offenders for their mischief. Paradox was not a mind-puzzle, but a real effect. It was a cleansing and healing force of time that promised nothing less than annihilation for all those who would dare to meddle, engulfing them in the quantum foam of uncertainty, and sucking them away to oblivion.
As much as she tried to put the strange notions in her head aside, that gnawing uncertainty persisted. Now they had discovered that even their own time line had been an altered meridian! Everything she had taken for granted all her life, the history she had fought so stubbornly to defend, was actually just the result of someone’s capricious meddling in time. But who was the real culprit? This time it looked to be the Russians, but this business Paul had turned up concerning these keys added another very unexpected twist. Keys, each associated with rifts in time, and found as artifacts embedded in something as old as the Selene Horse of the Parthenon! Who put it there, and why?
Someone was in her kitchen, rattling the plates and dishes of all the events in her cherished china cabinet of history. Cups and plates were shattered on the floor, and that awful feeling returned—she could never be certain of anything again.
Heisenberg be damned!
Chapter 14
“What can we do about all this?” said Maeve, the frustration evident in her voice. “You’re telling me that all these snippets we’ve been getting in the Golem data stream were actually real events? Those ships are still back there? Modern warships are setting off nuclear weapons in 1941? My god, isn’t the war revving up outside enough for them? They had to go back and do this?”
“Calm down,” said Kelly, trying to tamp down her emotion.
Maeve flashed him a dark glance, and then bored in on Paul again. “What’s going on with these keys, Paul? They’ve got something to do with all of this. That’s why you felt so compelled to go back and try to fetch this one, and to see those damn battleships again. What’s going on?”
“Yes,” said Paul, thinking. “The keys…. From what I’ve been able to learn, the one I found was not the only one. This Fairchild woman had another key in her possession, and she claimed it was somehow responsible for the movement of her ship in time.”
“The key?” Maeve shook her head. “How would it accomplish that? It took us years of research, all this investment of time and technology and equipment to get a functioning arch complex here and actually prove your theory could work. How does this woman simply upstage this whole project with a goddamned skeleton key?”
“I don’t know, but I think this is physical—not a technology based effect.”
“Physical?”
“Yes, she claimed they had discovered physical rifts in time, fissures, and that they were secured by these keys.”
Maeve’s eyes narrowed. “Rifts in time? You mean like that Oklo well you fell into in the Jordanian desert, the one that sent you right back to the time of the Crusades?”
“Perhaps,” said Paul. “We had no time to discuss the details, because I knew my shift allocation was running out and Kelly was about to pull me out. The Oklo reaction was something the Assassins set up, as a way of operating off the time grid, as it were. No. I think this lady was referring to something more, something unplanned by the Assassins or anyone else in the future—some natural event that had caused time to fracture.”
“The Russians!” said Nordhausen excitedly. “Remember that research I turned up concerning their nuclear testing program. I told you it looked suspicious.”
“Yes,” said Paul, “that may be part of it. Those effects could be considered physical, like the EMP effect they also discovered associated with nuclear detonations. Yet I think this lady was intimating there was something else in play here, not caused by the Assassins, or the Order, or anyone else deliberately moving in time. I’m thinking there was some natural event that fractured time. That Russian research you turned up may have been a good clue, Robert. Think… Suppose large detonations have the side effect of fracturing time. They don’t just disturb space, they disturb the whole thing—spacetime. That’s where we live, correct? We don’t just live in space, we live in time as well—spacetime. Suppose highly energetic natural events like that have an effect on spacetime? Hell, we already know gravity can warp and bend space. Why not time? And what you can bend, you can also break.”
“Fissures…” Maeve folded her