John Schettler

MERIDIAN

A NOVEL IN TIME

With gracious thanks to Richard, Mark and Candace

For being the friends they are to me and

For inspiring my Kelly, Robert, and Maeve.

“Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate.”

Alexander Pope: An Essay on Man II

Part I

The Tempest

“We for a certainty are not the first

Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled

Their hopeful plans to emptiness and cursed

Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.”

A.E. Housman: Last Poems IX

“And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The Solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

as dreams are made on, and our little life

is rounded with a sleep.”

Shakespeare: The Tempest, Act VI, Scene I

1

The Nordhausen Study: Berkeley, California – 8:15 PM

“I warn you, if the outcome is anywhere close to the preliminary readings, then we have a problem; and a very serious problem at that.” Dorland allowed himself a sip of coffee, his eyes dark ovals in the haze of steam above the rim of a Styrofoam cup.

“Oh, Paul,” Maeve Lindford was at the bookcase squinting at the spine of a volume in the literature section of the study. “When will you learn to drink from a proper mug?”

“When I can find someone to wash the damn thing,” said Dorland with the same dire intensity.

“Well, don’t worry about the numbers until they get here,” said Maeve. “We worked hard on this solution. Everything will be fine.”

“Yes,” said Dorland. “Fine as rain. The preliminaries show a .0027 percent discrepancy value for the entry zone. We aren’t sure where the target will be in the time frame the professor has chosen, and that makes me nervous.”

“It’ll be fine, Paul.” Professor Nordhausen spoke up from his place at the study table. “He’ll be there, I assure you—probably up in the gallery with the important guests.”

“Well I wish I could be so certain.” Dorland was shifting uneasily in his chair by the table, obviously upset about something, though he seemed more frustrated than angry. “What time is it?” He craned his neck about to have a look at the study clock on the mantle overlooking the fireplace. “Where’s Kelly? Is he going to make us wait until morning again?” There were four chairs around the study table; three showing obvious signs of occupation, with coats and scarves draped on the polished wood uprights and stacks of books and papers heaped on the table. The odd chair was waiting for the fourth member of the group, Chief Technician Kelly Ramer, running numbers in the computer lab, and he was always late.

“You know how hard it is to get time on an Arion mainframe these days, Paul,” Maeve chided again.

“Damn near impossible.” Professor Nordhausen shifted in his chair and eyed Dorland over the dark rim of his reading glasses, an irritated expression adding definition to the wrinkles etching his forehead. In his late-forties, the professor had settled into a comfortable agreement with his deeply receded hairline. Dorland remembered when he sported a full head of curly hair in his college days, for the two had a long history. Nordhausen had long since given up on the effort to cultivate what little remained of his hair. “We need another Arion unit on site if the project surprises us and actually works.” He wagged a finger at Dorland as he finished.

“I’d have three if I could,” said Dorland, “but the budget is strained enough as it is. An Arion mainframe will run us another ten million. Care to write me a check? Until then, we’ll have to stand in line and lease time on the university machines, like everybody else.”

While simple desktops had tremendous computing power, the computational requirements of the Dorland Project would require a network of several thousand PCs. There were, however, a few Arion mainframes deployed in universities and government facilities for runtime sessions requiring intense computation like weather modeling or exotic 3D-Holography. Named for the mythical horse endowed with the gift of speech and prophecy, the Arion series computers were massive parallel processing units with enormous computational power. A typical Arion system could now do the work of three high-end Cray machines. They were usually booked the whole year through, but Dorland had managed to secure five coveted sessions to run the crucial calculations necessary for his project. The computer genius of the group, Kelly Ramer, was finishing the last session tonight and was scheduled to bring in the numbers on a laptop for the meeting. He had to go all the way into the City, however, as there was no time left on the closer machine at U.C. Berkeley.

“Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Nordhausen sighed, his tone shifting noticeably. “If you ask me, the whole thing is a waste of valuable comp cycles.”

“You aren’t going to start in on that again, are you?” Dorland was drumming his fingers on the oak tabletop now, visibly agitated. His long slender hands moved in a graceful motion, index finger tapping out a steady rhythm.

“Waste of time,” Nordhausen said again, obviously intending to stir the kettle, though Maeve shot him an admonishing glance just the same. “It won’t work,” he pressed on. “Even if the theory is sound, as it may very well be, I still think the whole thing is impossible. So it doesn’t matter if the target is there or not, Paul. We may never know.”

“So certain again, are you?” Dorland shot him an annoyed glance. “Honestly, Robert, one minute you’re absolutely convinced that everything will be fine, and then the next thing out of your mouth is this damned pessimism! What’s your problem?”

“I’m just being realistic,” Nordhausen corrected. “It’s not pessimism. I have my doubts, that’s all. Hawking said it best: if it really is possible to travel in time then why aren’t we awash in time travelers? You’ve never answered that one, you know. Don’t you think they’d be just a little bit interested in a meeting like this, for instance?”

“Oh please,” Dorland rolled his eyes in obvious dismay. He had heard this complaint before; argued it many times in fact, but Nordhausen was still as stubborn now as when he had first broached the subject with him three years ago. “You really don’t expect a team of future researchers to just come barging in and join us for coffee, do you? Hello,” he acted the part, with a clear edge of sarcasm in his voice to let Nordhausen know he wasn’t happy to be launched on this course again. “Please excuse us, but we’re from the future and we understand this to be a particularly important meeting. Mind if we just stand here off to one side while you folks make a bit of history. We promise not to make any noise.” He looked away, obviously frustrated.

“Well, to be honest I really don’t expect much of anything at all—and that’s exactly my point, Paul. Nothing is going to happen! Therefore this isn’t a particularly important meeting and, assuming your theory is correct, that’s why nobody is crashing the party. It’s simple, really, when you think on it.”

“Oh, he’s thought on it,” Maeve put in with a smile, secretly pleased to find herself the referee again in another sparring session between the two senior researchers. Dorland was the Master Of Sciences on the project, and Nordhausen was Chief Historian. They had argued Time Theory many times before, but now that the project was at the very edge of their first real attempt at opening the continuum, the debate had begun to heat up again. Nordhausen, ever the devil’s advocate, was constantly jabbing at Dorland’s theory, in spite of his enormous commitment of time and resources to the effort that had brought them all this far. It was, however, the last thing Dorland needed just now. Healthy skepticism was one thing, but lately Nordhausen had begun to show real signs of backing out of the project altogether.

“Well it’s obvious that he hasn’t given it much thought,” said Dorland over his shoulder at Maeve. “I mean there are any number of ways I could answer his argument.”

“Indulge me.” Nordhausen folded his arms with a smug look on his face. “And will you please stop drumming your fingers on the table!”

Dorland looked at his hand, and then ran it through his full brown hair. Unlike Nordhausen the ravages of time lay gently on him. They were the same age, but Paul still looked ten years younger, and some even thought he was still in his thirties. “Alright,” he began, “let’s put your pessimism aside for a moment and suppose we’re successful tomorrow. If that’s the case then we will have accomplished something that will have the most profound effect I can imagine on the future course of history.”

“Yes, yes,” said Nordhausen, conceding the point. “All future time lines would be vulnerable to alteration if we’re successful.”

“All time lines,” said Dorland, “both future and past. That makes the experiment tomorrow a Deep Nexus, which would make this whole milieu a Point of Origin—closed to any temporal contamination according to my theory—unless it’s done by one of us here on the inside. So that’s why we don’t have visitors in the back of the room slurping coffee, Professor. It’s really simple, if you think on it.” He mocked his adversary to make his point, but the grin on his face betrayed the long friendship between the two men, in spite of their obvious intellectual differences. It was this bond, forged over some thirty years, that had kept Nordhausen involved in the project, though at times he was a reluctant warrior.

“Well there wouldn’t be enough to go around anyway,” Maeve chimed in as she slid another volume from the bookcase, frowning at the dust on the binding. “Make another pot, Paul. It looks like we’re going to be here for a while. Did you bring Peets?”

“Guatemala,” said Dorland absent mindedly as he flipped through the pages of a notebook, still hot on the trail of his argument with Nordhausen.

“I thought you were going to bring Major Dickason’s blend tonight. Guatemala is a good breakfast coffee but we’ll need something a little stronger if Robert starts digging his heels in again.”

“Oh come now, Maeve,” Nordhausen protested mildly. “I’m just trying to make him think about his own theory here. He dreamt up all this stuff, remember? The idea of a time ‘penumbra’ is convenient, but nothing more than pure speculation. I think my argument still holds up quite well. If they could visit a pivotal event like this, they would visit it. And since we can’t even seem to get Kelly to join us in a timely manner, I’m not expecting anyone else to show up either.”

Maeve was frowning at the spine of a volume of The Norton Anthology of Literature. “Don’t you ever clean in here, Robert? I could spend a whole day getting the dust off these books.”

“Be my guest.” Nordhausen warmed to the offer immediately, but Maeve shook a warning finger at him. He tacked back to the argument with Paul, as if suddenly remembering something. “I thought you said a Prime Mover was the primary causative factor for an Imperative, and that only an Imperative event can cast a time penumbra.”

“Precisely,” said Dorland as he scribbled a brief note in his journal.

“Getting a bit overconfident, aren’t we?” Nordhausen needled his friend again. “I mean if the experiment does become a Deep Nexus then the first moment when we open the continuum would be an Imperative event, an event that must happen—is that what you’re starting to think now, Paul?”

“Why shouldn’t I? If I had your attitude I would have torn out my hair long ago over this business, and given up.” He gave Nordhausen an accusing glance but the other man brushed it aside. “If you’re so convinced this is all poppycock, then why are you here? Could it be that there’s just a thimbleful of faith in your heart as well?”

“Believe me,” said Nordhausen, “If there’s any possibility that you might actually gain access to the continuum tomorrow, then someone has to be certain you don’t start mucking things up.”

“Oh, I see,” said Dorland. “You want to supervise again, is that it?”

“He ought to hire a maid,” said Maeve again from the bookcase.

“What are you doing over there, Maeve?” Nordhausen took advantage of the interruption to veer away from the conversation with Dorland for a moment. The two had quarreled in recent weeks over who should have final authority over the experiment. Up to this point it had been Dorland’s team of science experts and physicists that had been the key players in the project. The time and investment required to build the project launch site, with its massive computing and power requirements, had been the mainstream of their effort thus far. Nordhausen worked on the sidelines with his team of historical researchers to isolate an appropriate target for their first experiment. Now that the project plant was fully operational, he argued that the historians should exercise primary operational control. Dorland was too close to the effort expended thus far to relinquish control, and the friction between them had been building as the launch date neared.

Nordhausen slipped away from his place at the table and headed for the coffee station. He tugged on a gold chain attached to his sweater and drew out a pocket watch. “Eight-forty,” he muttered. “Wasn’t the meeting scheduled for eight? What’s Kelly up to? I know,” a mischievous glint brightened his eyes as he turned to Dorland. “He’s botched up the numbers again, and the whole thing is off. That’s why we don’t have visitors tonight. Kelly never shows and the meeting gets cancelled.” A satisfied grin dressed his features as he bent over the coffee station.

“He’ll be here,” said Maeve, defending their missing compatriot. “He’s probably just stuck in traffic with all this weather. My lord—” She was squinting through the rain drizzled pane of the study window now, still clutching the volume of the Norton Anthology under her arm. “What’s going on out there? You’d think it was rush hour.”

“Probably a concert letting out over at Sidney Hall,” said Nordhausen. “I think they were presenting a Verdi set tonight.”

“Not exactly the type of crowd you’d expect to be rushing about like that. Especially in the rain. Maybe there was a fire or something.”

“Good!” said Nordhausen. “They should never have built that hall, if you ask me. The acoustics are terrible in the place. In fact, there isn’t a decent concert hall on this side of the bay. You have to go into the city if you really want to hear anything.” The professor taught at U.C. Berkeley, and he kept a private study on the northwest fringe of the city as it reached towards the East Bay community of Orinda. It was a small apartment that was more of an office, completely furnished as a library and work area. The professor maintained living quarters elsewhere and was generous enough to donate the study as the primary meeting place for key project team leaders. It was convenient for his work, but he hated having to cross the Bay Bridge any time he wanted to pursue his love of classical music. He had chosen this place for his study because of the proximity of the newly built Sidney Hall, but was soon disappointed in the acoustics there. He frowned at the near empty coffee pot, tilting it to try and dribble the last of the coffee into his mug.

Maeve saw what he was doing and came away from the window. She went straight over to the study table and plopped a heavy volume of the Norton Anthology down with a thud. “Paul,” she said with a stern glance. “Where’s that Peets you said you brought?”

“What?” Dorland was preoccupied with his notebook. “It’s over by the sink.”

“Good,” said Maeve, her hazel eyes flashing as she reached out and snatched away Paul’s pen to interrupt his scribbling. “Go make some.”

Paul started to protest, but one look at Maeve quashed that idea. She had signed on two years ago with the history team to chart potential outcomes and consequences for the experiment. A slim woman in her middle thirties, she had a no-nonsense manner about her, a penchant for cleanliness, schedules and an almost maniacal insistence for structure in the way she ordered her work. She had been a key research leader for the Outcomes Committee, and the considerable force she was able to exert on the group mechanics had soon demonstrated that she was not a person to be trifled with. She smoothed back a lock of her reddish blond hair and fixed Paul with the same patented stare that had cowed the wayward elements of the Outcomes Committee. “Now.” The single word added just enough emphasis to set Paul in motion.

“Alright,” he offered a meek defense. “I’ll make another pot. Just give me a second here.” He reached for his Styrofoam cup as he retreated to the coffee station.

“Better hurry,” jibed Nordhausen, “the visitors could show up any moment. If they get here and find the hospitality lacking they might just pack up and leave.” The sarcasm in his voice was laced with just enough humor to soften its sting.

“Very funny,” said Maeve. “No doubt the mess in this place would be reason enough to send them on their way.” Nordhausen shuffled off to the bookcase as though he wanted to see just how bad it was before he dared to say anything. He thought his argument with Dorland offered better prospects, however, and returned to the coffee station while Paul ground a bowl of fresh coffee beans he had poured from a dark brown bag. The noise of the grinder imposed a moment of silence on the conversation, but Paul started right in when he was done.

“Your problem is that you are just too wedded to your own subject, Robert.” He tilted the coffee grinder on its side and tapped the contents of the bowl into the protective lid.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nordhausen was quick to defend himself, and Maeve smiled to herself as the two men warmed up the argument again.

“I mean you love your history so much that you simply can’t bear the thought that anyone could go back and ‘muck it up’ as you are fond of saying.” He was rinsing out a coffee press and wiping it down with a paper towel. The aroma of fresh ground coffee was already thick on the air as he worked.

“Well someone ought to be concerned enough about it to put in a good word or two for history’s sake—don’t you think? Can you imagine the potential nightmares we could have if this thing actually works? What if someone botched up the continuum and we end up losing Shakespeare, or Milton or Da Vinci?”

“We’re the only ones who would know about it,” said Dorland falling back on his inscrutable theory again. “Once the continuum changes, all trace of the altered past is gone forever. If Shakespeare ended up dead before he ever started writing, then no one would ever know about it—unless they were in the Nexus Point where the Meridian was altered.”

“Oh they’d know,” Nordhausen countered. “They’d know in their gut. There would be an immense hole in the entire progression of Western thought and expression that would leave us all the more impoverished. And if this be error upon me proved—” he began to quote one of the sonnets, and Maeve quipped in the finishing line for him.

“Then I never writ, and no man ever loved.” She was secretly delighted with the discussion, for it was just the sort of temporal conundrum that she so enjoyed sorting through. While her primary academic interest had been in Byzantine History, she was very well read and could hold her own in a discussion on almost any subject involving history, literature, and the other liberal arts. But the real reason she had been selected from among the thousands of applicants for the project was the incredible analytical ability she seemed to have. Her scores on the outcome variable testing were right at the top of the list, and she could back up each and every answer she gave with a hundred references and logical arguments. “That’s why I’m here, Robert,” she continued. “Don’t worry. It’s my job to be certain no one does drown Shakespeare before his time, and I can assure you that Hamlet and Othello have nothing to fear.”

Nordhausen smiled at her, convinced that she meant exactly what she said. Maeve Lindford would set a guard on the hallowed halls of history like no one else. It was precisely her research on potential Outcomes and Consequences that would stand that watch, and a sudden thought occurred to him.

“There you go, Paul,” he angled over to Dorland where he was impatiently waiting on a simmering water kettle. “Why not put Outcomes in charge of the operational phase of the project? Good Maeve here would be a formidable defender for us both, don’t you think? You theoreticians set up the equipment and parameters, and the historians will find you that needle in the haystack of time you’ll be wanting to get at. But we need someone like Maeve to knock our heads together when we can’t agree on what we should do. Outcomes and Consequences—Isn’t that what it’s really all about in the first place? Let Maeve’s committee exercise final authority on the operation and keep Shakespeare and Milton sleeping comfortably in their graves.”

“Here, here!” Maeve smiled at the thought of knocking a few heads together, and she knew exactly where she might begin.

The whine of the water kettle interposed itself and Paul quickly rescued it from the electric burner, pouring the hot steamy water into the coffee press. The aroma of the coffee redoubled. He was already looking for his Styrofoam cup to pour in his favorite creamer, a blend of powdered Carnation milk with a hint of hazelnut.

Maeve shot him a disapproving glance as he heaped the powder into his cup. “I can smell that way over here,” she said with an edge of complaint in her voice.

“What?” said Dorland as he stirred the coffee in the press with a long-handled spoon. “You mean my precious powders?”

“Whatever,” said Maeve with a half smile. “Are you sure you really like coffee? Why don’t you just mix up a batch of hot water with that stuff and enjoy your hazelnut.”

Nordhausen was quick to take her side. “I’ve always said that most of Paul’s problems can be attributed to an excess of hazelnut in his coffee.” They laughed together, the mood lightening a bit as Paul began pressing the coffee.

“Seriously,” said Dorland, trying to tack back to the heart of the discussion. “This gets at the crux of the matter, doesn’t it?” He filled his Styrofoam cup and Nordhausen watched the creamer billow up as he poured. “Now, the way I see it, the Old Bard would have to be a Prime Mover all on his own. He simply influenced too many lives with his writing to be so easily erased from the time continuum. I mean, anyone who has ever read the man seriously could not help but be changed by his poetry and plays in some way. Shakespeare is a perfect example of my theory on Primes. He’s just too damn important to be shunted aside, and history will do everything possible to see that it could never happen. A little help from Maeve in the bargain would be all the assurance you need, my dear Professor. See what I mean? Prime Movers cast a kind of protective shadow on the time line. They aren’t easy to derail.”

“Here we go. He’s going to give us that penumbra nonsense again,” Nordhausen complained.

“Well think about it, will you?” Dorland took a sip from his cup and extended the pot to Nordhausen as he spoke, filling the other man’s mug with the rich, black coffee. “You’re the man who is so adamant about protecting our cherished past. Perhaps the time continuum has a way of protecting its own, if you will. A man like Shakespeare or Milton is simply too important to the progression of Western culture to be lightly tampered with. Isn’t that why we picked Shakespeare for our first target? So, the continuum surrounds such a man with a protective aura of some kind. Such men stand so tall in the course of history that they cast a deep shadow about them once they first give birth to a work of art or science or whatever it is they do to become so important to the future. The shadow deepens as their influence on other lives grows and changes the progression of the time line. It soon reaches a point where their influence is so great, where they have altered so many individual lives, that it cannot be undone. The shadow they cast on history is so deep that it simply cannot be penetrated—That’s the penumbra surrounding the Prime Mover and insuring the Imperative such a person or event must give rise to. Shakespeare must write Hamlet, Othello, The Tempest and all the rest. ”

“Yes, but there’s a problem with that,” said Nordhausen. “What’s the Imperative, the man or the message? Is it Shakespeare that is important to the time line, or Hamlet?”

“To be or not to be? That is the question,” quipped Maeve.

“Well, we darn well better answer it, my friends,” said Nordhausen. “They still aren’t sure if Shakespeare even wrote half of the stuff that has been attributed to him.”

“Oh, now don’t drag in that silly theory about Sir Francis Bacon again,” Maeve protested, a warning in her eyes as she sidled over to the coffee station, mug in hand.

“Suppose it’s true,” said Nordhausen. “Then Shakespeare, the man, would be irrelevant. It’s Hamlet that matters, no matter who wrote the damn thing. I mean, suppose it was written by a squire somewhere and Shakespeare simply bought up the manuscript and published it for the local playhouses—grist for the mill.”

“So now it’s a simple country squire who’s doing the writing for you. Does he happen to work for Sir Francis Bacon?” Maeve jabbed him in the ribs with a firm fingertip.

Nordhausen laughed at this, letting the humor cover his retreat as he made his way to his seat at the study table again.

“The point is, it was published,” said Dorland. “Whether it was written by Shakespeare, or Bacon or his squire doesn’t matter.”

“And what are you getting at?” Nordhausen had reached his chair and was settling in again with a glance at his pocket watch. He snapped it closed and slipped it into his sweater. “Nine-ten.” He muttered.

Paul continued. “It’s the whole milieu of the time that surrounded Shakespeare’s life that gave rise to Hamlet, by one means or another. You can’t separate the man from his environment, and all of the history that gave rise to it. The two arise mutually—hand in glove. If Shakespeare were alive today he couldn’t write Hamlet, or Romeo and Juliet or anything even remotely like the plays and sonnets that made him famous. He was a man for his time, and the time produced the man. Don’t you see? It was an era where all the social and cultural elements that allowed a play like Hamlet to be written just came into the proper focus. Someone simply had to write Hamlet, no matter who it turns out to be.”

“Someone did write Hamlet,” said Maeve with an air of finality. “It was Shakespeare.”

Dorland filled her coffee mug with a smile. “Sure you won’t try my hazelnut creamer?”

“Don’t press your luck,” said Maeve, and she went over to the study table to retrieve the copy of the Norton Anthology of Literature she had dragged out of Nordhausen’s bookcase.

Dorland was momentarily distracted by a honking horn outside. He glanced through the study window and noted the traffic only seemed to be getting worse out near Sidney Hall. He saw a group of people running, and thought it a bit unusual for a classical music concert to be so unruly at this hour of the night. His attention to the time produced that brief surge of anxiety in his chest again. “Now where is Kelly?” He was getting more and more exasperated as they waited, as if the commotion outside the room was slowly invading the quiet atmosphere of Nordhausen’s study and stirring up all his old fears about the project again. Here he was, on the most important night of his life, perhaps the most important night of history since the Nativity, and Kelly was late again.

“He’s probably trying to get through that crowd out there by now.” Maeve took a sip of her coffee, and frowned. “You didn’t wait long enough before you pressed this,” she said. “It’s too weak. I thought you were going to bring Major Dickason’s blend?”

“Sorry,” Dorland apologized. “The professor here had me all caught up in this Shakespeare business and I wasn’t watching the time.”

“Don’t blame me, Paul.” Nordhausen was quick to defend himself. “Do not infest your mind with beating on the strangeness of this business.” He quoted Shakespeare again. “You’re the coffee expert here. You should know better.”

“Thank you, Prospero,” Maeve was quick to pick up Nordhausen’s reference to Shakespeare. “Well, our coffee expert had better learn how to use a press properly. This is too weak.” She pushed her cup aside and began flipping through the pages of her Norton Anthology.

“Looking for that quote?” Nordhausen ventured.

“Looking for trouble?” Maeve shot him a disapproving glance. “The Tempest: Act Five, Scene One.” She knew the play well and didn’t need her anthology to zero in on the reference.

Nordhausen gave her a contented grin. “Oh? I liked the second scene in that act better,” his voice had a teasing edge.

“There wasn’t a second scene,” Maeve was not in any mood for nonsense, and Nordhausen thought the better of prodding her further.

Paul was staring at the coffee press, his feathers ruffled somewhat by Maeve’s last comment. He did fancy himself a bit of a connoisseur when it came to his coffees. After years of swilling down run-of-the-mill Columbian beans off of supermarket shelves, he discovered Peets on the Internet one day and his long habit finally exulted with a brew that was truly addictive. He tried every one of the many blends over the years, finally settling on a few favorites. Major Dickason’s blend was not one of them, but it was a favorite of his good friend Kelly, and Maeve seemed to like it as well. “Sorry, Maeve,” he apologized again. “I just forgot. I had the Guatemalan in my cupboard, so I just grabbed it and ran out to catch BART. If I had known Kelly was going to be this late I could have stopped by and bought something fresh. Can I get you a tea?”

“No thanks,” Maeve was resigned to content herself with the Norton Anthology for a time. “You two can go right on arguing, if you want. Don’t mind me.”

