Anvil of Fate (Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  The man had turned to look at other riders, clerics, and one man all in white with what looked like a bishop’s miter in his hand. These might be officials of the chapel here, come to bear witness to Grimwald’s visit, and duly note the homage he has paid. It was all lip service, of course. Grimwald was here to make a political statement, not a religious one. By making his contrite visit to Lambert’s tomb, he would reinforce his alliance with the cult of sainthood that had grown up around the man—the bishop who had condemned the harlot mother of his greatest rival, Charles.

  He would soon go into the chapel and kneel before Lambert’s tomb. Hopefully he would see the dish of holy water there, and dip his hand in to make the sign of the cross in prayer. Hopefully he would take notice of the chalice there, and drink. Yet if hope would not prevail on this grey morning, Paul was up in the tower waiting. If Grimwald emerged, alive and well, he still had his rifle…

  The man greeted the clerics with a strained smile, then proffered a subtle bow and entered the chapel. Paul’s heart thundered as he watched the others waiting outside in silence. The horses chafed and snorted, and one seemed particularly unsettled.

  Oh, no, thought Paul. Not another unruly beast! What was going to happen? Was there another hidden Pushpoint here that they could not possibly have seen or predicted? The horse snorted, and for a moment Paul thought it was looking up at him in the bell tower. He hid himself at once. His back pressed flat against the cold stone wall, cowering in the shadows. Stooping, he reached for his rifle, and saw his hands trembling as he clutched it again, trying to impose a measure of calm on himself. He knew the animal was already well aware of his presence, though he hoped no one else had seen him. Kelly’s voice returned to him concerning this whole affair—It’s the damn horses!

  Then he heard voices from below, and cautiously knelt again to peer out the window. Grimwald had emerged from the chapel, obviously alive, and Paul was crestfallen. Apparently the water and wine were not sufficient lures, or perhaps Grimwald was not so pious, seeing fit to ignore them. So he had only one recourse now, and his hands were tight on his rifle as he slowly forced himself to stand on unsteady legs.

  He positioned himself to one side of the tall, narrow embrasure. Damn, he thought. Here I am, another Lee Harvey Oswald! His mouth was dry, his throat tight. Sweat dotted his brow. He peered out to see Grimwald clasp the arm of the chief cleric, smiling. It was now or never, he thought, and he aimed his rifle, sighting down the thin, cold metal barrel. He knew what the next moment might mean for him. He had no idea when his retraction might occur. He had only told Robert and Maeve to watch the Golems closely, looking for any sign or variation, and the many problems they had that night with the Golem module haunted him now. What was it Kelly had said—there could be a lag time between intervention and the appearance of a variation in the Golem reports? In those seconds or minutes, his life rode in the balance.

  The moment he pulled the trigger the gun would surely fire with an audible crack. He knew heads would instinctively snap toward the sound, and then how long would it be before these men at arms were up the tower ladder, growling and shouldering their way up through the trap door to get at him? He thought he might stand on the door, but he weighed all of 165 pounds. They would get to him soon enough, even if they had to hack the trap door to pieces with an axe. He could defend himself with the rifle, but what good would it do? It would only introduce yet more disastrous variations in the time line. He had little doubt that within ten minutes of firing his lethal round, he, too, would be a prisoner of Grimwald’s retainers, or worse, he would join the dark captain in the cold clutches of death. Grimwald was to meet his rightful death here and, if need be, Paul would die himself before he killed anyone else.

  All this passed through his mind in a heartbeat as he watched Grimwald leave off his clasping handshake and move to the side of his horse. A retainer held the reins as he made ready to mount. Paul slipped off the safety and his finger tightened on the trigger, his chin close by the rifle’s bore. Then, just as he was about to fire, he stayed his hand when he saw Grimwald sway on his thick bowed legs, then stagger, falling against the side of the horse, which skittered back with alarm. The big man fell heavily to the ground, with a dull thud. Immediately his retainers were at his side, aghast.

