by Bob Mayer
He fell silent and Neeley processed that. “How does Dane know that specific time and place?”
Roland’s big shoulders shrugged. “They just know. Sin Fen, I guess, since she’s the one who gave us the Choice when we were first recruited to the Patrol. You met her. She’s got the Sight. She sees things. So I guess she can see the past and our lives. Or maybe they just got a really good dossier on us and know.”
“What was—“ Neeley began but she stopped. “Can you tell me what Nada’s Choice was?”
“Yeah. Because it also was something you and I were involved with. In a way.”
“How?”
“Nada was the best team sergeant I ever had,” Roland said. “But I heard stories about his past. When he was in the regular Army and then Delta. He drank. He wasn’t good with his wife and daughter and they left him. He had nothing left but the team and his wife ended up getting killed by an abusive man she married and his kid wasn’t doing well. When we were given the Choice to join the Time Patrol, Nada’s was whether he wanted to move forward with the team, or go back. To Afghanistan. 2005. ”
“Red Wings,” Neeley said. Everyone in Special Ops knew about the most significant mission in that year in that country.
Roland nodded. “He went back. He made sure a guy was on one of the rescue choppers who hadn’t originally been on it. So they both died in 2005. That changed things for Nada’s kid for the better. But the guy who died with him, a Navy SEAL, well.” Roland was trying to figure out something he hadn’t really thought about. “Remember the guy we took out who was abusing his wife?”
Neeley nodded. “Yeah. The SEAL.” She was much faster than Roland. “But if Nada got him on that chopper in ’95 then . . . ” She nodded. “That’s why the body disappeared from the body bag.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t just about him abusing his wife and going after her again. That guy was working for some bad people. A rogue Russian Time Patrol team. You were involved in that too. The Ratnik.”
“Okay, hold on,” Neeley put her hands on Roland’s broad shoulders, a physical anchor. “I see now. Why the Time Patrol is different.”
“I guess it was a loop,” Roland said. “We get them sometimes. I don’t understand them. I don’t think anyone does. I just don’t think about it much.”
“Okay,” Neeley said. “This isn’t like the Cellar. Where someone crosses a line and I sanction them. This is very different.”
“It is.”
Neeley still had her hands on his shoulders. She started him straight in the eyes. “What do you think I should do, Roland? Should I join the Team?”
“I’d like you on the Team,” Roland said. He qualified. “I think I would. But I’d be worried. But I’m worried all the time anyway with what you do for the Cellar. But it’s your decision.”
“I know it’s my decision. But I care about what you think. And you’re on the team. I value your advice.”
Roland flushed. He looked back out to sea. “Before the last mission, I’d have told you that having you on the team, well, we go on our missions alone. So even though we’d be teammates, that doesn’t mean I can look out for you. Not that you need looking out for,” he quickly added. “But we all ended up together on Valentines Day. And Doc—“ He stopped.
Neeley slid her arms around him and embraced .
They stayed like that a long time, the only sound the waves breaking on the beach.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York City
It was a pain in the ass to work under these conditions, but Ivar kind of, sort of, understand the concerns about the Internet not being secure from the Shadow. Any connection to the World Wide Web was a two way street, no matter how stringent the protocols.
So he kept rolling the chair back and forth between the two computers. One was linked to the web but guarded with the most secure software the NSA could provide, the other not connected. He used the former to gather information; the latter to summarize the information and run calculations.
The calculations were pretty pathetic so far.
The walls of the room were lined with whiteboard. The whiteboards were covered with Ivar’s scrawl, mostly mathematical formulas.
Lots of formulas.
No solutions.
The room was buried deep underneath the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the center of Manhattan on 5th Avenue, on the edge of Central Park. The building the public knew was an amalgamation of expansion from its founding almost 150 years ago. It now had over two million square feet of floor space.
