The Gordian Protocol

by David Weber

  “All that concentrated chronometric energy actually did create the Admin universe,” Raibert said. “By itself, that wouldn’t have been a problem, since our new models predict that additional universes are coming into existence all the time. The problem was that this universe was mangled from the start. Our battle punched a hole in what you might call the ‘outer wall’ of the Admin universe, and that’s where all of that energy was pouring into it and where all of it would eventually backlash into the universes it had come from initially. So it had to be undone. And the key to undoing it was to prevent Hitler’s assassination, because that was the key event that formed that universe in the first place. It might only have happened originally because we went back, but when we prevented the assassination, we…restored just enough temporal consistency for the SysGov universe to break free from the Knot. And once it did, the rest soon followed. It didn’t keep the original turbulence from having all the effects we observed and experienced, but it cut off the inflow of additional energy and the storm front dissipated well short of the Edge of Existence.”

  “And wiped out Elzbietá’s universe,” Benjamin said flatly.

  “Wiped out this Elzbietá’s universe,” Elzbietá corrected very softly.

  “What?”

  “When we finally punched through the wall into a universe that still existed, guess where we found ourselves?” Raibert said. Benjamin looked at him, and the synthoid grinned. “Go on!” he urged. “Guess!”

  “Oh, stop it, Raibert!” Elzbietá gave him a disgusted look, then turned back to Benjamin. “It turns out that my universe wasn’t the only one in which Hitler was assassinated in 1940. Another iteration of that universe—all of it—existed. Turns out that the universe ‘right next to’ my universe is identical in every way so far as we can tell. There may be some divergences further downstream, but if so, we don’t have anything to compare them to. And it doesn’t really matter, because the point is that all of the people I lost with my universe are still alive, Ben. In some absolute sense, my universe, my family, my friends—they’re all gone. But in every other sense, all the people I ever loved are alive and well…except for you. Because the Benjamin Schröder in that universe never remembered what you remembered. He never experienced what you experienced—what I experienced with you—and so…he’s not you.”

  Her eyes softened, searching his face hungrily.

  “But I don’t belong there,” she said quietly. “There’s another Elzbietá in that universe, and she loves all those people—and they love her—just as much as I ever loved them. I can’t just walk into her life, into their lives, and announce I’m also her. So in that sense, my universe is gone. I can’t go home, but the thing is that thanks to you, I know ‘home’ is still there.”

  “Wait.” Benjamin’s eyes narrowed. “If that’s true, then Yulia—”

  “Yulia lived exactly as long as you remembered,” she told him, laying a hand gently on his forearm, and smiled. “Your Aunt Diana and Aunt Xristina are both still alive, for that matter! But,” her smile faded, “your grandfather couldn’t go home any more than I can. I think—I’m sure, from my own experience—that his grief has to have eased a lot, but he can’t take that universe’s Klaus-Wilhelm’s place any more than I can take that Elzbietá’s.”

  “Then it was worth it?” Benjamin asked.

  “You better believe it was worth it. Although…” Raibert paused and grimaced. “You remember I said there was a teeny error in our original model?”

  “Why do I get the feeling it was anything but ‘teeny’?” Benjamin asked, his expression wary.

  “We-e-e-e-ll, we did have this little problem. We just so happened to still be stuck in the wrong universe.”

  “Right. ‘Little problem.’” Benjamin rolled his eyes, and Raibert shrugged.

  “Could’ve been worse,” he said. Benjamin gave him a skeptical look. “Well, it could have!” he insisted.

  “Okay, fine,” Benjamin sighed. “You’re stuck in another universe. Which ‘another’ universe? And how did you get back to SysGov?”

  “Glad you asked.” Raibert beamed. “You see, where we wound up when the Knot broke apart was the other Elzbietá’s universe, and the TTV’s chronometric array was still working when we punched through the wall. Like I said before, it recorded a huge amount of data that sheds a lot of light on how the multiverse is fundamentally structured. Philo and Kleio spent two whole months crunching the math and managed to come up with a modification for the impeller. We fixed the TTV, refitted the impeller, and we were finally able to phase back to this universe.”

  “So now you can hop from universe to universe?”

  “Yep!” Raibert grinned. “For that matter, we can be certain we come and go in the same universe even on a temporal jump. We may still make changes, may still split off new universes, but we can phase back into the one where the change occurred instead of simply our own base line. The Kleio just keeps getting better and better.”