Dorland struggled to contain his frustration. He never thought it would be like this. Here he was on the night before the launch and Kelly was late and he was fussing with a coffee press and arguing with Nordhausen again! He had looked forward to this moment for so long that the seeming inconsequentiality of the events that were playing themselves out just didn’t seem to measure up to his expectations. In one sense, it confirmed a major principle of his own time theory: that most of the time line was littered with insignificant moments that simply flowed along, like bubbles in a stream. These were the ‘Thousand nothings of the hour’ as he liked to call them after a line from Matthew Arnold’s Buried Life. Somewhere in the stream, he knew, there was one tiny bubble that would give rise to Shakespeare and Hamlet and The Tempest. Which one?

He had puzzled over his theory for years before the ideas really seemed to gel in his mind over a cup of coffee one day. It was odd the way it happened. He wasn’t even trying to think about his theory that night. He was simply relaxing in an idle moment with the TV and scrolling through the channels with his remote. After skirting away from a score of commercial messages and the latest political scandal to hit Washington, he settled on a science documentary about genetics.

The narrator was explaining how only a tiny fraction of human DNA differed from that of a Chimpanzee, or from all the other animals on earth. He remembered the event so clearly now: how the narrator had emphasized that the human genome was littered with thousands of strands of unused, excess genetic material that served no real purpose. It had simply gathered there over the eons of mutation, redundant snips and errant strands of genetic flotsam and jetsam produced by the trillions of subtle errors DNA would make over time. Yet it was exactly these errors, the mutations arising in insignificant bits of protein, that gave rise to all the variety of life. If DNA were perfect in the way it replicated itself, the world would be awash in countless strands of DNA, and nothing else. Now, however, after a trillion, trillion errors, only a tiny fraction of all the DNA in the genome was actually useful, yet it still needed the supporting structure of all the trivial material around it in order to continue to move forward in the stream of evolution.

Time was like that, he suddenly thought. The idea shot through him like a bolt of lightning and gave him the last critical tenet that had so eluded him in his search for an understanding of time theory. His life was transformed from that moment on. The incident became the founding principle of his theory of time: that all of history’s most crucial events arose from their opposite, from some single moment of utter insignificance that served as the key trigger for the event.

What was it that had led him to the science documentary that night? Somewhere, he knew, there was some insignificant incident that led him to that single split second of insight. He did not know exactly where that moment in time was, but he knew it was there, a single point in time that gave rise to some compelling and truly significant event in the time line of history—a Pushpoint as he came to call it.

Now he was here on a night that should be saturated with significance—the night before the project launch; the final briefing! He was fidgeting with a coffee press and listening to Nordhausen, and trying to keep Maeve content with a decent cup of coffee. Was there another Pushpoint hiding in the insignificance of all these trivial events?

A peal of thunder rumbled in the distance, and the rain pattering on the rooftop began to beat down more heavily. Dorland set the coffee press aside and went over to join the others at the study table. “Well,” he said, “there’s no use wasting any more time tonight.”

“Good,” said Nordhausen looking around for his overcoat.

“Don’t get any ideas about leaving yet,” Dorland cautioned him. “I meant we should get on with the briefing. We can always fill Kelly in when he gets here.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Nordhausen sighed. “I suppose it’s a bit wild out there with this storm blowing through. Let’s get on with it then. I’ll start with the history briefing, unless you have more time theory to discuss.”

“Be my guest,” Dorland proffered a slight bow in the professor’s direction.

“Shakespeare’s Tempest,” Nordhausen began. “A fine night for the subject, isn’t it? Now, unless Kelly finds something in the numbers to screw things up, our plan remains the same. The temporal locus is the early winter of 1612, at the Globe, of course. Our intention is solely observation. We’re going to watch the play. The Tempest was written in the fall and winter of 1610-11 and probably first produced at court in 1611. This particular event was a special showing at the Globe, probably part of the festivities preceding the marriage of Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine. Oh, we’re going to nose around a bit, but there won’t be any real interaction with the locals.”

“Nose around a bit?” Maeve was immediately on guard. “What exactly is that supposed to mean? You said observation only—remember?”

“Well you don’t expect us to simply take a seat, watch the play and then leave do you? What’s the point of opening the continuum if we don’t learn anything?”

“At this point I’d be satisfied to simply get there and return safely,” said Dorland “If we actually manage to take in a scene or two of the play, all the better.”

“What do you mean, nose around a bit?” Maeve fixed Nordhausen with those riveting hazel eyes and he squirmed a little as he answered.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” he started to explain. “I thought we might just have a look about the theatre—at least one of us—while the others enjoy the play.”

“Where?” The tone of Maeve’s voice made it perfectly clear that Nordhausen had better come to the point, and fast.

“Well, there’s been a lot of controversy surrounding the origin of this play,” the professor ventured out onto the ice, choosing his words carefully. “I thought we might find something that would shed light on a few questions, that’s all.”

“What questions?” Maeve was still waiting and Nordhausen took a deep breath and finally let his idea tumble out.

“Source material, for one thing. There is no known source for the story, you see. As far as we know it was one of only two original plots Shakespeare came up with, the other being Love’s Labor’s Lost. There are some, however, who feel he was heavily influenced by the Bermuda Pamphlets, and—”

“This wasn’t in your task list, Professor.” Maeve’s look made it clear that she wasn’t happy.

“Yes it was,” said Nordhausen. “I put it in under observation of grounds and theatre.”

“Bermuda Pamphlets?” Dorland was confused.

“You expect a copy of the Bermuda Pamphlets to just be lying around somewhere for your perusal?” Maeve was on to something now.

“What are you two talking about?” Dorland was only too glad that it was Nordhausen who was going to be the recipient of Maeve’s attention for a while, but he tried to get his footing in the conversation anyway.

Nordhausen sighed and turned to explain. “Nine ships set sail from Plymouth for the colony of Virginia in June of 1609. The new governor of the Colony, Sir Thomas Gates, was on Sea-Venture, commanded by Sir George Somers. Well, the fleet hit bad weather on July 24, a tempest, if you will. Sea Venture was separated from the rest of the ships and was presumed lost at sea. Then, to everyone’s great surprise, the survivors of the ship’s contingent turned up in Jamestown the following May! They were adrift on two makeshift vessels they managed to build during a long sojourn on the isle of Bermuda—thought to be a devil’s island at the time. The reports and letters about the incident reached London in 1610, just before Shakespeare started work on The Tempest. It was very big news, you see, and particularly for Shakespeare.”

“Why is that?” asked Dorland.

“Because he had close relations with the folks who sponsored the expedition in the first place. Some even think he may have had a share in the profits of the planned Virginia Company. In any case, much of what we know about the incident comes from letters and reports that have been loosely called the Bermuda Pamphlets—William Strachey’s letter in particular.”

“I knew you would try to pull something like this,” Maeve was getting angry now. “I won’t allow it, Robert!”

“Oh come on,” Nordhausen tried to pacify her. “I have just as much interest in preserving the continuum as you do—even more, in fact. You know how I feel about the history.”

“Only too well,” said Maeve. “That’s what worries me. Now, I’ll ask you one more time. Just where do you think you might go strolling?”

Nordhausen had a flustered look on his face. There was no getting around her, he knew. Not on the night of the final briefing. He decided he had better come clean and see if he could get Dorland to chime in with something from his time theory to smooth the wrinkle over. “Just a quick peek in the rear offices,” he ventured. “Only one of us—while the others enjoy the play.”

“Whose offices?” Maeve narrowed her eyes, knowing the answer to the question before Nordhausen had a chance to answer. “No, I’m sorry, but I won’t allow it. This was not on your list—at least not specifically, and we can’t run formulae on potential outcomes without exact details. I’m amazed that you would try to pull something like this at the last minute. I won’t hear of it!”

“Whose offices?” Dorland was feeling a bit shipwrecked himself.

“But I won’t be more than a few minutes,” Nordhausen’s voice seemed to plead now. “I’ll just slip away for a moment and take a quick peek at the old man’s study, that’s all. He might have copies of Strachey’s letters there.”

“They weren’t even published until 1625,” Maeve put in adamantly, her arms folded with finality.

“Yes, the public version of the report circulated in 1625, but we know all the senior members of the Virginia Company must have seen Strachey’s letters much earlier; immediately, in fact. I’m certain that Shakespeare must have been privy to them—probably even had a copy; perhaps in his study at the Globe. And there may be other documents or books there that would shed light on this question. Perhaps I’d find a copy of Thomas’ History of Italy. Many of the characters names in the play are thought to be derived from that narrative.”

He looked at Dorland, reaching for some support. “Look here, Paul. This may be one of those little threads in the weave of time you’ve been talking about. What if there had been no real tempest at sea when the fleet set out?”

“That’s an Imperative,” Dorland explained. “The weather on a given day is not subject to a willful act by any person. It can’t be changed.”

“Fine.” Nordhausen brushed the point aside and pressed on. “What I’m saying is, that if we can establish a clear link between Shakespeare and the Bermuda Pamphlets at the time he wrote the play, then you may have a chance to hunt down one of those little insignificant moments in time that gives rise to The Tempest, one of Shakespeare’s last, and greatest, plays. Why, some even think it was the summation of his work. First we find Strachey’s letters; then we try and hunt down your intersection somewhere on the Meridian—”

“Pushpoint,” Dorland corrected him.

“Whatever,” the professor hurried on. “We do other missions to follow that lead back in time and see what might have really seeded the incident. It had to be something that happened at Plymouth before the expedition put out to sea. Look, the fleet left on June 2nd. We have the date right in Strachey’s report. If they had set sail a few days earlier or later, then no storm at sea; no shipwreck on Bermuda; no report reaches London in 1610, and perhaps no play! What a paper that would make!”

“No!” Maeve’s eyes widened with her exclamation. “No, Robert. Absolutely, positively and authoritatively: No. Are you crazy? What if Shakespeare is there when you decide to take a peek into his office.”

“Highly unlikely,” Nordhausen argued.

“Why? You seemed so certain he would be at the site earlier tonight, right, Paul?” Maeve gave Dorland a quick glance, beginning to pull him over to her side on the matter.

“He’d be there, alright,” said Nordhausen, “but he’d be in the upper gallery watching the play. There were official guests to be coddled. He wouldn’t be futzing about in his office during the performance.”

“Say something, Paul.” Maeve gave Dorland a disparaging look. “If he bumbles into someone, he could introduce variations in the Meridian. Am I right?”

“Well…” Dorland thought carefully before he spoke, and they both waited as he tapped his finger on the table, catching up to the implications of the argument at last. “The professor may be right that the Old Bard would probably be in the gallery, but probabilities are the province of Outcomes and Consequences.”

“There,” said Maeve, seizing on the moment to assert herself again. “You should have submitted this idea in detail, Robert, along with all this business about the Bermuda Pamphlets, and Strachey’s letters and God only know what else you may be after with this. We can’t run probability numbers without specifics. You, of all people, should know that!”

“But really,” Nordhausen made one last sortie. “What would be the harm? I’m not talking about some dolt blundering into Shakespeare’s offices and rifling the place for lost documents—”

“No,” Maeve interrupted him. “You’re talking about a bemused history professor on a quest for primary source material in the office of one of the most significant ‘Prime Movers’ of the last 500 years, right? Are you telling me you’re going to be careful once you get your beady eyes on that man’s desk? You mean to say that you could resist the urge to open that desk drawer, or to slip a volume or two out of his bookcase? Lord, I wouldn’t be surprised if you actually tried to make off with something significant and bring it back!”

“Well I’m not that daft,” Nordhausen was getting angry.

“That would be a serious violation,” Dorland put in matter of factly.

“Damn right,” said Maeve. “I just won’t allow this, so get it out of your head. If you plan on going tomorrow, then I am going to be glued to your right arm. Understand?”

Nordhausen gave her a sheepish look. “Oh, what’s the use,” he said sullenly, a defeated look on his face. “I mean what good is the experiment if you don’t try to answer questions like this? Don’t get all bent out of shape now, Maeve. Nothing’s going to happen anyway. We’ll get all dressed up for the play and the Arch won’t work. Mark my words.” He fished out his pocket watch again, snapping it open to look at the time. “Nine-thirty-five,” he muttered. “Where’s Kelly and his numbers machine? Are we going to sit here all night?”

Dorland saw that, with the loss of his fishing expedition, Nordhausen was going to lapse into his famous brooding intellect again. Lightning flashed in the sky outside the study, and it seemed there was a great deal of noise out on the street. He suddenly felt that the whole evening was spinning off kilter for him. All of the restless excitement he had brought with him to the meeting was dissipating into a rising sense of anxiety. He felt odd, and strangely out of place. One moment he had the reins of the project tightly in his grasp, and now he seemed to feel things slipping away from him. Maeve was clearly angry and Nordhausen was brooding and they were out of coffee and Kelly was nowhere to be found. The noise outside, and the roiling of the storm, seemed to mirror his inner states, leaving him adrift and unsettled in his mind about the outcome of the project. For the first time in many long years he faced a yawning sense of doubt about it all. What were they about to do?

What if they really could open the continuum and visit the Globe on the night of The Tempest? What if Nordhausen did something stupid and introduced a Variation—or even worse, a Transformation? What if they got too damn curious and started tugging on one of those errant threads of time, to look for clues and answer those nagging questions that were sure to present themselves? Suppose Nordhausen was right and they managed to travel back to Plymouth before the fleet set out in 1609: what if they disturbed something, ever so slightly, and the fleet leaves on June 4 instead of June 2? The professor would be correct! The storm at sea happens on schedule, because it’s inevitable. But if they don’t run into the storm, and the Sea-Venture never gets separated from the group, then they don’t run aground on Bermuda and make that miraculous appearance a year later. Strachey has nothing to write about, and there are no Bermuda Pamphlets circulating among the higher ups of the Virginia Colony investors. Shakespeare never sees the damn thing, and then, perhaps… he never writes The Tempest! A sudden idea struck him in the face like blowing rain.

“Wait a second,” he began. “Just a minute now…”

Nordhausen was still sulking and fidgeting with his pocket watch. Maeve was flipping pages in her Norton Anthology and sending the professor unfriendly glances. She reached for her coffee mug, took one sip and then frowned again.

“Robert’s got me thinking,” Paul began. The professor perked up a bit, looking in Paul’s direction. “He may be right, you know.”

“What?” Maeve closed the Anthology abruptly, ready to do battle with this unexpected column reinforcing Nordhausen’s position.

“Hear me out. Suppose everything Nordhausen says is true. Suppose we establish a link between the Bermuda Pamphlets and the origin of The Tempest. Like you said at the beginning, Robert: Shakespeare always got his plots from somewhere, and this is one of two plays that seem unusual. No one has found a source for the plot.”

“Get to the point,” Maeve was ready to squash the objection the instant she heard it.

“Well, if we do start looking around, and we go back to Plymouth before the fleet sets sail…” He laid out his line of thought for them. “Don’t you see? A Pushpoint is the triggering event that leads to something really significant in the time line—like the writing of this play. Yet, even though it is so powerful in its influence, it can be disturbed very easily—even prevented from happening altogether. If we were to go to Plymouth we could do something to interfere with the fleet’s departure date without even knowing it, no matter how careful we are to avoid contamination.”

“That’s why we can’t allow it,” said Maeve.

“No,” Dorland corrected her. “That’s why Time won’t allow it. We’d create a Paradox!”

“Oh, here we go again,” said Nordhausen. He had hoped Paul was coming around to his side on the issue, but now he saw that he was spinning off into Time Theory again.

“Think about it,” said Dorland. “If that fleet doesn’t leave Plymouth on June 2nd, and Nordhausen is correct in his idea about the Bermuda Pamphlets, then maybe Shakespeare never writes the damn play!”

Maeve was starting to get angry again, but her head began to filter through the possibilities and she settled into thought. After all, Outcomes and Consequences were her department. She should have seen the Paradox immediately. She was a little perturbed that Paul would happen on it first, but granted him a moment’s respect.

“Paradox.” Paul let the word hang for a moment, and a timely roll of thunder seemed to accent the moment and add just the right dramatic effect. A dog started barking in the rain outside, disturbed by the flash of lightning. “The continuum is very uncomfortable with Paradox, you see, and so I’m afraid we can’t pull on this string, Robert. If we prevent the play from being written then where the hell would we be going tomorrow? Certainly not to the Globe in 1611 to watch a play that was never written!”

“We don’t know that, Paul,” said Nordhausen. “Something else could become the source of the play.”

“Too much haze,” said Dorland. It was a term he used when events became obscured in the time line, and probability algorithms became particularly convoluted. “I was worried about that .0027% discrepancy on the preliminaries, but now I think the possibility of Paradox is very real here. We may have to work this through a bit. Sorry, Robert, but I’ll have to weigh in with Maeve on this one. We watch the play, but nothing else.” He was starting to think that the prospect of Paradox had cropped up all too easily in this scenario, where he least expected it. They had chosen the play as a way of avoiding any potential complications on this first mission. Now, the slightest variation in their planned activities presented problems. Perhaps, he thought, any time travel would eventually lead to some kind of Paradox. Perhaps Nordhausen was right again, and nothing was going to happen tomorrow—nothing at all.

“What’s wrong, Paul? Don’t let that man get you all depressed about this.” Maeve could see that something was clearly bothering him. He was biting at his lower lip as he considered the situation, very agitated. The weather outside rattled the windows, and they caught the sound of voices carried on the wind and rain. The voices seemed to be in Paul’s head as well, a tempest of doubt and uncertainty. Kelly was supposed to bring in the last crucial numbers for their launch, and he was late. Could the annihilating effects of Paradox already be at work?

“I don’t think we’re going to the play tomorrow,” the words just slipped out, and Paul seemed to slump a bit in his chair, clearly upset. They would have to think this through a bit more. They had to be certain nothing would go wrong. Before he could say anything more, however, there was a noise on the stair well outside the study door. Someone was running up the steps with almost frantic footfalls marking his progress. They all turned to look at the door.

“Well, it’s about time Kelly showed up,” Nordhausen put in. The door handle rattled and then the door flew open. Kelly was standing in the entrance, wet, bedraggled and clearly out of breath. His laptop computer was encased in its satchel under his right arm. The gray hood of his rain coat was thrown back and his short brown hair was thoroughly soaked. There was a cut on his forehead, and his normally amiable features were drawn with concern.

“Good Lord,” he panted, “I made it. Never thought I’d get here alive!”

“Kelly, what’s happened?” Maeve had noticed the gash in Kelly’s forehead, and the dribble of blood down one side of his cheek. Nordhausen snapped his pocket watch shut.

“Well I suppose you brought your numbers, yes?” The professor was oblivious to Kelly’s state. “Close the damn door, man!” He turned to look at Kelly when he felt the cold draft, and his eyes widened with surprise.

“Haven’t you heard?” Kelly was still panting.

“What do you mean?” Dorland was up from his chair. Maeve was rushing to get a wet towel from the coffee station.

“You haven’t heard?” Kelly staggered in and reached for the back of a chair. “Well,” he said, swallowing hard. “We aren’t going to see the play tomorrow, that’s for damn sure.”

Everyone just looked at him.

2

The Nordhausen Study: Berkeley, California – 9:45 PM

There was a brief moment of paralysis and then the room animated again as Dorland spoke. “What haven’t we heard? Was there a fire at Sidney Hall?”

“Fire?” Kelly had a confused look on his face. Maeve rushed to his side with a towel soaked in hot water. She waved at Paul to help get Kelly’s raincoat off, but Dorland’s mind immediately shifted back to the project when he caught sight of Kelly’s laptop computer.

“Did you manage to finish your comp cycle?” He was already easing the satchel strap off of Kelly’s shoulder.

“Put that down,” said Maeve. “Can’t you see he’s hurt?”

Paul noticed the cut on Kelly’s forehead for the first time, and winced. Kelly Ramer was one of his oldest and dearest friends. The two men had met in high school and had grown up together, sharing the rich mythology of their adolescence together, a history that often re-emerged in secret shared phrases that carried a wealth of meaning between them, but sounded like childish nonsense to anyone who had not lived out the experience they referred to.

They clowned together, and made silly tapes that they stored away over the years in the ‘Eternal Tape Archives,’ a record of priceless moments they had lived together. They shared the same music and appreciation for literature, and an almost mystical fascination for computers that had become so prevalent in the culture these days. It was Paul who had first caught the computer bug, and he quickly persuaded his friend to acquire one of the very first ‘personal computers’ that could be bought in the mid 1980s, a Commodore 64. From there they both graduated to an Amiga 1000 and then jumped on the first 286 series computers that began to circulate as ‘IBM clones’ when the PC age began to gather steam. Kelly went on to specialize in computer networks and the arcane science of Information Technology. They were in their early twenties then, and now, over 25 years later, Kelly was ready to celebrate his 48th birthday, though no one would guess he was that age to look at him. While he carried a little extra weight through the mid-section, he had a full head of dark brown hair, and a sharp, animated intelligence that found him interested in virtually everything. He gave his friend a look of wild eyed surprise, and Paul stopped what he was doing, immediately sensing that there was something very wrong.

“Good Lord,” said Kelly. “You mean you three have been in here locked away in a meeting all this time?”

“Yes,” said Nordhausen from across the room, “and where have you been all this time?”

Kelly slumped into a chair and Maeve was already dabbing at the cut on his forehead. “How in the world did you do this?” her eyes wrinkled with concern.

“It’s chaotic out there,” Kelly burst out.

“Well, I’ve heard of unruly crowds at concerts,” said Maeve, “but for Verdi?”

“Verdi?” Kelly gave them all a disoriented look. “Hell, the whole city is in an uproar! People are running around like madmen out there.”

“What in blazes are you talking about?” said Nordhausen. “It’s just a little rainstorm. People in California get positively silly with a little rain. They don’t know how to drive and they—”

“OK, Time out!” Kelly raised his voice, making the telltale sign of a ‘T’ with his hands as he spoke. “Turn on CNN. You’re not going to believe this.”

“I don’t keep a television in the study,” said Nordhausen. “I barely tolerate my set at home.”

“Then turn on a radio or something, there’s been one hell of an eruption in the Atlantic and the whole east coast is in a panic.”

“Eruption?” Dorland was immediately interested. “Where?”

“The Canary Islands, off West Africa.” Kelly took a deep breath. “Palma,” he continued. “The whole western flank of Cumbre Vieja has collapsed. There was a massive landslide.”

Paul had often talked about the prospect of such a collapse ever since he had first stumbled on the research of Dr. Simon Day around the turn of the millennium. Day, and his colleagues at the Hazard Research Center of University College in London, had been warning about a build-up of groundwater in vertical columns that seemed to be destabilizing the flank of the Cumbre Vieja Volcano on the Island of Palma. The research indicated that it could be some time, many hundreds of years, in fact, before an eruption capable of collapsing the flank would occur. Paul hesitated when he first heard the news, but he immediately began digging for all the information Kelly had. “When did it happen?”

“About three hours ago, from what I could pull in on the car radio. I had just finished my comp cycle and I was rushing to get over here. The traffic is crazy! People are all over the streets and BART stations are jammed. Hell, some idiot walked right in front of my car and just stood there. I leaned on the horn but old guy refused to budge. Then, he just looked at his watch and walked away. In any case, I got curious as to what all the commotion was about and turned on the car radio. Every channel had the same story!”

“Tsunami!” Dorland had already surmised the implications.

“Mega tsunami,” Kelly corrected him. “Remember that book by Bill McGuire we picked up at Borders a few years back?”

“You mean the book on natural catastrophes?”

“It’s happened! The coast of North Africa got slammed an hour ago. A 200 foot wave hit Western Sahara about an hour after the eruption.”

“Thank God that’s a sparsely populated coast,” said Maeve.

“Yes, but Casablanca got hit further north in Morocco and was all but inundated. The water wasn’t as high there. Some reports have it at under hundred feet, but that was on the back side of the event. The main force of the water dome will be directed west across the Atlantic and—”

“The east coast,” said Dorland. He ran over to the bookcase scanning about desperately. “Where’s your atlas, Robert?”

“Bottom shelf; to the right.” Nordhausen was up off his chair to assist. In a moment they had a thick volume of the Rand McNally World Atlas over on the study table and Paul was frantically flipping through the pages for a map of the Atlantic. “I’ll get my shortwave.” Nordhausen ran off and flung open a closet near the entrance. Maeve was still trying to dab the last traces of blood from Kelly’s cheek.

“Did you fall or something?” she asked, clearly as concerned for Kelly’s well-being as anything else. She had come to know him quite well since she joined the project three years ago, and they often worked together running calculations for Maeve’s Outcome studies. She was quite fond of Kelly, though a bit awkward with that emotion and too quick to hide it with the routine of their work.

