15 December, 2022
Chicago Control
The next week, back at Chicago Control, Haakon relaxed in an easy chair in the staff lounge. He sipped at a whisky sour while reading the brief for his next assignment on his iPad. Why they wanted to send him to London in 1933 was beyond him. On the continent, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January of that year, and in North America Franklin Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt to become President. But nothing was happening in England—at least nothing that seemed important enough for a Timekeeper mission.
A shadow fell across the screen as he was perusing black-and-white photos of crowds walking in front of the Georgian mansions that lined Russell Square in Bloomsbury. When the person casting the shadow cleared her throat, he glanced up and frowned. He didn't really feel like talking to anyone, let alone Associate Director for Twentieth Century Operations Portia Scurlock. Haakon wondered if she ever wore anything besides that same gray business suit with the too-short skirt that showed off her long legs. As usual, she'd tied her ginger-colored hair in a tight, crinkly bun that seemed to stretch her face to immobility.
Her narrow features relaxed into what served her for a smile as she examined him in turn. "I thought I'd find you here. May I join you?"
He shrugged and waved at a seat. "It's a free country."
She perched on the edge of the lounger opposite him and tugged at her skirt. "How was your trip to Iowa? Did you find your friend?"
"No." He let silence grow. He had nothing more to say. Screw her.
A sigh gusted from her lips, and her eyes softened. "I'm sorry, you know. I wish you'd succeeded where the other agents failed. For your sake, if for nothing else."
He flicked a finger across the iPad screen, bringing up another dreary photo from the 1930s. He finished his drink and then asked, "What do you want with me tonight?"
"Tonight? I'd hoped to share a drink with a colleague. Show support for you. Chaos knows, you deserve it." She flagged a passing waiter. "Young man, I'll have a gin martini, up, please. And another round of whatever my friend's drinking." She tilted an eyebrow to Haakon. "Would you like anything to eat?"
He shook his head no.
"Well, I think I'll have something. Perhaps the salmon vol-au-vent? Make it a double order, please. Thank you."
Haakon kept his gaze on the iPad, but didn't really look at the images.
She leaned forward and said, "The auditors have completed their investigation. I thought you'd want to know."
He grunted. "So, are they sending me off to Chicxulub?"
"Hardly. The official finding is that you single-handedly resolved a dangerous Deviation, at great personal peril. You're going to get a commendation instead of exile to the KT boundary."
He returned to examining the old photos. "A commendation will make everything just peachy-keen. Perfect." He looked up and scowled at her. "Besides, it wasn't just me. I had help from that other Timekeeper, Corbett. Even the Station Resident, the Abbott, helped. And Nathan saved my life at least twice."
"The Station Resident has no recollection of your appearance in Jorvik on the day of the battle." She sighed. "Here's what the temporal engineers think. Gunnar's report agrees that the Viking sack of Scarborough came a week early. When he showed up here at Control, the variance in stochastic simulators escalated by an order of magnitude. Everyone was in a panic. Before he was healed enough to give his report, though, you arrived an hour later, in Viking chain mail and near death. The simulators immediately stabilized. Whatever you did between those two events—Gunnar's flight to Chicago Control and your appearance here—resolved a dangerous Deviation. It's the only explanation that makes sense."
Her logic just infuriated him. "I don't buy it. It doesn't account for everything that happened to me. Vikings in Iowa, Nathan, the Pleistocene, Corbett. All of it just didn't happen?"
"Officially? That all happened to you, but it's not part of reality. It was all part of the Deviation, part of what made the simulators go crazy. But your stand at Stamford Bridge resolved the discontinuity in the space-time continuum."
"If that's true, then it must have also erased all the people I met and the things I did? So everything was hallucination?" Haakon didn't believe it. Couldn't believe it. Nathan was real. He had to be real.
The waiter arrived with drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Portia helped him move a table between herself and Haakon. She offered the fellow a tight smile. "Thank you. What's your name, young man?"
"Gomer, ma'am."
"A fine name. A Biblical name. Where are you from?"
"Kishinev, ma'am. 1903."
