chapter seven
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Argus Station
SysGov, 2980 CE
“Thank you for waiting,” the Argus Station’s attendant program said. “The Temporal Review Subcommittee will see you now.”
Teodorà Beckett looked up quickly from the virtual document she’d been reading. It was a new paper—a very good new paper, actually—on a new textual analysis of some of the more obscure books and scrolls she’d personally brought back from the Library of Alexandria. The researcher had zeroed in on something Teodorà and her own team had completely missed, and she’d been looking forward to finding time to read it for quite a while. She’d had that time today, during their lengthy wait, so she’d called it up and gotten two-thirds of the way through it.
And, she discovered, she didn’t remember a single word she’d just read.
“You ready for this?” Lucius asked, and she shrugged.
“Do I look ready?” she shot back.
“You look pretty damned nervous, actually.” Lucius smiled crookedly. “But this is our chance, so are you ready to argue your case?”
“I guess,” she replied, smothering the stab of irritation his comment had provoked. Of course she was nervous! Which only made his apparent lack of nervousness even more irritating.
“Look, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“They tell us no, kick our butts out of the meeting, and decide we’re just as crazy over at ART as they already thought we were.”
“So what you’re really saying is that we’ve got nothing to lose.”
She glared at him, but he only winked at her then turned to lead the way down the hall to the conference room where the Review Subcommittee awaited them. To her considerable surprise, that outrageously jocular wink actually blunted some of the sharp edges of her anxiety.
Some of them, anyway.
Lucius strode down the hallway like someone without a single care. Teodorà trailed a few steps behind him and envied the confidence of his body language. He was still the chairman of ART, and he carried himself accordingly. Of course, no one else wanted the job. But because of his position the Review Subcommittee had to at least consider his proposal, and the fact that he’d been able to arrange this meeting at all meant it was at least willing to listen. That had to count for something. She’d told herself that, firmly, over and over again on the way up from New York City to Argus Station, but her nervousness had never died down, and when the gargantuan orbital station finally loomed in her virtual vision, she’d almost backed out.
What we’re doing is a noble thing, she told herself yet again.
No one answered her thought, and once again she sensed the empty void in her mind, empty as the space beyond Argus’ hull, where Fran used to be. A pang of longing shot through her, but she pushed it aside and refocused her mind on what they were trying to achieve.
Argus was the largest SysPol facility in the solar system, supporting a force strength of over five million physical and three million abstract officers, although only a relatively small minority of those officers were currently on the station. The majority were spread across Earth and its orbital environs, and the entire Argus-based force wasn’t even half of SysPol’s full strength. SysPol employed over twenty million people, and the man in charge of it all sat in the room ahead.
Who in their right mind would lie to someone like that? she thought. Oh, that’s right. Us.
Virtual images lined the wide, arching hallway before her. SysGov had decorated one side but allowed the Admin to decorate the other, and that had created a strange dichotomy. She found herself pondering that dichotomy as a distraction from her nervousness as she and Lucius paced down its impressive length.
The right side started with the desolation caused by the Near Miss industrial catastrophe, then moved on to the drafting of the Articles of Consolidation by SysGov’s founding father, Isaac Maxwell. The signing ceremonies of all fourteen members, from the United Territories of America in 2455, to the Venus State, SysGov’s newest member, in 2943, underscored the Consolidated System Government’s long, steady growth and peaceful expansion.
The Admin’s side of the hallway started in a similar vein with their Articles of Cooperation, but then took a drastic turn.
Both the Admin and SysGov had arisen as responses to near disaster. In SysGov’s case, that had been the result of runaway civilian nanotech which had devoured a monstrous thousand-kilometer swath across Asia before its depredations were stopped. That had been a terrible enough experience, with millions of deaths, but it paled beside what had happened to Asia in the Admin’s universe. Their version of the Near Miss began with the escape of the Chinese military’s weaponized AI, named Yanluo, in 2761. Reacting to its designed imperatives, Yanluo had acted ruthlessly to protect its own existence and expand its resource base through conquest and the eradication of anyone who might have tried to shut it back down. In the end, they never had managed to “shut down” Yanluo’s rampage. The defeat of its self-replicating machinations had required a sustained nuclear bombardment which had virtually depopulated the most populous continent on Earth. The death toll had been staggering, numbered in billions, not mere millions. That was far worse than the casualties of SysGov’s Near Miss, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the Admin took what might charitably be called a jaundiced view of SysGov’s integration of independent electronic citizens into its society and government.
