The Gordian Protocol

by David Weber

  “No way! No fucking way!” Tears trailed down Benjamin’s cheeks. His breathing was jagged, shallow, and the icy tendrils of an anxiety attack’s prelude tightened the muscles in his chest. He’d come too far to go to pieces now. This madman was lying. He had to be. None of those memories were real. It was all in his head. It had to be!

  “Doctor, please.” The big man spoke in a soft, pitying tone. “If you would just calm down and seriously think about what you’re saying.”

  “You don’t understand! He cannot be allowed to live!”

  “He?” Raibert keyed in on the word. “Which ‘he’ would that be?”

  “I told you to get out!” Benjamin grabbed the cleaver from the wooden stand on the counter and brandished it at Raibert.

  “Yeah, umm, how to be polite about this?” He pointed at the blade. “I know you’re trying to threaten me, but that really doesn’t do the trick anymore.”

  “Get out! Get out! Get out!”

  Raibert frowned down at the advancing cleaver.

  “All right. I’ll leave.” He put his hat back on. “But please take some time and give what I said some serious thought. Also…”

  “What?” Benjamin fumed.

  “I truly am sorry about the door.”

  He left. The door swung shut, and the broken lock crunched against splintered wood.

  *

  “Well, that could have gone better,” Philo said through an audio-only connection.

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” Raibert replied without speaking aloud. He put his hands in his pockets and started down the sidewalk. “What’s he doing now?”

  “Pushing furniture around to barricade the door.”

  “Looks like I hit a nerve. Did you catch what he said near the end?”

  “About someone not being allowed to live?”

  “That’s the one. Doctor Schröder knows where the timeline diverged.”

  “Or at least thinks he does. He didn’t seem quite right in the head.”

  “He’s got two lifetimes bouncing around in there. Of course he’s not right in the head.” Raibert sighed, shaking own his head. “The guy’s got it rough, and we just made it a hell of a lot rougher.”

  “Should we try to find someone else?”

  “Are you kidding? He may have his problems, but he’s been able to sort through all that mental noise and figure out where the two realities split. That couldn’t have been easy, but he somehow soldiered through it and held himself together. Anybody who can do that has got to have one hell of a robust personality, whatever finally happened to him in this timeline. And he’s a historian. What are the odds we’ll find someone better than him?”

  “Pretty close to zero.”

  “Then he’s our man.”

  Raibert couldn’t help feeling sorry for Benjamin. The guy had just been living his own life when the universe decided to explode in his brain. He hadn’t asked for any of this, hadn’t done anything wrong to bring this misfortune down on his head. And on top of that, he’d managed to sort through his own scrambled mind and would live, at least for a few years, a normal life.

  And then I came by, Raibert thought with remorse. And told him oh, by the way, all those delusions you just got finished sorting out? Yeah, they’re all real. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

  “There wasn’t much ambiguity in his refusal,” Philo pointed out.

  “I know,” Raibert sighed. “That’s a problem.”

  “What are we going to do about it?”

  “Is there anything in his psych profile we could use?”

  “No, unfortunately. Almost all of it is about his ‘pretend’ family, especially the death of his father in a terrorist attack and the brother that was never born. There’s very little information about the differences in the history, and what’s there is too contemporary for us to use.”

  “Thought so.” He glanced back at Benjamin’s house. A sleek black roadster pulled out of the garage and sped down the road in the opposite direction. Twin red lights glared in the distance, then vanished around a bend. “Oh well.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “I’m going to try talking to him one more time.”

  “Just once?”

  “Yeah.” Raibert resumed walking down the street to where the TTV was parked overhead. “Just once.”

  “And if that fails?” Philo asked. “Then what? We just leave and try to find someone else?”

  “No. If I can’t convince him, then we grab him and take him with us.”

  “Seriously, Raibert? We’re going to kidnap the poor guy?”

  “What other choice do we have? A whole chunk of the multiverse is at stake, and he has the information we need to fix it. We can’t afford to be squeamish when so much is riding on us. If we fail, then all that’s left are Shigeki’s goons blundering around, and you said yourself we can’t rely on them. Even if they somehow find another way, a way that we with all our technological advantages can’t see, it still means everything and everyone we know and love back in SysGov will never have been. We can’t let that happen, and especially not when we’re the only ones who know the past can be changed. Sooner or later, the Admin is going to run into something just like this all its own. You were right; we have to see this crisis through ourselves. Sixteen universes have a death sentence, and it’s up to us to save them, because no one else will.”

  “All right, Raibert. I’m just…”

  “What?”

  “I know it’s not the same, but this is the sort of thing I would help you-know-who do.”

  “This is different. You and I aren’t like him, and you know it.”

  “You’re right. It’s just…it hits a little close to home, you know? I did a lot of things I’m not proud of back then.”

  “Like I said, we don’t have a choice. And look at it this way. At least you’re not the one who has to do the dirty work.”

  “Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  “Me neither, buddy,” Raibert admitted. “Kleio?”

  “Go ahead, Professor.”