Haakon recognized Gomer's native Yiddish in the fulsome phonemes of his vowels. He raised his gaze to the waiter's face. "You were caught in the pogrom?"
"No, sir. A Timekeeper rescued my sister and me. Vos vet zein, vet zein. We owe our lives to the Bureau."
What will be, will be. Haakon held his gaze steady. "You were blessed. I'm glad for you."
"Me, too. Thank you, sir." He looked over Haakon's head at another table. "Will there be anything else?"
Portia answered, "No, that will be all. Thank you again." She waited for him leave before taking a prim bite out of one of the pastries. "These are marvelous. Try one."
"I'm not hungry." He glanced at his iPad and muttered, "They're wrong. It can't all be hallucination."
An older woman sitting nearby leaned forward and said, "Not hallucination." She placed her tea cup back on the silver service at her side, stood and approached them. "I'm sorry, I couldn't help but overhear. I'm Zera Haversham." She extended a blue-veined hand.
Haakon jumped to his feet. He'd met the Founder twice before, but it must have been much earlier in her timeline. Tonight, the woman who greeted him appeared to be in her 70s, but her features and prim frame still bore witness to the striking beauty of her youth. She wore no discernible makeup, and she'd wound her grey hair in a tidy bun. Her black flannel slacks and creamy silk blouse screamed Bergdorf Goodman or possibly Saks. He accepted her proffered hand. "Pleased to see you again, ma'am," he lied. The last thing he wanted was to hobnob with the ultimate Timekeepers big shot. Not tonight. "We've met before."
"I know, Agent Sigurdson. I've followed your career." She nodded to Portia and then quirked an eyebrow. "I must go in a few minutes, but would you mind if I joined you?"
Portia stood, too, and pulled another chair to their circle. "Please do, Dr. Haversham. We'd be honored."
Haakon kept his face impassive. It wasn't like Portia to suck up, but then Zera Haversham didn't pop up every day.
The three settled back into a cozy conversation group, and Haversham turned a steady gaze on Haakon. "You, sir, are a hero. Again. We are all in debt to you for your sacrifices. I remember well our prior two meetings"
Haakon's mouth turned down. One of those times, he'd broken protocols to rescue a temporal from a gruesome death. If she hadn't supported him, he'd have been exiled. But she couldn't do anything now. Nathan was gone. Forever. "I'm still here. Save your gratitude for those who lost their lives." Or their very existence.
"Each soul lost, even those in vanished timelines, leaves a scar on my heart." She heaved a sigh.
Did the disappeared even have souls if they never existed in the first place? If so, Haakon mused that her heart must be nothing but scar tissue, but he held his peace.
Her features firmed. "I've read the reports on the Deviation you stopped. What you experienced was not hallucination. Not at all." She hesitated, then continued. "Your experiences were part of a might-have-been reality. Possibly part of a several might-have-beens. After Gunnar left, you floated in a netherworld between possible realities. Your damaged Timepiece might have something to do with that, too, somehow slipping you into one of those alternate timelines. The engineers doubt that, but it's something the equations say is possible. Anyway, when your actions at Stamford Bridge collapsed the wave form, you snapped back to reality. Our reality. Residual evidence of the Deviation disappeared, except in your memory."
There was no point in arguing with the certainty in her voice. But Haakon knew. Nathan was more than just a memory. Haakon could still feel his touch, could still see his gentle grin. "I don't want to talk about it. I know what happened."
She nodded. "I understand. I've lost people, too."
They sat in silence for a few moments. Haakon evaded her gaze and shifted in his seat.
"You know," she mused, "we don't really know what happens during a Deviation. They sometimes pop up, like quantum foam, and then fizzle. Or maybe Hawking radiation is a better simile—maybe they are information leaking from an unreachable part of the multiverse."
Haakon shrugged.
"When we first started Timekeepers, we were such idealists. We were going to make the world a better place for everyone. Somehow, we've devolved to this, mere guardians of a cruel status quo." She cupped her hands over her mouth and nose and closed her eyes.
