John Schettler - Anvil of Fate

In the end they had found the apples in the kitchen break room, and Paul decided they could slide a folded message neatly into a small slice in one side. Maeve’s close proximity when he appeared was just the icing on the cake. Paul knew she could not fail to see the apple now, and read the note it held.

“What is she supposed to do with it?” said Kelly. “Eat the damn thing?” They had no idea what the altered hieroglyphics might mean now, ‘by the river’s edge,’ but it was all they could do—just pass the information on to Maeve and hope for the best.

“Well, if she can’t make an intervention, then what?” Kelly asked, frustrated.

“Then you can send Paul through again to the villa and he can kill the bishop.” Nordhausen folded his arms and looked smugly at his friend.

“Hey, I just shifted in for the Spook Job, Robert. You’re up next.”

“That won’t matter,” Kelly waved at the two of them. “Lambert won’t even be at the villa. He was warned, remember? You think he’s just going to sit there waiting for Dodo and his men to show up?”

“He was warned, alright, and I would make it well after 9:00P.M. on that Meridian when we first returned,” said Paul. “But he had to be tipped off before midnight when we assume Dodo could arrive with his men from Heristal. Let’s say he flees at eleven then. In that case you’ll have to tell the Golems to reprogram that final worst case mission entry point for some time between ten and eleven. That would put Robert at the villa just before the warning arrives. Then he can break in and assassinate the poor man before he’s warned and makes off with the whole of Christendom and the fate of Western civilization in the night.”

“What?” Robert protested. “We haven’t drawn lots yet. Those little Spook jobs were nothing. You weren’t there but a few seconds, on either Meridian. It’s obvious you still have your wits about you, so take your chances, Paul. We’ll draw lots,” he insisted.

There was a shudder and they heard the telltale descending whine of a turbine. “That’s the setup man dying on the mound,” Kelly said quickly. “Somebody just singled to center field. I’ll have to bring in the closer, Paul.”

Kelly wasted no time getting the number three generator on line, but he had a worried look in his face. “How many outs can we get with this one?” He gave Paul a questioning look. “Cause there’s no one left in the bull pen.”

“I make it two hours fuel on that generator. That’s plenty of time in the altered Meridian, and I may be able to siphon some additional gas from the cars down in the garage if you can hold the Nexus steady. I could probably get another hour or two for us if I refuel one of the other two backup units.”

“I hope it’s enough time for Maeve to figure something out. As it stands now her retraction scheme is scheduled for midnight in her Meridian. So in… nine minutes now, our time, it’s going to be midnight there. The system is set up to look for her at the retraction point, and if she’s not there we’ll try pulling her out based on the tracking data we have, but it’s going to cost us fuel, both kinds, quantum and plain old petrol. We’re going to have to rev up the Arch to 100% power for a wide area retraction scheme.”

Paul sighed heavily. “So while we’ve been talking here hours have passed for her on the other Meridian. If she figured something out, and we have no idea what, then it’s very likely she would have done it by now.” At the same time the thought that they might pull Maeve out before she could take any decisive action rankled at him.

“Can we get a report from the Golems?”

“Yes, but remember there’s a time lag there. We may not see any variations until well after the deadline.”

“Can we abort at the last minute?”

“I need ninety seconds, minimum, for an abort,” said Kelly. “Otherwise I have to take the Arch up to 100% to be ready for the retraction. Yes, you can abort even then, but we lose the fuel in that instance, and get nothing for it in return. And…” He leaned on that word heavily, “there’s no guarantee I can get her out safely if we burn our candles at midnight as planed and decide to abort. We just may not have the fuel to run that kind of power again, so you can also forget your shift in to the villa to assassinate the damn bishop if I have to do a wide area search and retraction scheme. Neither one of you could do that anyway. You’re wonderful physicists and historians, but not murderers.”

“So it’s all on Maeve,” said Robert. “The whole damn history of Western civilization comes down to Maeve, on a horse, at midnight. She’s got to be the one to seal the bishop’s fate, and God only knows what she has to do, because I surely don’t have a clue…”

She came uponthe riders an hour later. Maeve had been picking herself through the gorse and thistle at the river’s edge, careful to steer wide of the thorns. Where was that damn ferry site? She should have found it by now, but the darkness and thickening clouds overhead confounded her effort. Then she saw a tree ahead, with a low bowed branch that leaned heavily over the river, and it stirred her with a moment of recognition.

She remembered turning south to evade any pursuit by the farmer, then coming upon the ferry shortly thereafter. Then she waded into the shallows and picked her way north, hoping to obscure her tracks. This tree, she knew, was the spot where she had stooped low to avoid the branch and emerged from the water’s edge to head inland again. She was very close now.

A moment later she was startled by a sound, a tinkling of a harness fitting and the neigh of another horse. Her heart leapt, thinking that the farmer had come all this way and was still fitfully searching the river’s edge for her—or worse, that he had managed to follow her tracks after all. Up ahead she saw shadows, perceived movement, glimpsed a brief glint of fleeting moonlight reflected off metal, and heard the muffled sound of horse hooves on the loamy ground. Who was this?

She looked around, thinking to hide herself in the heavy riverside growth, when another sound relieved her fears. It was a child, fussing at the edge of tears, then a woman’s voice speaking in soft, reassuring tones. Something drew her to face the travelers, and she nudged Kuhaylan slowly forward, singing to herself as she went so as to give the other party easy warning of her close proximity. Another part of her mind screamed at her. Why? What in the world are you doing? Be on your way and leave these poor people alone! Yet she felt herself pulled, as if by some strange magnetism that was more than idle curiosity or any desire to satisfy herself that there was no danger at hand. It was as if she simply had to go to them, greet them in the night, an appointment that was fated to happen long before she was born.

“Who is there?” The voice of a man quavered. “We are well armed!” he warned.

“Fear not,” she said in her best Latin. “Just another weary traveler in the night.” She drew closer, seeing a man and two women mounted on three horses. The women each held a child, one barely a toddler, the other a young yellow haired boy, eyes wide with apprehension as he looked at her. She instinctively smiled, throwing back her hood so as not to appear so mysteriously imposing. She recognized the man’s mount, the same old gray mare she had first purchased from the blacksmith and his livery, and it seemed to her the horse knew her as well, snorting quietly, its breath fogging the still, cold air.

“A woman alone at such an hour of the night?” said the man. Then his eyes searched about, with obvious uneasiness, a look of foreboding fear plain on his face.