  “Print out some prog-armor I can wear under my clothes.”

  “Would a standard pattern SysPol bodysuit with retractable helmet meet your requirements?”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right. Also, I’ll need a weapon.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “Something small enough to conceal on my person but with enough punch to blow holes in twenty-first-century tanks.”

  “I will see what I have in the pattern catalog. Do you expect to need that level of lethality, Professor?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Kleio, but my days haven’t gone well recently. Do you know what will happen if I try to nab Benjamin?”

  “No, Professor.”

  “Can you guarantee I won’t have problems with the indigenes?”

  “No, Professor.”

  “Then be a helpful ship and print me out the goddamned gun.”

  “Yes, Professor. I believe I have a pattern that will meet your requirements. Would a Popular Arsenals PA5 Neutralizer antisynthoid hand cannon suffice?”

  “That sounds lovely. I’ll take it.”

  The TTV’s outline showed up in Raibert’s virtual sight. At least his synthoid body included a rudimentary connection that allowed for virtual sight and sound, even if it didn’t extend to tactile sensations, and the Kleio had extended a small antenna through the shroud to allow for two-way traffic. Now the TTV hovered over the tree line just after the next intersection, and he shook his head and continued down the street.

  A part of him agreed with Philo.

  Wait, no. That wasn’t quite right.

  All the parts of him agreed with Philo. The very idea of kidnapping someone was so outside of anything he’d ever normally consider that it almost made him sick. Or at least as close to sick as a synthoid could become. He’d spent decades of his life just being a simple guy with a passion for history, and now he was arming up o
n the likely chance that he’d have to kidnap an innocent man.

  I’m just a historian, he thought sullenly. I didn’t even want to be in the time-travel program. Why did it have to be me in this mess?

  And then he remembered.

  In a strange way, this was all Philo’s fault.

  *

  Raibert Kaminski, newly hired professor of history, left the luxury shuttle and followed dozens of other guests through the umbilical’s moving walkway. He transferred from the shuttle’s gravity field to the ACCI station’s with barely a bump, stepped off the walkway, and followed the golden virtual line deeper into the giant space station.

  “You’ve been awfully quiet this whole trip,” Raibert noted. “What are you up to?”

  “Me?” Philo chortled in his virtual ear. “Up to something? Pfft! Perish the thought.”

  “Uh-huh,” Raibert replied skeptically.

  The Alpha Centauri Colonization Initiative had finished Grand Sending station more than a century ago, and the twenty-kilometer-long cylindrical edifice remained the most accurate, most powerful connectome transmission laser ever built, but it had never actually been used except for short-range tests.

  Until now.

  After all, the biggest connectome transmitter ever built needed something to transmit to. It had taken the ACCI’s colony ships and their abstract crews decades to reach the neighboring star system, though, Raibert supposed, the word “ship” was probably too grandiose a word for what the ACCI had actually sent. More like a small flotilla of graviton thrusters, each with an infosystem and a small microbot reservoir strapped to the front.

  But that had been enough.

  Once the abstract crews reached their destination, they’d established a small industrial base out of their ships’ resources. In the two centuries since, that base had grown exponentially to allow the construction of the five-hundred-kilometer-wide receiver array necessary to accept additional colonists. With both Grand Sending and Grand Receiving now operational, ACCI was ready to transmit the first wave of volunteers that would supplement humanity’s vanguard in Alpha Centauri.

  Theoretically.

  “Do you think this’ll work?” Raibert asked.

  “It should,” Philo reassured. “Though I guess we’ll only know for sure when we hear back from Grand Receiving.”

  “Do you think Dad cares that it hasn’t been proven out yet?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Yeah,” Raibert grimaced. “I thought you’d say that.”

  “There’s only one thing Tavish fears.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Being second best at anything.”

  “Ha!”

  The colonization of Alpha Centauri might not have been the largest SysGov initiative currently in progress—that distinction easily went to the Dyson Realization Project, whose first step was to convert Mercury into an energy collecting megastructure around the sun—but it did have the advantage of not being stalled in the courts by the Mercury Historical Preservation Society.

  Raibert followed the golden light to the reception hall where physical and abstract guests mingled with the ACCI colonists. A physical model of Grand Sending hovered over several tables at one end of the hall and a massive—if not quite built to the same scale—depiction of Grand Receiving took up much of the opposite wall. A brilliant laser connected the two, its red light shimmering through foggy atmospheric effects near the ceiling.

  Additional dioramas depicted the original colony ships, the industrial cluster the colonists had built, as well as a few replicas of their first rudimentary synthoids. There was even a “live” view from inside the colony, though Raibert wasn’t sure how anyone could call the four-year-old signal “live.” Finally, a large virtual timer at the far end of the hall counted down the remaining hours to the first extrasolar connectome transmission.

  “Son!” Tavish exclaimed, materializing next to Raibert. “You made it!”

  “Hey, Dad. You know I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

  “Congratulations on getting hired by the university, by the way.”

  “Thanks. I’m excited to start. I think it’s going to work out really well.”