Portia spoke with determination adding an edge to her tone. "Surely you don't mean to suggest our basic mission is flawed."
Haversham opened her eyes and some of the tension went out of her posture. "No. I believe in our mission. We know now we don't have the wisdom to choose the best reality, so we endeavor to do no harm. Or the least harm. Preserving the reality we know is the best we can do."
She leaned forward and reached for Haakon's hand. He let her take it. Her gentle grip warmed his palm.
"I'm late for my meeting, but I came here to see you, to thank you, and to mourn with you. You are not alone. Know that the universe abides eternal. Your loved ones are always there, in your memories."
He managed to choke out, "It doesn't help."
"I know. But don't forget. Never forget." She tipped her head and held a finger to an ear. "I'm being summoned." A sad grin bent her lips. "Strange that the inventor of time travel could be late." She stood. "Godspeed, good Agent Sigurdson." With a bow, she departed.
Haakon returned his attention to his iPad and the photos from 1933. To his relief, Portia sat in silence, sipping her wine. He gulped at his drink and stared at the most recent photo on his iPad. He frowned and swiped his fingers to enlarge it. He was missing something. What could it be?
Minutes passed, then Portia finally asked in a soft voice, "Is that the brief for the London assignment?"
He glanced up, then back at the screen, glad for the change of topic. "Yeah. Looks like busy-work to me. I need a real assignment, not some wild goose chase with the bourgeoisie."
"Don't underestimate its importance. All the simulations keep pointing to this as a milieu of extreme instability. It's a real assignment, all right. We just don't know why it's important." She adjusted the jacket on her suit. "What do you think of your new partner?"
"Nell? She seems professional enough, if a bit inexperienced. I'm just glad it's not Gunnar."
"Gunnar is in training at the Academy. We decided he'd make an excellent field agent. Eventually, he'll be a Resident." She fidgeted for a moment before continuing. "Miss Trent earned her doctorate in cultural historiography at Yale in 2026. She's spent five years of personal lifespan studying the London of 1933. She's whip-smart. One of our most promising agents."
He shrugged. "I didn't say she was incompetent, just a little green."
Portia sniffed. "She also finished second in hand-to-hand combat in her class at the Academy. She'll do." She held his gaze for a moment and then leaned back in her chair. "When do you think you'll be ready for insertion?"
He shrugged. "I've been ready for days, but the medics won't release me. Damned bureaucrats. This inaction is driving me insane. I could go tomorrow. I've got the lingual and cultural implants in place. But the friggin' nit-picking medics say they won't release me for another week." He flipped to another photo and mused, "Seriously, though, this is the vaguest assignment I've ever heard of. There's nothing concrete to do, or even look into.
"It's an enigma, I'll agree. With everything else going on in the world in 1933, especially in Germany, it's hard to see why the computers keep highlighting London." She fidgeted with her skirt. "Russell Square is interesting in its own way, I suppose. Every location has some kind of significance if you dig deeply enough. For example, Virginia Woolf's home is nearby, at Tavistock Square."
"Who?"
That earned him a sniff. "She's an important modernist author, critical even. Cultural stabilization is part of our portfolio just as much as political and military. George Orwell works at a government post in 1933 in Bloomsbury, for another example."
"Culture isn't my portfolio, thank Bog. That's for specialists." Haakon swirled his glass and sipped the dregs of his drink. "Besides, it's hard to see why an obscure author or two would set off all these alarms in the simulations."
"You field types always underestimate the power of the arts. Still, there are a few other things of note. For example, there's a cell of committed communists that meets in a home in Russel Square. They grow into an important spy ring during the Cold War, maybe the most important of the post-war era until 2016. There are even a couple of scientists hanging about in 1933. There's the physicist Leo Szilard, who was instrumental in launching the Manhattan project—he wrote the letter Einstein sent to Roosevelt that started the whole thing. Then there's Fritz Haber who had invented poison gas for the German Empire prior to the Great War. He's angling for a fellowship at University College London. There's a Texas oilman poking around, too, secretly meeting with the Nazis. All in all, it's an interesting time and place."
