TW11 The Cleopatra Crisis NEW (24 page)

"What do you mean, in a manner of speaking?" asked Delaney.

"I cannot tell you all the details of what is about to happen," Darkness said, "but Steiger has guessed correctly. The Special Operations Group from the parallel universe has indeed created a temporal paradox by their actions in this scenario. Had they done so in their own timeline, they would have risked bringing about a timestream split. But they have done it in
our
timeline. which changes the situation considerably."

"I'm not sure I see how," said Travers. "If they sent in Observers through the confluence point who then returned and made their report, then by sending through an S.O.G. team and having them clock back and interfere with temporal continuity during the same period their Observers had reported on, then the minute their Observers return, they will have altered their own past."

"Not necessarily," said Darkness. "Not if the Observers do not return."

"What?" said Lucas. "You've lost me. They would have
had
to have returned in order to make their report, so the S.O.G. team could come through and act on it. Because if they
didn't
return and make their report, then how could the S.O.G. team have received it in the first place? It's the Grandfather Paradox."

"Precisely," Darkness said. "So let us use that as an example. Assume that you clock back into the past in an attempt to kill your grandfather before he ever met your grandmother and you succeed in doing so. Your grandfather has now died before he could sire your father, which would have made it impossible for you to have been born. If you had not been born, then how could you possibly have gone back into the past to kill your grandfather? The most basic problem in temporal physics. Seemingly insoluble. Only Mensinger had solved it. His solution, of course, was the timestream split. However, Mensinger had not anticipated a Grandfather Paradox that could involve two separate universes. And this is precisely what we are confronted with.

"Let us now take our particular example of the Grandfather Paradox and follow it through using the two separate timelines," Darkness continued. "Step one: the people in the parallel universe locate a confluence point and send Observers through in order to research as thoroughly as possible the temporal scenario they wish to disrupt. Step two: the Observers complete their task, go back through the confluence point to their own timeline. and make their report. Step three: a team is assembled from your counterparts in the parallel universe, the Special Operations Group, and sent through the confluence back to the scenario the Observers had already reported on. Of course, since they are going back into a past scenario into which they had already sent Observers, those Observers are still going to be here when they arrive, because they will not yet have finished their task and made their report. And if at that point the S.O.G. team does anything to disrupt the original scenario, then obviously that will affect the scenario, changing it from what the Observers had originally reported on. You with me so far?"

"Right," said Lucas.

The others mumbled their assent or nodded.

"All tight, then," Darkness said, we understand that the moment the S.O.G. team arrives here, then the moment they do anything that affects this scenario, they change the past. They change what their Observers had originally seen. And at that point, they create a temporal paradox. So in order to avoid that, they proceed immediately upon arrival to step four. They kill their own Observers."

"Wait a minute," Travers said. frowning. That wouldn't work. Then they'd still be faced with a paradox. Their Observers
had
to have made their report in the first place in order for the S.O.G. to receive and act on it."

"You're absolutely right," said Darkness. “Now they're faced with the hypothetical dead grandfather. Only in this case, he's been killed in another timeline. So what they've done has not affected their timeline at all."

“But it would still affect them," insisted Travers. "The ones who did the killing. I mean. The paradox still exists."

"You're quite right," Darkness replied. "And it centers around them. Only they are no longer in their own timeline."

"I can't see what difference that makes," said Travers.

"Can't you? Follow it through. What has actually occurred in their own timeline? They sent Observers through a confluence point. That doesn't change. Their Observers completed the task they were sent out to do and came back to make their report."

"That does change." Travers said. "The team went back and killed them, so now they never come back."

"Correct," said Darkness. "But let's get back to their original scenario. After the Observers made their report. The team went through the confluence point to effect their disruption. So what do we have so far? Observers leave on their mission. They come back and report. The S.O.G. team leaves on its assignment. Only part of their assignment is to kill the Observers, so now they can't come back. The grandfather has been killed. So now the grandson can't possibly exist. Only he does exist. Not in his own timeline. but in ours, where he doesn't really constitute a paradox. The temporal paradox would only come into play when he went home again, back to his own timeline. Because then we'd have an S.O.G. team that would be returning to a universe where their actions in ours had changed the past in theirs. As a result of what they'd done, their Observers never returned. And since their Observers never returned. the S.O.G. team never would have left. So
they
can't return, either."

