John Schettler - Anvil of Fate

“Well this is all speculation,” said Nordhausen. “I think we had better have some look at the milieu before we actually shift in. We’re not even entirely sure if the camp is where we think it is—or the battle, for that matter.”

Paul shrugged. “You’re probably right,” he said. “Alright. I’ll make the reconnaissance. I’ll shift in for ten or fifteen seconds and do a three-sixty. If the battle is there, I should hear it even if I can’t see it, and if the breaching point is near the camp I should see all sorts of wagons, tents and perhaps even get a look at the corral where they have the horses we’re hoping to find.”

“See here, Paul. No need to put yourself out. You’ve just had a bout of the willies down in the garage. Perhaps I should make the jump on the Spook Job.”

“You think Maeve is going to let you shift by yourself? After the two unauthorized missions you ran and that pot shot you were going to take at Napoleon?”

“What? I did no such thing!”

“Alright, but you did wander off your manifestation point almost immediately. On a Spook Job you can’t move at all. You’ve got to stay exactly on your breaching point coordinates so the system can maintain a hold on your mass pattern.”

“I promise you I won’t move an inch,” said Nordhausen, but Paul shook his head.

“I’ll go,” he said. “It may be that we need a few more Spook Jobs if this first look isn’t on target. You can take the second shift in that case, and we’ll alternate until we’re satisfied we have a good location. Then you’ll join me for the final shift. And Robert,” he said with an obvious note of warning. “This is going to be the most dangerous thing we have ever done in our lives.”

Kelly was concentratingintensely on his math, rechecking everything to be certain he was correct. He had sent most of the primary breaching algorithms to the Golem cloud hours ago, along with the temporal data, and was just using the time to run verification checksums on the number sequences.

It was a strange feeling, being back in the lab again after the time he had spent in the desert, so very long ago. He could still hardly believe that he had lived several months there in that Meridian, chatting with Hamza the scribe, joining the regular prayer sessions, wandering the labyrinthine hollows of the hidden Sphinx, and standing on the apex of the Sun Pyramid each morning to greet the dawn. He remembered the vast, empty desert, stretching out to the horizon on every side, broken only by the wide gleaming course of the Nile. The sands were unspoiled, sere grey and white, baking in the hot sun as the day wore on. The air was absolutely clean, the night sky pristine and clear, with the amazing vista of the Milky Way often visible in the dry desert nights. It would not have been a bad way to live, he thought, praying and carving and dreaming away the days there in the desert.

Now here he was again, plugged into the technology he owed his life to several times over. He sat before three computer monitors, with software windows open all over the various screens. An ear bud fed music to his brain as he worked. He was listening to Porcupine Tree, his favorite band, and the song was titled “Stars Die.”

A humbling realization, he thought, but the music was nonetheless a comfort to him, engaging another part of his brain and soul as he worked. Music, books, computers, photography, these things had been the central interests of his life, and now that he was back in his own time again, he was immediately plugged, Borg like, into all the technology that characterized life in the early twenty first century.

He had just finished the last of his checksums and was satisfied that the data had good integrity when a low tone caught his attention through the music. He looked over at the right hand monitor and was surprised to see the Golem flag alert warning light on again.

“That’s odd,” he said aloud. He had ordered all the Golems to join in the network cloud and focus on solving his calculations. What would be feeding him this alert? He reached in, adjusting the monitor briefly before clicking on the Golem search application tied into the History module.

At first he was greeted with the same disturbing screen they had seen the first time. All the lines for Western history were blood red with variation: sciences, politics, arts and especially religion. He scrolled back through the data, noting the gradual shift through the orange and amber spectrum until he finally saw welcome green lines, right there in the early 8th century as he expected.

“Looks like I have some lost sheep here,” he muttered. A few of the Golems didn’t get the message, and they were still augmenting data on the variations in the history as compared to the RAM Bank. “Must be a glitch,” he said, resolving to round up his lost sheep later. Then he let the music flow into his tired brain again.

Hypersleep sounded appealing just now, though his mind remained remarkably sharp and alert in spite of the fact that he had shifted over ten thousand this morning. At least he had a full night’s sleep before Paul managed to locate him on the apex of that pyramid and bring him home.

Maeve had come up with costuming an hour ago and already had both Paul and Robert in their Berber robes. She had also raided the lounge and prepared a much needed breakfast in the adjacent kitchen. Kelly had just finished his scrambled eggs, realizing how much he missed them during his days in the desert. Now Maeve was still lecturing the would be travelers, especially Robert, trying to make sure he didn’t get carried away and do something preposterous once he shifted in.

Paul was right. This was going to be the most dangerous mission yet. In spite of his faith in his math, there were still so many uncertainties about the situation. It was going to be a wildly chaotic scene. Even the rear areas of a major battle like this could be perilous. Both sides had been raiding and harrying one another for days. Any hint of a spy in the midst of the Arab camp would likely be dealt with severely. Nordhausen claimed he could manage a word or two of Arabic to help them pass should they be confronted, but Kelly was still very worried about them.

And the scene was also likely to be very dynamic. Men and horses could be running everywhere. What you really wanted on a breaching point was a lot of nice empty space. The unsettling possibility that they would begin to manifest right where someone else was standing was a real concern in this situation. The magnetic corona around them would prevent their mass from merging with that of another person or thing, but it would also have a fairly rough repulsion effect on anything, they collided with on entry.

A second tone caught his attention. The Golems he had herded into the network cloud were signaling they had completed the calculations. The numbers were coming in to his laptop even now, and he called up the primary integrity number, relieved to see his breaching sequences had a high degree of accuracy, over 99.987% Anything in that range was nominal, and he was very pleased.

“Numbers up!” he shouted. “I can feed the Arch sequencer any time now, Paul.”

Paul rushed over, his long Arabic robes flowing behind him. “Clean numbers?” he asked.