TW11 The Cleopatra Crisis NEW (4 page)

Caesar was frowning. Travers held his breath. He could scarcely believe what he had just heard. The oracle had just named Caesar's assassins!

"This violent death you see upon the Ides of March," said Caesar "It will occur soon?"

“In five years' time."

Travers almost gasped. He had pinpointed the time precisely!

"And is there nothing I can do to alter this fate?" asked Caesar.

"Perhaps. To a man who takes his fate into his own hands," said Lucan, "nothing is impossible."

"What must I do, then, to avoid this violent death?"

"Give me your left hand," said the oracle.

Caesar held it out and Lucan took it in both of his, as he had done before. For a moment, he said nothing, concentrating. Then . . .

"There is a chance that you might be able to avoid the fate your destiny has in store for you," Lucan said. "But you must be mindful of the omens. One in particular, above all others. I have but a dim perception of it. You will know it when that which was concealed shall stand revealed."

Lucan released Caesar's hand. "I can tell you no more. Only that when you recognize that omen, you must hearken to its counsel."

"And that is all that you can tell me?" Caesar asked.

"That is all. And now, General, I must beg leave to retire. The sight has wearied me.”

"My men shall escort you from the camp," said Caesar. "I thank you, Lucan, for your prophecy." Caesar picked up several gold coins and gave them to the oracle. "Septimus, see to it that he is safely conducted from the camp."

His mind in a turmoil, Travers went with the soldiers to escort Lucan through the gates. Outside, it was dark and the oracle looked ghostly as he walked silently toward the gates with the hood over his head.

"How did you know those things?" asked Travers.

"I have the sight."

"But you named names, you gave an exact date!”

"It was what I saw."

"But you told Caesar that it was possible for him to change his fate," said Travers. "How? How can any man alter his own destiny?"

"A man's destiny is but the result of his actions in the present and the past," said Lucan. "Those actions set his feet upon a path that will lead him to his destiny. When I look into a man's future, my sight travels along the path that man has chosen by his actions. If that man were to choose a different path, it would lead him to a different destiny. However, it is my experience that most men never change."

There is no future,
Travers thought, his mind racing.
There is only an infinite number of possible futures
. What Lucan had just told him was an almost perfect paraphrase of the Principle of Temporal Inertia.

"Can you look into my future?” asked Travers.

"No," said Lucan.

"Why not?"

"Because the sight has wearied me. I need time to recover."

"Perhaps later, then?"

"I fear not. I am leaving upon a long journey in the morning. And your general shall take you with him upon his."

They had reached the gates.

"I doubt that we shall meet again, Praetor Septimus," said Lucan. "But perhaps that is for the best. Believe me, most men are better off not knowing what their future holds in store for them. Good fortune to you."

He passed through the gate.

The oracle is right," said the centurion. “If it is my fate to die tomorrow, or soon thereafter. I would prefer not to know of it tonight." He clasped the hilt of his sword. "And I would sooner trust my fate to this than to the prophecies of oracles and soothsayers. Good night to you, Praetor Septimus."

He turned and went hack toward the tents with his soldiers.

Travers turned to the guard at the gate. "I must speak further with that man. Let me through."

They passed him through the gates and Travers hurried after Lucan, but after running no more than a few steps, he stopped. The slope of the hill fell away from the camp, leading to a meadow. The open country was gently illuminated by the moonlight.

There was no sign of the oracle. It was as if he had simply disappeared.

TAC-HO. Pendleton Base, California, June 13, A.D. 2627

The penthouse of the headquarters building of the Temporal Army Command had originally been the personal quarters of the Pendleton Base commander, but since General Moses Forrester had assumed that post, as well as the directorship of the Temporal Intelligence Agency, it was hardly ever used. Forrester, a bull of a man, completely bald with a face like a pugnacious bulldog and a powerful, bodybuilder's physique that belied his advanced age, lived on the floor immediately beneath it, where his offices were located.

They were the same quarters he had resided in when he was the commander of the elite First Division, better known as the Time Commandos.

Forrester had spent his entire life in the service, which had entailed, as life in the service always had, a great deal of moving around. Now that he had reached a point in his career where he didn't have to move, he bloody well wasn't going to, not even if it was just upstairs. He had grown accustomed to his quarters, and even if they were not as spacious and luxurious as the penthouse, they suited his needs. He merely had to step outside his door to reach his suite of offices, the heart of TAC-HQ, and he had his secret room there, concealed behind a wall, a small private sanctum that only a few people knew about where he kept his prized and highly unauthorized mementos of the past. Occasionally, he had used the penthouse to hold parties or house visiting dignitaries, but it was now a highly restricted area.

Aside from Forrester himself, only three people were authorized access to it. Those three were Capt. Finn Delaney, Lt. Andre Cross, and Col. Creed Steiger of the Temporal Intelligence Agency. And one other man, who had no official authorization, because he did not need one. Dr. Robert Darkness, the man who was faster than light. The sole tenant of the penthouse was the reason for the maximum security.

He was Col. Lucas Priest, whose name was listed on the Wall of Honor in the lobby of the building, along with the names of all the other members of the First Division, now merged with Temporal Intelligence, who had been killed in action in Minus Time. Lucas Priest was, with the possible exceptions of Lazarus and Christ, the only man in history to have come back from the dead.

He had died saving the life of Winston Churchill: but the enigmatic Dr. Darkness had interceded with his fate. The story was as complex as it was baffling. It pivoted around the mysterious, brilliant, and eccentric scientist and the nature of what he had become.