“Like I said, it’s crazy out there. People are running around like idiots. I jumped on 280 to take it up to the Bay Bridge two hours ago and it was jammed.” Kelly was waving his arms about as he spoke. “It took me an hour to get over the bridge, and when I got up here it was almost nine PM. I tried to call, but couldn’t find my cell phone. Probably left it at the University. I got off at my normal exit and made for the pay phone near a Seven-Eleven. When I got out to make the call, some idiot came around the corner and damn near ran me down. I jumped back and slipped. Hit my head on a god-damned street sign! The guy never even stopped. People are running around like madmen out there. I was so pissed off that I just went back to the car and hurried over here.”

“We need to try and get more time on the Berkeley computers,” said Maeve. “It’s too hard going into the City, especially the night before the project launch. I told you we should have set the meeting later, Paul.” Maeve had a distracted, almost pained expression on her face, and she was still fussing with the towel, maneuvering to press a clean surface to the cut on Kelly’s forehead.

“I’ll be fine,” Kelly tried to smile.

“When was the eruption?” Dorland had found his map and was squinting over the page, his finger pressed on the blue surface of the Atlantic off the coast of West Africa. “Did you say three hours ago?”

“Quiet down people,” Nordhausen chimed in. “I can’t hear this thing.” He was fiddling with the dial of his combination AM/FM and shortwave radio, angling the antenna to try and improve the reception. A peal of thunder intruded and the sound of voices seemed to increase outside the study window.

“Three hours…” Dorland pursed his lips as he thought. “Did you say the wave that hit Western Sahara was over 200 feet?”

“Two hundred fucking feet!” Kelly still had the same look of amazement on his face. “Can you believe that? I heard this an hour ago and I still can’t get my mind around it.”

“Well if it was that high on the back end of the eruption I can only imagine what the water dome was like when the flank of the volcano went into the ocean. Are you sure it was the western flank of Cumbre Vieja?”

“That’s what they said on the news. Hell, Robert, why don’t you have a television in here?”

Nordhausen frowned at him, his ear pressed against the speaker of the shortwave radio as he turned the dial with his other hand.

“Let’s see,” said Dorland. The speed of the landslide had to be between 100 and 200 meters per second.” He was calculating something in his mind, brown eyes rolling towards the ceiling as he considered. “That’s going to push some mean water out into the Atlantic,” he concluded. “Three hours would put the wave-front of the tsunami sequence somewhere east of the mid Atlantic Ridge by now. Anybody who was living on the coastal regions of the Canary Islands is dead, and I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass for real estate in the Azores. Another ten or fifteen minutes and that place will be history, if you’re right about the eruption time.”

“I’ve got something!” Nordhausen rushed over to the study table and set the shortwave down next to the open Atlas. He adjusted the volume and they all leaned in to listen, faces blank with anticipation. Maeve bit at her lower lip, clearly upset.

“This is the BBC…” There was a wash of static as the signal faded briefly but the announcer came back on as Nordhausen jiggled the antenna.

“Get an AM station,” said Kelly, frowning at Nordhausen as he adjusted the antenna. “Will you let go of that?” Kelly shot him an exasperated look.

“I’m improving the damn reception.” Nordhausen’s body acted as an extension of the antenna when he touched the slim metal and Kelly hushed up, leaning in to hear the news.

“The eruption reported on the island of Palma in the Canary Islands has now been confirmed. Seismographic signatures reported at receiving stations in London set the time of the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja Volcano at a few minutes past four in the morning, Greenwich Mean Time.”

“That would be eight-o-clock our time,” said Paul. The signal faded briefly and Kelly shot a warning glance at Nordhausen, still convinced he was somehow interfering with the reception. Maeve went over to the sink at the coffee station, still listening as she rinsed the towel off under a stream of hot water. No one noticed as she eyed the telephone on the wall, picking the receiver up for a moment before putting it back in its cradle.

“…Damage reports are still sketchy at this time, and we have no official news yet from Santa Cruz de la Palma. Authorities have declared a state of national emergency in Morocco where tsunami waves struck a little before six in the morning, Greenwich Mean Time. It now appears that coastal cities and towns have been hit very hard there, and at Casablanca, a wave series exceeding 30 meters in height struck the city and harbor causing extensive loss of life and catastrophic damage. The tsunami is expected to strike the Straits of Gibraltar within the hour and all citizens are advised to seek the highest possible ground. Meanwhile, authorities in London estimate the speed of the tsunami sequence moving west from the Canary Islands into the Atlantic to be in excess of eight-hundred kilometers per hour. A high water tsunami warning is now in effect for the entire north Atlantic, and a severe flood warning has been issued for the Azores. Authorities also believe the coasts of Portugal, France and even the UK are in for extreme tidal surges in the morning hours of Wednesday. Evacuation orders are now being issued for all areas below fifty meters in elevation where citizens are advised to seek higher ground inland and migrate away from coastal regions immediately…” A burst of static interfered with the transmission again.

“They won’t get hit very hard,” said Dorland. “The Iberian Peninsula will take the steam out of the northern wave fronts. They’ll just catch secondary sequences rebounding from the coast of Portugal.”

“I’d hate to live in Lisbon,” Nordhausen put in. “The 1755 tsunami that hit after an earthquake in the Atlantic was estimated to be no more than 15 meters, but it still killed some 60,000 people.”

“Not to mention the tsunami after Krakatau blew its top in the late 1880s.” Dorland had always had a fascination for natural catastrophes. “That event produced wave run-ups of 30 to 40 meters above normal sea level. In flat-lying areas the water swept inland for many miles—right through dense jungle! There were over 30,000 killed there.”

“Wasn’t there an event in Alaska in recent times?” Asked Nordhausen.

“Lituya Bay,” said Dorland. “July, 1958. It was a combination of many forces after a strong earthquake in the eight-plus range. The ground motion of the quake triggered a giant rock-fall at the head of the bay. It was as if an asteroid had hit the bay and this caused a massive upwelling of water that actually lifted huge segments of glacial ice. The wave splash was thought to be over 1700 feet! Thankfully, the damage was mostly confined to the local area and it was sparsely populated.”

“What about us?” Kelly reached out to adjust the reception dial. “Can’t you get any local stations on that? I’m sure every station in the world has picked up the story by now.”

“What’s wrong with the BBC?” said Nordhausen. “Imagine what’s just happened, people. They’ve got nothing out of Palma because everyone’s dead. God only knows how they got the news on Casablanca!”

“Must have been reported by incoming airline traffic,” said Dorland. He was squinting at his map again, still calculating. “The Madiera Archipelago has probably been wiped off the face of the earth,” he said. The Azores and the Cape Verde Islands are next. Anyone who can’t get to high ground there had better find an airplane.”

“Those are all volcanic islands,” said Nordhausen. “They’ll have plenty of elevation, but I doubt the residents had much warning.”

“What about us?” Kelly asked again. He switched the reception dial to the AM position.

“Leave that alone!” Nordhausen was after him in a minute, reaching in to re-set the dial.

“We’re in no danger here, of course,” said Dorland “But the east coast has about six hours.”

“What?” Kelly had lost his battle with Nordhausen and folded his arms in resignation as he half listened for the shortwave signal again. Nordhausen adjusted the dial.

“You don’t think it will be that bad out east, do you, Paul?”

“Are you kidding?” Paul spun the map around so they could see better. “Most of the energy is heading west into the Atlantic. The wave front that hit Western Sahara was bad because it was so close to the initial eruption, but the damage in this hemisphere is going to be appalling. Wave heights will probably be well above fifty meters in northern Brazil. It’s likely they’ll see water that high coming ashore in Florida, New York, Boston, hell, all the way up to Greenland! It all depends on the initial velocity of the landslide during the collapse. If it exceeded a hundred meters per second we could see wave run-ups of at least ninety meters on the east coast. Water that high, with that much force behind it, will push inland for miles. This is going to be very bad.”

“Christ, no wonder everyone’s in a panic out there,” said Kelly. “They’re all running to get home and call grandma! Anybody have relatives on the east coast?”

“It will take eight or nine hours after the eruption for the tsunami front to cross the Atlantic,” said Dorland. “If the eruption occurred just after 4:00 AM, GMT, that would be 8:00 PM our time—just when we arrived here for the meeting. Add six hours and that would put high water on the coast of Brazil at about 2:00 in the morning our time, and the Eastern Seaboard of the US will get slammed about two hours later. Probably around 4:00 AM our time, or just about dawn back east.”

“But won’t the waves have time to dissipate as they cross the Atlantic?” Kelly was hopeful, but Dorland knew the worst of the disaster was still ahead.

“I’m afraid not. Actually, the waves won’t seem so bad as they cross the Atlantic—at least to ship traffic in deep water. They’ll notice the increased ocean swell, but not much else. When all that water begins to hit the continental shelf, however, we’ll begin to get real wave formation. The water has to go somewhere as it approaches the coastal shallows. The deep ocean swells will begin to build as wave run-ups.”

“You mean it actually gets worse as it reaches the coast?”

“Much worse,” said Dorland.

“It’s the end of the world!” Nordhausen chimed in.

“Hell, it’s not going to be funny, Robert.” Paul didn’t like the hint of levity in Nordhausen’s tone. “Do you have any idea how much damage a seventy meter wave sequence will do to the Eastern Seaboard? If it’s ninety meters or more this is going be a real catastrophe.”

“A lot of people live on that coastline. Can you imagine the panic back there? The roads must be jammed!” Nordhausen thought for a moment. “I mean, there they were, sleeping quietly while we were sitting here waiting for Kelly. Then word comes in that the entire Eastern Seaboard is threatened by a ninety meter tsunami—Lord, that’s approaching three-hundred feet—and everyone within twenty miles of the coast needs to be evacuated at once!”

“I’ve got a station in D.C.,” Kelly had taken good advantage of the time to wrest control of the shortwave. “Listen up…”

“…Please stay tuned to your local emergency broadcast frequency at all times. To repeat again, the Office Of Emergency Preparedness, in conjunction with the National Weather Service and FEMA, has issued a mandatory evacuation order for all coastal cities on the east coast of the United States. This affects all communities from Eastport, Maine and south to the Florida Keys. Citizens are advised to leave immediately and head inland to a safe distance of at least thirty miles from the Atlantic Seaboard. A severe tsunami warning is now in effect for the entire east coast of the United States and all Islands of the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic. Please stay tuned to your local emergency broadcast frequency at all times for important updates…”

The tension of the moment was broken by the clatter of a coffee mug falling to the floor. They all turned to see Maeve stooping to reach for it by the coffee station, a look of real distress on her face.

“Calm down, Maeve,” Nordhausen put in. “We have nothing to fear here on this coast.”

Kelly suddenly remembered something, and he got up at once, rushing over to Maeve’s side to help her up. He folded an arm around her slim shoulders and guided her over to the study table. “Come sit with us, Maeve.” His voice softened, comforting, understanding something the others were not aware of.

“It’s my mother,” said Maeve, her eyes glassy as she spoke. “She’s in Boston, and there’s no way that woman is going to hear about this tonight. She’s eighty two years old and…”

Kelly helped her into a chair and the others took in the moment with a bit of silence. The radio droned on and Kelly reached out to cut the volume. “Like I said,” he began. “We aren’t going to the play tomorrow.”

“Sorry, Maeve,” said Paul.

“Can I get you anything?” Kelly was very pleased to turn the tables on her now and take up the role of the caretaker.

“A cup of decent coffee would be nice, if you can find anything left in the professor’s larders.” Maeve rested her elbow on the study table, her chin in the palm of her hand.

“Guess I’m not so unlucky,” said Paul. “My folks died a peaceful death a few years back. I’ve got relatives in Western Pennsylvania, but the only danger they may be facing is the chaos that will likely result when the tide of refugees pours west from the coast. Who knows how far the water will push inland? Something tells me the human flood may be just as bad as the real thing. How about you, Robert—Any relatives back east? ”

Nordhausen was on the radio again. “Quiet everybody,” he said. “Just got report of an oil tanker in the Atlantic that put out an S.O.S. The report says the ship reported heavy seas and severe ocean swells, but she’s still afloat. She was about fifty nautical miles west of the Azores. It seems there’s an early hurricane out there to complicate things even further.”

“The Azores are gone,” said Paul. “Another three hours and the tsunami will reach Bermuda. It’s little more than a glorified sandbar. Elevation doesn’t exceed 80 feet anywhere on the island. The wave front will wipe that place clean and the east coast gets hit a bit later. You could still call your mother, Maeve.”

“The line is dead,” Maeve said sullenly. “I tried a few minutes ago.”

“Probably the storm, or everyone trying the same idea. The telephone circuits must be jammed.”

“I don’t suppose it would make much difference if I could call.” Maeve had a resigned look on her face. “She’s an eighty-two year old woman, Paul; with a bad hip. Should I call her up and tell her that a giant wave is about to…”

Kelly put his arm around her. Nordhausen went off to rummage about in his cupboards for a trace of coffee. Dorland had a vacant look on his face. “Well, I was wondering if we would see one in our lifetime,” he began, “and now I’m fairly certain we have. I thought nine-eleven came close back in 2001, but it will pale beside this. History is unveiling one of her most defining mysteries, people. We’re going to live through a Grand Imperative—though a lot folks on the east coast aren’t going to be so lucky. Sorry again, Maeve. I’ll shut up.”

“I’m all right,” Maeve raised a hand. “Better if we talk about it. I think it’s going to be a very long night.”

“And we’re out of coffee,” said Nordhausen. “Anyone for tea?” He came back to the table holding a tin of Earl Grey.

“The casualties will be extreme, I’m afraid.” Paul was rambling on. “A wave that high will sweep right over Manhattan Island. Hell, the highest ground in New York is only about 280 feet at Bennett Park. Ditto for Brooklyn and the Bronx. Staten Island has high ground at the landfill—I think over 400 feet, but how many people will want to be clinging to the top of a big rubbish heap when the tsunami hits?”

“What about the buildings?” Nordhausen set the tea tin down on the table. “The Empire State Building is over a thousand feet high.”

“If it stands,” said Paul. “Look how easy it was to topple the World Trade Center. The wave front will hit with tremendous force. To make matters worse, the weather channel said it was high tide tonight, and that hurricane off the coast will just make things worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if the initial wave front knocks down an awful lot of concrete on Manhattan. That will just be the beginning, though. This isn’t just one big wave heading west from Palma; it’s a sequence of waves.”

“Not exactly a tempest in a teapot.” Nordhausen set an empty tea pot down on the study table. “And this thing will effect the entire east coast?”

“As far north as Greenland,” said Paul. “Here…” he took out a pen and began tracing lines on the atlas map. “I hope you don’t mind, Robert.” Nordhausen gave him a dismissive nod, and Dorland continued drawing. He finished and slid the map into the center of the table. “That’s how the wave pattern should look about six hours after the eruption.”

Nordhausen stared at the map. His eyes narrowing with concern. “I see,” he said. “Brazil, Venezuela, all the Caribbean islands…”

“Florida is going to get hammered,” said Dorland. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the water sweeps all the way over the peninsula into the Gulf of Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to die when the sun comes up on the east coast tomorrow. Imagine it! All those time lines are going to be changed forever. The Meridians all end with the Palma Grand Imperative.”

“Good Lord, Paul,” said Nordhausen, “you aren’t going to start in with your time theory again are you? I’d take a clue from Kelly there. The project is off. We aren’t going anywhere tomorrow. I never thought we were in the first place, Grand Imperative or not.”

“Wait a second,” said Kelly. “Who said the project is off? It’s more important than ever now!”

“Oh, it’s a wonderful idea,” Nordhausen jibed at him, “but you don’t honestly think we would just excuse ourselves in the face of the greatest national catastrophe in history and amble off to the year 1612 to take in a play, do you?”

“Or look for the damn Bermuda Pamphlets.” Maeve took up the thread of her argument with Nordhausen again, but Kelly was shaking his head.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “We’ve got the project Arch all configured for 1612, but I can run new numbers for anywhere else you’d care to go. Perhaps we can do something about this.”

“It’s an Imperative, Kelly,” Paul frowned as he rubbed his chin. “It’s a natural event, not a willful event. There’s nothing we could possibly do to prevent the eruption.”

“Well we could warn people!” Kelly kept trying.

“Oh, that would be a sight,” said Nordhausen. “We’ll all dress up in emergency gear and take a short range jaunt, say five or ten days before the eruption? Then we can run around telling everyone the east coast is about to be destroyed.”

“You know that’s impossible,” said Dorland “We can only go back to a time beyond our own Life-Shadow. You can’t go to any time you actually lived. That’s Paradox with a capital P, and it can’t happen.”

“Of course it can’t happen,” said the professor. “The shortest jump we could make, assuming we could jump at all, would have to be to a time before any of us were born—well before we were born so we couldn’t possibly interfere with our own potential time lines.”

“It’s an Imperative event,” Dorland put in again. “We can’t change it, no matter where we go.”

A knock on the door surprised everyone in the room.

“Who could that be?” Kelly got up and started for the door.

“I’m not expecting anyone,” said Nordhausen. “Probably local police with a civil defense warning.”

“Probably one of those idiots running around in the street,” said Kelly. He twisted the door knob and pulled open the door. A frail, elderly man was standing in the shadows just outside. The noise of the tempest raging through the Bay Area surged into the room on a gust of cold air. “Yes?” Kelly poked his head around the edge of the door, peering into the darkness as he tried to make out the stranger’s face.

“Kelly Ramer?” The visitor’s voice spoke in a near whisper.

“Yes, I’m Mr. Ramer.” He could see that the man was dressed in a heavy overcoat, but that he didn’t seem to be wearing any kind of official uniform. “What is it?” He guessed. “Don’t tell me my car is in someone’s way out there.” The minute he offered the statement he knew how ridiculous it was. How would anyone know that the forest green Subaru with one wheel on the sidewalk outside Nordhausen’s private study belonged to Kelly Ramer?

“Thank God,” the man said. “You’re alive.”

“What?” Kelly was completely confused now.

“Who is it, Kelly?” Maeve came up behind him, her hand on his arm. “Well, invite the man in, dear.”

“Maeve Lindford?” The man stepped forward and the light from the study illuminated his face. He seemed old, perhaps seventy years by the well entrenched gray of his hair. His features were drawn with fatigue, and he paused a moment to look at his wrist watch. “10:45,” he said in a low voice. “I’m a bit early, but no harm. The tape has run out.” He looked up with a smile tugging at the lines around his eyes. “I’ve brought you a little gift, Maeve.”

The man reached into his heavy overcoat and drew out a small parcel. Maeve squinted, then saw what he was holding. A puzzled look came over her features. “A delivery? At this hour?” She instinctively reached out to take hold of the small dark brown bag in the man’s hand, recognizing it at once as a bag of Peets coffee. She raised it to her nose, taking in the aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans.

“May I come in?” The stranger smiled as Maeve looked at the label on the bag. It was Major Dickason’s blend.

3

The Nordhausen Study: Berkeley, California – 10:45 PM

Lightening flashed in the open doorway, and they ushered in the stranger as the resulting peal of thunder rumbled in the distance. The man tramped in, his outer coat and hat sodden with the rain. There was a strange howling on the wind, as if a pack of dogs was trailing in the man’s wake. He paused for a moment, a glimmer of fear and uncertainty in his eyes. The cold air seemed to surround him with a pale, frosty aura. Everyone in the room just looked at him, until Maeve, her social sensibilities more honed than the others, extended an arm and pointed the way to the study table where Dorland and Nordhausen were still hunched over the atlas.

“You’ve come a long way in this weather.” Maeve was still a bit nonplussed. “Peets is on the other side of town.”

“A very long way indeed,” said the stranger.

“Here, let me take your coat and hat, and please make yourself comfortable. Was this a special order? I had no idea Peets would make a delivery like this, but I must say, you couldn’t have come at a better moment. Will you join us? We were just about to brew a fresh pot.”

“I’d be delighted.” The man nodded, his ashen mustache wagging a bit as his features strained to a smile. He had a pale aspect, and he seemed very frail.

“Let me make the introductions.” Maeve was shifting social gears nicely, glad for the odd distraction from the tension of the moment, and glad to put aside the thoughts that were simmering in her mind; the image of a titanic wall of water sweeping into Boston Harbor and obliterating the quaint New England style cottage where her mother was probably sleeping quietly in her bed—dreaming away the last few hours of a very long life.

“This is Paul Dorland, and Professor Robert Nordhausen.” She paused, a strange look in her eye. “You seem to already know Kelly, but I’m sorry, I can’t recall meeting you. Forgive me. I’m sure I’ve been in your store a hundred times. Perhaps we met there? Mr…?”

The obvious question in her voice invited the stranger to answer. She was helping him out of his overcoat, and he reached up to remove his hat as he spoke, smiling graciously. He ran a weathered hand through his sparse gray hair.

“Excuse me,” Kelly closed the door and came up from behind, thinking the man had come to see him about something. “Was there some problem I can help you with?”

“No problem, Kelly,” said Maeve. “He was just making a delivery.” She had the closet door open and was fishing for a coat hanger.

“Well it’s just that…” Kelly thought a moment, smiling. “You seemed surprised to see me a moment ago and—”

“Count your blessings,” Maeve shot over her shoulder. “For someone to come out with a pound of coffee on a night like this is well beyond the call of duty. Let me get my wallet here, before I forget, and I can pay you for this.”

“Please,” the stranger held up a hand. “Don’t trouble yourself. I’m afraid you misunderstand. Yes, I’ve just come over from Peets, but I—” He paused, hesitating for a moment and looking at his watch. “May I sit down?” The man seemed to be somewhat winded.

“Be my guest.” Nordhausen pulled out a chair at the study table and the visitor sat down as the others gathered around.

There was an awkward moment of silence before the visitor spoke up. “Well, I’m afraid this can’t be helped.” He looked at his wrist watch, and Kelly had a puzzled expression on his face as he seated himself. Dorland was watching the man very carefully, his forehead furrowed with concentration.

“Phillip Graves,” the man introduced himself. “I suppose you’ve heard the news?”

“Indeed!” Nordhausen scratched the back of his head. He had noted Paul’s silence, and suddenly had a funny feeling about the unexpected visitor. This was very odd. Why would Peets send over a pound of coffee at this hour of the night? They didn’t deliver coffee at any hour. He struggled to get on top of the situation, but Maeve asked the question first.

“Did one of you lovely gentlemen order this?” She held up the bag of coffee with a glint in her eye. “Robert?” It was logical to assume that Nordhausen was the guardian angel, as the coffee had come to his study address.

“I’d love to think I was that considerate, but I must confess I know nothing about this. Does Peets deliver?”

“Paul?” Maeve smiled in Dorland’s direction. “Did you place an order for tonight’s meeting and forget about it again?”

Dorland glanced at Maeve for a second, but his gaze slipped back to the visitor. He spoke to Maeve, but his eyes swept over the man, focusing on the stranger with a keen inner assessment. “Mr. Graves doesn’t work for Peets, Maeve.” There was a blunt tone to his voice. “He was just was about to tell us he’s come for some other reason.”

The statement focused immediate attention on the visitor, and another awkward silence ensued. The man met Paul’s gaze, a strange mixture of admiration and fear in his eyes. He seemed very anxious, and Nordhausen noticed a sheen of perspiration on the stranger’s brow in spite of the chill on the room from the blast of cold air. He looked at Paul, and then turned to the visitor again with a hint of suspicion adding definition to the corners of his mouth.

Maeve broke the silence, always the gatekeeper as her instincts prompted her to smooth Paul’s remark over. “You must forgive us,” she said. “It’s been a very long night, what with this news and all. We just can’t imagine what this is going to mean now. But, Mr. Graves, was it? Did you have news for someone here tonight?” She was angling for some understanding of why the man had come, taking refuge and comfort in simple politeness, her thoughts still with her mother.

“Yes,” the stranger began. “I’m afraid so, and there’s no other way to begin but this: I’ve come for your help. You’ve all heard the news tonight and, now that Mr. Ramer has arrived, I think it’s safe to proceed. I must ask a very great favor.”

Nordhausen’s eyes narrowed. “Why do I have the odd feeling that you seem to know us, Mr. Graves? You have us at a bit of a disadvantage here.” He was beginning to think the man might work for the government. They had gone to great ends to keep the project privately funded, but government inspectors were always intruding nonetheless, and Nordhausen was concerned that this was just another bureaucratic busybody with some annoying regulation in mind.

“Know all of you?” The man smiled, his manner still a bit anxious as he pressed on. “Why, I suppose I do, in a way. Yes, we’ve never met, though I had a close brush with Mr. Ramer there earlier this evening. You’re a very impatient driver, if I may say so.” He looked in Kelly’s direction with a wan smile.