The art inside the Met covered all of recorded history, over five thousand years. Essentially the lifespan of human civilization, which in the cosmic entirety is little more than the blink of any eye; unless it’s your eye.
Ivar was six hundred feet below all this, nestled in the bedrock base of Manhattan Island. It, and the nearby HUB, could supposedly survive a direct nuclear blast on the museum above.
As if that mattered. Ivar had always found the military’s pre-occupation with surviving an initial nuclear blast shortsighted, as if there wouldn’t be far worse things down the line if that initiating event unfolded .
Plus there was the issue of would you be able to get out? And would you even want to get out into the world after such an event?
The computers were good. Top of the line. The one to the web didn’t just go to the normal web. It also accessed the dark web, both the government’s and the not-government’s.
They were both pretty dark.
Ivar turned as the door creaked open on old iron hinges that needed some oil. Edith Frobish held her leather satchel to her chest as if it contained priceless documents.
Given her job, it might.
Then again, that’s the way she always held it. Ivar couldn’t imagine her and Eagle ‘doing it’. He imagined whatever their ‘it’ was, involved a lot of intellectual conversation and literary allusions.
“I’m so sorry about Doc,” Edith said as she entered and shut the door behind her. “I know the two of you were close.”
That made Ivar pause. Had he been close to Doc? He hadn’t even known the man’s real name until Moms’ ceremony. Of course, he didn’t know Moms’ or Roland’s or Eagle’s or Scout’s real names either. Lara? No one knew who she was or where she came from. Ivar still wondered if he were the real Ivar after being duplicated in North Carolina, despite the affirmation of a Fate that he was.
Edith sat down next to him, putting her satchel on the desk. She was an art historian. Since art is an accurate recorder of a timeline, if the art changed, someone is trying to change the timeline. She was also the Time Patrol’s archivist. With a dancer’s tall body which she thought little of, and a prominent nose she also didn’t concern herself with, she was all work. Except for—
“Where’s Eagle?” Ivar asked, for lack of a reply to her concern.
“He had something he was ordered to do,” Edith said.
“Of course,” Ivar said.
Edith looked around at the whiteboards. “Catastrophe theory?”
“It’s something Doc mentioned,” Ivar said. “The number seven. The—“
“Do you have the letter?” Edith interrupted.
“What?”
“The letter,” Edith said. “From Meyer Lansky. To Al Capone. Your letter of reference. It didn’t come up in the debrief. Too much else happened. ”
Ivar nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. “I didn’t think it was important. Like you said; a lot went on. Kind of got lost in all that.”
“I’m not here to castigate you,” Edith said. “Just tying up loose ends.”
“That’s your job, isn’t it?” Ivar handed the letter to her. “Tying up loose ends?”
“No,” Edith said. “My primary job is the art.” She unfolded the letter and looked at it for several seconds. Then she put it on the desk and turned it around so he could see. Not that she needed to turn it around. It was blank.
Ivar stared at it. �
�The loop must have closed when Strings died. He couldn’t have gotten Lansky to write it if he wasn’t alive.” He thought about it for a second. “But then wouldn’t the letter itself be gone, not just the words?”
“I don’t know,” Edith said. She indicated the mathematical formulas on the whiteboard. “Where does that fit in all of this?”
“I haven’t gotten very far with it,” Ivar admitted.
“I don’t think you’ll get very far with it,” Edith said.
“How do you know that?”
“Ever wonder why art is an indicator of history, of a timeline, and math isn’t?”
“Math changes,” Ivar said.
“Exactly. Art evolves, but art from a thousand years ago remains fixed. Math from a thousand years ago might no longer be valid as new theories, new calculations come along. Much the same as physics. A theorem that was held to be sacrosanct fifty years is debunked. A new one takes its place. And there’s another reason.”
“And that is?”
“Because catastrophe theory is wrong,” Edith said.
“How do you know?”
“Other timelines have done the hard work. And ended up nowhere because it simply is a ruse. Some of them paid dearly for doing that work.”