The Yanluo Restrictions had been written to ensure that that tragedy would never be repeated. The Articles of Cooperation had been created to lend enforceable weight to the Restrictions, and every other government in the solar system had joined the Admin, willingly or otherwise. In 2765, the newly formed Admin had crushed the Lunar Federation and established a puppet government of the same name. A federation that was “happy” to sign the Articles. Mars and other factions had formed the Non-Earth Defense Alliance to counter Earth’s aggression, but that organization had dissolved in 2775, following Mars’ devastating defeat at the end of the Violations War.
A tale of two universes, Teodorà thought, looking at a pair of facing virtual images. On one side, a peaceful signing ceremony for Mars. On the other, the Admin’s victory at the Battle of Phobos Command.
The dark blue conference room doors, badged with the golden SysPol eye, split down the middle and opened double-wide at their approach. Teodorà brought her face and posture under strict control, donning the professional mask she’d worn in hundreds of meetings, and followed Lucius into the circular room.
The doors sealed behind them, and she eyed the people seated behind the wide, curved table. Only four of the ten seats were filled, and she considered each member of her soon-to-be audience carefully.
Oliver Lamont, chief of police, sat near the center of the table in the generic dark blue of a SysPol officer. His black, chiseled features wore a slight, welcoming smile as he sat with his fingers knitted together on the table. If there was anyone in this room she had to win over, it was him. Not only was he President Byakko’s representative on the committee, but he would also be the one to forward any official recommendation to the Senate’s Temporal Oversight Committee. Without his blessing, they wouldn’t get anywhere near a time machine.
Clara Muntero, ambassador from the System Cooperative Administration, sat to Lamont’s left. She, too, wore blue—in her case the sky blue of an Admin Peacekeeper—with her peaked cap on the table before her. A strict buzz cut framed her round face, and her firmly set jaw gave her a severe and unwelcoming air. A virtual image hovered over the back of one hand, showing a dove and cardinal flying around each other, so close that they almost formed a yin-yang of red and white.
That must be her marriage sigil, Teodorà thought.
The chair to Muntero’s left was occupied by Jonas Shigeki, one of the under-directors of the Department of Temporal Investigation, the Admin’s counterpart to the Gordian Division. The young man didn’t so much sit in his chair as slouch in it, and he didn’t even glance her way. His cap was pushed back at a rakish angle; he’d draped his long, black ponytail over one shoulder, and his eyes were half-lidded, as if he found himself ineffably bored but was—of course—far too polite to mention it. The backs of his hands were unadorned.
Young Shigeki was the son of Csaba Shigeki, the DTI Director-General, and Teodorà was tempted to decide that his position on the committee was the product of nepotism. Realistically, however, the tense political landscape made it unlikely the post would be filled so casually. That suggested his outer indifference was an act of some sort, although Teodorà was at a loss as to why he should want to look like “the boss’s kid” at a meeting like this one.
A gray-skinned, yellow-eyed security synthoid stood at attention behind the ambassador and under-director. His presence was a visual reminder that the relationship between the Admin and SysGov could be best described as icy but peaceful. Each superpower was content to stay on its side of the transverse, although in the Admin’s case, there wasn’t much choice, since it didn’t have the drive technology to cross it.
Not yet, anyway.
Despite that, SysGov had offered the Admin a seat on the Temporal Review Subcommittee, and their vote could be counted as a resounding no, almost without fail. Teodorà supposed open minds were hard to find in a society that enslaved AIs.
You stay on your side, we’ll stay on ours, she thought. Oh, and keep your dirty AIs where we can see ’em!
Teodorà smiled inwardly at the thought, then turned her attention to the room’s remaining occupant.
Vice-Commissioner Klaus-Wilhelm von Schröder sat to Lamont’s right, his back ramrod straight and his gray eyes keen, like those of a predatory bird. Where did she even begin with this one?
Former graf of imperial Germany.
Former four-star general of the Western Alliance.
Former Provisional Governor of the Republic of Ukraine.