Kelly was completely befuddled now. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“You were near the BART station earlier tonight after you got off the freeway. You always take that exit. I’m afraid I had to delay you for a moment. I suppose I’d have leaned on the car horn as well, but when you hear what I have to say I think you’ll forgive me. I’m only glad you’re safely here.” He looked at his watch again, as if to reassure himself about something. “I think it’s safe now,” he said looking from one to the other. “We’re in a void—a very deep Nexus Point. We don’t have long, but there’s still time.”

“Time indeed,” said Dorland. His suspicions coalesced into a wry smile and he knew who the man was at last. “What did I tell you, Robert?”

“What’s that?” The professor was looking from Dorland to the visitor, a moment’s uncertainty tugging at him, even as he, too, came to grips with what was happening.

“Don’t you see?” Dorland broke into a broad smile. “That was no chance meeting with Kelly near the BART station. You did that deliberately,” he pointed at the visitor. “You needed to delay Kelly somehow—just a gentle nudge, isn’t that so, Mr. Graves?”

“You are very shrewd, Mr. Dorland. But then, why not? This was all your idea in the first place. Wasn’t it? Well, I was fortunate enough to succeed with Mr. Ramer here, and if the good lady would be so kind as to make us all a cup of that wonderful coffee, I think we should get started.”

The rain on the roof seemed much louder in the silence that followed. Then Dorland broke out in a laugh, and Nordhausen joined in. Kelly and Maeve were staring at them both like they had suddenly been taken ill.

“What in God’s name is going on here?” Kelly gave them an exasperated look. “OK, I want to know who the hell you are, and what the hell is so damn funny!”

Maeve gave him a sharp glance and tugged at his sleeve in spite of her own confusion. But Dorland and Nordhausen just kept laughing and, as she stared at the visitor, she recalled the opening rounds of the running gun battle the two men had fought earlier that evening. “You mean to say that—”

“Someone’s come to join us for coffee after all!” The professor was beaming as he looked at Dorland, his smile conceding a point of long contention with his friend, and seeming to drain away the stress and tension of the night with his laughter.

“Then it works, Robert!” Dorland was ecstatic. “It works!”

“It might work.” The visitor interjected a sobering note. “We hope it will work,” he explained. “In fact, we think it will work, now that we’re on this side of the Shadow, but we’re not quite sure. In any case, we haven’t much time and the situation is desperate. We’re in a void now—a Deep Nexus. We have to get this underway before the tsunami hits the east coast and the event begins to solidify. It’s just a little past eleven. That leaves us another six hours and twenty odd minutes. I’ve saved Kelly, and he has his laptop with him. We need to get started!”

“Wait a second…” Kelly was slowly catching up with the men at the table. “What do you mean you saved me? And what was this business about the BART station? You mean you’re the guy I was honking at?”

“I had to delay you, Mr. Ramer.” The visitor gave him an apologetic glance. “It was only a matter of a few seconds, but it was enough. You were the Primary Lever, you see. We determined that from the tape of the meeting. I must say, I’ve listened to that tape a hundred times. I really feel I do know you, at least the three of you: Mr. Dorland here, and the good Professor, and of course you, my dear Maeve. I know you like we were old friends, and I will be very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Ramer, now that I’ve managed to prevent your untimely death.” He let that statement sink in for a moment.

Kelly just stood there, his mouth half open, but the light of understanding was gleaming in Maeve’s eyes, and she put her arm around him, whispering something in his right ear.

“Gentle nudge indeed.” Nordhausen put in.

“Right in the rib of history!” Dorland smiled.

“You were taping this?” Maeve gave Paul a disapproving look.

“For history’s sake. But I think my tape has run out by now.”

“It stopped at twelve minutes after ten,” said the visitor. “I aimed to arrive here well after that, so as to avoid any… complications.”

Kelly just stared at them. As the realization of what they were saying swept over him, all he could feel was the pressure of Maeve’s arm around his shoulder, claiming him, welcoming him. He passed a brief moment of light headedness, and a sudden chill shook his frame. The visitor was looking at his watch again.

“It’s time,” he concluded. “You’re safe now Mr. Ramer, though I see from that cut on your forehead that the world still managed to take a swipe at you.”

“You’re from the future,” Kelly whispered, “and you’re telling me I was supposed to die tonight? You deliberately stepped in front of my car to delay me?” He kept replaying the close call he had when he stopped at the Seven-Eleven in his mind.

“As far as we know,” the visitor said in a low, serious tone, “you were killed by an onrushing vehicle as you went to cross the street at the intersection of—”

“Good God,” Kelly seemed to slump in his chair.

“It’s eleven-o-five,” said the visitor. “We’re a minute past your official recorded time of death now, so I suppose this is another life for you, Mr. Ramer—perhaps another life for us all. But we haven’t much time. The first wave is due to hit the Grand Banks of Newfoundland at eleven minutes past seven, Eastern Standard Time—just after 4:00 AM locally. After that the situation begins to spiral out of control. In another two hours it hits the Eastern Seaboard, and the damage will be too severe to reverse. The event will solidify. For the moment, however, we still have a chance. We’re in a void, you see. It’s a rare interval of grace; a little null spot, like the eye of a hurricane. The tempest rails all around us, but for the next six hours we have to make the most of it. We’ve only this one chance.”

Dorland was taking everything in, smiling to think that his theory on the possibility of time travel had been vindicated—proved beyond any doubt even before they had a chance to test it! His dear friend Kelly was to have died tonight, and he passed a moment of profound thanks that the amiable man was still sitting there, albeit a bit flustered, looking from the visitor, to Nordhausen and then Maeve. In the midst of his elation, however, a nagging thought came to him. He had explained it to the others just a few moments ago when Kelly had been arguing about juggling the numbers on the Arch coordinates.

“Just a moment,” he interjected. “I’m as amazed as everyone else to hear all of this, but there’s something wrong.” The visitor smiled turning his attention to Dorland as if he expected the comment. “The eruption on Palma…” Paul continued looking from one face to another. “It’s a natural event, not a willful event. If you’re thinking we can somehow use these six hours to change things, I’m afraid you’ve come all this way for nothing. Oh, I assure you, I’m profoundly grateful if what you’ve said about Kelly is true. I don’t know what I’d do without him. But the fact of the matter is this: The Palma eruption is an Imperative—Probably a Grand Imperative, and it can’t be changed.”

“I’m afraid you are laboring under a misapprehension,” said the visitor. Everyone looked at him, waiting like supplicants at the throne of the Oracle. “The eruption was not a natural event. You’ll learn this momentarily if you keep your shortwave tuned to the BBC, Professor Nordhausen.”

“What did I tell you!” Nordhausen was up and reaching for the radio, intending to tune in the British news station again as he wagged a finger at Kelly.

“Not a natural event?” Now it was Dorland’s turn to swim in the eddies of confusion that seemed to pervade the room.

“I’m afraid not. Oh, it was probably going to erupt one day on its own, but this time it had a little help.” The visitor looked at his watch. “Let me be brief: The BBC is about to announce that there has been evidence of an unnatural explosive event at the time of the eruption. In point of fact, it was a twenty kiloton nuclear device that was smuggled on to the island by Islamic radicals over a year ago. The plan was in the works for some time, you see. They rented a small villa on the western slopes of the mountain—very secluded. After the World Trade Center incident, and all the talk about an Islamic bomb in Iraq, everyone was so concerned about security in the major cities that they never thought to look in a place like the Canary Islands. To make matters brief, they did their research and managed to get a device onto the island by helicopter. They were months drilling through the cellar level of the villa to get a pipe deep enough to plant the device where the blast would do them some good. We’ve got this first hand from… reliable sources. The recent upwelling of the magma dome on Cumbre Vieja was coincidental, of course, but it led them to believe they could trigger a major eruption with a device of sufficient strength. It so happened the volcano was amenable to their little plan, and the rest, as they say, is history. At least it was history. I’m hoping we can change that.”

“Listen,” said Nordhausen. “BBC is reading a statement that was supposedly sent by a group of the terrorists!” He adjusted the volume on his shortwave and they all leaned in to hear the news.

‘…We are patient, forgiving. We are seekers only of peace, but as Allah chooses, then the command is given for the seas to rise and pound the shore. We are but an instrument, to that power. As the oceans are made up of an uncountable number of individual drops of serene waters, when Allah commands, those drops come together to form the most powerful force on earth, the ocean of Believers, who’s waves of faith become the hammer upon which justice is delivered to all followers of Satan.’

“Then it was a willful event after all!” Dorland’s was breathing quickly as he spoke. “The Palma event was the work of a Free Radical.”

“Precisely,” said Graves. “It was the brain child of one Ra’id Husan al Din—Oh you’ll learn about him soon enough. If you thought Bin Ladin was a Free Radical, then just you wait. Well, as you know from your own time theory, Mr. Dorland, the work of a Free Radical can give rise to significant variations in all the time lines they cross. Sometimes these variations can be quite profound, as in the case of the Bin Ladin nine-eleven attack back in the year 2001. But this, ladies and gentlemen, takes the prize. The Holy Fighters of Husan al Din, as they came to be called in the West, came up with this little gem and set the whole world off its kilter. His name means the ‘Sword of the Faith,’ and appropriately so. He cuts the fabric of the time continuum so badly that chaos ensues.”

He looked at them, eyes flashing under his cinder brows. “The Palma Event was not a Grand Imperative, as you first concluded, Mr. Dorland. It was, however, a Radical Transformation: a catastrophic alteration of the time continuum due to the influence of a profound Free Radical. You said it yourself on the tape I’ve listened to so many times: hundreds of thousands of people are going to die when the sun comes up on the east coast tomorrow. All those time lines are going to be changed forever—unless we do something about it in the next six hours.”

A stunned silence fell on them all. Nordhausen was fiddling with the shortwave and a glint of satisfaction sparked in his eye. “He’s right!” He nearly shouted at them. “BBC is announcing evidence of unusually high radiation levels. The Brits sent a Canberra out of Gibraltar to over-fly the island.”

“It will be confirmed shortly by American Satellite Intelligence,” said Graves. “They picked up the initial explosion on their early detection system. By now the President is in an airplane heading west with a fighter escort, Section ‘R’ of the emergency government has been activated, and there’s quite a panic underway on your Eastern Seaboard. It’s just after two in the morning back there, and it’s going to be a long, terrible night.”

“No shit…” Kelly’s eloquence seemed to sum things up.

“There’s still something troubling me,” said Dorland. “We would have heard this news in time. The professor there is already piecing it together. Are you saying we found out about the terrorist attack and failed to act in time?”

“You failed to act at all.” The visitor looked at Kelly. “It was Mr. Kelly’s fate that preoccupied you this night, not the fate of the Eastern Seaboard. In the midst of the greatest tragedy in modern times, the simplicity of one man’s death had a profound effect on all three of you. Your telephone was supposed to ring about the same time I arrived at your doorstep. It was supposed to be the hospital, of course, with news of Mr. Ramer’s accident. I made sure nothing like that could happen by cutting the line an hour ago. It was just a backup plan in case my intervention failed to prevent the accident. In the history I know, however, the call came in and the three of you rushed across town in the midst of all this rain and growing alarm. We don’t really know why you never tried to use the Arch. There’s been a great deal of speculation, of course. Some think that Kelly’s computer savvy was the key to getting the right calculations in order; others attribute the failure to the deep depression that seemed to settle over Mr. Dorland there after the death of his friend. And you, my dear Maeve, were quite shaken by the events of this night. Still others felt that it was your input on Outcomes and Consequences that was most needed, and with the death of both your mother and your emerging…” He seemed to catch himself, pausing for a moment. “…The suffering of your new-found friends here,” he corrected himself. “It was all very traumatic.”

Maeve heard his comment about her mother, and her eyes hazed over with pain. The visitor continued, very intent on what he was trying to say.

“I could go on and on about this forever, and we haven’t the time. I didn’t come here to point history’s finger at any of you. We came to our own conclusions about why you never tried. The research was shunted aside, and not discovered again until… much later. The point is, we now think everything turned on the death of Mr. Ramer. The accident at the Seven-Eleven was a Primary Lever on all of you. I argued the point most eloquently, and the council finally acceded. There were many who saw the Palma Event as a Finality—so rooted in the stream of the continuum that it could not be altered. I had to quote them chapter and verse from your papers on the theory, Mr. Dorland. Eventually I convinced them that if they were correct in that assumption, there was one chance of altering the Radical Transformation. One slim chance.”

“Pushpoint…” Dorland spoke the words with an almost reverent whisper. “Every Finality creates one moment in time where the possibility of reversal blooms in a brief interval at one given point on the continuum. The two opposites arise mutually. Then, the event solidifies and the shadow it casts on the continuum becomes impenetrable.”

“I could not have said it better, Mr. Dorland.” The visitor took a deep breath, the lines of his face long and drawn, his eyes almost pleading. He was sweating profusely now as he spoke. “Dear me… I may have already said too much here…” The wind was still howling at the night outside, and the visitor eyed the windows with a glimmer of fear, harried a bit by the sound. He seemed to pause at the edge of a precipice in his thinking, and then leapt over.

“It’s too late for us—In the time of my natural life. We can’t see through the Penumbra, through the shadow cast on the time line by the Palma Event and all it gives rise to. We’ve tried to reason it out—we’ve thrown enormous computing resources at the problem, such as we had available in our time. It was leading us nowhere. Every attempt we made at opening up the continuum failed. Every time we tried to go back to the crucial moment we were stopped by the Penumbra of Palma. It acted as a great barrier. Then I came up with this little idea. We were trying to get back too far, I told them.” His thin hands waved about to add emphasis. “If we could focus all our resources on sending one man through; and if we could just reach any time at all close to the onset of the event, then there would be a chance to prompt action from here, from this side of the shadow—before the wave-front strikes the coast. We made six attempts. They all died in the Arch. The shadow was just too formidable for us. We made… adjustments. We tried something new, and I volunteered for the seventh attempt. Thank God, I made it through.”

“When did you arrive?” Dorland was spellbound.

“Seven years ago. We missed our mark, you see. Bit of a bumpy ride getting through the Penumbra. It’s a miracle I got through at all.”

“Seven years? Why, you had all that time to plan alternative action and you waited until the night of the event to do anything?”

“You don’t understand,” said the visitor. “The Lever was here—it was now. It was instrumental that I prevent the death of Mr. Ramer. That was all. There was nothing I could do to prevent the rise of Ra’id Husan al Din and his Holy Fighters in this time. They were part of a fire that started long ago, and we could not get far enough back to do anything about it.”

“But you had information—vital information that could have worked to change history in any number of ways. All you had to do was call the FBI and tell them about the bomb.”

“Who would have believed me?” Graves looked at them. “An anonymous tip called in among the thousands of anonymous tips in the deluge of misinformation and false alarms that became the heart of the terrorist strategy after the World Trade Center fell. Would you have even believed me, say, four years ago; before you dreamt up this project?

“But where have you been all this time?”

“In a monastery! I had to avoid contact and let things germinate on their own to prevent the possibility of Paradox. It’s very real, you know. It’s not just a clever twist of the mind. It kills. Time is a harsh mistress, Mr. Dorland. We have lifted her skirts once too often, you see, and many have died. We know better. That little stunt you were planning with the Bermuda Pamphlets, for example, could have gotten you all killed! The only way to be certain, to be safe, was to limit my influence on the time line as much as possible until the actual moment where I could do some good. All our research pointed to the death of Mr. Ramer as a Primary Lever on the three of you. We decided to gamble everything on that one throw of the dice. Outcomes and Consequences had very good numbers for us. They predicted that, if Kelly had lived, you would most certainly have tried something with your experiment. You wanted to visit the Globe in 1612 to take in the Tempest—it’s all on the tape we recovered. We had to decide what to do. Should we simply act on Mr. Ramer’s behalf and hope for the best, or take more drastic action?”

“Well you have certainly let the cat out of the bag with this little visit.” Dorland was pacing again, his mind a whirl. “The possibility of Paradox is very real now. You’ve revealed things here—”

“I know…” There was fear in the visitor’s eyes. “But we had to take the risk. It was our last chance at survival. I was resolved not to say anything to you here until we were safely in the void. I was very patient, Mr. Dorland. Very patient.” He clutched at his chest as he spoke, his fist tightly balled, eyes wide with the intensity of his argument. “It was your theory…” His breathing seemed to come faster as he spoke. “A moment exists, somewhere in time, and it can undo the catastrophe that is about to change the entire world. We must find it, and that quickly. We are in the eye of the tempest now. We have less than six hours before the wave-front is scheduled to make first landfall. You have a fully operational Arch ready here, and you must use it tonight.”

Nordhausen put down his shortwave and leaned heavily on the table. “Use it tonight? To go where?”

“You must find the Meridian and stick the needle in…” The visitor seemed pale and drawn as he labored to persuade them. “Oh my… I was hoping the void would keep me a while…” He gave them all a wild-eyed look. “Stick the needle in…” he said again, and then collapsed, fainting dead away and sliding off the chair onto the floor.

Part II

The Dreamers

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”

T.E. Lawrence – The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

4

The Nordhausen Study: Berkeley, California – 11:30 PM

Maeve was the first to render assistance, Kelly at her side. Together they reached to cradle the visitor’s head from the hard wood floor of the study. A moment later, Paul helped Kelly lift the man and they carried him gently to the reading room where Nordhausen kept a small love seat. Maeve rushed in with another wet towel and began swabbing the old man’s forehead. She could see no signs of serious injury, but was concerned nonetheless.

“He’s light as a feather,” said Kelly. “Has a pallid look to him, doesn’t he? Do you think he’s had a heart attack?”

Maeve was taking his pulse and looking for other obvious signs of cardiac distress. “I think he just fainted,” she said. “Do you have anything to eat, Robert? The man looks half starved.”

As if to confirm her suspicions, the visitor’s eyes fluttered open and he looked about the room, clearly disoriented. “I seem to have fallen…”

“There now,” said Maeve. “You just fainted. Your pulse is a bit weak, but otherwise normal. You’ve been sweating with a bit of a temperature, I’m afraid. Let’s get something into your stomach and then you rest a bit. Perhaps a hot tea?”

“There’s very little time,” the man tried to return her smile. Then he seemed to remember the urgency of the moment and spoke again. “You must not worry about me,” he whispered. “The Arch… That is the only thing that matters now.” His eyes seemed to look right past her, watching the ceiling and the walls about him with growing anxiety. “No time…” he breathed.

“Yes, yes,” Maeve comforted him. She turned and waved at the others to shoo them out of the room. “You just lie here quietly and I’ll get you something to drink.”

She herded the others back out into the study area and made for the coffee station while Dorland and Nordhausen huddled near the shortwave. They tuned in a few other stations, moving from one emergency bulletin to another until Paul pursed his lips with resignation.

“Six hours,” he said. “Well folks, if we are going to do anything about this business, we had better get started. I’d like to have a word with Mr. Graves, and—”

“Don’t you dare,” Maeve wagged a finger at him. “Give the man a moment to recover, Paul. I’ll get some shortbread and tea into him while you work out a strategy.” She was pouring a cup of the Earl Grey Nordhausen had brewed earlier. “I don’t suppose coffee is the right thing just now, but a little tea will do anyone good.”

Kelly retrieved his laptop and came over to the study table to join the others. “We don’t have much time,” he said. “I’ve got all the algorithms here for the planned mission, but I’m going to need cycles on another Arion system to reconfigure.” He looked at his friend Paul with a puzzled expression. “Where to, boss?”

Dorland ran a hand through his thick, dark hair and cleared his throat. “Good question,” he began. “Any thoughts, Robert? You’re the historian.”

“Lovely,” said Nordhausen. “A madman we haven’t even heard of yet has blown up the island of Palma and we’ve got to find a way to undo the thing. This is a fairly tall order, Paul. The research could take months, years even!”

“We have six hours.” Paul fixed him with a determined look.

“Lord, a few hours ago Maeve was yammering to keep me from sneaking a peek at Shakespeare’s writing desk; now I’m supposed to save the world! Why don’t you go in and ask our visitor from the future? He must have some idea of what we were supposed to do.” He shivered with a sudden cold. “Did someone open the door?”

“Put on the heat, Robert,” said Maeve. She noticed the chill at once. The others felt it as well. “Here, let me get this tea in to Mr. Graves and then we can plan this thing out.”

“We’ll need time on an Arion system,” Kelly repeated. “I can’t log in from here because the phone line is dead. It’s two hours to the City with the traffic and this weather.”

“We’ll just have to try finding something closer,” said Dorland. “What about the system at U.C. Berkeley?”

“You have any time booked?”

“Well, who would be using it on a night like this?”

“Good point,” said Nordhausen. “I’ll bet they closed down and joined the panic out there. I’ve got a U.C. library pass. I just may be able to get us in with my credentials, even if I have to pull seniority to bump someone off the machine.”

“How much time will you need, Kelly?” Dorland was thinking hard.

“Well… That depends on what we need to do. I need at least a half hour to program the preliminaries, but the real work is in fine-tuning the temporal locus. Where are we going?”

Dorland looked over his shoulder. “Maeve? We really must talk with—”

Maeve was standing in the open doorway leading to the reading room, a cup of tea in one hand and a box of shortbread wafers in the other.

“Mr. Graves?” Maeve seemed as if she were calling a lost kitten. She started into the room. “Well that’s odd, he’s gone…” The howling of the wind continued outside, and the rain drummed harder on the roof.

Nordhausen hurried over with Dorland in his wake. “What do you mean he’s—” He came up short, staring into the empty reading room. The love seat was unoccupied, and there was no one by the piano on the far end of the room. Maeve walked to the window and saw it was still locked. There was no other way in, or out, of the room.

“Do you suppose he slipped out the front door?” Nordhausen craned his neck to look at the front entrance, but the door was shut tight, and the emergency chain was still in place.

Dorland said nothing as he entered the room, feeling the remnant of a palpable chill as he approached the love seat. He extended his arm, palm open as if he were feeling the air about him. The cold seemed to emanate from the surface of the love seat. When he touched the fabric he sensed a frosty tinge that was almost wet, and it prompted him to draw his hand back at once.

They just stood there, blank expressions on their faces, but Paul had an eerie sensation in his gut that something was wrong. He stepped back from the love seat, his mind slowly coming to a conclusion about what had happened. The others, Nordhausen in particular, seemed more flustered than anything else. The professor strode boldly across the reading room and leaned over to have a look behind the piano.

“Odd,” he mused aloud. “Very odd. One minute the man keels over and has to be physically carried, then, not five minutes later, he vanishes. Something is very wrong here, Paul. What’s happened?”

Dorland looked at him, and then back at the love seat again, still deep in thought. “I’m not entirely sure,” he began.

“I recall him muttering something about a void.” Nordhausen was still looking about the room, as if he thought he would spy some hint of where the man had gone: behind the music stand, the end table, the white lace curtains by the window. He finally satisfied himself that the stranger was not in the room. “What did he mean by that?”

“I think he knew he was taking a very great risk coming here tonight, just as Maeve argued that you would be taking a great risk by trying to steal away to the back offices at the Globe Theatre during the play. We haven’t even tried our experiment yet, but they have. They know what can happen. What was it he said a moment ago? Time is a harsh mistress. She may be a jealous one as well. Something tells me the whole notion of a Paradox is time’s way of protecting the continuum from contamination, and it’s not just a thorny puzzle. We may have just seen its handiwork. Paradox is real, he said. It kills. Didn’t he try to warn us? If we take the man at his word; if he was from a future time, then his actions here could have triggered some sort of temporal complication that impacted his own personal time line—he may have even created a Paradox.”

“He seemed positively terrified of the thought,” said Nordhausen. “Did you see how the man was perspiring? Why, the moment he sat down at the table it was as if he was afraid to open his mouth.”

Maeve came back from the window, sitting the tea and shortbread on the end table. “He was certainly frightened of something. Did you notice how he looked at you, Paul?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, one moment it seemed as if he was about to burst out with something, and then the next—”

“He was afraid,” Nordhausen concluded.

“Yes, and I’m afraid that without him our task has become immeasurably more difficult.” Paul took one last look at the love seat, and then led them back out into the study. The radio droned on, and the rain fell heavily on the rooftop lending to the atmosphere of somber strangeness in the room. Paul saw Kelly sitting at the study table, deep in thought. He had taken a small notebook out of his pocket, and his pen was poised above the page, as if he was trying to decide just what to write. It was his word trap, Paul knew. Kelly was secretly a poet, and a darn good one at that. He always carried a little notebook with him so he could jot down a word or phrase when it bloomed in his mind. Paul walked over to him, immediately interpreting the look on his face and sensing his distress. “What’s the matter, mister?”