  There was shouting, hard words that Paul did not understand. Fearful that he might be seen, Paul cowered back away from the embrasure, hiding the rifle beneath his cassock again. He heard quick footsteps in the chapel below. They were in through the sacristy and into the tower now! Had he been seen?

  Then something creaked and the hanging bell moved, clanging loudly. Paul stopped his ears with the palms of his hands, a look of anguish and fear on his face. They had seen him, and by God, they were raising the alarm, ringing him out, dulling his senses with the hard peal of the bell. Again and again it rang, accusing him, singling him out, shouting in his weary mind—murderer, assassin, wretch! And the sound of the bell was a hammer on the anvil of his soul as he coward against the wall there, the rifle tight between his knees as he waited for his inevitable doom.

  Chapter 24

  The Berkley Arch Complex, Saturday, 10:35 A.M.

  They had little more than a minute to rest after Paul’s shift concluded, for a moment later the Golems were already signaling variations in the Meridian.

  “Hold on!” said Nordhausen. “Something’s up!”

  Maeve was at his side immediately. They were looking at the chart again, and were relieved to see that the line of green that had been stubbornly stuck in the year 714 was now again on the move. The shades of green darkened and migrated further along the Meridian, passing through the years 720, then 725 and moving towards 732, the pivotal date for the Battle of Tours.

  “This is looking very promising,” she said. “Any documentation on what has happened?”

  “Searching now,” said the professor. “Let me see if I can get something from the continuation of Fredegar’s Chronicle… Here, I’ve got the file up…. “Grimwald was assassinated, poisoned, while praying in the Church of St. Lambert. This while his father lay ill at Jopille on the Meuse… By God, he’s done it!”

  “Then our torpedo struck home,” said Maeve. “Paul made it through and delivered his javelin dart to Grimwald. God, I wonder how he managed it? So what about the battle?”

  “Never mind that now!” Kelly shouted. “I’m pulling Paul out right away.” He was working feverishly at his console, checking readings, toggling switches, adjusting dials. “Someone get down there, will you!”

  Minutes later Maeve watched Paul step over the event horizon and appear in the whirl of light and color, a thick acrid fog in his wake, resolving to blue mist. She went to the intercom to send up word that all was well, then came up and gave him a big hug, surprised to feel something hidden under his monk’s robe.

  “Bring that bloodied javelin back with you?” she asked, curious.

  “Well…” Paul gave her a sheepish look, opening his robe to reveal the .22 caliber rifle.”

  “You took that through?”

  “I had to be sure,” he said. “You made your point too well, Maeve. Was I supposed to rush the man and try to best him at arms? You should have seen him!”

  “You killed him with the rifle? That will leave a slug in his corpse!”

  “No, no, no,” Paul held up a hand. “I didn’t fire a shot.” He told her what had happened, and she slowly regained her composure, suddenly realizing what he had gone through, and remembering what it was like herself, at that very place, yet nine years earlier on the Meridian.

  “So you’re Rantgar now,” she said softly. “Well you can join the club. I suppose I’m just another of Dodo’s retainers.”

  Paul smiled, “It was risky, Maeve, I know. But it was all I could think of—all I could do.”

  She nodded solemnly, understanding. They were about to leave when Maeve caught something out of the corner of her eye. She turned to squint at the Arch, advancing cautio
usly towards the event line, stooping to get a better look at something on the floor. “Now what in God’s name is this?” She could hardly believe her eyes.

  Could there be a feedback loop in the system? She had no idea how the physics worked and the equipment had been running fitfully all night, relying on secondary power sources and invaded by a virus sent from the future, albeit a benign one if they were to believe Rantgar.

  “Did you take that through as well?”

  Paul turned and looked, puzzled, shaking his head in the negative. But what he saw, sitting square on the middle of the yellow event horizon line, set his mind spinning again, and gave rise to a thrum of anxiety in his chest. “It couldn’t be,” he said aloud. “It just couldn’t be…”

  Maeve started to reach for it, her fingers enshrouded by the fading mist and pricked by the remnant of icy frost there, then she drew her hand back, afraid to touch the thing.