Darkness had once been an obscure research scientist working in the field of temporal physics. In the course of his work, which was centered on temporal translocation, he had invented the most devastating weapon ever devised by man—the warp grenade, a combination nuclear device and time machine. It was small enough to be carried in one hand and its built-in chronocircuitry allowed for pinpoint adjustment of its nuclear explosion. It could be “fine-tuned" to use all or any part of the tremendous energy that was released. The surplus energy was then clocked through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, a -wormhole in the fabric of space and time, to explode harmlessly in the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Or so it was believed.

No one knew exactly what had happened. The prevailing theory was that such incredible amounts of energy clocked through Einstein-Rosen Bridges, perhaps combined with the strain already placed upon the timestream by the actions of the Time Wars, had somehow shifted the chronophysical alignment of the universe. The result was that a parallel timeline, a mirror-image universe, had been brought into congruence with our own. Each time a warp grenade was detonated, the parallel universe was nuked.

Space colonies that they had established were utterly destroyed, with catastrophic loss of life. And now the two parallel timelines were at war. It was a "limited” war, but it was still the most dangerous war humanity had ever fought. Both sides refrained from the use of strategic weapons, because each of their time streams had become perilously unstable. Both timelines were "rippling” - intertwining like a double helix. The result was the "confluence phenomenon." At various points in space and time, the two timelines intersected and the parallel universes met.

At those points, it was possible to cross over from one universe into the other. The resulting potential for the disruption of either timestream was staggering.

People simply disappeared. A man could be walking down the street, turn a corner, and suddenly find himself in another universe. And these confluence points did not necessarily correspond in space and time. That same man might turn a corner and suddenly find himself not only in another universe, but in another country, in a different time period. If he kept his head about him and was able to retrace his steps exactly, there was a chance he could get back to his own time and universe, assuming he was lucky. Confluence points were invisible. Their focal points varied in size and they were incredibly unstable. There was no telling how long they would last. The time streams would ripple and a confluence point would come into existence, a 'window" into another time and another universe. The ripple effect would move on and the confluence point would disappear. It could last for hours, days, weeks, or only seconds. It could lead to a point in the middle of an ocean or a desert in the other universe, or even to deep space, in which case death was instantaneous and horrible.

In the face of such a threat, international conflicts had become utterly meaningless. The Time Wars as they had once been fought had ceased, escalating into a far more frightening conflict. Each universe was now threatened by the very existence of the other. Each was now faced with three prime necessities.

The first was to map as many confluence points as possible. If a confluence point could be located, it could be used to cross over from one universe into another, to stage temporal disruptions in the opposite timeline.

Ranger Pathfinder units whose job was to map confluences and the territory on the other side had the most hazardous duty in the entire Temporal Corps. They had no idea what they might find on the other end of the confluence and they could never be sure that they would be able to get back. If the scouts did come back, with detailed accounts of what they had encountered in the parallel universe, further action could be contemplated. If they did not return, the worst was assumed and no one else was sent through that confluence point. In either case, the confluence was secured for its duration, to make sure no one blundered into it and that no one or nothing came through from the other side. In some cases, it was to no avail. Occasionally, something could come through that nobody could stop, as had happened at Tanguska, in Siberia, where a meteor came through a confluence point and caused incredible destruction.

The second imperative both universes were confronted with was the Time War that they waged between themselves. Each attempted to locate safe confluence points that the other had not yet managed to discover, so they could send agents through to disrupt the continuity of the opposing timeline.

Apparently, temporal physicists in the parallel universe believed that a temporal disruption of a magnitude sufficient to bring about a timestream split in the opposing universe would work to overwhelm the confluence effect and separate the two timelines once and for all. Consequently, they were sending across agents and temporal strike teams from their Special Operations Group to gather intelligence and stage temporal disruptions in an attempt to split the timestream. There was a chance that their thinking was scientifically sound, however, temporal physics—or Zen physics, as it was often called—was a nebulous and elusive area of science. It was where scientific logic merged with metaphysics. Temporal relativity was never absolute. There was also a chance that a timestream split in either universe, aside from the potentially devastating consequences in the universe in which it would occur, could result in the creation of yet another timeline that would compound the confluence effect and make it even worse, with
three
timelines intersecting. Or, worse still, it could set off a chain reaction, with the creation of another timeline disrupting the temporal continuity of the other two, creating further timestream splits and the creation of still more timelines, with no end in sight. It could end in ultimate entropy. No one knew for sure. Yet both universes continued to wage their Time Wars, on the principle that the more the opposing universe was occupied in trying to compensate for disruptions in its own timestream, the less time, energy, and manpower it could expend in trying to disrupt the timestream of the other.

The third problem faced by each universe was safeguarding the temporal continuity of their respective timelines. The confluence phenomenon dramatically increased the chances of temporal disruption. It was necessary to clock as many Observers as possible into the past, so that history could be preserved. In order to facilitate this seemingly impossible task, the majority of the temporal forces of all nations had been converted to Temporal Observer status, with the best and brightest assigned as L.T.O.'s, to keep watch on figures of historical significance. C.T.O.'s, or Chief Temporal Observers, functioned as field commanders, supervising the T.O. units in their respective sectors. Any sign of a disruption was immediately reported to TAC-HQ, so that a team of temporal Intelligence agents could be dispatched to Minus Time to deal with it. Yet, this task was akin to bailing a rapidly sinking rowboat with a thimble. No matter how many Observers were dispatched into the past—and thousands upon thousands were—they could not possibly cover all of human history. And the increased presence of people from the future in the past served by itself to increase the odds of temporal disruption.

Waging the war with strategic weapons would have been too dangerous, for there was no way of telling if a nuke launched at the opposing universe would actually explode there, or if it might become caught in a confluence and cause untold destruction, and possibly a timestream split, in the universe that had launched it in the first place. So the war was fought through the means of historical disruption. But there were more than just two sides.