The Legacy of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic

by Robert Kroese

  Chapter Eight

  “Eleazar, you must see that this is not the way.” His sleep having been troubled for three days after the massacre in Beneberak, Akiva had taken a day off from teaching to visit a colleague of his in Lod, Rabbi Eleazar of Modi’im. Eleazar was fifteen years younger than Akiva and belonged to a different school, but the two had met a few times before and engaged in spirited but respectful conversations regarding their interpretation of the Torah.

  “You are speaking, I assume,” said Eleazar, “of the recent violence in Beneberak and elsewhere.”

  “You know that I am.”

  “And what have I to do with it?”

  “I am an old man, Eleazar, and have no time for games. Your nephew’s name is on the lips of every stone-throwing hoodlum in Judaea.”

  Eleazar shrugged. “The young man will not take instruction from me. I might have had some influence on him before his father was killed, but now he is like a javelin in flight. He will not be deterred.”

  “Perhaps not, but his movement would not have nearly the strength without your endorsement. You let the people believe Simon ben Kosevah is an agent of the Lord, when he is but an angry young man with a yearning for vengeance. He cares not for the law, nor for our customs. You have heard what his young men say as they charge into battle against the Romans: ‘Oh God, neither help nor discourage us!’ Is this the battle cry of the moschiach?”

  “You use that word, not I. But can the Lord not use such a man? King David himself was an adulterer and murderer.”

  “It is a dangerous game you are playing, Eleazar. Simon ben Kosevah cares not for you. He will sacrifice you to the cause the moment you are no longer of use to him.”

  “As befits an old goat such as myself. What would you have me do, Akiva ben Yosef? Discourage these young men from fighting for Israel against their oppressors? That is all well and good, but what then shall they do? They cannot worship at the temple. They cannot even go to ruins of Yerusalem to mourn their ancestors. They cannot have their sons circumcised because it offends the Emperor. We have lost our past and are losing our future. At least in fighting, they remember.”

  “Then you do not even expect to succeed.”

  “Against the Romans? History shows it can be done. In Iberia, Viriathus led the Lusitani to victory against them and successfully negotiated terms.”

  “And then he was assassinated by his own men, who were bribed by Romans intent on conquest, and his struggle came to naught.”

  “Viriathus was defeated because of a lack of unity. So it was in the revolt in the time of our grandfathers, when infighting among the zealots allowed the Romans to retake Yerusalem. If we are to defeat the oppressors, we must be united under the banner of the one true God.”

  “And Simon ben Kosevah.”

  “Why not? Simon ben Kosevah is a fighter, and he inspires the people to resist. If we wait for the perfect vessel for God’s will, we shall wait forever.”

  “He is impetuous, irreverent and cruel.”

  “Speak with him, then. He would benefit from your wisdom. I will arrange the meeting.”

  “He will not listen to you, but he will take guidance from me? No, I shall not try to steer the javelin in flight. Your purpose is not to tame Simon ben Kosevah, but to have me fall under the spell of his charisma so that my name can be added to the chorus of those calling him moschiach.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  “To proclaim a false moschiach? May God rip the tongue from my mouth.”

  “I do not ask you to prophesy falsely, but rather to consider whether with your support and guidance, Simon ben Kosevah might become what we both wish he could be.”

  “Your words veer close to blasphemy, old friend. God does not need me to fulfill His purpose.”

  “He does not need you, but nor should your pride cause you to rebel against Him. If God has chosen Simon ben Kosevah to be the deliverer of Israel, who are you to deny him?”

  “I can only see with the eyes God has given me. If Simon ben Kosevah is the moschiach, where are the signs?”

  “He is a son of the line of David. Already he has twenty thousand men on his side. With your support, he could have two hundred thousand. You will have your sign when he throws off the Roman shackles and rebuilds the Temple of Solomon.”

  “Then I shall await that time.”

  “And you will weep for the men who died because of your indecision. What shall you do in the meantime?”

  “I shall pray and wait on the Lord.”

  “And if you are called on to do more than that? I heard what happened in Beneberak yesterday.”

  “An ambush of a group of stationarii. I imagine you hear of all such events. What of it?”

  “I was told you were there. One of the men recognized you.”

  “I was walking home, as I always do.”

  “This man said that you had an opportunity to spoil the ambush, but you did not. Why?”

  “There was no such opportunity. It was done before I knew what was happening.”

  “That isn’t how this man reports it. He says you stepped out of the way so the ambush could proceed. He says he heard you praying that God’s will be done. Do you believe that the ambush was God’s will?”

  Akiva found it difficult to believe anyone had overheard his prayer. Was Eleazar bluffing? “It is something I pray often,” he said. “I may well have said it last night. As I say, it all happened quite suddenly. My memory is not clear.”

  “Ah, then you spoke without thinking,” he said. “It is a common thing, to invoke the name of God when one is momentarily overcome by confusion or fear.”

  Akiva felt heat rising in his cheeks. Was Eleazar accusing him of taking the Lord’s name in vain? It was a clever tactic, as the only defense was for Akiva to admit he had spoken deliberately. He refused to rise to the bait. He stood. “I can see that my trip here was wasted. I am not going to convince you of anything.”