Kelly looked up at him, his eyes alight with the inner fire of his reverie. “This is weird,” he said. “I was supposed to die tonight. I mean… We’ve been working on this thing for over three years, Paul. I put my sweat and tears on the line with each of you—not to mention my bank account. Now we find out the damn thing pays off, and pays off big. I’m alive right now because the project works. But don’t you see? I’m not supposed to know that! I’m supposed to be lying on a slab in the morgue right now with a hang-tag on my big toe and a couple of late night med-techs futzing about my corpse until they get around to my autopsy. This isn’t my life any more. It’s… something else now, and it’s just weird, that’s all. This whole thing seems like a dream. It just can’t be real.”

“You’re right, my friend.” Paul put his hand on Kelly’s shoulder to reassure him. “It’s weird for all of us. We’re in a Deep Nexus Point—very real to us, but very strange. Time is dreaming now, and in a dream anything can happen. From this point, all possible futures extend out to infinity. I think I understand what the visitor was trying to tell us now. This is a null spot; a void. The volcano has been blown apart and a massive surge of ocean is about to radically alter the continuum. But, for the next few hours, we will occupy a brief interval of time where it remains possible to exercise some influence on what actually happens.”

“Something already has happened,” said Nordhausen.

“Yes,” said Dorland “but don’t you see? We’re right in the middle of the dream! In fact, I would go so far as to say that we are the dreamers; waking dreamers with a chance to determine how this whole thing plays itself out. What we do in the next six hours will be absolutely crucial to the fate of countless individual time lines. If we can take the obvious fear and distress of our guest as any indication, it may be crucial to the survival of the human race.”

“I don’t follow you,” said Nordhausen.

“They were desperate, Robert. They had the benefit of the most powerful technology ever devised at their disposal and they were desperate. It was all they could do to get one man through the shadow cast by the Palma Event. There was only one interval in time now where they could do anything to change their fate, the fate that will befall all of us if that tsunami strikes the east coast in the morning. Think of it. How many died on Palma? Hell, the population of the Cape Verde Islands is probably half a million by itself. Add in all the other islands: the Azores, Madeira, and then what about Western Sahara, Casablanca, Lisbon and the coast of Portugal? The web of time is already ripping asunder, people. The hundreds of thousands of life-strands are snapping and twisting in the void under the assault of that wall of water. The fabric of the continuum is tearing, and we’ve got to dream up something here tonight to mend it again—and fast. It’s going to be dangerous—the most dangerous thing we’ve ever done in our lives. I can see that now. Do you realize the power we have in our hands? Yet, the greatest peril we face is ourselves. Right now, at this moment, we’re the most dangerous people on earth. We can be saviors on the one hand if we manage to sort this thing out, but if we fail, for whatever reason…”

Nordhausen stared at him, a grim determination settling itself onto his features. “But what will we do? We’re wasting time!” He looked at Kelly, and then Maeve. They all stared at each other, each waiting for one of the others to speak. Kelly was looking at Paul, and Paul’s eyes caught the professor’s with a question in them that was needing his help. It was clear to them all that they had to act; had to do something, but what? Where should they go? Where would they even begin to look for that one single moment of insignificance that could make the difference in the endless weave of time?

“This is cruel,” said Dorland. “Here we had the answer to that very question sitting at our study table and resting on the love seat, and then he was snatched away from us.”

Nordhausen began to think. “It must be something to do with the rise of Islamic radicalism in modern times. Lord, the roots of the conflict between the Moslem world and the West go back centuries! Where do we start?”

“What about the Crusades?” Kelly offered an obvious guess.

“Which one? They started in 1096 and extended all the way to 1254.” Nordhausen wasn’t making things any easier, but he needed to impress the enormity of the problem on them. “Should we start at the beginning and try to prevent Pope Urban II’s speech in 1095 where he exhorted the faithful to come to the aid of the Byzantine Empire? Supposing that was the right place in time, how would we find Dorland’s pushpin in all the moments leading up to that incident?”

“Pushpoint,” Dorland corrected him.

“Whatever!” Nordhausen was clearly flustered now. “The point is that it will be absolutely impossible for us to find this thing—the one insignificant moment in time that acts as a catalyst to energize that event. It could be anything. Do we try to delay the Pope on the road to Clermont where he gave the speech? Do we go back further to try and intercept the messenger that reached him from the Byzantine Emperor with an appeal for aid? Where is the decisive moment? Is it a rickety wheel on an oxcart that we must keep from repair; or do we just try and assassinate the man, God forbid? Don’t you see how useless this is? It will take months or even years of research to isolate a potential root cause for the Crusades. It may take us ten, twenty or even a hundred attempts: each one a mission to enact our latest best guess on the issue, and who knows what harm we’ll work upon the time line with our mistakes?”

“Well, it didn’t seem so difficult when we were discussing the Bermuda Pamphlets earlier,” Dorland argued.

“That was happenstance,” said Nordhausen. “The key to solving that event was in the timing of the storm. If the ships could be delayed in setting out from Plymouth, then it was very likely that there would have been no Bermuda Pamphlets. But this is different, Paul. The Crusades were a huge cultural, religious and political event—a wave of events that set Europe on a collision with the Moslem world for well over a century. Now the wave train is heading our way, and it would be like trying to stop the ocean with our bare hands. History has its imperatives, as you will be the first to admit. I’m afraid the Crusades are one of them. We’ve no hope in that area. They must occur.”

“Then it has to be something else, perhaps closer to modern times.” He looked at the clock over the mantle. “We can’t just stand here gaping at one another. We have to move. We can talk about this on the way to U.C. Berkeley. Kelly—get your laptop. We’ve got to secure that comp cycle you need for the numbers.”

“But—”

“No questions, let’s go. Maeve, would you grab that coffee and the coffee press?” Paul was scooping up his papers and notebook, and stuffing everything into his briefcase. “Come on, professor. We’re going to need you more than ever now. You’re the historian. Start thinking! Are there any books or references here you may need to bring?”

Nordhausen gave him a hopeless look, but then came to some inner conclusion on the matter and nodded his head. “Quite right,” he said as he made for the bookcase. Impossible or not, he would give it his best try.

Maeve threw the coffee makings into a bag, and followed them with anything edible she could find in Nordhausen’s cupboards. Then she ran to the closet to fetch the coats. The others gathered up their things and Kelly and Paul were making for the study door.

“Hold on,” Maeve yelled at them. “It’s raining something fierce out there. Take your coats and umbrellas.” She reached into the closet and then stopped cold, her eyes wide. “Wait!” She shouted as Kelly opened the door and a blast of cold, wet air blew into the room.

“It’s just a little rain,” said Kelly. “Meet us outside. We’ll warm up the car.”

“I said wait!” This time her voice carried a note of urgency that took hold of the men by the door and spun them around. Maeve threw two jackets and an umbrella onto the floor, then emerged from the closet, holding a dark, gray trench coat in her arms. It was still damp from the rain. Paul recognized it at once.

“Hello,” he said, his mood lightening.

“Our visitor may have vanished,” said Maeve, “but his coat was still hanging just where I left it in the closet!” She extended the trench coat to the others, the light of discovery glistening in her hazel eyes. Paul and Kelly rushed to her side. They each had one thing in mind—to search the pockets for any sign or clue. Maeve knew what they intended, and she clutched the coat to her breast, an arm extended to ward the others off.

“Stand where you are,” she warned them. “I’m not going to let you two tear this thing to pieces. Outcomes and Consequences will handle this, if you don’t mind.” She rushed to the study table, and set the coat down with an almost reverent sense of care. She stared at it for a moment, one arm still extended to hold Paul and Kelly at bay. She was afraid to take her eyes off it, as if she thought it might just disappear into nothingness if she turned her head to look at any of the others. Then she smoothed the fabric out on the study table and slipped her hands into the outer pockets. There was nothing inside.

“Well?” Paul was hovering over her shoulder, restless with anticipation. She folded the coat open, her hand sliding along the smooth inner lining to find the interior pocket. She almost held her breath as she reached inside. She felt something—a piece of folded paper!

“What’s that?” Kelly could not contain himself. Nordhausen had finally realized what had happened and was looking over his shoulder from the bookcase, frozen in the moment, his arms full of books he had pulled from the shelves.

Maeve unfolded the paper and something fluttered out, slipping on to the floor. Kelly and Paul dove and it was Kelly who came up with it first. “Be careful you idiots!” Maeve scolded them, but Kelly’s excitement quickly faded when he saw what he had recovered.

“It’s just a receipt,” he said, somewhat deflated. “For the coffee: One pound, Major Dickason’s blend.”

“What about this,” said Maeve. She still held up the paper the receipt had been riding in and there was something written on it. “Looks like the address here at the study, and… What’s this? How odd. It’s your name Kelly, and an English name: Lawrence. Then this other…” She pointed at the paper, tilting it at last so Paul and Kelly could see. They leaned in, squinting. Paul angled to one side to keep from casting a shadow on the note. “What was the name of that terrorist?”

“Ra’id Husan al Din.” Nordhausen hurried over. “And something about the Holy Fighters.”

“No,” said Maeve. “That’s not what’s written here. It looks like Masaui—Is that a ‘u’ there near the end? And what are these numbers: 11101917 – K172? There’s another word. Can you make it out Paul?”

“It looks like another Arabic word: ‘Hejaz.’ Could that mean something, Robert? Can anyone remember any reference to those names on the news in recent months?”

“Masaui? How is that spelled,” Kelly asked? “Wasn’t that the name of the 20th hijacker during the World Trade Center incident?”

“Yes, he was the guy the FBI picked up before the event. I remember the trial now.” Dorland was reaching for details in his mind. “But I thought that name was spelled differently.”

The clock on the mantle chimed, as if it signaled their time was up and the mystery would escape them, but Nordhausen’s eyes narrowed with thought. He put the armload of books he was carrying on the table, and reached out to take the note. Maeve released it to him, but kept her eyes glued to the paper. Kelly had gone around behind her and was poking about in the outer pockets of the coat.

“What did you say about this interval, Paul. This Nexus Point business, and all.” Nordhausen was pulling on a thread of some recollection, staring at the note and scratching the back of his neck.

“What?”

“You said time was dreaming—that we were the dreamers; that we were the most dangerous people on earth right now. Damn!” He rushed back to his bookcase, his finger tracing over the third shelf. “Now don’t tell me I left that book in my office library. No, here it is!” He had a thick volume out of the shelves and was flipping through the pages, a broad smile on his face. The others hurried over, but Maeve snatched up the trench coat, afraid to let it out from under her nose. Nordhausen read from his book.

“All men dream,” he began, “but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” He smiled at them, snapping the book closed with an almost jubilant air. “T. E. Lawrence,” he said to them. “You know—Lawrence of Arabia! It’s one of his most famous quotes. This is the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He spent years dawdling over it. Had the whole thing in manuscript and then lost it on a train ride. Can you imagine that? Well, he set about to re-write the damn thing from memory! A dangerous man indeed, that one.”

“Very poetic,” said Kelly. “But we’re running out of time, professor. I’ve got to get to U.C. Berkeley and fire up that Arion system. What in blazes does it mean?”

“It means our visitor inadvertently left us a little clue. Oh, he probably only meant to reinforce his memory. Look here, he wrote down the address, then your name, Kelly, then the name Lawrence.”

“So you just thought you’d offer us all a nice quotation.” Kelly was getting frustrated. “This isn’t a word association game!”

“Well don’t be a dolt, man. Everything on this page is significant. He wrote the place he had to be, and the person he had to save. And look here, he’s given us these other names as well, along with a date.”

“A date?” Paul’s eyes widened.

“Yes, it’s right here,” said Nordhausen. “The first part of this number: 11101917. That would be November ten, nineteen seventeen. It so happens, my dear friends, that a certain Lawrence of Arabia was in the desert that very year, helping the British in their campaign against the Ottoman Turks in the First World War. He was campaigning in the region of Hejaz. That’s on the paper as well. This other name must be a person of some importance from that time, or perhaps a place. Here, let me see if I can find a reference.” He flipped through the index, but was frustrated. The name was not there. “That’s odd,” he muttered. “I was certain I’d find it… Perhaps in my other volumes…”

“You won’t,” said Paul. “If what you say is true that last name is the needle in the haystack. See how its been underlined?”

“Then it should be easy enough to track him down.” Nordhausen was nosing at his bookshelf again.

“Just the opposite,” said Dorland. “He won’t be in any of your books because he’s a person of absolutely no significance whatsoever—at least to the time and place he lived in. Lawrence, there, is our light post. He’s the great romantic hero of the tale—at least for us in the West. Lawrence was certainly a Prime Mover, but the real mover and shaker of the world is this other fellow: Masaui, and he’s not the 20th hijacker. I’m certain of it.”

“You’re on to something there.” Nordhausen was still flipping through his volume of the Seven Pillars. “It’s perfect! This was the time and place where the Arab people first rose up in rebellion for their independence against foreign colonial powers. The long conflict with the modern West was just getting started. The First World War just got in the way, and the British, true to form, made the Arabs promises they could not keep while they used them to master the Turks. Lawrence was a bridge between both worlds. He was a British serving officer, but in his heart he had come to know and love the Arabs and he was helping them win their freedom, or at least he thought he was.”

“Yes,” said Dorland. “And the British used Lawrence, even as they used the Arabs. Then they went and made a hero out of him to sweep it all under the rug.” He took a deep breath. “You were right, Robert: we could have never completed the research for a mission in the few hours remaining to us. They had to know that as well. They were trying to reach us here because we have a viable Arch in place on this side of the Palma Shadow. The minute I suspected who our visitor really was I knew he must be here with vital information. Our visitor has given us a nudge in the right direction after all. We’ve got our clue! Bring that book, professor. We’ll need it. Come on, let’s get over to U.C. Berkeley. Something tells me this Masaui has something to do with this. We find him, and we become the dreamers of the day. Let’s move!”

5

En Route, Berkeley, California – 11:55 PM

They gathered their things and were soon huddling in Kelly’s Subaru Forester, shivering with the cold yet fired by the urgency of their mission. Kelly started the vehicle and backed it off the curb where it had come to an abrupt halt when he rushed to the scene with his news. The vehicle jolted off the pavement, and Nordhausen complained from the back seat where he sat with Dorland.

“Now have a care, mister, no need to get us all killed along the way.”

“Relax,” said Kelly. “I’ve been living up here for over 30 years. I know just the route to take, panic or no panic. Besides, it seems to be settling down out here. People have gone indoors to get out of this rain. I’ll bet everyone is huddling around their TV sets or trying to call friends and relatives back east.”

Nordhausen folded his arms, and Dorland noted that he gave Kelly a strange look, as if he expected trouble from some quarter. It occurred to him that the professor might be afraid Kelly would suddenly vanish, leaving them all in a driverless vehicle, careening along some rain swept street to their doom.

“I wouldn’t worry,” he leaned over to Nordhausen with a whisper.

“What?”

“He’s a Prime Lever; possibly even a Free Radical now. Didn’t you hear what the visitor said? I don’t think we have anything to fear just yet.”

“Well what if…” Nordhausen lowered his voice. “What if time tries to undo our visitor’s intervention and there’s an accident waiting for us out there? And what happened to Mr. Graves? How can you be sure that time won’t find some way to make amends for his mischief? Perhaps she already has. The man just disappeared!”

“What are you two talking about back there?” Maeve leaned around, her arm draped over the back of the front seat.

“Nothing,” said Nordhausen. “Just running through the history in my mind again, that’s all. How much time will you need to program the temporal locus, Kelly?”

“If that date is good, not much time at all—twenty minutes. I’ll need time for the Arch configuration, however. Perhaps half an hour.”

“How long to U.C. Berkeley?” Dorland was getting worried.

“Maybe twenty minutes, considering the condition of the roads tonight.”

“Then figure an hour on the Arion system, for your calculations and anything Maeve might need. It’s another ten minutes up to the lab. If you need time on the Arch we’re going to lose Bermuda. We’ll only have three hours left!”

“If I go any faster I’ll get us all killed,” said Kelly, but he nudged the accelerator just the same and the SUV sped along, the windshield wipers battling with sheets of rain. The professor gave Paul another worried look.

“What about the spatial locus?” Dorland changed the subject, trying to pull in all the loose threads he could and give each one at least a moment of his own computing time.

“Ask the professor.” Kelly begged off on the question.

“What about it, Robert. Know where we’re going yet?” Maeve was eager to get a handle on the situation so she could start considering her outcome algorithms.

Nordhausen thought for a moment. “Well, we’ve got the date and a few other clues on that note. When we get to the university I’ll look up the references and see what I can find.”

“This is worrying me.” Maeve wasn’t satisfied. “I’ll need time for Outcomes and Consequences as well, Paul, and I can’t do a thing until Robert gives us a target. What are we trying to accomplish?”

“Masaui,” said Paul. “That’s the key name. It’s something to do with him.”

“But how do you intend to find the man? We’ve got a good date, and a general idea of where to go, but we could end up a thousand miles from any place where we could do some good. We haven’t the time to do the research.”

“I’ll find the references,” said Nordhausen. “Just quiet down and let me think. Our friend from tomorrow was very succinct. He gave us the year and he must have given some information on the spatial locus as well. There was another number on that note…” He lapsed into silence and Maeve rolled her eyes, giving Dorland a disparaging look.

“He’ll work it through, Maeve,” said Paul. “You can use the time to run over to the Drama Department and see what you can do for us in the way of costuming. I mean, we can’t very well go barreling through the Arch in these clothes: rain jackets and umbrellas in the desert, not to mention blue jeans and sneakers.”

“Good point.” Maeve was eager to latch on to something to do. “OK, everyone. Give me your sizes for shirts, pants, coats and shoes. I’ll write it all down and rifle the costume wardrobes while Nordhausen fine-tunes the target.” They complied as she wrote the information down. Then Paul returned to the problem at hand.

“What about that last number?” Dorland was still turning things over in his own mind. “What was it Maeve?”

“K17 something,” said Maeve. “But it looked as though it was part of the date sequence.”

“Was it hyphenated?” Kelly spoke up as he took a corner a little too sharply and the tires squealed on the wet pavement. The SUV tilted ominously, but righted itself and revved up as Kelly sped down the road.

“Watch what you’re doing!” Robert gave Kelly a wide-eyed look.

“Don’t worry,” said Kelly. “Some SUVs used to roll over a lot about ten years ago, but they widened the wheel base and lowered the center of gravity. This one never had the problem. It’s got four wheel drive.” He gave Robert a reassuring smile. “Was the number hyphenated after the date sequence?” His hand was on the stick, down shifting as they went around another bend.

“Yes,” said Maeve. “I’ve got the note right here.” She reached into the pocket of her coat, groping around and coming up empty. Dorland watched as she shifted to search another pocket. “Give me a second.”

“It’s a location.” Kelly’s voice had a definitive tone to it. “I started combining temporal and spatial coordinates in my final algorithm sequences last month. But I wasn’t using alphanumerics. The ‘K’ thing is odd, but I was coding the location right after the primary date sequence, and using a hyphen to separate the data. It should have been another long number for longitude and latitude, right down to the hours, minutes and seconds.”

Dorland smiled to think how spatial coordinates still used a temporal metaphor to fine-tune their location on the planet. Everything was described as being a given number of hours, minutes and seconds on one side of the Greenwich mean or another—the Prime Meridian, as it was called. “What was that number again, Maeve?”

She was still fishing through her pockets in silence and, as he watched her, it suddenly dawned on Paul that the note was gone. He had been thinking about the disappearance of the visitor for some time, and it bothered him. It was clear that the man just didn’t get up and walk out. Yes, there was that moment when it seemed that someone had opened the front door. Nordhausen even commented on it. Yet the security chain was still in place, and the windows in the reading room were locked from the inside as well. When he extended his hand to the place where the visitor had been resting on the love seat the chill in the air was palpable. He knew then that the visitor had been reclaimed by the continuum in some way—but how? Was it a complication of time caused by the fact that he had tampered too directly with the lives of everyone else in the room? Was it the nullifying power of a Paradox that snatched him from the love seat? Or was it simply that his comrades had yanked him out of the moment, calling him back to some distant future?

What was that future, he wondered? His own theorem of time dictated that it was impossible to return to any moment on the continuum when you actually lived. The visitor was an elderly man in his seventies. That meant he came from a time at least seventy years in the future—from the end of the twenty-first century, or beyond. What had happened to him?

He considered the possibilities while he watched Maeve’s ever more frustrated search for the note. One thought gave him hope: if the mission Mr. Graves had been sent on was to succeed, then the Palma Event would be undone, and what reason would he have for being here in the first place? Paradox, in all its confounding majesty, loomed heavily over the situation. Would that explain his sudden disappearance? But why now? We haven’t gone through the Arch yet, and might never go through the Arch. We still have to work out the numbers and time is running short. Yet Graves had vanished. If it was Paradox that had reclaimed him, then something has already altered the time continuum so radically that his mission here was made ludicrous. Could the answer lie with Kelly? With the note? Was there another Pushpoint trigger hiding in something as simple as Maeve’s inherent civility that led her to take the man’s coat?

“Did someone have the note?” Maeve looked around, giving the others a glance that was half accusing but was becoming ever more sheepish as each second passed.

“It’s gone, isn’t it.” Paul spoke in a quiet voice.

“You had it for a moment, Robert, didn’t you?” Maeve pointed an accusing finger.

“I just left it on the bookcase,” said Nordhausen. “Didn’t you take it with you?”

“Well, I thought I had it right here in my pocket.” Maeve looked around as if she might find it on the seat of the vehicle.

“Did you bring the man’s coat?” Nordhausen pressed her.

“I left it on the study table, but…”

“It’s probably gone as well.” Paul folded his arms, still thinking.

“What are you getting at?” Nordhausen nudged him.

“The man is gone, the note is gone; you get my point, professor. Something’s happened to the continuum.”

“What? Are you saying things have already changed?”

“Yes,” Paul was certain now. “Kelly’s alive, for one thing. We’re heading for U.C. Berkeley in his car instead of the hospital in my car. We’re in a Deep Nexus now, a kind of no man’s land on the time continuum. None of this was supposed to happen, so it’s very tentative until we achieve our final outcome. It’s not fixed yet; not solid. I’m not quite sure yet, but I think Mr. Graves’ job was accomplished. A Meridian of time is in play here, and he’s stuck the first needle in.”

“He said that,” said Nordhausen. “Those were his exact words!”

“No,” Paul corrected him, “he said we had to stick the needle in. It’s like acupuncture.” The image was clear in his mind. “The Palma Event was so traumatic to the continuum that it needed intervention at more than one point on the Time Meridian. Mr. Graves stuck the first needle in when he stepped in front of Kelly’s car and prevented the accident that was supposed to take his life. The rest is up to us. The coat and the note were very odd. Without Maeve’s polite manner we might never have had those clues. This may seem strange, but I’m beginning to think time is on our side in this one. The horrible violence of the Palma Event has somehow been such a violation that she may just be smiling on us now. Yes, some sort of complication may have snatched away our visitor, but at least we all saw the note—right? We all remember it.”

“Then what was that last number?” Nordhausen reiterated his quest. “If Kelly’s right then it must be the last coordinate—the spatial coordinate we need for the Arch.”

No one could remember the number. They had been so taken by the rush of the moment that it just didn’t have time to register in anyone’s head. “I know it was K17 something,” Maeve repeated.

Nordhausen had a small pocket flashlight out and was squinting at his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He was certain there would be some reference in the book to the number—but what? The thing to do was to find Lawrence’s diaries for the month of November, 1917. What exactly was he up to that month? He renewed his search with dogged determination, certain he could unravel the last clue.

“Let me think,” he spoke aloud. “They had already taken Akaba that summer by mounting a raid from the landward side. After Lawrence crossed the Sinai to bring news of the raid to Cairo, he eventually rejoined his Arab cohorts. Now what was he up to in November? Ah! Here it is.”

“What is it?” Dorland leaned over trying to see where the professor’s finger pressed against a line of text in a circle of wan yellow light from the flashlight. The light fluttered and grew weaker.

“November, nineteen seventeen…” Nordhausen read aloud. “I have rejoined Auda and his followers with the aim of causing some mischief along the route of the Hejaz…” The flashlight suddenly went out.

“Damn!” Nordhausen shook the light, and it fluttered on briefly before failing again. “Of all the time for the batteries to fail! Has someone got a match?”

“Does that help?” Kelly switched on a small ceiling light.

“Good man, Kelly” The professor bent over his volume again, angling the book to cast as much light as possible on the page of interest. “Yes, it’s right here. Lawrence was asked to put pressure on the Hejaz Railway. He made raids against the line at numerous points in October and November; the first at Kilometer 587, then at Kilometer 489 and later at 172.”

