by Simon Hawke
Forrester frowned. “What are you getting at?”
“Just this. The whole thing is beginning to shape up as the sort of nightmares we used to construct as theoretical problem modules back in RCS when we were studying the effects of the Fate Factor on temporal inertia. We used to call it ‘zen physics,’ because it bends your brain around just thinking about it, like one of those old Japanese koans, you know, ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ Only this is even worse.”
“How so?”
“Because trying to figure it out logically will make you crazy,” said Finn. “More cadets washed out on zen physics than in any other course. Temporal inertia works in ways that not even Mensinger fully understood. Look at the complete picture here. Everything that’s gone down so far bears directly on our actions in 17th-century Paris during that adjustment mission involving the three musketeers. The adjustment was successful and it enabled the TIA to arrest most of the Timekeepers, but we have no way of knowing just how much temporal inertia was affected. Remember that the Fate Factor works as a coefficient of temporal inertia, determining the degree of relative continuity to which the timestream can be restored. That depends on the effects of the disruption itself in the first place and the manner in which it was adjusted in the second place.”
“In other words,” said Andre, “ ‘relative’ is the operative term. Temporal inertia can still be affected in some way that might show up at some later point in time.”
“Exactly. Coincidences are a natural part of a random world, but too many coincidences indicates that there has to be more than randomness at work. That’s what we’ve got here. Too damn many coincidences. One: what the Timekeepers have done in disrupting 19th-century Ruritania is directly related to what we did to them in 17th-century France. Cause and effect. Two: Falcon appears to have been very high up in the terrorist organization, perhaps one of their leaders, which connects her to what we did in 17th-century France. Three: as Elaine Cantrell, she was involved with Colonel Forrester and now, as Falcon, their paths have intersected once again. Four: as Elaine Cantrell and later as Sophia Falco, she was involved with the TIA and with Mongoose, who’s been involved with us on more than one occasion in the past, specifically on that 17th-century adjustment. Five: I happen, just ‘coincidentally,’ to resemble both Rudolf Rassendyll and King Rudolf of Ruritania, who are principal parties in the historical scenario the Timekeepers have disrupted. Possibly, they discovered this resemblance by accident and acted because of it, but there are still too many coincidences interrelating here to be dismissed as a random progression of events.”
“So you’re suggesting that it’s the Fate Factor at work?” said Forrester.
“It has to be. Remember that old story about how a kingdom was lost for want of a horseshoe nail? All it takes is one seemingly insignificant action to set in motion a cause-and-effect chain that will eventually lead to one significant event. Trying to analyze such a situation in terms of temporal inertia practically erases the line between physics and metaphysics. It’s what finally drove Mensinger to kill himself. He realized that the whole thing is like a house of cards. Sooner or later, it’s bound to collapse under its own weight and all it takes is just one card to start the whole thing falling.”
“But none of our actions have ever been temporally insignificant,” said Lucas. “We’ve even faced a timestream split before and managed to adjust for it successfully.”
“Yeah, so far as we know,” said Finn. “The point I’m trying to make is that Mensinger’s theories refer to Fate in a literal fashion only obliquely. That’s because complete objectivity is impossible under any circumstances. It goes back to Heisenberg’s Principle. An observer of any phenomenon can’t get away from his subjective relationship to it merely by being there to observe it. Any action we take in Plus or Minus Time is a causal manifestation of our subjective relationship to the timestream.”
“You’ve lost me,” said Andre.
“Let me attempt to translate Delaney’s verbosity into layman’s terms,” said Forrester. “What he’s saying is that the Fate Factor governs not only the end result of any adjustment to the timestream, but it also governs the actions of those effecting the adjustment.”
“Only in this case,” said Finn, “we seem to be confronted with a situation that’s eschatological in its implications. We may have adjusted for a split before, but now we’ve got the potential for a massive rupture on our hands. And what makes matters even worse is that all we’ve got to work from in terms of intelligence is some sort of drawing-room novel written in the 19th century. Without access to those diaries that Hawkins allegedly worked from, we have no way of knowing what really happened. The TIA is in no position to give us any help. Besides, even if they managed to get their hands on those diaries in time, we’d still only have Rassendyll’s word for what actually happened. He could easily have embellished the story for his own sake.”
“I’ll agree that the element of uncertainty in this scenario is very large,” said Lucas, “but at least we know what the result was. History records a King Rudolf the Fifth on the throne of Ruritania, and Rassendyll obviously managed to get back to London in one piece to write about it in his diaries. Whatever it was he did, he was successful.”
“Not any more he wasn’t,” said Finn. “I trust we have access to this novel Hawkins wrote?”
“It will be included in the mission programming,” said Forrester.
“Good. We’ll need all the help that we can get. We’re looking destiny squarely in the face here. The Fate Factor is trying to compensate and we’re a part of it!”
“I wonder if the Timekeepers realize that?” said Lucas.
“I wonder if they care?” said Forrester. “Their so-called movement has been effectively destroyed. There can only be a handful of them left. Can you think of a better note to go out on than having brought about ultimate entropy?”
“Is that actually a possibility?” said Andre.