Haakon closed his eyes and, in the dark depths of memory, Ralf's dead body lurched on the bridge over the River Derwent. "Yeah. That's all real interesting. I can see that it's just like Stamford Bridge."
She leaned forward and touched his knee with feather-light fingers. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to demean your heroism. How are your injuries?"
"I told you. I'm fine. A few twinges in my leg, but the nano-docs are taking care of it."
"I wasn't thinking of your physical injuries," she murmured. "Violence invokes demons. They may die, but even in death, they triumph in fire and power."
She leaned forward. "It's hard being a Timekeeper. The weight of all humanity is on us. You did your duty. You nearly died yourself."
He narrowed his eyes and controlled his breathing. "I was a volunteer. I knew what I was getting into. The ones I destroyed didn't. I killed my friend Ralf, not to mention temporals who did nothing more than defend their homeland. Then there's Nathan, the most innocent of all. He's just gone. I made him disappear, according the engineers. Quite a feat, that. Heroic." His face squirmed in self-contempt. "Duty, destiny, death. What's the point? They're all the same. What makes one life worth more than another?"
"You're worried about good and evil. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
He hardened his mouth and glared at her. "Quoting Hamlet doesn't make things better."
"I didn't mean to diminish your loss." She lowered her eyes and murmured, "You know, Ralf can never really be gone. You could visit him again, if you wanted."
"You mean visit Ralf back in Jorvik, before I killed him? That won't change what I did. I couldn't face him, knowing what I know. Knowing who I am."
"Yet isn't that what you tried to do today in Iowa? To meet Nathan out of sequence, before you first saw him that night in the woods?"
Anger heated his face. "Nathan's different. Whatever I did at Stamford Bridge erased him. Made it so he never existed." There. He said it. It just made it worse.
"That's probable." She moved to hold his hand, and he flinched away. "He was part of the alternate timeline. The one that includes the others you met. Corbett and the Russian. Claude."
"I know logically that must be true. But I lived it. Why am I here and they are gone?"
"Reality is what it is. Vos vet zein, vet zein, as our server said." She sniffed and sipped at her drink. "The alternative is that the Everett Interpretation is right."
He gave a bitter snort. "You mean the many-worlds hypothesis? That's crap, and you know it. No one believes that." He couldn't take his eyes off the photo on his iPad. Women in floppy hats and men in baggy suits strolled along streets clogged with cars from another era: blocky Ford Model Bs and Austin Ten-Fours. What made this photo different from the others?
"I know nothing of the sort. I'm not a temporal engineer, and neither are you." She tugged at her skirt and gave him a stern look. "You also had that wound to your shoulder." She sighed. "It's well known that nano-docs sometimes have hallucinatory side-effects when repairing trauma. Your own account says you were chased by archers in Scarborough. There's a minority auditor's report that contends you were wounded there, hid out in 1066 and never jumped to Iowa or the Pleistocene. That part of your report is all a drug-induced delusion. That minority view is the main reason you've not been given a new assignment up to now."
"So some idiot medic thinks I'm crazy? Perfect."
"No. The head medic just signed off tonight and gave you a clean bill of health. You're good to go now that the official finding is that you experienced everything you said, and that it all vanished when you collapsed the wave form at Stamford Bridge. Even if the minority report is right, at worst you have a transient, harmless, nano-doc-induced psychosis."
"What a relief. I just have a transient psychosis." He glared at her.
"I told you the official position." She folded her fingers before her mouth as if in prayer and gave him an appraising stare.
A face in the picture on his iPad leapt at him, and shock skittered down Haakon's spine. He expanded the image until one person filled the screen. The black-and-white visage was grainy and out of focus. A fedora partially obscured the features, but they were unmistakable. His hand trembled as he turned the device to show Portia. "I know why 1933 London is important."
Her gaze flicked to the screen, then back to Haakon. "Him? The man in the picture? Who is he?"
"That's Nathan. I'm sure of it. He's not in any fantasy alternate reality, and he's not a psychotic delusion. He's right there, in Russell Square, in 1933. Whatever is going on there that's so important, it's got to involve him."