Survivor of a dead universe.
Cutter of the Gordian Knot.
And now Vice-Commissioner of SysPol, Gordian Division.
It still boggled her mind that here sat not just an indigene from the past, but an indigene from a past that didn’t even exist in this universe.
Or anywhere else, now.
“Chairman Gwon. Doctor Beckett,” Lamont said, nodding respectfully to both of them. “Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with us,” Lucius responded. “Doctor Beckett and I appreciate you and the rest of the committee taking the time to hear our proposal in person.”
“Yes, I understand you have something a bit on the unorthodox side for us to consider.” Lamont leaned back, propping his elbows on the arms of his chair and releasing his fingers across his chest. “I must admit the project summary was . . . intriguing. It wasn’t terribly specific, however, so I’m sure you’ll understand, in turn, that there have to be some significant reservations on our part.”
“Given the Gordian Knot and all its implications for the damage the Antiquities Rescue Trust has done, I would be astounded if there weren’t reservations,” Lucius replied frankly. “Doctor Beckett and I would expect no less.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” Lamont said. “With that said, however, please proceed.”
“Actually, Doctor Beckett will present our proposal, if the committee will permit.”
“That will be fine, Chairman Gwon,” he said, and looked courteously at Teodorà. “Doctor Beckett?”
“First, allow me to add my thanks to Chairman Gwon’s,” she said.
Lamont nodded, and Teodorà very carefully did not look in Lucius’s direction as she moved to stand in the open end of the curved table’s shallow horseshoe. There were a lot of reasons for Lucius’s insistence that she present the proposal. The most important of them was probably that, for all his surface courtesy, Lamont personally despised Lucius. Teodorà had no idea how much Muntero and young Shigeki knew about Lucius’s . . . checkered career, but Lamont knew it chapter and verse. So did Schröder, although the vice-commissioner had his own expression well in hand. She doubted the committee would have agreed to hear their proposal at all if Lucius hadn’t leaned hard on his contacts in the ministries, and she wondered how many favors he’d burned in the process. Having him as the face of the proposal could only have further prejudiced the committee’s SysGov members, however.
Holding him in reserve if—when—the committee rejected her initial proposal was another factor, of course.
Now she dropped her prepared visuals into the room’s infostructure and watched the committee’s faces as the images expanded in their virtual sight. Microscopic bacteria, close-ups of fleas and rats, images of men and women and children with necrotic toes, fingers, noses, and lips, or with engorged lymph nodes that oozed blood and pus.
Lamont and Muntero grimaced at the grotesque collage, while Schröder watched it with unfazed calm. Shigeki only glanced at it, then shrugged, and his security synthoid stared straight ahead, coolly vigilant and ignoring the imagery completely.
“Distinguished committee members,” Teodorà said. “I give you Yersinia pestis. More commonly known as the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death.
“The first of what we think of as pandemics, the Antonine Plague, struck Asia minor, Egypt, Greece and Italy in 165 CE. Its cause was debated for centuries, but thanks to ART, we now know that it was in fact smallpox, brought back to Rome by soldiers returning from Mesopotamia. It killed over five million people, just over two percent of the population of the world at that time.”
She paused to let that number sink in, then continued levelly.
“The Plague of Justinian, the world’s second pandemic, was far worse, however. It hit the Eastern Roman Empire sometime around 540 CE, and over the next several years, it killed between twenty and thirty million people—a quarter of the population of the Eastern Mediterranean, in a single year. In the city of Constantinople, alone, it killed five thousand people per day. By the end of the year, forty percent of the Byzantine capital’s population was dead.
“But even that wasn’t the worst. The Black Death struck Western Europe, as well as its traditional killing grounds, in 1347, and recurred periodically until about 1665. Peak deaths occurred between 1347 and 1351. It’s estimated to have killed between seventy-five and two hundred million people in Europe, Africa and Asia. To put that into context, the world’s total population in 1500 was only four hundred and fifty million.”
She paused again, her eyes dark as those stark numbers went home.
“Gentle beings,” she said then, “in proportion to the populations involved, the Black Death was far more lethal than the Near Miss. Indeed, it was more lethal than the Yanluo Incident. It took two centuries for the world’s population to recover to pre-plague levels.”