“Delaney seems to think so,” Forrester said.
“But that would mean…” Andre’s voice trailed off.
“The end of time,” said Lucas, softly.
3
Drakov was impatient. He kept pacing back and forth in the small turret atop the keep of Zenda Castle, rolling his massive shoulders and stretching to get the kinks out of his muscles.
“Sit down, Nikolai,” said Falcon. “Your constant pacing back and forth is distracting me.”
Drakov gave her a look of mild irritation. She was reclining on one of two small cots in the tiny room that was otherwise bare except for some equipment and supplies piled in a corner. Her ash-blond hair was pulled back in a pony tail, and she was dressed in low black boots and black fatigues. Drakov was similarly attired, though he added a sheepskin vest to his army-surplus clothing.
“You may find it distracting,” he said, “but I find it necessary to move about. The chill and dampness of this place is making my bones ache. While you’ve been out there socializing as the Countess Sophia, I’ve been cooped up here for days with nothing but rats and silverfish for company. I don’t know how people ever managed to live in such places.”
“It may be uncomfortable, but it’s an ideal base of operations,” she said, still intent upon the screen of the small computer she held in her right hand. “No one’s set foot in this part of the castle for years and even if the adjustment team suspected that we were holed up in here, they’d have a hell of a time trying to get at us.”
“Unless they decided to try clocking in here,” said Drakov.
“The risk factor would be far too great,” she said. “They would never attempt it without transition coordinates. They could wind up inside a wall that’s eight feet thick. However, it’s possible that they could try an assault with floater-paks, which is why I’ve moved us up here to this turret. It might be colder and windier up here, but we can see out over the entire castle. Once I’ve got the tracking system set up in those embrasures, there’s no w
ay they’ll be able to drop in here without setting off a laser.”
“What is to prevent them from obtaining their coordinates the same way we did?” Drakov said.
Falcon raised her eyebrows. “By seducing Rupert Hentzau in the dungeon?”
“Don’t be crude,” said Drakov. “You know very well what I mean. One of them might arrange a visit with Black Michael and ask to see the castle. You might have done the same when you attended the ball in his chateau, only you chose to appeal to Hentzau’s prurient sensibilities, instead.”
Falcon smiled slyly. “That’s true, but I’d never done it on a rack before. There are all sorts of interesting devices down there. You should go down with me and take a look. You never know, it might help take the chill out of your bones.”
“Thank you, but no,” said Drakov.
“You know, you really are a very pretty boy, Nikolai, but you’ve got the mind of a neanderthal. That’s the trouble with implant programming. It can teach you things, but it can’t make you unlearn a lifetime of social conditioning. Perhaps I should have had you totally reeducated, but I liked your personality the way it was when I first found you. It has its own charm and appeal, despite your Victorian attitudes. But for God’s sake, you’ve lived in the 27th century! Haven’t you learned anything?”
“I have learned a great deal,” Drakov said. “I have learned that your ‘modern era’ is degenerate and decadent, and not in ways that pertain just to sexual morality. You have replaced quality with quantity, substance with artifice and principles with expediency. Forgive me, but I find little in your time to admire except your technological achievements, and even those you use irresponsibly.”
“You’re a fine one to take such a lofty moral tone,” she said. “When I found you, you were a jaded playboy who could buy everything except the things you really wanted. Your money couldn’t buy you peace and it couldn’t buy you a sense of purpose. I gave you both.”
“I will admit that for a brief time, I found a sense of peace with you,” said Drakov, “but that was nothing more than self-delusion. You used me, but I’m not complaining. We used each other and we continue to do so, like a pair of parasites. And where has it brought us? Here we are, the last remaining members of the Timekeepers’ vaunted inner circle, sitting in a cold, gray room like a pair of deluded anarchists, plotting our revenge.”
“It’s what you wanted, Nikolai.”
“What I wanted? No, it isn’t what I wanted. If I could have had what I wanted, mine would have been a different life entirely. It is, however regrettably, what I need. When this is over, if things should go our way, I can think of nothing that would please me more than to part from you and never see you or your 27th century again.”
“Poor Nicky,” she said. “What would you rather do?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I do know that I can never go back to being what I was. Making war on war has changed me. Whether for the better or for the worse, I cannot tell. I do know that it is a thing that needs doing.”
“I see,” she said. “You just don’t want to continue doing it with me, is that it?”
“If I remained with you, I would become like you,” said Drakov, “and that is what I do not want. The end result of fanaticism such as yours is that everything becomes subordinated to the cause. After a time, you perpetuate the cause for its own sake, not for the sake of whatever it was you started out to achieve. Look at what’s happened to us. Taylor killed in 17th-century Paris, Singh captured to die a suicide, Tremain trapped forever in the dead zone when he tried to follow us, Benedetto escaped to God knows where in abject panic, and all of those who were arrested, all of those who died trying to escape, yet you feel nothing, do you? To you, it’s merely a setback.”
“Sacrifices must be made, Nikolai,” said Falcon, putting the computer down and looking at him thoughtfully. “I thought you understood that.”