“That’s it!” Maeve was certain of the last number on the note now. “It was K172. What an elegant way to note the exact spatial location! We have to be at Kilometer 172 on the Hejaz Railway when Lawrence makes his raid. You were correct, Robert. Everything on that note was of great significance. Our visitor managed to deliver his message, in a way he never intended, but deliver it he has.”

Nordhausen snapped the book shut. “Great!” He was relieved to have the burden of making the exact call on the spatial coordinates removed from his shoulders. “You know it could have taken us months to discover that. Oh, we could have just picked a time and place in November of that year, but then we’d be right back in the same situation as with the Crusades. Where do we go? What do we do? Now we at least have a good fix on the where.” He came up short, meeting another obstacle in his thinking. “Lord, how are we going to manage this? We can’t just appear in the middle of the attack—or worse yet, on a moving train.”

“Train? Why would we want to be on the train?”

“Because that’s where Masaui is likely to be. It’s his fate that matters most here.”

Paul agreed with him at once. “Yes, then we have to board the train before it starts off on its journey. When we get to the Computer Library focus your research on finding us a good boarding point. We’ll need to configure the Arch to open a breaching point at a place where we won’t be noticed by the locals. Then we get on the train and it takes us out to Kilometer 172 for the raid.” He smiled. All we have to do is discover who this Masaui is and what we have to do about him.”

“That may be trickier than you think,” said Maeve. “You say this train is operated by the Ottoman Turks? Well, what would four English speaking passengers be doing aboard? We’ll need much more than appropriate clothing. We’ll need some sort of documentation to justify our presence on the train. For that matter, what about effects? We’ll need period specific money and who knows what else. The devil is in the details, you know. We could run into trouble right from the beginning if we don’t plan this correctly. Suppose we have trouble boarding the train?”

“We’ll have to work something out.”

“I’ll dig up everything I possibly can on the incident. But Maeve makes a good point. Suppose we do manage to slip onto the train unnoticed. Suppose we even manage to make the ride out to Kilometer 172 without any undue attention being paid to us. There’s still the matter of the raid.”

“Yes,” Kelly piped up from the driver’s seat. “I saw the damn movie! They weren’t taking prisoners on those raids.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Nordhausen chided him. “You can’t base your history on the dramatic portrayal of the movie.”

“Well he still makes a good point,” said Maeve. “It’s going to be dangerous. We’ll be riding on a train that will come under attack, and who knows what could happen.”

“I said it was going to be dangerous,” said Paul. “A far cry from sitting quietly in the Globe and watching Shakespeare. But whatever the risk, we have to try. The consequences of failing are just too great.”

“Outcomes and Consequences,” said Maeve, lapsing into thought for a moment. “God only knows what happens if the water hits the east coast in the morning. Whatever it was, it was enough to send them back here on a very risky mission. Perhaps it cost Graves his life. Are we prepared to risk the same?”

She let that sink in for a moment, and they all sat in silence. Kelly shifted the gears as they rounded the bend and entered the U.C. Berkeley campus. He was soon speeding toward the library and, as he drove, a thought suddenly occurred to him. He, of all people, wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Do we all have to take the risk?” His thought emerged.

“What?” Nordhausen looked up from his book.

“I mean… why do we all have to go? Doesn’t that just complicate matters for us on that end?”

“Well,” said Nordhausen, “I suppose there’s no reason for you and Maeve to come along. I’ll be needed for the history, of course, and if Paul would be so bold as to accompany me, then perhaps the two of us could handle it. Then Kelly could run numbers and work the Arch from this end, and Maeve could watch the variance factors and help program the retraction.”

“You can count on me, Robert.” Paul assured his friend he was willing to go.

“No, you don’t understand.” Kelly groped through his reasoning again. “I’m the one person here who is already supposed to be dead. Remember? I was… Well, I was just thinking that perhaps I should be the one to go. The rest of you stay here where it’s safe.”

“Oh no you don’t!” Paul moved to quash the idea at once. “Look Kelly, you may have a point. This whole notion of your death has really gotten to me. As I said earlier, we’re already off on some new Meridian now. Time is branching here in the Nexus Point. This is another life—not only for you, but for all of us. Whatever happens, I can’t let you take any unusual risks for a while. I couldn’t bear to loose you, buddy.”

“Nor I,” Maeve said quietly. She gave Kelly a lingering glance.

“Let’s everyone think this over while we run the numbers,” Paul suggested. “We’ll decide who goes and who stays later. In the meantime, we have to plan as if we were all going, Maeve. Work whatever magic you can at the Drama Department wardrobe. I know you’ll come up with something. Robert and I will work out the details.”

The SUV sped along Hearst Avenue to the North Gate of the University. Kelly squinted through the front windshield, looking for parking. He was fortunate to find something immediately and Nordhausen had the back door open in a moment, heedless of the rain. “Come on,” he shouted in at them. “Time and tide wait for no man!”

How appropriate, thought Dorland. He visualized the great swelling of the ocean as it hurtled west from Palma, fast leaving the shattered remnants of the Azores in its wake. They couldn’t save Bermuda, but the fate of the Eastern Seaboard was still riding in the whirlwind of time.

6

U.C. Berkeley, California – 12:20 AM

They made their way over the rain swept pavement past the Earth Sciences Building and the Memorial Glade until they reached the main library in the center of the campus. Thankfully, the lights were still on, and Paul started to lead them toward the entrance.

“Not that way,” Nordhausen called after him. “We’ll go in the back way. I have a pass key.”

Paul reversed his course, and the others followed until they reached a nondescript doorway in a sheltered alcove. The Professor fumbled with his wallet for a moment, extracting his pass key card to log in through the security gate. In a few moments they tramped inside, grateful to be out of the driving rain and cold. The moment of respite was a brief one, however, and they were soon animated by the urgency of their mission.

“Storm must have everyone hunkered down in the dorms,” said Nordhausen.

“That or the news,” said Dorland. He suddenly remembered it was also Memorial Day weekend, and the normal library traffic would be thinned out by the holiday. “I think our chances of finding an open computer terminal will be very good.”

“I’ll get right on it,” said Kelly, hastening off to find a terminal where he could interface his laptop with the Arion mainframe humming away in the lower level of the library. “Get me spatial data as soon as you can,” he shouted over his shoulder as he ran.

Nordhausen was already moving toward a catalog terminal to begin with his research queries. Paul and Maeve followed in his wake, still catching their breath from the rush across the campus grounds. Maeve caught the time on a wall clock. It was just after midnight.

“What about that costume run, Maeve?” Paul asked.

“Well, I need something more to go on than the date,” she replied. “Any ideas at this point, Robert?”

“Give me a few moments,” said the professor. “I’ll get Kelly his spatial numbers and then we can decide how we’re going to make our entry. God, I wish we had a week to plan this.”

“We’ll just have to pull it through as best we can,” Paul encouraged him as he settled into a terminal next to Nordhausen and keyed in catalog searches. “Many hands make for light work,” he smiled, but the tension was obvious as the two men hunched over the keyboards. “What should I look for, Professor?”

Nordhausen balled his fist at his chin for a moment. “Why not run genealogy queries on the names we have on the note? Don’t bother with Lawrence, of course. But give that other fellow a try—what was it, Maeve?”

“Masaui. But don’t ask me to spell it.” They were both thankful for her memory of the note, as it lived only in their combined recollection now.

“I doubt if we’ll find much locally,” said Paul. “I better ask for an Internet search as well.” He was soon discouraged to find thousands of useless references, and began scouring his brain to try and narrow down his search. Nordhausen saw what he was doing and tossed in a few ideas.

“Include the word genealogy,” he said. “You should get some common name combinations that way.” He flipped open his copy of the Seven Pillars, glancing at the brief introductory poem Lawrence had written there.

“I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands, and wrote my will across the sky in stars, to earn you Freedom, the seven pillared worthy house, that your eyes might be shining for me when we came…”

“What was that?” Paul was struck by the poignancy of the words.

“Lawrence,” said Nordhausen. “Funny how those same tides of men have now swelled the oceans with our impending doom. And the odd thing is, they’re still reaching for the same thing Lawrence wanted: their freedom. Why is it we can’t seem to understand that and find a way to give it to them?”

“Is it ours to give?” said Paul rhetorically. “If I’m not mistaken the Founding Fathers seemed to believe that all men were created that way—free. We’ve tried to be the guarantor of that over here, but I think this business with the Holy Fighters is more than a struggle for liberation. There’s hard vengeance in this act. You don’t go and do something like this without being dead inside; heartless and cruel. Nothing could condone the death of so many innocents.”

“True, this Ra’id Husan al Din is no saint, but who plunged the knife into his chest? This is a struggle that has been going on for a hundred generations, Paul. The Islamic world has lived in the shadow of the West for over a millennium. That shadow was once the threat of mounted knights on chargers marching to the holy land—now it has become something far more insidious. Face it, we’ve sucked the life out of these people like we’ve pumped the oil from under their desert. I would say they feel as threatened by us today as they ever did during the Crusades. They handled Pope Urban’s vigilantes easily enough, but how do you strike at something as all pervading as a culture? We don’t send soldiers to conquer our enemies any longer. We send television sets. These people have lived in the pristine clarity of their deserts for thousands of years until we came along with our thirst for petroleum. Now they’ve got McDonalds in Mecca, the Fifth Fleet plying the waters of the Persian Gulf, stealth bombers circling on standby over their heads and special forces teams out hunting down their heroes. I know, we see these men as murderers and terrorists, but to the average Moslem on the street, this Palma thing will be seen as holy retribution.”

“Hell, they killed their own people in the Western Sahara.”

“Martyrs,” said Nordhausen. “Yes, it’s a twisted thing in our minds, but that’s the way these guys see it. They won’t be satisfied until we pack up and leave them alone, and as long as they are sitting on the fermented remains of all those dearly departed dinosaurs—the oil—well, we want to be darn sure we get our daily deliveries. Something like this was bound to happen one way or another. Face it, the typical Arab ‘man in the street’ is a person without a credit profile. He wants to rise and take his morning prayer instead of running out to a one day sale event at Sears. They’re different. That’s the only thing we can come down to, and that difference has produced men like Husan al Din.”

“I can only imagine what the U.S. response will be to this if we fail to get it fixed. There was a desperate look in that fellow’s eyes—Mr. Graves, I mean. Whatever happened must have been terrible.”

“Let’s hope we never have to know about it. So… It all comes down to an ambush by Lawrence and his Arab freedom fighters at Kilometer 172. I guess it’s time for us to start writing our will across the sky in stars. We had better get busy.” He thought for a moment. “I’ll see if I can narrow that location down. It might help us figure out who this Masaui could be.” He began requesting period map searches from the cartography database while Maeve jumped on a third terminal and started calling up images of typical fashion and dress in the year 1917.

Time passed almost unnoticeably as they worked, each one hot on the trail of some key element that would be needed for the planned mission. It would normally take weeks or months to gather and refine this ‘Approach Data’ as it was called. They had taken five weeks to plan the Globe Theatre mission to 1612. Now, without the luxury of that time, they focused on rooting out the essentials for the mission: where should they go, and what role should they assume in the time they were entering? Beyond that, the problem of how to identify the key moment in time, the Pushpoint, loomed as an ever more daunting obstacle.

Nordhausen was the first to narrow in on some useful data. He was still reading from his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, using a convenient date indexing scheme Lawrence had appended to the pages to aid his search. Soon he managed to locate a reference to Kilometer 172 in the narrative. “Here it is,” he said jubilantly. “It’s on the rail line between Deraa and Amman. Deraa was the lynch pin, of course. The rail line split just above that point and one spur headed for the coast at Haifa while the main line reached up to Damascus and beyond. South of Deraa, the line ran all the way down through the Hejaz region to Medina in Arabia. Here’s a good map, Paul.”

Paul left his terminal and scooted over to Nordhausen’s where the amber gold of a map file was displayed. It was labeled ‘SKETCH MAP: Adapted from War Office material as embodied in G.S.G.S. 2957, by permission of Controller, H.M.S.O.’ Nordhausen was reading quickly through the narrative of his Seven Pillars.

“Apparently this attack was a bit of a fluke,” he said. “Look here, the date is very precise: November 10, 1917. The odd thing is this: when they set out on the operation that resulted in this raid, they had no intention of blowing up a train. They were after a bridge in the Yarmuk Valley, but they were discovered as they approached it and had to flee. After some argument the idea for an attack on the railway grew out of their frustration—almost on the spur of the moment. They seized upon it to salve their failure at the bridge, and it resulted in the destruction of a heavily laden troop train that was heading north from Amman.”

Dorland thought about the situation. “Any reference to Masaui in the narrative?”

“Not a hint,” said Nordhausen, “but he had to be there, on one side or another.”

“Well, that’s an Arabic name,” Maeve added. “Perhaps he was one of Lawrence’s men.”

“A likely conclusion,” said Nordhausen, “but I’m afraid there were thousands of Arab soldiers in the Turkish Army—whole divisions of them, in fact. They were broken up and had their battalions scattered through the ranks after the Arab rebellion began. Masaui could have been a Turkish soldier on the train as well. This is maddening! Even if we solve this first riddle, and figure out which side Masaui was fighting on, how will we find him? Suppose he’s on the train. First we have to find some way of blending in with the Turks. If we somehow manage that, then what will we do: go from train car to train car and call the man’s name?”

“Oh, don’t be foolish.” Maeve chided the professor as she leaned in to take a look at the map. “There could be a way to inquire about the man discreetly. Suppose I go as a foreign nurse, and the two of you get bandaged up as wounded soldiers.”

“But we don’t speak the language!” Nordhausen was being difficult.

“Well, I can manage a bit of German, Robert. Weren’t the Turks allies of the Germans? We could make up a list and put Masaui’s name on it as if he was being selected out of the ranks for some inoculation.”

The professor thought for a moment. “It will be risky. Paul and I will have to play some ruse to keep our mouths shut.”

“I’ll just bandage up your throats or something,” Maeve sketched out her idea. “We can make it look like you’re simply too sick to talk—victims of a gas attack.”

“Good work, Maeve,” said Paul. “But we’re assuming Masaui is on the train. What if he’s with Lawrence?”

“For that matter what if he’s not even there?” Nordhausen folded his arms. “Suppose he’s at Amman selling tickets, or at the terminal destination of the train waiting to meet someone?”

The real difficulty of their situation was growing in Paul’s mind. He wracked his brain with the dizzying possibilities that flowed in from a thousand directions to this one moment. It would be absolutely impossible for them to consider all the contingencies. They had to choose something and get a focus on their mission. It was already well past midnight! The more he thought about the situation the more the weight of impossibility seemed to settle on him. Then the floorboard creaked in his mind and his thinking fell through to an obvious conclusion.

“Wait a minute!” He nearly shouted. “The visitor must have known we would encounter all this potential variation in our target search. We have to rely on the clues in the note. They must have done the research, and the time and location are very specific. What was the outcome? What happened, Robert?”

Nordhausen read a passage from his Seven Pillars. “Here it is,” he quoted: “When the engine was squarely over the mine I pushed down the handle of the exploder. The resulting explosion was even more effective than we had hoped. The old engine was lifted off the tracks, and her boilers were rent open in a cascade of steam and flying metal… Looks like they were successful.” He scanned forward through the narrative. “Many of the cars derailed, and the fire triggered a small ammunition cache causing further havoc. The Arabs attacked and butchered quite a few of the enemy in the confusion before they melted away.”

Dorland rubbed his forehead. “That has to be the event,” he said. “The train was destroyed, and Masaui’s fate was sealed in the resulting chaos. It doesn’t matter who’s side he’s on.”

“Are you suggesting he gets killed in the raid?”

“Most likely, but that doesn’t matter. Whether he lives or dies is not our concern. If they planned this correctly, and I have to believe they did, then the event we need to alter has to be something obvious in the milieu they’ve pointed us to.”

“But I thought you said it would be something utterly insignificant.” Nordhausen was confused.

“Yes,” Paul explained. “It will be. All the Meridians flow into this one Nexus Point. They knew it would be impossible for us to test every time line that feeds this point for a possible intervention. Yet, we have to do something to change the obvious outcome of this time milieu. Whatever it is must be right there in front of us. Think! You’ve been pointing out how impossible it will be for us to interact with the people on the train, or within Lawrence’s camp, to find this man. They must have known that as well. So I reason that we don’t even attempt to find him. To me it looks like the destruction of the train is the key lever here. That’s what we have to prevent. If we change that outcome, then I believe the fate of Masaui will be altered as well. Don’t you see? We can’t possibly figure out what Masaui does, or fails to do, that eventually gives rise to the Palma Event. But I’m willing to stake everything on the chance that this is the lever we have to alter. That train must not be destroyed. Right Maeve?” He looked to Outcomes and Consequences for support.

“It certainly has far less haze in the equation than trying to find Masaui,” Maeve agreed. “Yes, I like this. It has switch-like clarity. If the train blows up at Kilometer 172 on November 10, 1917, then we have history as we seem to know it now; as it reads there in Lawrence’s book. If the train fails to blow up, then something changes in the time line for Masaui. It’s not for us to know what that is. You’re right. This is the key moment. Kilometer 172 is both a time and a place—a precise moment on the Meridian. Our visitor knew that, and the clue is vital.”

“Then what should we do?” Nordhausen closed his book.

“Get us Arab garb at the Drama Department,” Paul said to Maeve. “Your idea about the German nurse was good, but it brings us into contact with too many people on the train. We’d have to open the continuum at Amman, and board there. It’s too complicated. If we go as Arabs, we can cloak ourselves easily, and just drop into the desert somewhere near Kilometer 172. It’s perfect! Then we wait for Lawrence to lay his charge and we find some way of preventing the explosion. We do it with as little contact with the locals as possible.”

Nordhausen was still the devil’s advocate. “But suppose we run afoul of the Arabs, or even Lawrence himself? None of us speaks Arabic.”

Dorland’s mind worked quickly, brushing the argument aside. “Time will not want us anywhere near Lawrence,” he said quickly. “He’s a Prime Mover—or perhaps even another Free Radical, depending on your point of view. In any case, Time will not easily allow us to tamper with his history. That’s why Masaui is our target, and this incident becomes the Pushpoint that decides his fate.” He tacked on one last thought. “If we happen on the Arabs, we speak English.”

“English? What good will that do us?”

“We use Maeve’s first ruse. Say we’re a medical team that was captured by the Turks. Say we were on a train, but managed to slip away. Say we were taken in by an Arab family and—”

Nordhausen interrupted him. “Say all of this in English?”

“No!” Maeve held up a finger, her eyes brightening with an idea. “We just say one thing,” she concluded. “Aurens! That’s what the Arabs called him. We just invoke his name and point. Let his name be our shield and hope for the best.” They were all quiet for a moment before Maeve put in one last remark. “And a good retraction algorithm wouldn’t hurt either.”

Kelly came running up, breathless, a notepad in hand. “I’ve got all the preliminaries in for the temporal locus,” he huffed. “Where’s that spatial coordinate?”

“Just a second.” Nordhausen looked at Paul. “Arabs in the desert?”

“I think it’s our best bet, Robert.”

Nordhausen fidgeted a moment, consulting his book again. “The attempt on the Yarmuk Gorge Bridge was made in the pre-dawn hours on November 8th. After it failed they fled to Abu Sawana, arriving tired and hungry as the sun came up. As you might imagine, morale was low and they were all quite discouraged. They had to do something to make the raid worthwhile, particularly if Lawrence hoped to gain the support of other local tribesmen in the area. A botched operation was not good for recruiting purposes, you see. That’s when they hit on the idea of blowing up a train. The rail was close at hand, and they still had explosive charges left. So they decided to set up an ambush at one of their old lookout posts well north of Amman.”

Nordhausen’s finger marked a place in his book. “They approached the rail line again near Minifir on the 9th to lay their last explosive charge at the culvert near Kilometer 172. They fled east after the attack, across the line into the desert to reach Abu Sawana again. We should be on the west side of the line then, probably here.” He fingered a location near the rail line close to Minifir, then keyed a new query for the cartography data base. In a few moments he had coordinates for Minifir, and extrapolated from that location to choose a drop point. “I hate rushing like this,” he muttered to himself as he worked. Kelly leaned over his shoulder and began scribbling the coordinates down.

“Take off another second in each direction,” said Nordhausen. “Lord, it looks like open desert on the map, but we’ve no way of knowing what was really there. We could appear right in the middle of some wandering band of Bedouin vagrants, for all I know.”

“It’ll have to do,” said Kelly as he started off. “If anything changes, let me know at once.”

“I’ve got to get over to the Drama Department.” Maeve realized she had a lot of rummaging to do in the wardrobe.

Kelly came up short, fishing in his pocket and tossing her the keys to the Subaru. “Here,” he said. “You’ll have to drive yourself. I need another twenty minutes on the Arion system.”

“We’ll come with you, Maeve,” said Paul. “Now that we have our coordinates, we might as well carry on the preliminary briefing. Listen everyone. We’ve got to get up to Lawrence Labs as soon as possible. We’ll come back for you, Kelly, but if you finish ahead of us, take University Drive and head for the East Gate. Then we can take Gayley up to Hearst Avenue and head up past the Cyclotron to the lab.”

The Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories were just beyond the campus, up a winding way called Cyclotron Road. Born on the Berkeley campus, the facilities had grown considerably over the years, and eventually moved to the rolling green hills that overlooked the university. A host of scientific disciplines were rooted in the lab, which was a major center of research and a place where some of the most profound questions imaginable were asked, and sometimes answered, with the secret arts of Quantum Science. They took the universe apart, bit by bit, discovering atoms, protons, electrons, neutrons; and then breaking each one down into smaller and smaller particles, and watching how each one behaved. Once the physical structures of the universe were ferreted out and understood, science thought it would finally have the answer to how everything related to everything else. Soon, however, they began to encounter strange things in the corners of their vacuum chambers and cyclotrons. The deeper they looked, the more they found that the universe was playing with another set of rules altogether in the realm of the very small. Things that were once thought to be impossible, even unimaginable, suddenly became odd realities. Travel in time, long debated by physicists, was one of those unimaginable things.

One theory of time held that any given moment was simply a specific arrangement of every quantum particle that made up the universe. The particles, always in motion, created the perception of a forward progression in the flow of time, which was really nothing more than the constant variation of those particles, morphing from one state and position to another. To be in any place, or any time, all one had to do was find a way to tell all the particles of the universe to assume a given state or position in relationship to one another. Any reality that was ever possible could become this moment; this reality. The realization of the theory seemed impossible, however, for one could never know how to arrange each particle of the universe just as they were at the Globe Theatre in 1612. It was challenge enough to understand even one particle of the universe—but science held that the whole of the universe had sprung from one single point. If that were true, then any possible universe might arise in the same way.

The way, it was found, was through the seeming annihilation of a small black hole. Dorland found a theory, and the theory became an Arch. It was found that the crushing effects of gravity as one approached the singularity could be neutralized by simply getting the black hole to spin at a fantastic rate of speed. The resulting reality was like a dead spot of calm in a whirlpool, or the eye at the heart of a swirling hurricane. It was realized in the center of the Arch, and anything that passed within its aura was protected from the annihilation of the event horizon. The Arch opened and forged a safe pathway through the event horizon of a controlled black hole, and all that lay beyond it.

While it was impossible for humans to physically re-arrange the particles of the universe into a new pattern, a quantum singularity achieved this result effortlessly. Humans only had to tell the universe what they wanted—what shape and time to assume on the other side of the singularity. Mathematics was their voice, and the universe, being about nothing of any particular importance at any given moment, was kind enough to heed them and comply.

Three years later, after extensive research and with the backing of corporate sponsors and private funds, a project was born at Lawrence National Laboratories just outside the U.C. Berkeley campus in California. The government believed it was simply another particle chamber to test the theory Dorland expounded. They never dreamed that the project had reached such an advanced state, ready to actually send objects through the Arch and retract them safely. That secret, however, was closely held by the key project team leaders, project staff, and a few select individuals from Maeve’s Outcomes Committee.

Dorland was the guiding light, and a small band of dedicated physicists, engineers and mathematicians had built the first prototype of a mechanism they hoped would tame the universe at last. They had an idea, and a theory, and an Arch. They didn’t know if it would work, but had faith that it might—until a man appeared at Nordhausen’s study door that night, out of a driving rain at the edge of a storm; with a pound of Peets coffee and an answer to all their doubts. It would work.

That was the only thing that offered them consolation as they bent themselves to the feverish task of configuring the Arch that night. They were confident that they could create a new milieu that was very close to the moment they desired, but yet they were afraid nonetheless. Quantum Mechanics made promises, but would keep them at a whim, and who knows what mischief they might accomplish when they first sought to tamper with the fabric of being itself?