A chill breeze whispered silently around the room as those members of two different advanced societies faced that charnel pit reality.
“Both the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death were the result of Yersinia pestis, which means the same countermeasures would work against both. We know the Black Death originated in Central Asia, Kurdistan, Western Asia, and Northern India, with rodents fleeing the dried-out grasslands, and previous ART expeditions have confirmed that 1338 Kurdistan was ‘ground zero’ for the Black Death. Similar expeditions haven’t been conducted for the Plague of Justinian, which happened eight hundred years earlier, but it probably came from the same general area.
“What we propose seeks to accomplish two goals. First, to further our understanding of the multiverse by conducting a controlled experiment. Second, to do a tremendous amount of good as a side effect of that experiment.”
“That sounds very laudable,” Ambassador Muntero said, although it clearly didn’t sound all that “laudable” to her, Teodorà thought. “But how will you achieve those goals?”
“With an ART expedition. One to the year 490 CE, a few generations before the Plague of Justinian ravaged the Eastern Roman Empire. Ideally, we’d like to start at the plague’s source, but since we’re not certain where the earlier pandemic began, we’ve selected Constantinople as our focal point in our current planning. Additional research might allow us to further refine our targeting.”
“You’ve selected Constantinople as your focal point for what, exactly?” Muntero pressed, and Teodorà drew a deep breath as unobtrusively as she could.
Lucius had crafted their précis with care. All it had really specified was an intention to do in-depth research on pandemics of the ancient world with a secondary object of gaining additional insight into the fundamental mechanism of how the strands of the multiverse were structured. Even that had been more specific than he would have preferred. In fact, he would have preferred an outright lie, but Teodorà had been adamant. This was to be their redemption, and that meant they had to give the committee the chance to make the right decision from the outset.
“The focal point of our mission is to cure and immunize the population against the plague,” she said now, unflinchingly.
Muntero’s eyes flared wide. Clearly, she hadn’t seen that coming! Even young Shigeki sat up a bit straighter and looked actively engaged for the first time.
“We propose to use large-scale genetic engineering via airborne microbot swarm,” Teodorà continued undaunted. “We’ll target the plague epicenter, then move east into the area we know the plague came from. In effect, we’ll build a firewall for the Eastern Roman Empire that we then extend east from Byzantium to try and choke the plague off at its source, or as close to it as we can come.”
“An intervention of that magnitude would be almost guaranteed to spawn a child universe,” Lamont noted. His tone was calm, and Teodorà nodded. Obviously, Lucius’s “spadework” had done at least some good. The notion wasn’t coming at Lamont completely cold, and he seemed prepared to at least hear them out.
“We’re fully aware of that, Chief Lamont,” she countered. “In fact, we view that as a positive feature of our proposal and not a downside.”
“So I gathered from your initial summary.” Lamont nodded. “It was rather vague on why you would view that as a positive outcome, however.”
“Our understanding of how the Gordian Knot formed is woefully incomplete,” Teodorà responded. “We do know that at least some ART expeditions have spawned child universes, such as Alexandria-1.” She kept her voice level. “But we also know ART has conducted hundreds of expeditions, any of which might have spawned child universes, yet we’ve found only a handful. We recognize that we’re in the very early stages of exploring and mapping the multiverse, of course, but the fact that we’ve found so few of them directly attributable to ART’s actions suggests that while the risk of creating them isn’t zero, it’s manifestly very low. By conducting a carefully controlled and monitored expedition that purposefully creates a new universe, we will be shining a light into the unknown, illuminating these dangerous mysteries. Only by comprehending the underlying structure of the multiverse can we truly protect ourselves from future tragedy. And, as an added benefit, we’ll set this new universe on a track free of the ravages of the plague. Certainly, you must all agree that eliminating the Black Death would have to have a beneficial effect, and we would also—”
“I need you to stop right there.” Klaus-Wilhelm von Schröder leaned forward, gray eyes sharp as scalpels. “When exactly were we appointed God?”
“I beg your pardon?” Teodorà asked.
“I realize I missed a thousand years of history. Was there some point in there where that vote happened? I only ask because you’ve just demonstrated that you and the rest of ART haven’t learned a damned thing. You still speak of the past as if it’s your personal plaything. You’re talking about creating an entire universe as a science experiment. What utter arrogance! Haven’t you done enough damage flailing around in ignorance?”
