Upfall

Feldhandler looked toward Yatom who stared back coldly. Mofaz thrust a thick forearm harder against Feldhander's neck, and putting him on the verge of a swoon. Yatom motioned with his hand and Mofaz released the pressure. Yatom motioned again, and the major let go, but gave Feldhandler a hard slap to the top of the head before retaking his seat, and shoveling in another mouthful of potatoes.

"Answer the question" said Yatom.

Feldhandler moved his neck cautiously and winced. He squinted at Mofaz through glassy eyes. Feldhandler had felt a sense of elation just a moment before Mofaz's attack, now he couldn't hardly bear to look at the man. They were sitting in a liberated Sobibor, eating captured German food on captured china, having done the impossible, saved thousands of Jews from death and captured a critical mechanism of the Holocaust. Then to find himself on the verge of death at the hand of a fellow Jew...!

"Feldhandler!" hissed Yatom, breaking the scientist's fugue.

"I‘ve explained it to you" croaked Feldhandler "that I do not have control of the device. What more do you want me to say?"

"Answer my question" insisted Perchensky.

"Your question?" said Feldhandler, recovering some equilibrium and managing to turn slightly in her direction. "Oh yes. Well, as to whether we can go home, the answer is very probably no—as I've explained. The rest of Dr. Perchensky's question" he continued, now looking away from her "is theoretical. If we are in the same timeline that we departed this morning, then we have created a terrible temporal paradox, the results of which are unknowable. I, personally, should not like to return to such a place, even if I could."

Feldhandler paused. His own voice calmed him, and the rest of the table now sat silently absorbing his comments.

"The probability exists" he continued "that we have created a new timeline, in which case the actions we have taken today, have in no way influenced the timeline we departed. But we car1't know what is the case."

"Why not?" asked Shapira, too tired and strangely exhilarated to much care. He was simply curious.

"Because" said Perchensky, tired of listening to Feldhandler lame answers "we never experimented with temporal displacements of more than a few seconds when operating the device—because we feared the situation we are in now."

"But we did displace time on the other mission" continued Shapira "with no apparent effect on our own timeline.“

"Right" interjected Feldhandler, retaking the floor.

"Displacements of a few seconds apparently have no effect one way or the other. If a new timeline was created out of a few seconds, it essentially dissolved itself into the main timeline..."

"Like a rivulet that gets sucked back into a larger flow, or a sapling absorbed into the trunk of a bigger tree" said Perchensky, finishing Feldhandler‘s sentence, which she had heard in theoretical discussions with him before.

"Correct Andrea" said Feldhandler with a small smile, a bit flattered that she remembered his metaphors so precisely. "Why exactly this is so, we are not certain—a matter of quantum probabilities. Like everything we do. But nature abhors a paradox, and so probably forbids it. The fact that we are here likely means that we are in a new quantum timeline."

"So there is a quantum probability that we can return to our own timeline" said Perchansky, looking at Yatom "It is possible. We should not give up."

"But if you are wrong" Mofaz broke in "then we would likely return to a world in which Israel did not even exist. Even if this is a new timeline, it will be a world without Israel. What will we have accomplished?"

"How do you figure that, Major?" asked Feldhandler condescendingly, still furious at the commando's attack.

Mofaz shook his head, and looked as ifhe wanted to leap across the table again, but instead shook his fork at the scientist. "Israel was created in part out of Christian guilt over the Holocaust. If we stop it, we likely will stop Zionism from succeeding after the war."

"No Major Mofaz" said Feldhandler. "Learn your history better. It is May 1942. A million Jews or more have already been killed—mostly in Russia, but in Poland and Germany too. The Holocaust has happened. Do we need to allow five million more to be slaughtered to win our state? In either case, a new timeline or the one we left, the Zionist enterprise will be fully justified."

Mofaz pursed his lips but kept quiet.

"I'm still not satisfied that we have not created a critical paradox which will change the future of our own loved ones— even to the point of forfeiting their lives" said Yatom. "How can you be so confident that this is a knew timeline? If this a completely new world, Where did it come from?"

"Think of it this way" said Feldhandler. "Did you ever see the Hubble deep field photograph?"

Shapira nodded immediately. "Yes" said the lieutenant "a long time exposure of a small portion of the sky which showed thousands of galaxies stretching back into time and space."