The storm behind them now, Taggart watched shadows on the deck as the rising sun wiped away the last gauzy remnants of night. He stood and walked the deck again, the pain in his back much worse if he sat still for any length of time, his mind full of unanswered questions. He walked aft, dropped the swim platform and stepped down just inches from their streaming wake, then, as if on cue the big male's dorsal fin broke the surface about ten yards away, his immense body surfing along on Bandits' foaming wake.
Eva? Had he done the right thing? Could she have made this leg of the trip?
Looking at their progress so far he knew the answer to that question already. Time Bandits was brutally efficient in a heavy seaway, and even ten-foot breaking seas hadn't bothered her in the least. Instead of slamming into waves she seemed to knife through them, cut them away and slip through unscathed, and he'd carried more sail through the night than he would have ever thought safe on the Nauticat.
Dina and Rolf had had no problem sleeping, either. So, yes, Eva would have done just fine.
With twenty hours elapsed since leaving Bergen's inner harbor they'd made 160 miles, hideously fast given the rowdy state of the sea, and sitting at the wheel overnight he'd positioned Bandits on a broad reach and surfed her off a wave, grinning as she hit 12 knots before rounding up a little.
The two smaller males swam close and one of them came very close, swimming on his side with one eye planted on Taggart, and for a moment he'd wanted to lean over and rub the guy. Then the big male swam in close, in effect running the smaller males away, and Taggart did lean over and hold his hand out...but he too swam away then.
He went back to the helm and pulled up the latest weather overlay, then he zoomed out, pulling in information from all over the North Atlantic basin. Two more hurricanes had formed, one with probability cones leading to Florida, the other looking to turn northwest towards Bermuda again, and he'd have to keep an eye out for that one. Beyond that? A big, fat blob of high pressure was filling-in behind the storm, centered over the Irish Sea this morning, so he expected falling winds during the day - today, and possibly zero wind tomorrow - as they approached the Dutch coast.
The next waypoint was set a few miles off the entrance channel to Den Helder, and they'd avoid the treacherous low tides in the Waddenzee by entering the Dutch canal system there, taking a deep commercial barge canal directly to the center of Amsterdam. From there, the plan was to take the StaandeMast Route, so-called because there would be no need to remove the mast for the trip through the heart of the city - and, indeed, all the way to Rotterdam. Looking at the drafts needed to transit these routes, he was glad this particular vessel had the shoal-draft option - because without this shallower depth option the canal systems of Holland, Belgium, and France would have become out of reach, the water not deep enough to use. As it was, Time Bandits was right at the limit...
He pushed the radar's range out to 72 miles, wincing as his body moved and immediately regretting it. He took a deep breath and felt odd shooting pains and sighed, wondering where this crud was spreading next, and how fast. He'd learned enough to know that if it spread up to the cervical vertebrae it would be 'game over,' and as soon as the vagus nerve was compromised. He shook his head as he took another deep breath, not taking anything for granted now.
Only one target popped on the radar, and that was strange. They were about to transit the main shipping lane from the Kiel/Elbe waterway to the English Channel, and if this route was empty that meant almost all the ships in the Baltic had successfully left the possible conflict zone. It was either that or the Kiel Canal had been closed to traffic...
He turned on the new Fusion radio and selected the transceiver, then hit the BBC's World News broadcast and set the cockpit speakers to active.
"...repeating, at least four Russian mechanized groups have entered Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia have asked that American forces attempt to form a new coalition to halt this latest advance. This comes two hours after Russian paratroopers landed around strategic routes connecting Helsinki to Sweden. A government spokesperson still trapped in Finland stated that the central government has relocated to Stockholm and that almost all elements of the Finnish Navy and Air Force have relocated to pre-determined redoubts throughout the region..."
"Well, Hell," he sighed, "so war it is. And Middle East oil is the objective. Again."
He changed the frequency to Radio Deutsche Welle and listened as the reporter described a tense standoff in central Ukraine as Russian forces had violated the cease-fire and started a new push for Kyiv. Warsaw had canceled all military leaves and activated reserves, while Hungary had reportedly approached Moscow, declaring neutrality in any conflict. So Moscow now had a safe corridor to approach Austria and Bavaria...
France Radio reported that the French president had put all nuclear forces at the equivalent of DefCon 2 and that the Secretary-General of the UN was imploring all sides to step back from the brink...
"Sounds bad," Mike said, coming up the companionway with two cups of coffee. "Any news from Washington?"
Taggart leaned forward to change presets and winced again, then hit the button.
"You okay?"
Taggart shook his head. "Something under the right ribcage. Sharp pain."
"Damn..."
"Reports from the White House would seem to confirm that the president has left for Joint Base Andrews, but we are getting more reports of heavy traffic on the roads leading to Mount Weather..."
"So," Mike said, "the president is going airborne and key government officials are headed to the underground C&C center."
"Sounds like someone is trying to push NATO into thinking an attack is imminent."
"Yup."
"Which sounds like," Taggart sighed, "the Russians are trying to get a response from whoever hacked their systems three weeks ago."
"Okay...I'll bite. Can you?"
"Me? Not without another back door, like another Mainstay flight - that also just happened to go active over the North Sea."
"Talk about a stroke of luck..."
"Depends on your point of view, Mike. A Russian might disagree with you."
"Well, yeah, but the action you took, that unilateral take-down, was a stroke of genius. With everybody offline, nobody appeared guilty. I take it the fuel thing wasn't your doing?"
"No way."
"So, what is their interest in all this?"
"I get the impression we're kind of like a bunch of high school students' science project."
Mike grinned at that. "Now that's a confidence-inspiring idea. What about the one mind thing? What has that got to do with all this?"
"Ya know, a bunch of people a lot smarter than I am haven't been able to figure this one out, but let's go back to Schrödinger for a second."
"Okay..."
"So, Schrödinger was thinking that the universe looks less like a big machine than it does One Big Thought and that this One Big Thought exists, in effect, in a unique quantum state. Schrödinger's next postulate was the idea that consciousness, in the form of a quantum singularity, is out there, and I mean literally everywhere, phasing within all sentient beings. So, what we were trying to wrap our heads around back of Seattle - especially after the whole 9/11 random number thing hit home - was that the speed of thought within a single quantum singularity is literally instantaneous..."
"You mean, like everywhere in the universe?"
"Yup. And I know, the idea seems preposterous, until Winky and his pals showed up just before 9/11..."
"Coming from Andromeda, you said. So, what you're saying is that they've somehow been able to physically move around the universe at the speed of thought?"
Taggart nodded. "If we'd only had another couple hundred thousand years to evolve, we might have made it there, too."
"You're speaking of us in the past tense."
"That's right. They've pretty much written us off as a species, yet for some reason, a few of them are still hanging around, like they're waiting for the final results to come in. Like I said, it feels like a science project."
"Only we're the ones being put to the test."
"Exactly, so as far as Russia goes, if this next little war proves to be our extinction-level event, you'd think they would just pack up their bags and go on to their next project, but no, that's not quite the case, and personally, I think it has something to do with our friends over there," Taggart said, pointing at the orcas.
"The Cape St George..."
"Right. I grew concerned that the ship might try to take us out, but they'd have had to use explosives and that would have injured, or perhaps even killed, one or more of the whales. So, I let Winky know."
"And a guided-missile cruiser became a lighter than air cruiser."
"Elegant solution, I thought," Taggart said, smiling at the memory. "Still, there's one new wrinkle in all this. Those female orcas and Eva, and whatever they were doing out there, matters, because Winky was taking an intense interest in the process."
"You think he was watching, or maybe even directing the process."
