some effects that were significant enough for us to detect a variation?”
“Possibly.”
“Fairchild knew about these rifts?”
“I think she was told about them. She said she received instructions on how to utilize one, and that is apparently how they managed to get that corporate ship to also move in time. If there are other keys, then there are other rifts. That could be the reason for some of these other variations we’ve detected.”
“You suspect someone else is using a natural time rift to effect these changes?”
“How else can we explain this altered Russian history?”
“Alright,” said Maeve. “Let’s assume that is the case. Wouldn’t we see other variation flags?”
“Well, we’ve got red flags all the way back to 1908,” said Nordhausen.”
“Nothing earlier?”
“Not much of anything. There was a yellow flag in 1815, but it didn’t have any corroboration, and no consequences I could determine.”
“What was it?”
“Just a Golem report indicating there had been an assassination attempt on the life of Marshall Ney.”
“Marshall Ney?” said Paul, his eyes widening. “Le brave des braves?”
“That’s the man.”
“Who tried to kill him? Did the data reveal that?”
“No. It was just an incident during the Waterloo Campaign, where the Marshall was fired on by a sniper. But the attack wasn’t successful. He wasn’t even hit. His horse had reared up at that very moment, and the assassin missed. There was nothing else about it, just a few lines in a report written by an adjutant in the campaign.”
“Interesting,” said Paul. “Ney was certainly a Prime in that campaign. It looks like time did its best to prevent that attack.”
“And it also sounds suspiciously like something the Assassin cult would do,” Maeve warned.
“Kill Marshall Ney? Whatever for?” Then Paul considered the matter, thinking. “Wait a second… let’s consider this a moment. Ney’s errors were a big reason Napoleon lost that last battle. He failed to promptly secure the vital junction at Quatre Bras, and then was late counter-marching to the engagement Napoleon was fighting with Blucher at Ligny. He recalled D’Elon’s Corps at a vital moment, and it was never committed to battle, and then, in the main battle at Waterloo, he committed the whole of the French Cavalry in a fruitless charge, mistaking Wellington’s “backward step” as a retreat. That had a lot to do with the outcome of that battle. Yet why would the Assassins want to eliminate him? Suppose they did so, and Bonaparte wins the battle of Waterloo? That helps France, for a while. Were there any other outcomes in the resonance?”
“Nothing,” said Nordhausen, “just this one little blip in 1815, and nothing more. The attack failed, and that seems to be the end of the matter. It could have just been a little aberration.”
“Little things have a way of becoming big things,” said Maeve. “This could be evidence that someone else is still operating in the continuum. That affair in 1908 can be attributed to the Russian ship, but we have no evidence it ever went any farther back in time.”
“Nothing that I could see,” said Nordhausen.
“Then who tried to kill Marshall Ney?” asked Maeve.
“Well we can’t immediately assume it was a time traveler,” said Paul.
“Then why was it flagged by the Golems?” Like an ill placed crumb on her table, Maeve was immediately suspicious. “They don’t just report history—they report variations on the history. This incident was not in our touchstone database, it’s something new.”
“Yet it seems to indicate no unusual consequences,” said Paul. “Look, we’ve enough on our hands now with this damn Russian battlecruiser. Let’s leave Marshall Ney alone for the time being.”
Maeve took a deep breath. “Agreed,” she said. These other variations with people and ships popping into World War Two are the immediate concern.”
“That’s an understatement,” said Nordhausen. “Everyone starts crashing the party. I’ve got major variation data on the North African campaign now, and reports indicating a Russian submarine was also operating in the past. Just ten minutes ago I got a further variation flag that showed other modern British vessels discovered in the past. I even got a photograph—a ship called Ulysses. It was from a file buried deep in the Royal Navy archives, but the Golems managed to dig it up. The Brits use it as a troop carrier in our day.”
“The same ship sunk yesterday in that ballistic missile strike?”
“Not sunk, my friend. It’s turning up in the data stream now for 1941, along with all the other ships in that convoy that went missing. Christ! Things happen in this damn war, they hit