The Zenda Vendetta (TimeWars 4)

“You’re to be congratulated, Mr. Delaney,” said Forrester. “Your analysis of the situation and the TIA’s coincide exactly, except for one small point. There is one possibility for gaining access to the right equipment and the necessary expertise that you’ve overlooked. Subverting someone in TAMAC.”

“Hell, that’s right,” said Finn. “That never even occurred to me!”

“The TIA put it all together,” said Forrester, “but then, they had all the facts. When they moved to make mass arrests of the members of the Temporal Preservation League based on the results of your Paris mission, one of the people they apprehended was Captain Lachman Singh of the Temporal Army Medical Corps-a psychiatric specialist. He committed suicide before he could be interrogated and we now know why. Once Falcon’s identity was discovered to be false, the TIA began to backtrack. It turns out that the woman I knew as Elaine Cantrell was a complete fabrication, in a manner of speaking. Whoever she is, she seems to have no history. She must have had herself imprinted with a personality to match her cover identity as Elaine Cantrell prior to joining the service. A check of her service record reveals that she enlisted in Colorado Springs, which means that she would have been processed at TAMAC, where Captain Singh was in an excellent position to find some ‘inconsistency’ in her psych profile and put her through a scanning procedure for verification purposes. That would have given him all the cover he needed to put her through a modified reeducation program, imprinting her with a bogus personality and some sort of trigger, as Delaney puts it, to reawaken her true identity. Then he cleared her, as the records show, and she went on to Pathfinder training and eventual assignment to my unit.”

Forrester winced slightly as he said that. He swallowed hard, then continued.

“Temporal Intelligence confirms that she applied to the agency while still under my command. She passed their scanning procedures-thanks to Captain Singh-and was accepted for training as a field agent. At that point, Elaine Cantrell disappeared in Minus Time. I believed her to be dead, but now I’ve learned that the TIA arranged for her to be MIA so that Elaine Cantrell could ‘die’ and begin a new career with a new identity, as Sophia Falco-code name: Falcon. She became one of their top field agents.”

“And since Mongoose was the senior field agent, they obviously got to know each other pretty well,” said Lucas.

Andre grimaced. “Yes, but unfortunately for Mongoose, not well enough.”

“The ironic part,” said Forrester, “is that the TIA assigned her to infiltrate the Temporal Preservation League with an aim to making contact with the terrorists and infiltrating them. When she succeeded, the Timekeepers knew that they had succeeded, at which point they must have triggered her.”

“It’s almost funny,” said Finn. “It’s as though the Timekeepers gave the TIA the ingredients to make a bomb. The TIA assembled it for them, then gave it back so they could push the butto

n. The scary thing is that Falcon might not have been the only one.”

“That’s precisely what they’re worried about,” said Forrester. “This has thrown the TIA into an absolute panic. They’ve recalled every single one of their field agents in order to put them through a series of exhaustive scanning procedures designed to check for the possibility of imprintation.”

“All of them?” said Lucas. “That could take months!”

“At the very least,” said Forrester. “What that means is that you won’t have any intelligence support upon this mission. Which brings us full circle. Falcon purposely left behind some personal effects belonging to Rudolf Rassendyll at the scene of Mongoose’s murder. Temporal Intelligence has authenticated them. I think that we can safely assume that they’re not trying to bluff us. The Timekeepers have clocked back to the 19th century and eliminated Rassendyll.”

“But why tell us about it?” Andre said.

“I should think that would be obvious,” said Forrester. “They want revenge for what you did in 17th-century Paris. As a result of that mission, their organization was virtually wiped out. They’ve already killed Mongoose. That leaves just the three of you.”

“If they’re trying to make certain that we’re the team sent out on the adjustment,” Andre said, “why play into their hands? Why not simply send in another team?”

“You’re not thinking, Corporal,” said Forrester. “Sending you three in is our best chance to stop them. They know that. They also know that we know that they have already created their disruption. They’ve made a point of telling us about it. There’s nothing preventing them from merely clocking out to another time period except the fact that they want you dead. So long as you’re available, they’ll stick around and try to get the job done.”

Finn Delaney was shaking his head.

“What is it, Delaney?”

“There are entirely too many coincidences here,” he said. “I can’t believe that the Timekeepers arranged them all.”

Forrester frowned. “What are you getting at?”

“Just this. The whole thing is beginning to shape up as the sort of nightmares we used to construct as theoretical problem modules back in RCS when we were studying the effects of the Fate Factor on temporal inertia. We used to call it ‘zen physics,’ because it bends your brain around just thinking about it, like one of those old Japanese koans, you know, ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ Only this is even worse.”

“How so?”

“Because trying to figure it out logically will make you crazy,” said Finn. “More cadets washed out on zen physics than in any other course. Temporal inertia works in ways that not even Mensinger fully understood. Look at the complete picture here. Everything that’s gone down so far bears directly on our actions in 17th-century Paris during that adjustment mission involving the three musketeers. The adjustment was successful and it enabled the TIA to arrest most of the Timekeepers, but we have no way of knowing just how much temporal inertia was affected. Remember that the Fate Factor works as a coefficient of temporal inertia, determining the degree of relative continuity to which the timestream can be restored. That depends on the effects of the disruption itself in the first place and the manner in which it was adjusted in the second place.”

“In other words,” said Andre, “ ‘relative’ is the operative term. Temporal inertia can still be affected in some way that might show up at some later point in time.”

“Exactly. Coincidences are a natural part of a random world, but too many coincidences indicates that there has to be more than randomness at work. That’s what we’ve got here. Too damn many coincidences. One: what the Timekeepers have done in disrupting 19th-century Ruritania is directly related to what we did to them in 17th-century France. Cause and effect. Two: Falcon appears to have been very high up in the terrorist organization, perhaps one of their leaders, which connects her to what we did in 17th-century France. Three: as Elaine Cantrell, she was involved with Colonel Forrester and now, as Falcon, their paths have intersected once again. Four: as Elaine Cantrell and later as Sophia Falco, she was involved with the TIA and with Mongoose, who’s been involved with us on more than one occasion in the past, specifically on that 17th-century adjustment. Five: I happen, just ‘coincidentally,’ to resemble both Rudolf Rassendyll and King Rudolf of Ruritania, who are principal parties in the historical scenario the Timekeepers have disrupted. Possibly, they discovered this resemblance by accident and acted because of it, but there are still too many coincidences interrelating here to be dismissed as a random progression of events.”

“So you’re suggesting that it’s the Fate Factor at work?” said Forrester.

“It has to be. Remember that old story about how a kingdom was lost for want of a horseshoe nail? All it takes is one seemingly insignificant action to set in motion a cause-and-effect chain that will eventually lead to one significant event. Trying to analyze such a situation in terms of temporal inertia practically erases the line between physics and metaphysics. It’s what finally drove Mensinger to kill himself. He realized that the whole thing is like a house of cards. Sooner or later, it’s bound to collapse under its own weight and all it takes is just one card to start the whole thing falling.”

“But none of our actions have ever been temporally insignificant,” said Lucas. “We’ve even faced a timestream split before and managed to adjust for it successfully.”

“Yeah, so far as we know,” said Finn. “The point I’m trying to make is that Mensinger’s theories refer to Fate in a literal fashion only obliquely. That’s because complete objectivity is impossible under any circumstances. It goes back to Heisenberg’s Principle. An observer of any phenomenon can’t get away from his subjective relationship to it merely by being there to observe it. Any action we take in Plus or Minus Time is a causal manifestation of our subjective relationship to the timestream.”