“Forgive me, Vice-Commissioner,” Lucius intervened in his most diplomatic tone before Teodorà could respond, “but that was when we didn’t know the past could be changed. And everyone, please don’t react before hearing us out fully. Without really considering what we’re talking about here.” He swept the other three members of the committee with dark eyes. “Believe me, there isn’t a person in this room who understands what Vice-Commissioner Schröder is talking about better than I do! And not just as ART’s chairman while all of that was going on. My God, do you think the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing makes it any easier to live with some of the horrible things I did? Did for amusement, not as part of our serious study of the past? I treated living human beings like the constructs in some kind of VR game, because I thought the things I did would never ‘really’ exist. But the people I did them to did exist. All of them did.”
Pain warred with self-disgust in his expression, and he shook his head hard.
“Teodorà—Doctor Beckett—and I are both only too well aware of the blood on our hands . . . and on ART’s collective hands. Maybe that’s part of what’s driving us here. But it’s definitely front and center in our thinking when we consider both the repercussions of our past actions and the good we might accomplish. I think there’s general agreement that we know entirely too little about everything that went into the Gordian Knot, and we have an acute scarcity of observational data on both that and on how a child universe’s early stages differ from those of its parent.
“The object is to acquire some of the data we so desperately need. Is it totally without risk? No, of course not! But isn’t there a greater risk in acquiring that data because of some uncontrolled event? Another Gordian Knot that we might not be lucky enough to survive? Surely it’s better to be in control of the parameters rather than their victim? We need that insight if we’re to survive, and if we can acquire it while simultaneously making some compensation for the incredible amount of human suffering ART unknowingly inflicted on so many millions, isn’t that a desirable outcome, as well? Think of all the good that would come of this! The outlay for us would be absolutely minimal, and we’d have the opportunity to watch a child universe as it forms and to actually observe and record every instant of the process. And as a fringe benefit of acquiring that knowledge, we would create an entirely new, unique human civilization that never knew the mass mortality of the Black Death! What a magnificent achievement that would be!”
“Are you out of your freaking mind?” Muntero stormed, surging to her feet. “The original Gordian mess came within an eyelash of destroying not just your universe, but a dozen others—including ours!”
“But this time it would be a controlled experiment,” Lucius promised almost pleadingly, “without the overload factor of having so many TTVs and chronoports phasing in and out in a massive dogfight. And by watching the process happen, we’d gain an incredible amount of knowledge about the physics behind it.”
“This isn’t something we need to be blundering around with until we’re damn sure we already have a theoretical model that can at least explain how the Knot formed!” Muntero shot back. “You idiots need to—”
Shigeki pressed his hand against Muntero’s sleeve, and she stopped in midsentence and looked down at him. He glanced up, the two made eye contact, and appeared to be having a conversation. Except that their lips weren’t moving.
This must be an example of the Admin’s closed-circuit chat, Teodorà thought. They’re conversing via a contact point.
“That will be all for now,” Muntero said curtly. She sat down and Shigeki lounged back in his chair once more.
Now that’s interesting, Teodorà thought. The “bored boss’s kid” is the one who really holds the leash on the Admin’s delegation. I wonder if he thinks his act is actually fooling anyone on our side of the table? Or—her eyes narrowed—if he really cares whether or not it is as long as we have to act as if it is?
“Thank you, Ambassador Muntero,” Lamont said dryly. “The Admin’s position on this matter is duly noted.”
Lucius glanced quickly at Teodorà, and she shrugged ever so slightly in acknowledgment. Muntero’s reaction illustrated exactly why he’d argued against voicing their real plan at all. He’d preferred instead to propose the second, more palatable option from the start, and he’d argued—not unreasonably—that approaching the committee with their true plan in full view would decrease their chances of successfully proposing even their fallback position as an alternative.
She’d agreed with his logic, but she’d needed to at least try to convince the committee that what they wanted to do was right and honorable. Lying from the start would almost certainly have made it easier, but she had to give these people the opportunity to make the right call. She owed it to them. At least until they let fear stay their hands. Then—and only then—would she and Lucius make the choice for them.