“’A ruse’?”
“We’ve looked into it since you brought it up,” Edith said. “We believe catastrophe theory is a honey-trap.”
“A what? ”
“You must have dozed through that part of your training at Bragg.” Edith said it with a smile to remove any criticism. “The Soviet Union would use sex in what’s called a honey trap. Women, men, whatever a target’s proclivity was. To lure them in.” She indicated the boards. “For scientists, it tends to be numbers. Theorems. Checking data. The Shadow knows this.”
Ivar understood. “A honey trap is planted. It’s deliberate.”
“Exactly,” Edith said. “And we think catastrophe theory is a plant. We believe the Shadow introduced it in the fifties via an agent or a Valkyrie or by whatever means. It percolated until a brilliant mathematician jumped on it and promulgated it. The Shadow knows that eventually those trying to figure out the rule of seven will delve into it. Thus . . .”
“All right,” Ivar said. “Let’s say that’s true. Then what am I supposed to do?”
“We’re not saying stop,” Edith said. “We saying perhaps look at it a different way. If catastrophe theory was planted by the Shadow, what are they trying to keep us from seeing?”
“That’s a good point,” Ivar said. “When people want you too look one way, sometimes it’s because they don’t want you looking somewhere else.”
“Come with me,” Edith said.
Ivar followed and they left the room. They walked down a brick-layered corridor of indeterminate age. They passed a pair of heavily armed security guards who didn’t say a word.
They got on the elevator to the Museum proper and made the six hundred foot ride in silence. It was after closing, the large halls empty of the throngs of tourists.
Edith negotiated back hallways. She pushed open a door into a gallery. Walked up to a painting. “There. Monet. The Water Lily Pond .”
Ivar didn’t say anything. She led him to another exhibit. “The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David. It depicts what happened after Socrates was accused of denying the Gods and corrupting the young. He was given a choice. Renounce his beliefs or drink a cup of hemlock.”
“He’s reaching for the cup,” Ivar said.
“Indeed.”
“Do you have a point?”
“You’re going to have to approach things differently,” Edith said .
“In what way?”
Edith touched Ivar’s chest. “You’re going to have to use your heart as well as your brain. Do you feel Socrates’ bravery and the anguish of those around him looking at that?” She indicated the painting.
Ivar gave a small nod. “He’s not willing to compromise.”
“Why?” Edith asked.
“I’ve got a PhD in physics, not philosophy.”
“You can think for yourself. That’s all philosophy is.”
“If he renounced what he believed in,” Ivar said, “then it wipes out everything. Not just his living, but everything he lived for.”
“Exactly,” Edith said. “All that in a painting. But to have to explain it to someone? How would you program that into a computer?”
“It could be done,” Ivar said.
“Really?”
“Maybe. If AI advances far enough.”
“Do you want AI to advance to that point?”
“You’re trying to make a point,” Ivar said. “Why not just tell me?”
“Because people rarely get a point told to them,” Edith said. “They have to feel it prick their skin. Worm its way in. Make them feel. And eventually it blossoms into something they believe they came up with themselves. Come on.” Edith took his arm, pulling him along. “We got this painting on loan from MOMA.”
“’MOMA’?”
“Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
“It’s a cartoon,” Ivar said.
“It’s a painting based on a cartoon panel,” Edith said. “It’s called, easily enough as you can see, Drowning Girl .” The face of a woman in swirling water, one hand out of the water, but not raised for succor, but rather protest. A dialogue box above her read:
I DON’T CARE! I’D RATHER SINK THAN CALL BRAD FOR HELP!
“Since when do cartoon drawings make it into museums?” Ivar asked.
Edith didn’t say anything, letting Ivar stare at it.
“She must really hate this Brad guy to die before she’d ask him for help,” he finally said.
“Would a machine do that? ”
“No.”
“Is the Shadow a machine?”