  “Once we were in the right universe, we headed for the thirtieth century,” Elzbietá said. “Raibert’s thirtieth century, not the Admin’s. And, Ben, you should really see the place. SysGov is incredible.”

  “I can imagine.” He smiled and reached out and stroked her hair. “And—” He paused, then shook his head. “I was about to say that you can’t imagine how happy I am to see you, but fortunately I realized in time that you’re probably the only person in the universe—in all the universes—who understands exactly how happy I am.”

  “You got that one right, Ben,” she told him, reaching back to cup his face in her hands—both her hands—and kiss him thoroughly.

  “Ahem!” Raibert said thirty or forty seconds later. Elzbietá turned her head to glare at him over her shoulder, and he coughed into his fist. “Moving right along?” he said helpfully.

  “I guess that leads me to the next question I’ll probably regret asking,” Benjamin said. “Not that I’m not delighted to see you—well, to see one of you, anyway—but I have to wonder why you’re here. Especially if you’d assumed that I wouldn’t remember what happened any more than the Benjamin in the other Elzbietá’s universe does?”

  “Your grandfather sent us,” Raibert replied, and Benjamin blinked.

  “Why? And for that matter, since when did you start taking orders from my grandfather?”

  “Hold that thought. We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here. First, we should tell you what happened when we got home.”

  “Okay.” Benjamin raised both hands shoulder high. “Tell away.”

  “Well, Philo and I took our findings to the Ministry of Education as soon as we got home. A lot happened after that, and I mean a lot. Long story short, SysGov instituted the Gordian Protocol, a law code designed to regulate both time travel and transdimensional travel, since we just happened to have figured out how to do that, too. And also authorized SysPol—the police in my time, if you recall—to create a new division dedicated to enforcing the Protocol.”

  “Which we now work for.” Elzbietá tapped the flash on her right shoulder. “SysPol, Gordian Division.”

  “‘Gordian,’ huh?” Benjamin nodded. “I like it.”

  “Actually,” Raibert smirked and crossed his arms. “I was the one who suggested the name during my testimony.”

  “I like it less now.”

  Raibert gave him a dirty look, but Elzbietá chuckled. Raibert looked even more affronted for a moment, but then he began to smile himself.

  “So how does my grandfather fit into all of this?” Benjamin pressed “Did you recruit him or something?”

  “Recruit him?” Raibert laughed. “Are you kidding? He’s our boss. He recruited us.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “What can we say?” Elzbietá shrugged. “The man’s like a force of nature.”

  “He may only have the Gordian Division for now,” Raibert commented. “But give him time. I’ll bet he ends up running all of SysPol before long.”


  “I suppose that explains the uniforms then,” Benjamin remarked. “And he sent you back here to pick me up?”

  “To offer you a job,” the synthoid corrected. “We didn’t think you’d have your memories, but a version of you did play a major role in saving this universe. The Gordian Division needs the very best, and your actions, my friend, impressed a lot of important people.”

  “Which is why Klaus-Wilhelm got this time-travel excursion approved and we came back here,” Elzbietá said.

  “Soooooo.” Raibert leaned casually against the wall. “Want the job?”

  “If I take it, do I sign a one-way ticket to the future? I just got over losing Dave, Steve, and Mom and getting them back again. I don’t want to lose them again!”

  “Well, I’m not really sure,” Raibert grimaced. “Like I said, we didn’t expect you to be you, so yeah.” He shrugged. “Haven’t really considered this.”

  “But surely SysPol can make an exception in his case,” Elzbietá pointed out, then reassured Benjamin with a smile. “Your grandfather got this trip approved, so I’m sure he can set up some sort of special arrangement for you. Perhaps a kind of periodic leave to this part of the timeline. You could even come back to the exact instant you left, so none of your family will even know you’ve been gone.”

  “Hmm.” Raibert slowly began to nod. “Yeah. Could work.”

  “Klaus-Wilhelm did say ‘make sure he says yes’ before we left.” Elzbietá winked at Benjamin. “He sounded quite adamant about that.”

  “Yeah,” Raibert repeated with growing certainty. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sure he could get an exception like that approved. I mean, hell, look at everything else he’s managed to ram through the Ministry. Plus, you did turn yourself into a puddle to save the day. That’s got to count for something, right?”

