The Ivanhoe Gambit (TimeWars 1)

"So do I," said Finn.

"Why do we do it?"

"I can't come up with any answer better than Lord Tennyson's," said Finn.

"I don't mean that," said Bobby. "I don't mean why do we do it, I mean why continue with these crazy time wars? Considering the risks involved, I just can't understand why they continue. Why can't we just stop it before something really nasty happens?"

"It may already have happened," said Finn. "That's why we're here. As far as stopping it goes, figure out when the arms race started, whenever in hell that was, and ask yourself why they didn't stop it then. Somebody would have had to stop it first. Your trouble is that you're thinking like a rational human being, not like a politician. Go back as far as you like, to the Belter Wars, the nuclear arms race, the first atomic bomb. . . . Okay, we've got the technology and we know how dangerous it is and how dangerous it is to escalate. To continue on the same course would be insane. But if we stop, there's no guarantee that they will stop and so the game of leapfrog continues. The trouble is that the people who make those damn decisions are never the ones most qualified to make them. Back when the time wars started, nobody fully understood the risks. You can't change history, right? You can't change the past, it's absolute. Anything you do back in the past will have to be canceled out one way or another by the inertia of time. And that's correct, but it's only partially correct. It's like I told Lucas before about diverting the river. Follow the analogy. You drop a big rock in the river, you're going to create a splash and make some eddies, which will dissipate in the flow eventually. That's why if you kill some poor redcoat at Breed's Hill, you're not taking much of a risk of changing the course of history."

"Unless you went back to the time of the Revolutionary War and snuffed George Washington," said Bobby.

"True," said Finn, "but nobody believed that was possible. They thought something would have happened to prevent it. But then there were anomalies, such as the Bathurst Incident, which Mensinger cited, the case of the British diplomat in Austria whose carriage dropped him off in an open courtyard. He walked around in front of the horses and simply disappeared, never to be heard from again. It didn't change the course of history, perhaps, but how do you ever really know for sure? Mensinger proved that parallel timelines could exist and that a split timeline will eventually rejoin. You take an even bigger boulder, some huge goddamn piece of rock, and drop it in the river and it will split the river, but the water will flow around the boulder and the twin streams will rejoin, forming a single stream once again. It's what happens during that split that scares the shit out of everybody. That's when they started getting really paranoid, but they were just as paranoid that the other side wouldn't stop if they did. So the Referee Corps got more power, they got really strict about soldiers killed in action. . . . You've got to bring back your dead because you never know just what might happen. You've got to send your Search and Retrieve units back to find your MIAs and you worry like hell when they can't. So you're sitting on a powder keg that could blow up beneath you. Does that worry anybody? Some, but not enough. You give 'em that argument and they'll say that that's what people said about nuclear waste and radioactive fallout, they said it about the hydrogen bomb, they said that sparks from the smokestacks of trains would burn down the countryside, they even predicted that the world would end in violence when the crossbow was invented. And we're all still here."

"So what's the answer?" Bobby said.

Finn laughed. "Well, we could always go back and kill the son of a bitch who invented the crossbow."

He yelped suddenly as an arrow embedded itself in the tree trunk against which he leaned. It pierced his left sleeve, grazing his arm and cutting it.

"Stand and deliver!"

Three men appeared, each holding a drawn longbow pointed in their direction. Both men jumped to their feet, Finn first yanking the arrow free and throwing it down upon the ground furiously.

"It's Little John and Robin," one of the men said, lowering his bow. The other two followed suit.

"Damn, Will, you could've killed him!" one of them said.

"Sorry, John," the one named Will said. "I couldn't see that it was you."

Finn glowered at him. "Come here, you ..."

Will Scarlet approached hesitantly. "Now don't get mad, John. Could've happened to anyone, y'know."

Delaney struck him squarely on the jaw and Will Scarlet collapsed to the ground, unconscious. The other two began to back away.

"Stand fast!" said Delaney.

They froze.

"Now, you two eagle-eyed marksmen, I want you to cut me a staff, a nice-sized one, and then you truss up sleeping beauty here and hang him from it like a stag. Then you can carry him to camp that way."

Anxious not to provoke him any further, the two merry men hurried to comply with his orders.

"We're going to start whipping these cretins into shape right now," Delaney said. "Their cozy little forest retreat is about to become Finn Delaney's boot camp!"

* * * *

Discretion seemed the better part of valor. Although he was tempted to reveal himself at Ashby, Lucas chose to postpone the return of Ivanhoe until a more opportune time. What he needed now was Cedric's protection. Ashby would provide a good opportunity to make it up with his "father," but not during the banquet. His arrival at the feast would have caused quite a stir, especially if he attempted to reclaim his fief and announced that Richard had returned to England, as had been his plan. Such an announcement, he had believed, would have thrown John for a loop.

He guessed that the prince would have stalled for time. With many people at the banquet still loyal to Richard, the very people John was determined to win over to his side, Lucas thought that John would have made a show of loyalty himself by returning to Ivanhoe his fief and welcoming his brother's return. It would be so much lip service and nothing more. Returning Ivanhoe's possessions would have been a small sacrifice and a wise political decision. Meanwhile, John would doubtless send armed parties abroad in search of Richard, to find him and to do away with him posthaste. If Lucas could get John to do his job for him, so much the better. And certainly, anyone wishing Ivanhoe ill would not act during the banquet, where there would be so many witnesses. By giving up Rowena and begging Cedric's forgiveness, Lucas was certain that he would reestablish Ivanhoe in his father's good

graces. It might not make Rowena very happy, but he would be safer leaving Ashby in the company of an armed party of Saxons. At least, that had been the plan. His growing sense of paranoia made him change it.

Finn was most likely correct in his guess that Goldblum had done away with Richard, rather than holding him prisoner somewhere. Holding the real Richard prisoner might have made for a bargaining point with the referees in case Irving failed, but Lucas was convinced that Irving was not even considering the prospect of failure. He was well ahead in the game and his possession of a chronoplate made the prospect of defeating him highly improbable. Unfortunately, that highly improbable prospect was all they had to look forward to. The alternatives were too frightening to consider.

Somehow, he had to discover where Irving was holed up. Either that, or wait until he made his move. So long as he was on his own, he was an open target. He had to change the course of events that had led to Irving's clocking back with Hooker's body. He did not know if that was possible, but he had to try. The danger was in second guessing himself.

He had fully intended to pursue his original plan. What he did not know was if he had already done so by the time that Hooker died. He thought back to Finn's analogy of dropping boulders in the river of time. His brain was in a muddle. Perhaps, by clocking back with Hooker's body, warning them that the boy would die, Irving had dropped a little boulder in the stream, had caused a tiny split in the timeline. Assuming that Goldblum had killed Hooker, at the time that happened —at some point in the not too distant future relative to where Lucas now was—perhaps Lucas had followed through on his original plan and revealed himself as Ivanhoe at John's banquet. Perhaps it was that event which had led to Hooker's death. What was the absolute past in Irving Goldblum's case?