“We don’t know,” Ivar said. “We assume it’s another timeline. A human timeline as we’ve only run into alternate Earths.”
“We don’t use computers at the Possibility Palace,” Edith said, “because we know the Shadow can use them to attack us. If the Shadow thinks computers are so vulnerable, do you think it, or let’s say, they, would rely on them?”
“Doubtful,” Ivar said.
“So why do we think a computer can solve a human problem?”
Area 51, Nevada
“Lose-lose,” Colonel Orlando said. “Supposed to be the best measure of a man.”
“The Kobyashi Maru scenario,” Eagle said.
“What I said.”
They were at a remote, concrete airfield on the Area 51 military reservation. The landing strip had no designation and lacked buildings or hangers. It was one of several outlying field that dotted the 4,531 square miles of the Nevada Test and Training Range. Most were abandoned and half buried in sand. Technically abandoned that is. In the covert world nothing is ever abandoned.
Not even people. Orlando was old, tired and drunk. The first was a product of nature, the second from the job, the third also from the job; so he said. When the drinking had gotten to be too much, he’d been kindly exited from the Nightstalkers and shifted into Support. Many would have viewed it as a demotion. Orlando had accepted it as an inevitability and preferable to a Sanction.
“How is everyone?” Orlando asked. A distant speck appeared in the sky, a plane heading in this direction. “Moms?”
“Okay.”
“You say that with a hitch in your voice.” Orlando might be ROAD—retired on active duty—but there was a reason he’d initially been recruited into the Nightstalkers many years ago. Even more significantly, he’d been good enough to survive long enough to be shuttled off to this job .
Very few made it that far. Most ended up with their names carved into a table.
“She took a forty-five slug to the thigh on our last mission.”
“Ouch,” Orlando said. “That hurts. Speaking from experience. Not my leg. Elbow.” He rubbed the offending appendage. “From behind. Hit the elbow, bounced up along the
bone and came out my shoulder. I was lucky. Full metal jacket. If it had been one of them cop killer 9mm bullets, it would have destroyed my elbow. Probably would have lost the arm. Like that shit head Frasier. Please tell me he got killed on a mission.” He said it without much hope.
“He doesn’t go on missions any more,” Eagle said.
“Then tell me someone fragged his ass. Or he got Sanctioned?”
“No such luck. He was shifted to support.”
“A pity.” Orlando pulled a flask out of his camouflage fatigue jacket pocket and took a swig. He offered it to Eagle, etiquette more than expecting to be taken up, which it wasn’t. “That new girl. Lara. What’s with her?”
“She’s been helpful,” Eagle said.
“Uh-huh. And Scout? I like her too.”
“Scout’s fine.”
“Am I going to have to go through the roster?” Orlando groused. “Ain’t many left. Ivar came on later. You’re standing here. You appear functional. Have all your pieces and parts. Roland?”
“He’s got a girlfriend.”
It took a lot to shock Orlando, but that qualified. “Bull.”
“Seriously.”
“What kind of woman would be crazy enough to hang with Roland?”
“She’s an assassin. Works for the Cellar.”
“Oh.” Orlando nodded. “That makes sense. What about Doc? He was a Nightstalker. Thinks too much, but someone has to do it.”
Eagle gave the briefest shake of his head. “We lost him on the last mission. He sacrificed himself so the rest of the team could make it out alive.”
Orlando sighed deeply. Took another swig. Put the flask away. “Explains the urgency to recruit all of a sudden. Not that I haven’t been looking.” He nodded toward the plane, which was about three miles off, but still at five thousand feet altitude. Both Eagle and Orlando could recognize the make, both from silhouette and the sound of the engines: the venerable C-130 Hercules cargo plane. “Got a dozen fools on board. Pick of the litter. Well, most of them. Best of the best and all that crap.”
“You tend not to take the pick of the litter,” Eagle observed. “You pick the outcasts.”