Part III

The Arch

“Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.”

Henry Miller: The Tropic of Cancer

“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”

Susan Sontag

7

Lawrence Berkeley Labs – 1:15 AM

They made their rendezvous near the theatre and followed the winding route of Cyclotron Road to reach the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. Access to the facility was closely guarded, but each of the team members has been cleared long ago. Kelly produced his encrypted access card, rolling down the window and sliding the card through a reader. A camera was filming his face as he squinted through the drizzle of the night at the reader alcove. Somewhere, a computer was running pixels through a recognition algorithm and deciding who he was. It was enough to pass them through the first level of security that surrounded the complex.

They drove on past the circular dome of the Cyclotron building, and Dorland noted again how the bright, evenly spaced rectangular windows at the base of the dome gave the impression that an immense flying saucer was sitting on the rooftop of an otherwise nondescript building. The lights of the city glimmered in regular rows below them, defining streets that reached out to the dark blue edge of the East Bay, the waters illuminated with the soft amber glow of the city. They made a turn and headed for the lab in the newly renovated Building Complex Number 54.

A security guard emerged from a small white building on the left, squinting in as Kelly opened the front window to display his ID card. The guard nodded a greeting, almost as if he expected them, for they had been in and out of the facilities there with increasing frequency as the date of their planned project test drew near. Just the same, he checked all four ID cards, and carefully noted each person in the vehicle before he waved them through. They made their way around a bend and climbed the last switchback of roadway to Building 54. The parking lot outside the building was nearly vacant, but Dorland recognized a few of the vehicles as belonging to the Advanced Prep team members. He sighed with relief, glad that a few intrepid souls were still on their night shift standing a faithful watch over the Arch in anticipation of its debut performance on the morrow. They, too, were oblivious to the real implications of the project they were serving. Most were just promising Physics or Math students, serving out assignments they thought might help their post-graduate plans.

The cover story shielding the real intent of the Arch was that it was simply a test to see if particles could be moved in time, but it was already advanced well beyond that stage. Objects had been sent through the Arch and retrieved intact. Encouraged by their success they tried to send through small mechanical probes with cameras to capture images of the ‘other side.’ These never came back in a functioning state. The fragile electronics would just not work in the intense, otherworldly environment of the Arch. This fueled much of the debate about the long term prospects for success. Clearly things were going somewhere, but there was no evidence to prove they had actually traveled in time. Paul insisted that only a human being could make that determination, but could a person actually move through the arch and yet live? Could a sentient being travel in time, and interact with the past Meridian to change future events? These were the real questions the impending test planned to answer.

The rain was abating somewhat when they abandoned the Subaru and confronted the third security barrier before gaining entrance to the facility. This time each member had to pass a retinal scan, but at least they were in the outer hall and screened from the rain and cold. Once cleared, the inner doors opened with a click and they rushed through the lab entrance. Paul led the group, walking at a brisk pace with Kelly right behind him, the laptop computer huddled close to his chest and cradled like an infant in his arms.

“Evening Dr. Dorland.” A bright young graduate assistant that Dorland had enlisted as a project technician greeted them as they burst into the lab.

“Hello Jennifer, glad to see someone knows we’ve got a project underway here.” Dorland winked at her as they rushed in. “Is the Arch on standby?”

“Yes, sir. We started warming things up a few hours ago… But with the news and all, I thought—”

“Turn the generators over, Jen. We’re going to need full power in one hour. Kelly, you want to start the data feed?”

“I’m on it,” said Kelly, and he was already throwing off his coat and unzipping the satchel that held his laptop.

Jennifer, the lab assistant, stared from one person to the next, a bit wide eyed to find all four senior team members arriving in the dead of the night. She reached up and removed the MP3 player earphones she had been passing the time with, a bit flustered with the sudden intrusion in the quiet of the evening. She had been hiding from the stream of news events on the radio by playing a few of her favorite songs. Now, as she looked from one senior team member to another, the urgency that was driving the world on finally came home to her. At one point she thought the project would be called off, but now she could see that it was clearly more important than ever. She smoothed back a lock of her medium length hair, trying to gain some sense of composure in the growing haste of the others. “Evening, Professor,” she said to Nordhausen, but Robert was too preoccupied with his thoughts to heed her. “Then we’re still planning the experiment on schedule for tomorrow morning?”

Maeve rushed into a side room, her arms expanded around an immense bundled laundry bag. Jennifer instinctively went to help her but was intercepted by Paul. “Now Jen,” he tugged on her arm to emphasize his point. “We need the power ramped up ASAP.”

“Now? But—”

“Take it to 80% immediately. Is there anyone else on site?”

“Just Tom, down in the generator room. The storm has been causing a few problems and—”

“Tell Tom to turn that baby over right away. I want 80% power inside half an hour.”

“But, sir…”

The look Dorland gave her was enough to quell her protest. His dark eyes had a determined fire in them, and she surrendered with a confused nod, running off to the far alcove where the intercom enabled quick communication with the generator room. Dorland allowed himself a fleeting glance at her as she went, noting how the swathe of her amber hair caught the light. He always had a fond spot for Jen, and was not surprised to find her on duty tonight with the prep-team, or what was left of it. He knew the others were not due to check in for hours, and there would be no time to get anyone on the phone, particularly on night like this. No, they were going to have to manage with Jen and Tom, and this thought led him to revisit the discussion about who would be going through the Arch on the mission.

He looked around the room, noting how Nordhausen was already hunched at a desk, his nose buried in his weathered volume of the Seven Pillars. Kelly had the laptop interfaced, working with uncanny reflexive efficiency as he began to fire up the main system monitors. Maeve was in the anteroom, sorting all the clothing they had gathered from the theater wardrobes into neat piles. They had decided to give themselves as many options as possible, finding traditional British Army uniforms that they could wear beneath the more voluminous outer robes and headdress that would be typical of the Arab peoples of the time. This way, their obvious handicap in only speaking English, might be explained if they should run into trouble.

“What if we run into Lawrence’s men?” Maeve had argued on the way to the facility. “We’ll have to get very close to the place where they will be lying in wait if we are to have any hope of preventing their charge from going off. Has anyone even thought about this? These men were a bit wild and headstrong, weren’t they?”

“We’ll just have to risk it,” Dorland had said. “The British garb will be our ace in the hole in that event. God help us if we run afoul of the Turks, however.”

Now, as Paul considered the matter again, he was wondering who should take that risk. There was no question in his mind that he should go. It was his theory, and his project. Even though it was an awful risk, he felt the burden of responsibility sitting squarely on his shoulders now, and an uneasy sensation began to thrum in his chest as the realization of what they were about to do finally settled in on him. They might get through, he thought. The visitor from the future gave him every indication that they would get through if they tried. But there were still a hundred questions clamoring in his mind, and the greatest of these was the prospect of getting back. Would the retraction algorithm work? How should they set the variables? How much time would they allow? There were so many things they did not know yet.

He tried to visualize the team of future researchers who had labored to reach them here with their urgent call for help. It took everything they could do, all of their resources, to get a single man back to this time with a message. Imagine the computers they must have used to coordinate things; the power generation capabilities, the general understanding they had of the whole process. Yet, they had missed their target by a full seven years, forcing the intrepid Mr. Graves to wait out the days in a monastery to reach a single, critical moment in time on a rain-slick street corner by the BART station. True, there had been profound interference generated by the Palma Shadow, and they would not have that obstacle to contend with on this side of the event. Yet the Shadow was building itself up even now, gathering strength and shape from each life the tsunami sequence was extinguishing, a great overspreading darkness that promised to swallow them all in time. There might be some interference, even if the way to the past was still open.

The last words of the visitor replayed themselves in his mind with a growing sense of unease. “A moment exists somewhere in time that can undo the catastrophe that is about to change the entire world. We must find it, and that quickly. We are in the eye of the tempest now. We have less than six hours before the wave-front is scheduled to make first landfall. You have a fully operational Arch ready here, and you must use it tonight.”

It was almost half past one, and they had less than three hours left to them now. What if something went wrong? What if there was interference from the emerging Shadow of the catastrophe and they ended up in the wrong day, in the wrong month, the wrong year? If they fell short of the target date, they would have to live out the time just as patiently as Mr. Graves had, assuming that was possible. What if they missed the mark by twenty years, thirty years? Paul was in his later forties, reasonably fit, and with good genes. He might live to be eighty or even ninety under normal conditions in the comfort of contemporary American culture. The other team members were close to his same age as well. If they missed the mark by too many years they would be forced to simply live out their lives as best they could in a distant past, with the hope of making it intact to the month of November, 1917. If they missed by fifty years? The prospect of missing on the other side of the target was something he did not even wish to consider.

He knew they would have to arrive somewhere prior to 1965, for they were all born in the last five years of that decade. If they did miss, or if the retraction algorithms failed, for any reason, they would be doomed. He imagined walking through the Arch and emerging some forty years beyond the target date, in the year 1957 instead of 1917. What would happen to them as they approached their birthdays in the late 1960s? According to his theory, they would have to die in some way, before the date of their actual birth. It was an uncomfortable prospect to consider—all too much to ruminate on now. The variables fought with one another in his mind, confusing him and throwing fuel on the fire of anticipation that was building in his stomach. They had to make the attempt, no matter what the outcome. Someone had to go, and he knew he would be the first to step through the Arch, come what may. Could he do it by himself? Was it necessary to risk the lives of any of the others?

Nordhausen was up from his reading and rapidly keying something on a computer terminal. Kelly was just completing the data download, feeding the precious Arion calculations into the Arch control unit. Maeve, God bless her, was trying to discretely slip out of her clothing in the ante-room to get into her costume. Lord, could he ever let any of them go? There would be quite an argument if he tried to prevent them. If he somehow prevailed and stepped through the Arch alone, would he ever see any of them again?

He passed a moment of sentiment, and then steeled himself. He could not be concerned with his own personal feelings now. Kelly and Robert were his closest friends. If he had to lose them to save them, and everyone else in the bargain, he would suffer the burden alone.

Maeve opened the squeaking door to the ante-room and emerged in British Khaki shorts and blouse. High wool stockings were pulled up to her knees and she was fiddling with a canvas belt and buckle as she came.

“You’ll need to put on something warm,” said Nordhausen. “It’s raining.”

“What? We aren’t going out again tonight,” Maeve scolded.

“No, my dear,” Robert humored her, “It’s raining there, in November of 1917. I just came across the passage in my Seven Pillars. I’ve been double checking it in the meteorological database. It seems they were dismayed by a nice thick winter rain the night of the attack. The ground was quite wet. Mud made for long work as they tried to set the charges and bury the cables.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll still have my Arab clothing on top of this. How do I look?”

“Wonderful,” said Kelly. “A fine British soldier—except women were just not in the Army back then, Maeve.”

“I’m a nurse!” Maeve protested meekly. “And that only if we’re discovered. Until then, I can swaddle myself under Meccan shepherd’s dress and hide behind the veil.” She raised a handkerchief to her face to cover her mouth and nose. Her hazel eyes darted about, and it was clear that she was intent on leaping through the Arch at the first opportunity. Her excitement was obvious, but it made Paul all the more anxious.

“Perhaps we better discuss this a bit,” he ventured.

“Discuss what?” Maeve had the belt buckle cinched up and was fishing about in the pockets of her shorts.

“About the mission,” Paul continued. “And about who should go and all…” His voice faded as he finished.

“Count me in,” said Nordhausen. “And you’re coming along, aren’t you Paul?”

“Yes, but…”

“Don’t even try, Paul.” Maeve was on to him at once. “If you think I’m going to let the two of you go tramping through history unattended, you’re crazy. Who knows what nonsense Robert may try to pull?”

“Oh, come now, Maeve,” the professor protested. “Are you still on that Bermuda Pamphlet thing? If there’s anyone here who has a respect for the history, it’s me.”

“That’s exactly my point!” Maeve forged ahead. “You’ll get back there and you simply know too much about things. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Your curiosity about what you think you know will be overwhelming. You’ll start sticking your nose into things just to satisfy yourself that you were right.”

“And just what is that supposed to mean?” Nordhausen’s chin jutted at her as he spoke, rising to the fray of the argument.

“Are you telling me you wouldn’t like to get a peek at Lawrence and his little band of cutthroats? Shakespeare’s desk is one thing, but if you go off and try a little stunt like that you could get us all killed!”

“Oh, please,” the professor turned away with a peeved expression, intent on his book.

“But don’t we need a watch on potential Outcomes here, Maeve?” Paul tried another approach, appealing to her logic instead of trying to back her down directly. “Normally it would take several weeks to develop your algorithms for Outcomes and Consequences. Won’t you need to stay here with Kelly and feed those numbers for processing?”

“What do you mean stay here with me?” Kelly looked up from his terminal and Paul could see that his argument had run into flak immediately. Maeve waved at Kelly to be quiet and took the floor.

“There’s no way I could complete the calculations in time. That’s why it’s imperative that I keep a close eye on the event from the mission end of things. What good are algorithms now? We haven’t done any of the primary research. We’re relying on the date and time from the visitor’s note, and the hope they’ve thought this through for us. No sir, Outcomes and Consequences will have to work its will on the mission end of the project this time. Under normal circumstances I would never even allow a breach like this. Going along is my one chance at assuring myself that the two of you won’t mess things up.”

“Give her a uniform and she becomes positively adamant.” Nordhausen rallied to Paul’s side. “God only knows what she’d do if we gave her a rifle to go along with that outfit.” He satisfied himself that he had evened the score for a moment and returned to his reading, flipping through the pages of his book.

“Well?” Maeve let the word become a challenge, daring anyone else to try and prevent her from joining the mission team. “That’s it then. You two had better get undressed. You can’t wear those clothes and we’re running short of time. If I’m not mistaken, Bermuda is going to go under in about fifteen minutes. Get ready!”

Paul started to say something, but realized it would be futile to try and change Maeve’s mind at this point. In the end, each of them had to decide their own fate in this. Yet a strange thought came to him as he made his way to the anteroom. What if they did try, and they failed? What if all the senior team members went off on a time jaunt and that was the reason no one was able to re-visit the Arch again until the end of the century? He soon realized that this course would doom him to endless reverberations, and he let it go. They had to rely on the integrity of the visitor’s story. If Paradox was going to emerge from this mission, they would have to suffer the consequences. Too much was at stake.

He went into the anteroom and eyed the piles of clothing on the floor. It did not take long to ferret out which was his. At a little over six feet, his lanky frame could be destined for none other than the officer’s trousers Maeve had dug up for him. The matching long-sleeved Captain’s shirt even had the proper insignia on it. He started undressing, more intent on the Arabian headdress in his pile, complete with parallel gold circlets noting him as a Sherif. Rank has its privileges, he thought, even if he had been unable to assert his authority and prevent the others from coming. Something in him wanted company when he stepped through that portal. In spite of his misgivings, he was inwardly glad that Robert and Maeve would be coming along. Maeve’s presence, being a woman dressed in obvious male garb, could cause problems if they were discovered. But her no-nonsense approach to things, and the added insight she would undoubtedly bring on potential Outcomes and Consequences, would be a plus.

They needed Nordhausen along for the history. He had buried himself in Lawrence’s book for the last forty minutes. It was Kelly he was worried about. Who else could run numbers if he came along? He decided to try and enlist the support of Maeve in the one battle that remained to be fought before they left.

By the time he had donned his clothing, Jen was rushing back from the generator room. She was out of breath from climbing the stairs.

“The intercom system doesn’t work,” she breathed, “so I had to use the stairs.”

“Must be the storm,” said Paul. “Nothing we can do about it tonight. Sorry Jen, I hope you’re in shape.”

She was staring at Paul in his long Arab robes. “What on earth? What’s going on?” She looked from Maeve to Paul, obviously confused. Maeve was oblivious, huddling with Nordhausen as the two of them were working out the details of their approach to the situation.

Paul went over and took Jen by the arm, a bit pleased to have a brief moment with her like this. Somehow, the change of clothing imbued him with a sense of adventure. He had come to terms with his fear and apprehension and was determined to carry the mission through. Now the same exhilaration that had possessed Maeve a few moments ago seemed to infect him as well. He proffered a slight bow, warming to his role, with just the hint of flirtation in his manner. He was no longer Dr. Dorland, Chief Project Administrator. Now he was a Sherif of the desert, dark, mysterious and delighting in the secret he held in the palm of his hand that so confounded the young woman. She broke into a smile, and Dorland walked her toward the circular bank of control consoles, whispering as he went.

“As you can see,” he said, “the mission parameters have changed. The launch time has been moved up twelve hours.”

“What? Twelve hours?”

“Yes. We’re trying something new.”

Jen looked very surprised. “Can you change things this late? I thought we needed time to program everything.”

“It’s all been planned,” Paul reassured her. “There were several alternate mission profiles worked up.” A little white lie would do no harm, he concluded. “How do you like my costume?”

“How strange,” she smiled, but that was one thing she always liked about Dorland. He was a bit unpredictable.

“And the professor and Miss Lindford are getting ready for the operation as well. We haven’t decided about Mr. Ramer yet. He’s still working up some numbers and I was hoping we could count on you and Tom to monitor things up here when we go down to the Arch.”

“System Monitor? Me?” She took a deep breath, as if taking in the obvious implications of the position. It would be no small matter to ride shotgun on the main system terminals while the Arch was at full power.

“You’re fully trained,” Dorland pressed on. “And frankly, you’ve shown the best record of any technician these last six months. I’ve… had my eye on you lately.” He smiled inwardly at the double meaning that he hoped would only be apparent to him. “I think you’re best qualified for the job. You’ll have Tom to watch the power levels in the generator room and perhaps Mr. Ramer here to see to the computers. Sorry about the intercom, but we still have the stairs.” He smiled as he gestured to the stairwell leading down to the power generators. “Once we start the experiment you’ll have approximately two hours on the system monitors. The important thing will be the retraction module, of course. You must be certain it reads green the whole time. If the readings fall into the yellow I want you to run the focal routines on terminal three. Can you remember that?”

“Two hours?” Jen seemed a bit flushed with the responsibility he was handing her. “But the other team members won’t be here until at least six AM. Should I call them in now?”

“I’m afraid there won’t be time for that. This will be a brief mission; just a little test, that’s all. We should be finished before four o’clock this morning…”

The futility of what he was trying to do became more and more apparent to Paul as he spoke. How could he enlist Jen’s support and try to keep her in the dark about the real intentions of the mission? It wasn’t fair. She had heard the news about Palma, and would probably begin to put questions together in time. The more he tried to spin out his cover story, the more uncomfortable he became. At last he sighed with resignation and looked her straight in the eye.

“You’ve heard the news, right Jen? So you know what’s at stake.”

She gave him a perplexed look, but he could see that his point was hitting home. “So we’re going to see if we can do something. Kelly’s working up last minute numbers now.” He waited, watching her reaction closely. Bewilderment became fear, and then understanding. He forged on.

“Watch the retraction module closely now, will you? We don’t want to lose our lifeline.” Paul smiled, reassuring her that all would be well and, as her features softened, he realized how very attracted he was to the woman, and how very stupid he had been all these months to hide behind his project title and do nothing about it. Somehow, the precipice he was slowly approaching in his own personal time line had emboldened him. He imagined himself sweeping the woman off her feet, a wild eyed Sherif of the desert felling her with a passionate kiss. Instead he reached out and touched her shoulder. “Thank you, Jen” he said. “I knew I could count on you. Now, tell Tom to take the Arch to 100 percent in ten minutes.”

He caught a glimmer of bewilderment in her eyes and smiled again as he ushered her off toward the stair well. Something was suddenly tugging at his attention in the main console circle. Maeve was badgering Nordhausen and urging him to get into costume. Paul turned and saw that something well beyond Maeve’s overweening air of self-assertiveness was bothering the professor. He knew the man too well. Nordhausen seemed oblivious to her entreaties, and then he swiveled suddenly in his chair to look at Kelly where he was still fidgeting at the main data terminal.

“Can we change the time?” His question had an edge of urgency in it.

Kelly looked up, obviously frustrated. “What? Change the time? Are you kidding?”

“What’s wrong?” Maeve’s eyes narrowed, and she folded her arms, giving Nordhausen an accusing stare.

“Well, I was just thinking that we ought to give ourselves a little time to get settled in once we arrive and—”

“What’s wrong, Robert?” Maeve was becoming fierce now, and the professor gave her a sheepish look. He scratched the back of his neck, and glanced at his volume of the Seven Pillars. Paul saw how his finger marked a place where he had been reading.

“There was more than one train,” Nordhausen blurted out. “Just after they laid the charge at Kilometer 172 they were surprised by a train coming down from the north. No one seemed to see the damn thing in the rain, so they let it go by. The second train out of Amman came up from the south at mid-day, and a third was scheduled six hours later from the north out of Damascus. They were staggered on the single line, you see, about six hours apart.”

“And…” Maeve looked as though she was ready to explode.

“Well I’m not exactly sure which one we need to concern ourselves with, that’s all.”

He looked from one to the other, obviously flustered, but trying to muster what little remained of his dignity under Maeve’s adamant stare. “We might end up tampering with the wrong train…”

Kelly dropped his pen.

8

Lawrence Berkeley Labs – 1:55 AM

Paul passed a moment of great hesitation as the implications of this latest obstacle struck home. Three trains… All at Kilometer 172 on the tenth of November, 1917. Two passed through unscathed. One was blown up and derailed. If there had only been two trains the outcome would have been easy enough to decide. They would simply work to make an end of the first train and, that failing, they would labor to spare the second—the one that had been blown up according to Lawrence’s narrative. But three trains added just the extra measure of complication to the mission that could prove its undoing.

“OK,” he said as his thoughts spilled over. “Let’s reason this thing out. Go get into costume, Robert. I’ll discuss this business with Maeve.”

“Right.” Nordhausen was only too glad to extricate himself from the situation, and he slipped away as Paul settled into a chair, looking oddly out of place in his 19th century Arabian clothing against the backdrop of humming blue computer screens and 21st century technology. “Was there anything else in that note you can recall that might help us out here, Maeve?”

“Nothing I can remember. Our visitor couldn’t write all these details down. I’m sure he meant to discuss this with us. They must have known about this potential complication.”

“Of course they had to know, but we’ll just have to work it thorough. Let’s start with the first train. Suppose we manage to alert Lawrence’s men to its approach—even if that means we expose ourselves to a Prime Mover on the time line.”

“That would be risky,” said Maeve.

“Yes, but if they get the first train, then the derailment on the tracks will prevent the other two from getting through, or at least it will delay them. Lawrence’s boys will grab their booty and high-tail it out to the desert. The second train, the one that blows up as the history reads now, will be spared.”

“How would we alert the Arabs without exposing ourselves?” Maeve was stubbornly trying to protect the Prime Mover from contamination. “If we go running up, shouting the alarm in English, it will certainly get Lawrence’s attention. We’d become entangled in the whole situation and retraction would be very difficult.”

“Well, we don’t have to actually say anything. You’d be amazed at how effective a few shouts and gestures can be. They’ll see us and assume we’re a few stray cohorts raising the alarm.”

“Possibly,” Maeve equivocated. “Or they might just take us to be vagrants and shoot us down. But—”

“Then maybe we could do something to make the train more visible.” Paul was sorting through the possibilities.

“You mean board the train and pull on the whistle or something?” Maeve handled that argument with the obvious sarcasm it deserved.

“Alright,” said Paul, deep in thought. “What if we just made our way to the tracks and pulled some debris across the line. Not enough to cause any real harm, mind you, but perhaps enough to force them to stop and clear the rails.”

“Not very practical, and risky again,” Maeve folded her arms.

“But why?”

“It’s a desert, Paul. It’s not like the rail line is lined with trees. To start with, I’ll bet we would have a rough time finding anything to block the rails. There was probably very little beyond scrub and an occasional tamarisk about.”

“What about rocks,” Paul argued. “There should be plenty of rocks and gravel around. We could pile up just enough to force them to stop.”

“And arouse their suspicions as well,” Maeve countered. “That’s the real complication, Paul. If we block the rail line they’ll be on the alert for possible sabotage. We would risk exposing the Arabs, and Lawrence himself, to a danger they did not have to face historically.”

“Lord, every mission they undertook had the risk of discovery inherent in the operation.”

“This is different,” Maeve countered. “The Turks would be on the alert. They’d be looking for trouble ahead on the line. They might get off a telegraph to call for help. The second train was a troop train, if I remember Nordhausen’s reading of that passage. Suppose they coordinate and catch Lawrence in a trap.”

“You’re reaching, Maeve.” Paul needled her.

“Yes, but you get my point. What if Lawrence is captured? We cannot expose a Prime Mover to unforeseen hazards—a risk forced upon him by our direct actions. There has to be another way.”

