you opening the continuum?” Maeve’s inner sense of caution prickled up the moment she felt the vibration coming from the Arch.

“Right over London,” said Kelly. “Well up in the atmosphere. I’m just going to establish a breach and transmit. On my mark… three… two… one.” He gave the go signal and the peculiar vibration of the Arch changed ever so slightly. There was a slowly rising tone in the humming below them, and Kelly began to tap out a message using the space bar of his keyboard. This went directly to the radio equipment below, and was hopefully broadcast through the decades, to a gray evening over London, May, 1941.

He tapped away, his face set with concentration. The seconds seemed like hours, but the breach was really only open for a minute or two and he completed his message in the peculiar series of codes words Paul had given him. When Bismarck had first been sighted off the coast of Malmo, Sweden the coast watcher there had simply sent a telegram: Pit Props and Battens Rising. The message Kelly sent was equally obtuse, though in layman’s English it told a fairly plan story after decoding, ending with a precise time and the call sign Paul had chosen:

“To all stations. Bergen. Today. Bismarck and Prince Eugen have put to sea. Time: 1712. Lonesome Dove.”