“Oh, I understand,” he said. “What troubles me is that I’m beginning to accept it so easily. I said much the same thing to Rassendyll when I killed him. I sat there, trying to explain things to him like a fool, watching his uncomprehending eyes staring at me as he slipped away, and I felt no remorse. None whatsoever.”
“What do you want, Nikolai, to cry over everyone who has to die so that the Time Wars can be stopped?”
“Someone should, don’t you think?”
“Well, you go ahead and grieve for all the poor souls who fall by wayside,” she said, flatly. “I’ve got more important things to do. You want to go your own way when this is over, fine with me. I don’t need you. But meanwhile, there’s work to be done. Just in case the adjustment team manages to get someone inside here, I’ve prepared some surprises for them. If staying inside this castle hasn’t turned you into an impotent Prince Hamlet, you can help me set them up. Otherwise, you can stay here and muse on the pathos of it all.” She got up from the cot. “Priest, Cross, and Delaney are undoubtedly here by now and things will start to happen very soon.”
“How can you be so certain that they’re the ones Forrester will send?” said Drakov.
“Because those three are the First Division’s best,” she said. “And because Moses Forrester will realize that he has no choice but to send them, just as he will have no choice but to come to us when we’re ready for him. Then you can have your own personal revenge. After that, I really don’t care what you do.”
Drakov glanced out of the small embrasure in the turret. “Have you ever cared for anything or anyone at all?” he said.
She was silent for a moment. “Yes, once.”
“Only once?”
“There was a very special man once. It was another life, but I remember it quite vividly.” She smiled. “Ironically, it was the same man you want to kill.”
Drakov looked at her with surprise. “Moses Forrester?”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” she said. She held up her hand. “I still wear his ring. Here,” she said, pulling it off and tossing it to him, “maybe you should have it. After all, it was your father’s.”
From where they stood, the three commandos had a spectacular view of the Duke of Strelsau’s residence. They had clocked in at a point several miles away from the village of Zenda. The province was mostly heavily forested hill country, wild and teeming with game. The village was tiny and bucolic, made up of small, picturesque cottages, an inn, a blacksmith shop, a church and several farms that dotted the hillsides around it. The flavor of the place was decidedly medieval, but the duke’s estate was a palatial mixture of the old and new.
They had been met at their transition point by Captain Robert Derringer, the Observer assigned to their mission. He seemed very young for an Observer, despite the fact that the antiaging drugs made appearances deceptive. Derringer didn’t look much older than a recruit fresh out of boot camp. He was dressed in period, in a lightweight dark brown jacket, riding britches, high brown boots, and a blue silk shirt. He was sharp-featured with large brown eyes and a thick, unruly mop of dark brown hair. There was a coltish look about him, an energetic restlessness in his speech and demeanor. He had led them a short distance to the top of the hill, from where they were able to take their first look at Michael Elphberg’s home.
The long, wide, tree-lined avenue that ran straight for a distance of about two miles to “Black Michael’s” chateau was immaculately maintained. It led up to a large courtyard in front of the chateau, then curled around the east side of the estate, making a wide loop around Zenda Castle, following the moat which was as wide as a medium-sized river. Having rounded half the castle, the road then ran south, away from the estate and into the forest, through a small pass and to the village of Zenda. The avenue that led to the chateau’s front entrance ran in the opposite direction to the road that led from Zenda to the capital city of Strelsau.
Though it was dwarfed by the castle situated directly behind it, the chateau was nevertheless quite large. Built in the French style, it was five stories high with an elaborate, colu
mned portico and a steeply gabled roof. Its gleaming whiteness was a stark contrast to the murky gray stone of the castle that loomed over it.
“It’s a rather curious architectural mixture,” said Derringer. “The chateau was built by the last king as a country residence, because he evidently liked the castle a great deal but felt it too uncomfortable to live in. Only that one small drawbridge you see connects the castle to the chateau. It spans the moat about twenty feet above it and it’s wide enough for three or four men to cross it abreast. It won’t accommodate a carriage. With the construction of the chateau, the only way to get into the castle now is to go through the chateau. The back door is flush with the wall and it opens directly out onto the drawbridge or the moat if the drawbridge has been raised. The castle itself seems to have been constructed in stages. The oldest part is the central portion. You’ll notice that there are no baillies. Apparently, there were at one time, but at some point, perhaps during the construction of the chateau, the outer walls were torn down and the moat was widened.”
“It does look larger than any I’ve ever seen before,” said Andre.
“That’s right,” said Derringer, with a grin. “You’re our resident knight errant, aren’t you?”
“I’ve seen many castles in my day,” she said. “This one appears to be old, but quite impregnable. I can see where the weak point in the fortifications was reinforced by building that embrasured keep on the southwest corner, but I am puzzled by that addition with the two small towers there, jutting out over the moat. It seems to serve no useful defensive purpose.”
“I think I can explain that,” Derringer said. “That was done most recently. I haven’t been inside, but judging by appearances, I’d guess that much of the old castle is in a state of disrepair. The squared-off section sticking out into the moat was probably added as a sort of guesthouse, so that people can move back and forth between the castle and the chateau. It’s the only part of the castle where I’ve seen lights burning.”