  Eleazar got to his feet and clasped Akiva’s hand, seeming to regret his rhetorical ploy. “Please, Rabbi, stay the night in my home. Tomorrow Simon is returning from a visit to like-minded friends in Joppa. Despite your unkind words for him today, he respects you a great deal. The three of us will have wine and break bread together. It would warm my heart if we could come to an understanding.”

  “I’m afraid I cannot,” Akiva said. “I have responsibilities to attend to. And in truth, I must tell you that part of me fears that you are correct—that Simon ben Kosevah will bring me around to his way of thinking. I have heard him exhort the crowds and I have seen the results. I am an old man, but I am not entirely devoid of passion. I love Israel, and I chafe at the yoke of the Romans, but the moschiach does not come to ease my mind or give me comfort.”

  “But he will come.”

  “At the time of the Lord’s choosing. I thank you for your hospitality, old friend. Now I must return home where I will seek the counsel of the Lord. I exhort you to do the same.”

  Chapter Nine

  The gaunt face of an elderly, nearly bald woman appeared on Huiskamp’s screen. Her skin was leathery and olive colored. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected Christina Prince to look like, but it wasn’t this. She smiled at him enigmatically. “Hello, Admiral,” she said.

  “Did you know?” he asked.

  “What was going to happen to Andrea Luhman? Yes.”

  “How?”

  “The artifact I understand you currently have in your possession, for one thing.”

  “A fabrication.”

  “Our analysis of that artifact indicates it was manufactured for the IDL sometime in the early twenty-third century. It also suggests the artifact is approximately thirteen hundred years old.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  Prince shrugged. “Only if you assume certain dubious premises about the nature of spacetime.”

  “When did you know?”

  “I personally have known for about twenty years, since I was promoted
to a leadership position in Jörmungandr. Others have known for much longer.”

  “Your organization only dates to the late twenty-first century.”

  “Before Jörmungandr, there was something called Project Firefly. By now you’ve heard of it, I expect.”

  “If you knew, why didn’t you warn us earlier? Why wait until the very moment Andrea Luhman disappeared?”

  “The past can’t be changed,” Prince said. “If we had tried, we would have failed.”

  “Before you attempted to contact me, the disappearance of Andrea Luhman wasn’t in the past. It was in the future.”

  “It was in your future. It was in our past.”

  “Gobbledygook.”

  “Not at all. When I say that the past can’t be changed, what I mean is that one can’t contradict what is known to be known. We have a name for it at Jörmungandr: the Limits of Known Information. LOKI for short. But knowledge is subjective. You and I know different things. Therefore what I can’t do and what you can’t do are different things.”

  “This sort of philosophical nonsense is exactly why I didn’t take your call the first time.”

  Prince laughed. “The low tolerance for ‘philosophical nonsense’ among those whose careers depend on the manipulation of spacetime is a constant source of amusement at Jörmungandr. You step through a magical doorway that sends you farther across the galaxy than the fastest spaceship can carry you in twenty years and then you insist you have no time for speculation about the nature of spacetime.”

  “What is the purpose of your organization, Ms. Prince?”

  “The same as yours. To ensure the survival of the human race.”

  “And yet, until ten days ago, I had never even heard of the Jörmungandr Foundation.”

  “That was by design. It was vital that our two organizations work independently of each other.”

  “Then why contact me now?”

  “Because the time for working independently has ended.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “A more thorough answer will require some patience on your part for what you call ‘philosophical nonsense.’”

  Huiskamp sighed. “Very well. Fortunately, I have some downtime while I await an alien attack. Educate me.”

  “You’re familiar with Schrödinger’s cat?”

  “An illustration of the absurdity of quantum mechanics. As I recall, it requires a cat to be dead and alive at the same time.”

  “Right. In Schrödinger’s thought experiment, a cat is in a sealed chamber along with a Geiger counter containing a small amount of radioactive material. In a given amount of time, say an hour, the radioactive material either decays or does not decay. If it does, the Geiger counter trips a relay that causes a hammer to smash a vial containing hydrogen cyanide, killing the cat. If it does not, the relay is not triggered and the cat remains alive. If the chamber is kept completely isolated from any outside influence, then it is impossible to know whether the radioactive sample has decayed or not. Quantum mechanics tells us that until the sample is observed, it is in a state of superposition, both decayed and undecayed. Therefore the cat must be considered dead and alive simultaneously.”

  “And what does this have to do with changing the past?”

  “You can think of the passage of time—more precisely, the stream of causation from past to future—in much the same terms. Imagine a cat running across a busy freeway. Perhaps the cat dies and perhaps it does not. If you observe the situation before the cat crosses the freeway, either outcome is a possibility. If you observe the situation after the cat crosses, only one has happened: the cat is either dead or it is alive. In other words, your vantage point determines the range of possibilities.

  “Generally speaking, all observers seem to share the same present, so we have developed language that reflects a view of causation as objectively real for all observers. That is, instead of speaking of a cat that is dead-alive, we talk about a cat that will be dead or will be alive, depending on whether the cat is hit by a car crossing the freeway. But what is this conditional state of affairs but Schrödinger’s superposition expressed a different way? Rather than putting a cat in a sealed chamber, we have placed it in another unreachable place: the future! As long as the cat remains in the future, it is in superposition, both dead and alive.”