  Tavish only grinned smugly.

  “What’s with that face, Dad?”

  “Oh, nothing. Nothing.”

  “Except it’s very much not nothing.”

  “Well, yes,” Tavish admitted, still smiling.

  “Does this have something to do with why Philo’s been so quiet?”

  “He’s got us there,” the AC said, appearing in his virtual sight.

  “It’s not hard to tell,” Raibert said. “You should know the firewall gets real quiet when you’re up to something. It’s very conspicuous.”

  Philo shrugged. “I’ll try harder next time.”

  “Don’t blame him for this,” Tavish said. “He just wanted it to come as a surprise. We both did.”

  “And that surprise would be what exactly?”

  “Remember when I told you to take a physics minor?”

  “Yeah. It was interesting enough, I guess, but I still think it was a waste of time.”

  Both Philo and Tavish chuckled.

  “‘Waste of time,’” Philo parroted.

  Raibert rolled his eyes at the allusion to tired ART jokes.

  “Son, how would you like to join ART?”

  “Seriously?” Raibert crossed his arms. “That’s the big surprise?”

  Both ACs nodded.

  “Come on, Dad. You know how I feel about ART. And Philo, you’re in on this, too?”

  “Oh, don’t be like that,” Tavish dismissed. “Besides, this is different.”

  “Just hear us out,” Philo said. “I think you’re going to like it.”

  “All right,” Raibert said. “I will. But this had better be good.”

  “As you know,” Tavish began, “the Ministry of Education has nearly doubled ART’s budget since I left, and most of that is being poured into new TTVs. I’ve recently had some discussions with my old colleagues about how to best apply these resources, and, in short, ART’s mission is being expanded.”

  “Actually split,” Philo clarified. “Into two branches.”

  “That’s right,” Tavish said. “The Preservation branch will handle what you could think of as the classic missions of preserving tangible relics from history, while the new Observation branch will be more focused, as you might imagine from the name, on studying history with little to no disruption.”

  Raibert’s face lit up.

  “And since you’re now a professor of history with a chronometrics minor,” Tavish continued, “and both Philo and I happen to be ex-ART, well, a few strings have been pulled to get your university assigned a TTV of its own. And to make sure you’re on the top of the list to pilot it.”

  Raibert’s grin could barely fit on his face.

  “See, I told you he’d like it,” Philo said.

  “Dad, I don’t know what to say. Thank you! Thank you so much!”

  “Ah, ah. Don’t thank me,” Tavish corrected. “This was Philo’s idea. I just helped set things in motion.”

  “It was?” Raibert faced the AC.

  “Well, you know…” Philo shrugged bashfully.

  “You,” Raibert said, pointing a finger at the AC, “are awesome.”

  “I do what I can.”

  “That’s a fine companion you have there, son,” Tavish said. “And it makes me very happy to see the two of you together.”

  *

  “Philo?” Raibert asked as he finished buttoning his dress shirt over the prog-steel bodysuit.

  “Yeah?”

  “I want you to know this is all your fault.”

  “Okay? Where did that come from?”

  “I was just thinking about how I got roped into time travel in the first place.”

  “As I recall, you didn’t need much in the way of encouragement.”

  “True enough.” He chuckled, then
took the hand cannon off the table and fitted it into his shoulder harness. “But you know something else? There’s no one I’d rather be stuck with in this mess than you.”

  “Hey, right back at you, buddy.”

  “Now, I wish we could just microjump and try the original scenario all over again, but that’s not an option anymore. What do you say we give Doctor Schröder some time to cool off? Maybe jump ahead three days? You think we’re safe to do that?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Philo said. “We’re twenty-three years from the window you gave Shigeki. Not even SysGov arrays are that good.”

  “In that case, let’s jump and try this again.”

  “And if he still says no?”

  “Then I’ll have no choice but to completely ruin his day.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  DTI Chronoport Pathfinder-12

  non-congruent

  The chronoport existed slightly out of phase with the normal flow of time, but the absolute flow of time marched on within its hull and in sync with the True Present. Because of that, Katja Hinnerkopf did what she could to stay busy and stave off the boredom of watching 2005 and its surrounding years.

  She floated in the cramped space that now served as her office, surrounded by virtual charts while her PIN tensed and relaxed muscle groups as part of her daily exercise regimen. She pushed one chart aside and pulled the next one in front of her before the PIN finished her abdominal sets and moved up to her arms. The raw chronometric data would have been indecipherable to most, just a jumble of terrifyingly high numbers, but she saw the patterns emerging from the chaos.

  Everything Kaminski had said was true. This universe was doomed if they did nothing. But was the only solution what he had suggested? Was there another way to untangle the Knot and halt the deluge of foreign chronotons flooding into their universe? Was there a path that canceled the death sentence and preserved the Admin?

  She didn’t know if she’d be the one to find that solution, but she would start the search. After all, the Admin had over a thousand years to find a way. If it existed, then she or her successors would discover it.

  She truly believed that. Or at least wanted to believe it. And she would have believed…except for one small detail.