“It seems the objections are stacking up,” Lamont said. “And I must admit I’m quite hesitant about this proposal myself. Do you have anything else to add to your case?”
Teodorà and Lucius exchanged another quick glance, and Lucius nodded to her.
“Yes, actually we do.” She closed the collage of plague images and opened a virtual representative of a portly man in a long brown coat and a dark, curled wig. “This is Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the British Admiralty from 1673 to 1688 CE and one of our transplanted guests at ART.”
“You mean he’s an ART abductee,” Schröder corrected sharply.
“Actually, that’s not correct in his case.” Lucius smiled thinly. “Mister Pepys boarded the TTV of his own volition, knowing it was a time machine, and he’s been very complimentary about his treatment here in the True Present.”
“Then he’s a lucky exception to ART’s norms.”
“That, unfortunately, is true,” Lucius conceded, his smile vanishing.
“More importantly, what does he have to do with the plague?” Muntero asked.
“Samuel Pepys lived through the Great Plague of London, which eventually killed a hundred thousand people, or about a quarter of London’s population,” Teodorà said quietly. “He was there, he witnessed it, he wrote about it in his diaries, and it affected him greatly. So much so, that it was actually he who proposed we go back in time to prevent the plague.”
She noticed a slight softening in Schröder’s face. He leaned back, still manifestly skeptical, but perhaps now primed to listen.
“You’ve begun considering the wishes of those you’ve abducted, have you?” he asked.
“That’s correct, Vice-Commissioner,” Lucius said, then went on, grimly. “As part of ART’s new policy toward the individuals we’ve abducted, I’ve instructed our personnel conducting exit interviews before they’re moved to Retirement housing to be more engaged with our ‘guests.’ To ascertain their needs and desires and to make as much as they desire and can handle of our own time and technology accessible to them. Which is in no small part what brings us here, today.
“I hope you and the other committee members will forgive the . . . excessive boldness of our first proposal, shall we say? We have a second, more modest one that also aligns with Mister Pepys’s wishes and which will also, we hope, add to our understanding of exactly how our interaction with the past affects things.”
“While he enjoys the thirtieth century,” Teodorà said, “he also yearns to return to his indigenous time. What we propose here is similar to our first proposal in that it would be an experiment meant to collect valuable data while also providing a real benefit to those involved. It is, however, on a much smaller scale, with consequences which should be far less significant. We request permission from this committee to go back in time and return Samuel Pepys to the exact phase coordinates from which he was removed.”
Lamont grimaced.
“Is that even possible?” He turned to his right. “Klaus?”
“It’s possible, sir,” Schröder acknowledged. “Although not without risks.”
“But how can he be returned? Won’t the original him be there as well?”
“Not necessarily,” Schröder said. “The original visit that picked him up would have created a variant of the past. That happens every time we interact with the past rather than simply observing events. From that point, there are two possibilities. The disruption can be so great a child universe is formed, hence the alternate version of the Admin universe. But that process isn’t instantaneous from an absolute time perspective, and by using the flight data from the TTV that picked them up, it’s possible to backtrack to that same cord variant.”
“I see.” Lamont leaned back. “So it is possible to return him? And by extension, all the other transplants?”
“We’ve already used this method a few times. It’s functional and repeatable. If you recall, one of our twenty-first-century agents—Agent Benjamin Schröder, to be precise—has used it to visit his family.”
“I do. But I also remember your reassurances that Agent Schröder’s case presented almost no risk.”
“That’s correct. He wasn’t a prominent or influential figure in his native time. Pulling him out or plopping him back into the cord variant has little impact. At least on the scale necessary to permanently branch the timeline.”
“How much of an impact is necessary?” Lamont asked, and Schröder frowned.
“The creation of an accurate mathematical model has been an ongoing, frustrating process, sir,” he said.
“In other words, we don’t know.”
“No, sir. We don’t.”
“Then what do you make of their proposal?”
“I’m not sure.” Schröder glanced at the virtual person standing in front of the table. “Someone like Samuel Pepys is far more historically influential than our agent, and ART has already disrupted that part of the timeline by removing him. Reintroducing a version of him that’s been exposed to the thirtieth century would be risky.”