  “No,” Huiskamp said, having no patience for semantic games. “It is alive. It will be dead or alive.”

  “But don’t you see you’ve resorted to a linguistic workaround rather than an actual solution?” Prince said. “If you try to express the situation without using the future tense, you will see the problem.”

  “Why would I want to speak about the future without using the future tense? That’s what the future tense is for.”

  “Ah, but the future doesn’t exist! It’s a fiction, much like Schrödinger’s cat. It’s a very compelling fiction, to be sure, but it has no objective reality. Einstein demonstrated that simultaneity is relative, which implies that there is no objective ‘present’ that we all share. And if there is no objective present, there is no objective future. There are only events that have occurred for a given observer, along with an infinite range of possible events that may yet occur.

  “But if there is no objective future, then what does the future tense actually refer to? Not an objective reality, but a subjective set of possibilities. Your future, therefore, is slightly different from that of your very understanding assistant, Ms. Umarzai, although the differences are so small that you and Ms. Umarzai have no difficulty speaking with one another about what will or won’t happen in ‘the future,’ despite the fact that, speaking precisely, there is no such thing. Your future will diverge somewhat more from that of your son, traveling away from you at thousands of kilometers per second, because time will travel more slowly for him relative to you, and therefore you will lose the illusion of a shared present.”

  So she knows about Jason as well, thought Huiskamp.

  Prince continued: “Taking the matter to the extreme: if one were to travel thirteen hundred years backwards in time, one would find that events in one’s past exist only as future possibilities for one’s contemporaries. Suppose, for example, you are a spaceman from the twenty-third century who has been transported to Europe in the late ninth century. You encounter a man—we can call him Sigurd—who intends to kill Harald Fairhair, the King of Norway. Being from the distant future and possessing encyclopedic knowledge of history, you are aware that Harald Fairhair died of old age well into the tenth century. Therefore, killing Harald is an impossibility, because the past cannot be changed.”

  Huiskamp shook his head. “If the future is subjective, then killing Harald remains a possibility for Sigurd.”

  “In a sense,” Prince said. “But realize that the question is muddied by our own perspective. If I say, ‘Would it have been possible for Lincoln to survive the attempt on his life by John Wilkes Booth?’, I am asking a different question than ‘Is it possible that Lincoln survived the attempt on his life by John Wilkes Booth?’ The former question asks if history might have turned out differently. The latter asks if events did occur differently than recorded in the historical record. The answer to the former question is, ‘Yes, of course.’ The answer to the latter is ‘Probably not, given the amount of contemporary corroboration of the incident we have.’ Is it possible that history might have turned out differently, resulting in Harald Fairhair being murdered by a man named Sigurd in the ninth century? Yes, of course. Is it possible, given what we know of what did happen, that Harald was murdered in this way? Probably not.”

  “This is clarifying exactly nothing.”

  “Allow me to finish, Admiral. Is the future subjective? Yes. But Sigurd’s future is our past. It is reasonable to ask whether Sigurd could have acted differently than he did. But it is not reasonable to ask whether he did act differently. From our perspective, in our present, he did what he did. Could he have murdered Harald Fairhair? Yes. Did he? No. What is the
difference between the two questions? The former considers an event that might happen in the future. The latter considers matters as they did exist in the past. It is precisely the difference in Schrödinger’s cat before and after its state of superposition is collapsed.

  “Perhaps this seems like a rhetorical trick to you, but it is in fact the opposite: by removing the deceptive linguistic trickery of the future tense, we reveal that there are only actualities and possibilities. The future is an illusion. The past is real—although it is not the same for everyone.

  “If you still doubt me, consider this: suppose that we alter Schrödinger’s experiment by placing a camera in the box with the cat to record everything that it does during the time that it either does or does not die of cyanide poisoning. If we open the box and find the cat alive, we will also find a recording of the cat inside the box, perhaps clawing at the box to get out, probably getting hungry, possibly falling asleep out of boredom. If we open the box and find the cat dead, we will instead find a rather gruesome recording of the cat inhaling the poison gas and succumbing to its effects. The important thing to note is that both and neither of these recordings will exist until we open the box because they, like the radioactive sample and the cat itself, exist in a state of superposition until their state is observed. What this means is that not only did opening the box cause the cat’s state to collapse from alive/dead to either alive or dead, that action also retroactively created a recording of what happened to the cat over that hour.”

  “You’re saying that cause and effect can be reversed.”

  “That is the inescapable conclusion, yes. If I were to ask you before the box was opened, ‘Is the cat alive?’, you could accurately answer only that it is both alive and not alive. But if we opened the box and referred to the timestamp on the recording from the exact moment I asked you that question, we would find that the question had a very definite answer. How is it possible that the question both does and does not have a definite answer? It’s a matter of perspective. Inside the box, it had an answer. Outside the box, it did not. Could Sigurd have killed Harald Fairhair? That’s a question that both does and does not have a definite answer, depending on your perspective.