"I'll be damned," said Travers slowly. He moistened his lips nervously and nodded. "It works. So long as they don't go back, there's no temporal paradox in their own timeline." He shook his head with awe. "It's positively brilliant. They came here on a suicide mission!"

"No, they didn't," Lucas said quietly.

Travers glanced at him. "But then, how . . ."

"They just came here on a one-way trip," said Lucas. "They can never go back. But they can go anywhere they want to in our timeline."

"A guerrilla disruption team," Steiger said. "They can spend the rest of their lives clocking through our timeline. disrupting our history everywhere they go. And since they can never go home again, they've got nothing left to lose."

"Which means that we not only have to stop them from preventing Caesar's assassination," added Delaney, "we've got to make sure we find every single one of them. And kill them all."

"You'll need to do much more than that," said Darkness. "Keep in mind that they're in a position to affect the lives of at least
two
pivotal figures in this scenario. Any well planned mission has both a primary
and
a secondary objective."

"Cleopatra," Andre said.

"Precisely. If they fail in their objective to prevent Caesar's murder, they can still affect the course of history by killing Cleopatra. Or Marc Antony. for that matter. Or even Octavian. who will become Caesar Augustus."

"Hell. I knew I was going to hate this mission," said Delaney.

"We can have Antony and Octavian covered." Lucas said, a worried look on his face, "but they've already got Cleopatra."

"Which is why I'll have to kidnap her." said Darkness.

Capt. Zeke Hollister of the Special Operations Group sat on a couch in his room at Cleopatra's house, scowling and smoking a cigar. He was scowling at the men standing before him, dressed in white cotton tunics and sandals. They were all standing at attention, their eyes firmly fixed on a point somewhere above his head.

"At ease " said Hollister in a voice that was quiet, yet laced with barely suppressed fury.

The men assumed a position of parade rest, their eyes still focused on a point somewhere above him. They did not look at all at ease.

Hollister looked up at his platoon sergeant. "All right, Maselli," he said, around his cigar, "what the hell went wrong?"

Sgt. Robert Maselli’s jaw muscles tightened for a moment before he replied. "We got hit, sir."

"I know you got hit. God damn it, what I want to know is how? And by whom?"

Maselli swallowed nervously. "We don't know, sir."

Hollister stared at him for a long moment. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly in an effort to control his temper."Tell me what happened."

"We took three squads." Maselli said. “Petrone led the first. Morton the second. I took the third. I figured we had plenty of time to conduct the operation. I knew we had at least a couple of hours once they went into the bedroom and I figured half an hour at most would be enough, plenty of time to get the A team back before Caesar was ready to leave."

Their platoon was divided into three squads— A team, B team, and C team. The A team was Caesar's bodyguard, with Sgt. Morton in charge. B team, under Cpl. Petrone, remained stationed at the house with Hollister. C team, under Maselli, was recon and surveillance.

"It was going to be a fast operation," Maselli continued. "hit and run and get out quick. Petrone led the detachment from B team against Septimus and the others. They set up an ambush on a quiet side street a short distance from their baseops. Morton led the group from A team against that Sabinus character and I went in with four men from C team to get Marcian. I know the idea was to take him alive for interrogation. but he was already dead when we got there."

"Dead how?"

"Shot through the heart with a laser." said Maselli. "And there's one more thing. A guy was watching his house."

"What guy'?"

"I don't know, sir. I never saw him before. He was taking good cover and we almost didn't spot him. We took a risk and clocked straight in from the coordinates I picked up when we were at that orgy Marcian had a couple of weeks back. We found him dead in his room, with the door locked from the inside."

"Suicide?"

"No chance," Maselli said. "Whoever killed him had to have clocked out."

Hollister frowned. It wasn't making any sense. "Go on.”