  “What do you make of that?” She looked at Paul, extending her arm pointing at the floor in the arch. “It appeared just after your retraction,” she said.

  Paul stepped over to the ready line again, Maeve advancing cautiously behind him.

  “Be careful,” she whispered. “I went to pick it up and things didn’t feel right.”

  Paul looked at her, then waved his hand cautiously over the object, as though testing the air. There was a residual feeling of cold there, but this was normal for the Arch just after a shift.

  “Can we touch it?” asked Maeve.

  “I don’t see why not,” said Paul, reaching. A second later he had hold of it, and they both stood up.

  Maeve looked at him, eyes wide, arms crossed, and obviously curious. “Well?” she said.

  “Let’s take it upstairs,” he said. “The others won’t believe this!”

  Back in the main operations room Robert was still fiddling with the Golem module. “Getting up information on the battle now,” he said. “The system seems sluggish. Can you put more Golems on this Kelly?”

  “No problem,” said Kelly as he grabbed a mouse and clicked on an icon to activate his primary Golem interface. The expression on his face changed immediately. “I take that back,” he said.

  That got Robert’s attention immediately.

  “Problem,” said Kelly. “Big problem…”

  “Trouble getting data from the Golems?”

  “Trouble finding the Golems,” said Kelly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well I put the bulk of the installed user base to work as a remote supercomputer so I could process calculations we needed for the shift. But I can’t find the little buggers now. They don’t answer my command calls.”

  “Maybe it’s the Internet,” said Robert.

  “No, the network is wounded, but it’s still functional. I can ping lots of primary hub servers and the latency is still tolerable. Packets are moving on the net as normal, but I’ve lost contact with a huge chunk of my flock. All I seem to have control over now are those lost sheep that came on line after I gave the initial command for the Golems to begin processing shift algorithms. I banked then into one group but that’s no more than ten percent of the installed user base, now.”

  “What about the worms and viruses Rantgar was talking about?” said Robert, wagging his finger excitedly.

  “Good point,” said Kelly. “That pissed me off, frankly, though I’m glad we got the data that enabled Paul to shift in. But a virus is a virus, and it can do unexpected things if it tangles with security software. It’s designed to penetrate supposedly secure systems, and that means it has to be able to defend itself. The damn thing could have caused mutations in my Golem code, and that would be a real problem.”

  “Could our friends in the future be using the Golems somehow?” Robert was considering every option. “Is there a way they could get control of them?”

  “God only knows,” said Kelly. “All I know is that I can’t get control of them. All we’ve got now are those lost sheep.”

  “Well, well, well…” The Professor was tapping his monitor now. “It’s not the little lost sheep I’m worried about, it’s the big bad wolves. It’s Tours. I’ve got an account of the battle here from the altered Meridian, and apparently Paul’s poison dart wasn’t sufficiently lethal. Abdul Rahman still prevails and the Franks flee north. Nothing has changed! We need to verify this. What’s wrong with the bloody Golem module, Kelly?”

  Kelly gave him a blank look, clearly upset. “I tell you I just don’t know what happened!” Kelly had had enough with the speculation. He was tired and his temper always got the best of him when he was frustrated like this. Losing his hold on the Golems was a hard blow, coming at a critical time, and he felt like someone had severed his right arm. Now this! “Maybe the damn Assassins did something. They know how crucial the Golems are for us.”

  Paul and Maeve had come up, padding quietly into the lab to find Robert and Kelly still squabbling about the missing Golems and the slow data rate and whether or not the green line on the variance monitor was going to eventually migrate to the right, through the end of the year 732.

  “Can we rely on this data now with that virus is at large in the system?”

  “How the hell do I know?” Kelly said with obvious annoyance.