“If I may intrude?” Lucius raised his hand and smiled almost apologetically as they looked at him. “In our opinion, his increased impact on the timeline is precisely why an experiment of this nature would be so valuable. Doctor Beckett and I would have preferred our original proposal, but it may well be that the risk factor in that proposal was too great for safety. For that matter, we’re both aware that our personal sense of guilt may very well have played a major part in our thinking. If you’ll forgive my putting it in these terms, both of us are driven to find some way to at least partially atone for past actions, and it’s hard to think of something that would be more beneficial to the universe in which it happened than the eradication of the plague.
“But this would pose a far more modest risk of creating a child universe. From that perspective, frankly, it wouldn’t provide as valuable a data sample, but much as I might prefer the . . . bolder approach, this may indeed be a time when it’s wisest to ‘first do no harm.’ Even so, if we carefully monitor the timestream while reinserting Pepys into his own life, we should be able to at least take a step forward in developing a true working model for this branching threshold.”
“Klaus?” Lamont said again.
“They’re not incorrect,” Schröder replied carefully.
“And if we’re successful with Pepys, then it could open up possibilities for other transplants,” Lamont said thoughtfully. “We could give all of them the option to return home. I must admit I find that notion appealing.”
“As do I, sir,” Schröder seconded, and Teodorà felt her hopes rise.
“I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” Muntero fumed. “Are you two honestly considering this outlandish proposal?”
“It’s not outlandish,” Schröder said stiffly. “Far from it, in fact. There’s risk, yes, but it will be based on a tried-and-true method. I’m not fully sold on their proposal yet, but I believe it deserves serious consideration.”
“Tried-and-true?” Muntero mocked. “You mean how SysGov makes exceptions to the Gordian Protocol for your grandson?”
“Agent Schröder’s contributions to the Gordian Protocol are well-known to this committee,” Schröder bristled. “And I’ll have you know his relationship to me has no bearing on any decision we make here.”
Perfect! Teodorà thought. All she’s doing is driving them to our side!
“I have to agree with my vice-commissioner.” Lamont smiled at Muntero the way a parent might smile at a petulant child. “We treat each and every proposed exception with all due seriousness, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t make insinuations to the contrary.”
“But look at what you’re proposing! There’s no need to do this, and yet you both sound ready to sign off on a totally unnecessary escapade into the past. This could end up being another Gordian Knot in the making.”
“I would like to remind the honorable ambassador”—a venomous edge had entered Schröder’s tone—“that it was we who unraveled the original Knot despite the Admin’s best efforts to not just stop us, but to kill us. And ultimately, the proposal before us has merit. We’re stumbling around in the dark, and more data could prove useful, which doesn’t even consider our moral responsibility to give the transplants the option to return home if we learn we can do so safely!”
“Oh, come on! You and I both know the alternate version of the Admin you faced isn’t—”
Shigeki tapped Muntero’s shoulder, and the ambassador stopped and grimaced, then leaned back, waiting for him to speak. He straightened his cap and sat up straight in his chair.
“We freely acknowledge,” he began, “that the Admin has no direct say in what is, after all, an internal SysGov matter. However, we’re grateful to your government for giving us a seat on this committee despite that, and I’d like the opportunity to provide a more official response to ART’s proposal. I request a recess so that we may return to the Admin and consult with our leadership.” He looked down the table to meet Lamont’s eyes. “Hopefully, you’ll find my request reasonable, Chief Lamont?”
“Quite reasonable, thank you, Director,” Lamont agreed. “I’ll have the TTV brought over to carry you home, and we’ll reconvene in one day.” He turned to Lucius and Teodorà. “Chairman, Doctor.” He nodded to each. “Given the nature of what you’re proposing, I’d like to speak with Mister Pepys, as well. Since it’s his life we’re talking about, it seems only fair that we hear from the man himself. Can that be arranged?”
“I don’t see why not,” Lucius said. “In fact, it may be easiest to just bring him with us when we come back tomorrow.”
He glanced Teodorà’s way, and she nodded back, her face carefully neutral. They both knew they’d have to coach Samuel on what they were going to say to the committee versus what they were actually going to do.
“Excellent,” Lamont said. “And I believe we’re done for today. Thank you, everyone, for your time. Meeting adjourned.”