"We decided not to do anything about the guy keeping Marcian's place under surveillance. Apparently, he didn't know Marcian was already dead, so I doubt he was involved. For all we know, maybe he was just a burglar, casing the damn place.”

"You should have taken him.” said Hollister.

"I'm sorry, sir. I guess I made the wrong decision. It's just that finding Marcian dead really threw me. It simply didn't make sense and I didn't want to take any unnecessary chances."

"All right," said Hollister. chewing on his cigar. "What the hell happened with the other two assault teams?"

"After we found Marcian dead, we clocked over to back up Petrone's team," said Maselli. "Only we were too late. They'd already been hit. No survivors. I left Church behind to take their discs and clock the bodies out and the rest of us clocked over to check on Morton's group. They'd been hit, as well."

"I don't believe it," said Hollister. All right, Morton. let's hear it."

Sgt. Morton picked up where Maselli had left off. "We clocked over to the Argiletum, where Sabinus had just moved into a small apartment. We figured he was only one guy, we'd have no trouble. We could probably take him alive for interrogation. Only there was someone keeping him under surveillance. We held back and while I was trying to figure out what the hell that meant. Sabinus came out and started walking down the street.”

"Alone?"

"Alone. And this guy started tailing him. So we started tailing them both. I didn't know what the fuck was going on. But after a couple of blocks, I was pretty sure that Sabinus or whoever the hell he really is spotted the guy who was tailing him so we decided to move in. Only before we could, somebody opened up on our tail with lasers."

Hollister frowned. "What the hell...”

"That's just what I thought, sir. And right about the same time, we got hit, as well. I don't know where the hell they were. I never even saw them. Randall and Biers were down before we knew what hit us. Sabinus and the guy tailing him both clocked out to who knows where. Then we got the hell out of there ourselves before we all got wasted. That's all there is, sir."

"Son of a
bitch
!" said Hollister. through gritted teeth.

"What the fuck is going on? How many sides are there to this thing?"

"The only explanation I can think of is that it's their Underground," said Macelli. "They must have an entire cell back here. They've caught on to us and started backing up the T.I.A. team to prevent a disruption on their home turf."

Hollister nodded. "That would fit," he said. "They could be covering the T.I.A. people, but that doesn't explain the hit on Marcian. We're pretty sure that he was either in their Underground or another L.T.O. In either case, why take him out? It doesn't make any goddamn sense!"

“There's obviously something going on that our Observers weren't aware of," said Maselli.

"We allowed for the possibility of a T.I.A. adjustment team being clocked in," said Hollister, "but we didn't count on members of the Underground coming to their aid. We should have foreseen that possibility. But it's still not necessarily a problem." He got up and started pacing back and forth.

"Marcian's murder bothers me. It simply doesn't fit. Why would they want to take out one of their own people?"

"Maybe he wasn't one of their own people," Morton suggested. "Maybe we were wrong about him. Maybe he was just an ordinary Roman whom they used."

"Then explain the cigarettes we found in his room," said Maselli. "And the warp disc and the laser he had hidden away. No, Marcian or whoever he really was had to be either T.I.A. or Underground. We know their Temporal Intelligence agents used contacts in the Underground from time to time. Hell, we've done the same thing. So either way, it doesn't make any sense that they should kill him. There's got to be a part of the picture we're not seeing. In any case, it probably doesn't matter anymore. If they had any doubts about us before, they don't after tonight. I think it's time we considered aborting the mission."

Hollister spun around to face him. "We're not aborting anything, Maselli! We've come too far and we're too close to give up now! Besides, we're still holding all the cards. So long as we stick close to Caesar and Cleopatra, they can't touch us. Not without risking a temporal disruption. They can bring in as many people as they want, an entire fucking army, and it still wouldn't do them any good. Caesar's got to die on the fifteenth and he's got to be murdered by Brutus, Cassius, and the other conspirators. Anything they do to change that would play right into our hands. Even if they figured out some way to get the conspirators past A team and take out Caesar we've still got Cleopatra. And we can still shift our objective to Antony or Octavian. Their hands are tied by their own temporal continuity. We don't have to worry about that, do we?"