  “Great!” Benjamin exclaimed. “In that case—wait. There is one other thing.”

  “What?” Raibert demanded.

  “Are there any gender-awareness classes I’ll need to take?”

  “Uhh, no. Why would you even ask?”

  “No gender-awareness classes? Well why didn’t you say so! We can leave right now!”

  “Now that’s more like it!” Raibert clapped his hands together. “The Kleio is right outside. Is there anything you want to bring?”

  “That won’t be necessary.” He rested a hand on Elzbietá’s shoulder. “I already have what matters most.”

  “Ahhh,” Raibert sighed. “You two are so cute.”

  Elzbietá smacked Raibert on the arm, and the big man chuckled as he left the house.

  “So what is it I’m getting myself into?” Benjamin asked as they followed Raibert out.

  “I’ll say this much about it.” Elzbietá hooked her arm into his. “You won’t be bored.”

  “But what if I’m in the mood for something boring?” he asked. “You know, just for a change of pace. I think I’ve completely forgotten what bored feels like.”

  “Well then.” She patted his arm. “I’d say you’re going into the wrong field. Having second thoughts?”

  “Not a one.”

  They walked out onto his driveway, and the Kleio shed its metamaterial shroud and lowered the front cargo ramp. Its clean gunmetal hull gleamed in the sunlight, and the golden SysPol eye blazed high on the nose. The outer lines of the craft were bulkier—and meaner looking—than the last time he’d seen it.

  “Good news is we’re heading straight into your first assignment,” Raibert stated as he walked the ramp. “We’ve identified three other time-traveling societies on different versions of Earth, and they’re all blissfully going around wrecking this sector of the multiverse.”

  “Part of our job is to establish contact with those societies,” Elzbietá said. “We hope to assemble pan-multiverse enforcement for the Gordian Protocol someday.”

  “That sounds ambitious,” Benjamin noted.

  “It is,” Raibert groaned. “And two of those societies are going to be first contacts, so this might get interesting.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Benjamin walked up the ramp, and the prog-steel sealed shut behind him. The other two continued across the cargo bay, but Benjamin stopped suddenly. “Wait a second.”

  Raibert turned back to face him. “Something wrong?”

  “Yeah. You said only two of them are first contacts.”

  EPILOGUE

  Department of Temporal Investigation

  2979 CE

  The schematic of the new Hammerhead-class heavy assault chronoport rotated over Csaba Shigeki’s black glass desk. It bristled with weapons and armor, but he most assuredly did not drool over it.

  Well, maybe a little.

  He couldn’t argue about the price either: just a few chronoports from Pathfinder Squadron placed under Cheryl First’s command for an expedition to the Valley of the Kings. That and a carefully worded request to Chief Executor First, and now he had the budget to expand his squadrons with the best military hardware available.

  Shigeki leaned back in his chair with a smug grin and placed his hands behind his head. Yes, today was going quite well. Quite well indeed.

  The door chimed.

  “Yes, come in.”

  He brought his chair back upright as the door split open, and a towering blond man in a gray-green uniform stepped in. Shigeki frowned at the unfamiliar face. He queried the man’s identity with his PIN, but the only match the tower’s infostructure could find was for an unassigned synthoid in DOI storage, which didn’t make any sense at all.

  “Hello again, Director,” the big man said with a friendly smile.

  “Excuse me? Have we met?” Shigeki asked pointedly.

  “That depends on your point of view.” He sat down and leaned back in the chair casually. “I’m Special Agent Raibert Kaminski, Consolidated System Police, Gordian Division.”

  “That certainly…sounds impressive,” Shigeki admitted as he signaled for Nox to get the hell over here, “but I’m not familiar with your…organization. You seem to have me at a disadvantage.”

  “A refreshing change of pace, to be sure.”

  Shigeki’s brow furrowed, and he waited for Raibert to continue. Nox and another security synthoid stepped in, but the big man seemed completely at ease despite their presence. Nox quickly approached the man from behind, but Shigeki held up a hand.

  “All right, out with it. You clearly came into my office uninvited for a reason. What do you want?”

  “I’m here on behalf of my government with a warning about your time-travel program.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.” Raibert leaned forward and flashed a satisfied smile. “And this time, Director, you’re going to listen to me.”