  “I mean the Internet is full of crap. Remember the big scare about Nibiru that had all the doomers up in a fit in 2011 when Comet Elenin paid us a visit? Well how do we know this is reliable information? I mean the file says it’s from the Chronicles of Fredegar, but how can we be sure it isn’t something someone just threw up in a blog somewhere?”

  The professor turned, seeing Paul and Maeve, and waved them over, intent on enlisting some support for his argument. He didn’t even notice what Paul was holding.

  “Welcome home, Paul. You got rid of Grimwald, alright. Good Man, but you can tell us the tale later. The job is still not done. We need to be certain we have good information here,” he went on. “There’s been entirely too much speculation pushing this mission, and look at the results!” He had pointed at the screen. “It’s still not green…”

  Paul gave him a sharp wave of his hand. “Time Out, gentlemen!” he yelled. “Look what I found—well Maeve found it I suppose, but what do you make of this?” He thrust his arm out, boldly, showing them the object with a wry smile. “It apparently manifested just after I shifted back successfully.” He looked at Kelly. “And brother, I was never more grateful to feel that retraction shift kick in. Let’s hope my integrity is good and I don’t suffer Rantgar’s fate.”

  “No problem there,” said Kelly. “Your numbers were rock solid. “Remember, I took a double sweep on your pattern.”

  Robert gave Paul a puzzled look. “That came in through the Arch with you?”

  “It appears so,” said Paul, holding up the apple. It was a plump, round Pippin, nicely ripened, and there was a thin slice on one side with a piece of paper tucked into the crevasse, an obvious note. Paul could make out handwriting on the paper as he peered at it, smiling.

  “Well open the damn thing!” said Kelly. “Someone obviously has a wry sense of humor, but it’s clear they want to get our attention.”

  Paul slipped out the note and they all drew closer. It felt vaguely like that moment, so long ago now it seemed, when Maeve had come upon a paper in Mr. Graves overcoat. It had contained numbers that led them to decipher the exact physical coordinates of their initial shift in time, to Minifir, where Lawrence of Arabia would lie in wait for an oncoming Turkish train. The note in the apple was an obvious message from Rantgar’s unseen. associates. Perhaps he didn’t simply vanish after all, though he was clearly not at the scene of Grimwald’s death. Yet, he must have told them the story of how Paul shifted in on a brief Spook Job and tossed the apple to Maeve, hoping against hope that she would decipher its meaning and find a way to take some decisive action. As he slipped the note paper out, Paul was struck by the thought that this was an equally urgent appeal.

  He opened the p
age and read the few words that had been written there: “Congratulations! And now the pleasure of your company is requested. Send R.N.”

  “Send RN?” said Robert. A Registered Nurse? It must be shorthand for help.” They were all looking at him, eyebrows raised with some astonishment.

  “You’re thinking that means me?” he said.

  “R period, N period, and it’s underlined,” said Paul. “Aren’t those your initials, Robert?”

  “Me? What would they want me to join them for? Join who? Where?”

  “Good questions,” said Paul. “Perhaps they’ve found a way to shift you forward in Time to a safe Nexus Point. This could be exciting, Robert! It’s just what you’ve been wanting, a nice close look at a future no man of our era would ever have the opportunity to see.”

  Kelly cleared his throat, noticeably.

  “Except Mr. Ramer here,” Paul corrected himself quickly.

  “Well it could mean Ramer and Nordhausen,” said the professor. “The both of us.” The look on his face was somewhat squeamish, and he seemed to be looking for allies in an ever closing circle of foes.

  “I doubt that,” said Paul. “It looks like an invitation to take a trip through the Arch. But where indeed? Noticing Robert’s discomfiture, he chided him a bit. “Are you telling me you don’t want to go with that sad face?”

  Maeve jumped right in. “The man who’s become famous for unauthorized use of the Arch for personal business!”

  “Now, now… We have no idea what that note means,” said Robert, increasingly leery. “Why, we have no idea who even sent it! Suppose it’s from the Assassins, and they’re inviting me to a lynching party or some other mischief?”