Dorland leaned on the arm of his chair, his hand cupping his chin as he thought. “Alright,” he concluded. “Let’s stay with our assumption that the middle train is the key—the second train. To reverse that outcome we will have to find a way of sabotaging the wires or fiddling with the charge so it doesn’t go off. That’s up close and personal. We risk exposing ourselves there too.”

“Yes, but it might be done by one of us. Lord, if they failed to see or hear the first train coming, then I’m inclined to think that one of us could sneak up and do the job.”

“Possibly, but if we fail then the second train blows and the whole mission plays out as it does in the history we have now. We aren’t giving ourselves much room here.”

“What about the third train?” Maeve jumped ahead to the obvious next step in the progression of their thinking. “Think, Paul. If we do manage to save the middle train, and if Lawrence persists in his plan, then it’s the third train that goes boom in the alternate time line. The way I see it we’ve still got a 50 percent chance here. If Masaui is on the middle train, and we save his life by preventing its destruction, then the fate of train three is irrelevant.”

“But if he’s on the final one…” Paul latched a tender onto her train of thought for a moment. “Then Masaui needs to die. The way history reads now, that train might be delayed by the destruction of train two, but it is otherwise unharmed. We have to reverse that outcome as well to be certain.”

“Right,” Maeve agreed. “Train two needs to be saved, and train three needs to blow up. It’s the only way to cover both bets. That’s why we can’t touch the first train. If we meddle with that, both of the other two trains will be spared.”

Jen came running up the steps from the generator room, breathless with excitement. “Tom says the power can go to 100 percent any time. You can toggle it from the main panel up here. I’ll see that the feeds are all tapped in.” She went off behind the main console.

“Great!” Paul clapped his hands together, rubbing them with anticipation. He looked at his watch, and Maeve pointed at it, almost aghast.

“Take that off or you aren’t going anywhere.”

“What?”

“Nothing from our time can go through, Paul.” She looked over her shoulder at Jen, moderating her tone a bit. “At least nothing that would look obviously out of place. You know that!” She gave him a bemused look. “Suppose we leave a nice twenty-first century Timex glistening in the sand for some poor shepherd to find? Get rid of it.”

“Right,” Paul fussed with the watch band as Nordhausen came huffing up in full costume.

“Behold the Caliph!” He smiled broadly, extending his arms to display his long flowing robes. Maeve caught sight of his shoes and saw that he was still wearing a pair of Bass hiking boots.

“Wonderful,” she said with an edge. “Those cleated, Vibram soles were all the rage in 1917. I found a pair of old boots for you, Robert. Go put them on.”

“The damn things are too tight,” Nordhausen complained.

“Too bad!” Maeve’s cheeks flushed red as she pointed to the ante-room. “Look, do I have to take you both in there and do a strip search on you before we go? Nothing from our time goes down to the Arch! Got that? Lose the shoes, and leave that book and your classic Parker ink pen behind as well, Robert.”

The professor gave Paul a wry wink as he shuffled away. “Come on, Paul. I’ll frisk you if you’ll return the compliment.” He laughed, lightening the mood. “We can spare Maeve the trouble.”

“I’m clean.” Paul looked at Maeve. “You have my word on it, but if you ladies would care to explore the issue further…” He raised his eyebrows jokingly, looking from Maeve to Jen.

“We’ll take your word on it,” Maeve grinned.

Kelly slid away from the data portal and hurried over. “Numbers are in the system. I shaded a variable to try and give us a little more time, like Nordhausen wanted. No good trying to change the date at this point,” he explained, “but if we miss our mark it will push things in the right direction, behind the event and not in front of it.”

“Glad to hear that much at least,” said Paul. He could put aside the worry of landing in 1957.

“I better get dressed.” Kelly looked around. “Where’s my costume?”

Paul looked at Maeve, and she read volumes in his eyes as he considered what to say next. “I’ve been thinking, Kelly,” he began uncomfortably.

“Paul and I have been discussing things.” Maeve saw where he was going immediately and deftly came to his rescue, a co-conspirator on the effort to leave Kelly behind. She had other reasons, which she would keep to herself for a time, but now she decided to weigh in with Paul. “One of us has to stay here to watch the data flow, and you’re the numbers man.”

“What? Hell, I’ve got everything programmed. It’s all automated. All we have to do is toggle the Arch to full power and go through.”

“It’s not that simple,” Maeve forged ahead. “Nordhausen hit us with these three trains at the last minute. We’ve had to consider Outcomes and Consequences, and we’ll need someone here to make a possible adjustment on the retraction.”

“Adjustment?” Kelly gave her a bemused look. “What are you talking about?”

Nordhausen came tromping up, clomping his new army boots audibly and lifting his gown to display the battered old leather for Maeve. “They’re too tight,” he complained again.

Maeve saw that he still had his copy of the Seven Pillars in hand and she stepped over and snatched it away from him. “Give me that.” She shot him a fiery glance and then handed the book to Kelly.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Nothing,” said Maeve. “Until four o’clock, that is. Just take the book and put it in a drawer somewhere out of sight while you help Jen with the system monitors.”

“I wasn’t going to bring the damn thing.” The professor was slightly miffed, still thinking Maeve was riding the warpath on him for his suggestion about the Bermuda Pamphlets. “I wish you’d get over this.”

“No. This has nothing to do with you, Robert,” Maeve made a real effort to calm herself. “It’s for Kelly.”

“What are you talking about? I’m coming too, Maeve. Where’s my costume?”

“Kelly…” The tone in Maeve’s voice pulled at him. “Put the book in a drawer. Monitor the system panels with Jen here.” She glanced at the young technician, noting that she was fully focused on some task behind the console. “If we aren’t back by four AM I want you to open the drawer and read the passage in Lawrence’s narrative where this attack was made at Kilometer 172. Read it very carefully, but be quick about it. Paul, when is the tsunami sequence scheduled to make first landfall on the east coast?”

“Around dawn; a little after four in the morning, our time.”

“The visitor gave us the exact time,” Nordhausen said quietly. “He said eleven past the hour.”

“Then you’ll have eleven minutes to do your reading, Kelly,” Maeve continued.

Paul finally understood what she was getting at. “Yes!” He pointed at the book. “If we’ve done our job… If we’ve found the Pushpoint and changed things, then you can read the result in the book!” He looked at Maeve, just a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

“Exactly.” Maeve supported him at once. “There were three trains, Kelly. As the history reads now, number two blows up. Remember that. You’re a Free Variable now.”

“What?” Kelly was struggling to understand the time theory again. He was a programmer and a networking genius, but the logic of Dorland’s theory had always escaped him.

“Yes, a Free Variable.” Paul took up the charge. “You said it yourself, Kelly. You aren’t supposed to even be here. We’re supposed to be over at the morgue identifying your body by now. Like I said earlier, this is an alternate time line for you,” he whispered, “for all of us in one sense, but particularly you, Kelly. Right now we’re in a Nexus Point. This is very rare, you see. Even though the tsunami is moving hundreds of kilometers per hour, it is still taking this precious time to make its way across the Atlantic. That interval is creating a Deep Nexus! The Palma Event has occurred already, but its primary effect is in the ripple of this tsunami wave. While we’re in the Nexus, in eye of the storm, if you will, we can all act as Free Variables! This means that even if we do go back and alter the time line you should still remember this conversation. The record of these events will be preserved in your mind, even if physical alterations in the matrix of reality occur here.” He tried to say it another way. “If we change history the passage in the book will change, Kelly. You’ll be able to read about it, possibly even discover what we ended up doing. Look, the visitor vanished, but we all still remember him, right? Then you should remember this conversation as well! If we don’t get back before four AM, you’ll have those eleven minutes to decide what to do with the retraction module. I’ve told Jen to monitor it very closely, but we may need programming. We may need your magic, Kelly. You’re the only one who could re-program the algorithm on this end if something goes wrong.”

Kelly finally realized what they were saying, but he still had a bewildered look on his face. “Well, what do I look for?” He gave the book a forlorn glance.

“I’ve marked the place and scribbled all over the pages as well,” said Nordhausen.

“The way it reads now, Kelly, the second train, the one coming up from Amman, was blown up by Lawrence and his men. At four AM you read the passage through. If the second train gets by unscathed, and the third train blows up, the one from the north, then we’ve done our job and you can pull us out. Otherwise hang tight until the last possible minute. Let the fail-safe retraction scheme bring us home. It may give us just the extra time we need there.”

“What about the first train?” Nordhausen asked.

“Ignore it,” said Paul. “Maeve and I have worked this out.”

“Now, put the book away in a drawer like I said,” Maeve cautioned him. “I want it out of sight. Don’t touch it until four AM. Understand?”

“What if the damn thing vanishes, like the old man, or the note?” Kelly had a desperate look on his face.

“I think it will remain a stable element in this environment,” said Maeve, and Paul nodded his ascent.

“Lawrence is going to write the book one way or another. The note was a Radical Variable, the book should hold true, except for the outcome in this particular narrative. The only way it could vanish is if we do something that gets Lawrence killed.”

Jen had finished her work behind the main console and came running up with the good news. “Everything’s ready! You can toggle the primary power surge from the main console now.”

“Well people,” Paul took a deep breath. “The three of us are wasting precious time. Let’s head for the Arch!”

They started away in a rush of motion, leaving Kelly in their wake holding the volume of the Seven Pillars, and looking like a lost child. Paul looked over his shoulder at him.

“Take care of us, buddy!”

Kelly forced a smile in spite of the strange feeling that settled over him now. “Count on it, mister,” he said reflexively, but his heart was very heavy. He had the odd feeling that something was going to happen—something unexpected. His friends were all going off without him and he might never see them again. He swallowed hard, forcing himself to focus on the things he might have to accomplish here.

They reached the heavy sealed doorway that would take them into the Arch complex. Paul was already entering the access code on the security panel, leaning in to let the retinal scanner verify that the numbers were being keyed by him.

Maeve hesitated a moment, looking from Paul to Kelly, then she turned and rushed back, reaching Kelly in a wave of motion and throwing her arms around him. She smiled warmly, giving him a tight hug.

“Don’t touch the book until four AM,” she whispered. “And if we’re not here to read it with you, bring us all back, Kelly… Bring me back to you. Hear me?” It was an action that was well out of character for Maeve, as she had guarded her feelings for Kelly very carefully. Here, however, at the edge of a leave taking that could become permanent, Maeve broke out of her shell of propriety. The action had an immediate effect.

Tears welled in the corner of Kelly’s eyes as Maeve released him. He was wrestling with a flood of emotions. All the sweat and labor of three long years was finally coming to a head. He was still flustered with the notion that he was living a second life, and the time seemed all the more precious to him as each second ticked away. Now the three people he felt closest to in the world were going off and leaving him with a history book! It was all too much to process at once.

The heavy titanium doorway opened with a hiss as the pressure variance between the two rooms equalized. Maeve turned and hurried over to the doorway where Paul and Robert were already making their way through the dark entrance with a last wave.

The moment was jarred with the ring of a telephone on the main console. Jen reached for it as Maeve hastened towards the yawning portal. The door was programmed to open for a brief interval and then automatically close again. If she didn’t make it through she would have to enter the access code all over again. Paul heard the phone ring and froze in his tracks, an odd look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Nordhausen nudged him. “You don’t think we’re getting a last minute call from our friends in another century, do you?”

“Hang on a second,” he waited breathlessly as Maeve approached the entrance.

“Oh, Miss Lindford! It’s for you,” Jen called, her hand covering the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver.

“What? Who would be calling me at this hour?”

“Long distance,” said Jen. “It’s your mother.”

Maeve rolled her eyes, as if acknowledging some deep inner fear that had finally come to pass. She had come to terms with the fact that her mother was going to be killed if the tsunami sequence reached the east coast. Her one hope had been that she would not even hear about the event, remaining quietly asleep in her little cottage on the shore of Boston Harbor.

Events had overtaken her, and Maeve managed to suppress the sorrow that welled within her as the evening unfolded. She would find time to grieve the loss later, she told herself. Then the visitor arrived with his pound of coffee and she threw her emotions into the one hope that they might actually prevent this catastrophe.

Time passed in a dizzy rush after that. Now it was running out. The Deep Nexus that had formed around them would soon begin to dissipate as the tsunami sequence surged west. She could feel it. Surely the alarm was up all along the Eastern Seaboard by now. All the media channels were broadcasting full tilt, and she had no doubt that every fog horn and lighthouse along the coast was signaling danger to any who could see or hear. Something must have awakened her mother and, by some miracle, she managed to get a line to the one place she knew Maeve would probably be if she was not at home.

Maeve stopped, nearly at the door, looking over her shoulder at Jen, her eyes wide with the urgency of a decision that clamored for an answer. The heavy metal door was swinging shut, gliding silently on well-oiled hinges; moving as inevitably as the great swell in the Atlantic. She looked at Paul and Robert, then at Kelly, and Jen where she waited, holding the telephone in two hands like something hot that she had just taken out of the oven. It would be the last time, Maeve thought, that she would ever hear her mother’s voice. If she slipped through the narrowing portal she might never see this world again.

All these thoughts passed in a fluttering instant within her mind, and her heart leapt with the only choice she could possibly make. She looked at Paul and Robert.

“Go!” she yelled at them. “Don’t wait. There’s no time!”

The great polished door swung closed, the seals taking hold at once with a sharp metallic clank followed by a sibilant hiss as the pressure reasserted itself. She stared at the impenetrable mass of titanium alloy, her eyes wet with tears. Then she heaved a quiet sigh and turned toward Jen at the main console. Kelly was frozen with a heart-rending look on his face. He started toward her, but Maeve held up a warding hand, intent on reaching the phone.

“This first,” she said with quiet dignity, and Kelly gave her an assuring smile.

When the door clamped shut the pale blue overhead lighting winked on to illuminate a long cylindrical tunnel. Paul stared at Robert, but was soon galvanized by the urgency of the moment.

“We’d better hurry,” he said, leading the way down the long tunnel as it angled ever more sharply into the depths of the hillside. The complex was buried deep underground, a precaution to help shield the environment against the strange effects that might be released should anything go wrong with the spin-out of the singularity. The tunnel led them to an elevator, and they rushed in, catching their own reflection on the polished metal doors: two ghosts in long white Arab robes. There were only two buttons on the elevator panel. One was clearly labeled ARCH and Paul pressed it without a moment’s hesitation. He glanced at the clock on the elevator wall, noting the time at 2:20 AM.

“We lost Bermuda, Professor,” he said quietly. “The wave was scheduled to hit there a little after two AM, our time.”

“It was a saving grace in 1611 when the Plymouth expedition made landfall there,” said Nordhausen. “They once feared the place, you know. Called it the Devil’s Island.”

“God help them now,” said Paul. The queasy feeling of anticipation seemed to redouble when the elevator shot down, leaving their stomachs behind.

“It’s better this way,” said Nordhausen. “Maeve has a wonderful head on her shoulders, but a woman would have been very much out of place in the milieu we’re opening; perhaps unexplainable. That nurse business was a good try, but really, what would a nurse be doing in the middle of the desert in Bedouin clothing? Did you know that there was not one single speaking female role in the movie?”

“What?”

“Lawrence of Arabia,” Nordhausen explained. “The entire cast was male—what blessed relief! It was, as they say, a man’s world in 1917. It’s better she stays behind.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Paul conceded. “But don’t get any ideas just because you won’t have Maeve watching your every move. We’ve got to be very careful. This is going to be like a delicate surgery. We have to find our Pushpoint and enable it while creating as little disturbance in the flow of events as possible.”

“I hope there’s time,” Nordhausen worried. “Look at the clock! What if we land in a place that takes us hours and hours to find the ambush zone? We’ve only got an hour and a half.”

Paul shook his head. “Plenty of time. Once we step through the Arch we’ll have all the time between the interval when we emerge and the actual attack on the train. It doesn’t matter how much time is left on this end. We could walk through the Arch a minute before four in the morning and return in thirty seconds, having spent a decade in the past! You never will get a handle on temporal mechanics, will you? Our visitor tonight emerged seven years ago, by his account. He lived out all that time on our Meridian but, in the world he came from, he might have been gone a just few brief moments. Maeve will hardly have time to take her phone call before we get back; you’ll see.”

“What if we miss our target?”

“That’s my main worry,” Paul confided. “Kelly said he shaded a variable to drop us on the negative side of the event. We can’t risk arriving too late, you see. But arriving too early could be just as much of a problem. Suppose we suffer the same fate as our visitor from the future, and miss the mark. We would have to scrub the mission and wait for the fail-safe retraction to kick in, unless we disable it. In that case, if we were to land around 1900, would you be prepared to live out seventeen years in the alternate time line? Think about it, Robert. You can still change your mind if you want. Thus isn’t going to be a quiet evening at the Globe. Kelly is good, but he really had to rush these calculations tonight. We haven’t had any time to fine-tune the breaching point.”

Nordhausen shook his head as the elevator came to a halt. “You aren’t getting rid of me that easy,” he said. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m scared shitless right now, but I’m still going.” Then he thought about the prospect for a moment and asked another question. “I’ve never quite understood how the retraction sequence works. How do we get back?” The question underlined the fear they were both feeling now.

“What? Oh, it’s a bit complex. The infusion is going to permeate the Arch with a tachyon surge. We may even feel the whole thing when we get inside. No one knows yet. In any case, we can weave particles into the fiber of our quantum matrix and give them a designated half-life, in a manner of speaking. We set the spin resonance to respond to one of two events: the temporal signature of the target time, plus a given interval, or the final decay of the infusion. One way or another, we’ll be pulled back through the singularity in the Arch and return. That’s what happened to our visitor! I think he had a very brief time with us after he intervened to save Kelly. That was his mission, you see. Whether he was free-lancing with his coffee run is another question. Did you notice how he kept looking at his watch? He was very agitated, almost as if he expected something to happen to him at any moment.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Nordhausen. “We won’t have an Arch on the other side. How will we get pulled back?”

“Simple,” Paul smiled. “The door we’re about to open is going to remain open for us, Robert. Time may be a harsh mistress, to repeat that old cliché, but she’s also a tidy one.” The elevator doors slid open and they stepped out into another long metallic tunnel. Paul reached back and extended an arm to block the closing doors.

“You see?” He smiled at the professor. “Time will extend an arm and keep the portal open for us. She knows we don’t belong on this side of the door, and she won’t rest until we’re safe in our own Meridian again. You’ll see.”

A great oval door was waiting for them at the end of a short tunnel, much like the portal above. Paul keyed the entry code and looked for the intercom to the control console while the heavy door swung inward with the same snapping hiss as before. He thumbed the call signal on the intercom and spoke.

“We’re opening the outer lock, Kelly. You can ramp it up to full power and start the spin sequence.”

“Roger that,” Kelly’s voice was reassuring on the other end of the line. “Maeve says to check your pockets and all.”

“Tell her we’ll be very discreet campers.” Paul suddenly smiled with an inner recollection. “And we’ll spend a lovely couple of hours in the Arabian Desert.” He let a little southern twang into his voice, knowing that only Kelly would know what he was talking about.

Nordhausen gave him an odd look, and Paul explained.

“I took this camping trip once out on the Olympic Peninsula with Kelly. The park ranger was coming by to collect the camping fees, and these two old people were trying to pretend they were just day visitors… Oh, never mind. You had to be there.”

The professor patted his torso, compliant with Maeve’s abiding caution to the last. He was surprised to find something in a small cache pocket within his gown, and he reached inside to fondle it with his fingers. Beads, he thought? Then the a faint familiar odor came to him and he realized that Maeve had secreted a supply of loose coffee beans in a cloth pouch, along with a few other items that he did not have time to explore. He smiled.

They were in a small, spherical chamber, and the heavy door was already swinging shut behind them. The faint whir of spinning turbines came to them now, resonating from the bowels of the earth with a palpable vibration that gathered strength with each passing moment. A pump began to operate somewhere and they felt their ears pop as the outer door sealed behind them and the chamber added pressure. They instinctively turned to face the last barrier between them and the Arch. It was a another massive metal door, split down the middle with a single seam—the final safety lock. The two halves would slide open any moment now.

“Power at 100 percent,” said Kelly over the intercom. “Everything all right down there?”

“We’re all yours,” said Paul.

“Well don’t cause any trouble in the park. Got that?”

Paul smiled. It was another of their favorite catch phrases, the warp and woof of a long friendship. Kelly spoke again: “Spin configuration looks wonderful, Paul. I’m infusing the chamber now… On my mark… And you are good to go!”

The titanium-steel alloy split asunder as the two halves of the final barrier slipped open with a metallic whisk. They found themselves staring down an iridescent corridor, broken at intervals by gleaming arches of pulsating light. The final Arch was brilliantly lit with a chaotic radiance of color and movement.

“Put your headdress on, professor!” Paul had to shout over the torrential sound resonating in the narrow passage.

“What if we miss the target, Paul?” Nordhausen gave him a wide-eyed look. “What if we miss it by fifty years?”

“No time for that, Robert!” Paul squinted into the scintillating sheen of light and motion in the Arch. They started forward, eyes fixed on a thick yellow line painted in the place where the last metal barrier had stood. Once they crossed that line they would be a few short steps from the event horizon of a tiny black hole. The spin-out of the entire quantum phenomenon was the only thing keeping them from being sucked into oblivion now. It was an elegantly simple effect that seemed to hold true because of the odd interaction of gravity and centrifugal force. Just as one could put a finger into the heart of a whirlpool and not get wet, and again like the dead space of calm in the eye of a hurricane, the interaction of quantum gravity conferred the same benefit to a spinning black hole. Here, in the sacred sanctuary created by the Arch, the annihilating effects of the singularity at the heart of the black hole were tamed and rendered harmless. It was all in the spin; all in the incredible vortex of energy and light, that swirled around them as they stepped over the line.

Paul felt Robert groping for him in the whirling storm of light, and the two men locked arms. Somehow the simple grasp of another human being made the last few steps possible for them. The final, brilliant span of the Arch loomed ahead of them and they felt their skin tingling as with the prickle of a thousand needles. There was no pain—only the strange sensation that something was permeating the entire fabric of their being, rending them through with the cold, penetrating gaze of eternity. It was suddenly very cold, and a violet haze seemed to enfold them. They were under the Arch. Infinity yawned, and the two men slipped through into the void.

9

Lawrence Berkeley Labs – 2:25 AM

Maeve gave Kelly a furtive glance as she stepped past him to the Main console. Jen extended the telephone receiver, a question in her eyes when she saw how Maeve received it so tentatively, as if uncertain or fearful in some way. Maeve put the receiver to her ear, listening for a moment before she spoke.

“Mother?” she said at last, her voice breaking a bit, a look of anguish on her face.

“Is that you, Maeve?” The old woman’s voice seemed distant and remote, fading in and out as if it were carried on a wireless signal.

“Are you there?” She waited, hearing a faint wash of static on the line before her mother’s voice emerged, a barely discernable whisper, as though from another world.

“I’m frightened, Maeve… I’m frightened.”

“Where are you, mother? Are you home? Are you in bed, dear?”

Something interposed itself between them, a shadow, thin and insubstantial, yet palpable in its effect. The overhead lights flickered for a moment and Maeve was distracted by the sound of Paul’s voice emanating from the intercom.

“We’re opening the outer lock, Kelly. You can ramp it up to full power and start the spin sequence.”

“Roger that,” Kelly’s was all business, his eyes focused on the main power flow panels, arms extended as he began toggling switches and twisting dials. Maeve listened at the receiver, but static masked the connection. She covered the mouthpiece briefly and whispered something at Kelly.

“Maeve says to check your pockets and all.” Kelly passed the message on through his console microphone.

“Tell her we’ll be very discreet campers.” Paul’s voice returned with a strange southern twang to it, and she knew that he was reaching out to Kelly in their secret language, a mythology of long steeped friendship that passed between them as a silly, effortless banter.

“Power at 100 percent,” Kelly informed. “Everything all right down there?”

“We’re all yours,” said Paul.

“Well, don’t cause any trouble in the park. Got that?” Kelly smiled as he spoke again: “Spin configuration looks wonderful, Paul. I’m infusing the chamber now… On my mark… And you are good to go!”

The static on the telephone increased, and Maeve tried to talk through it, urging her mother to wait a moment. Her eyes were glued to Kelly, watching his animated movements at the main console. He snapped his fingers, waving at Jen to take a seat next to him on the targeting vector readout.

“Watch that color bar,” he said quickly. “Let me know what it’s reading.” His eyes were scanning the bright phosphorous displays on the panels, the green numbers reflecting onto his face and forehead until it seemed that his brain was being flooded by an endless digital stream of ones and zeros.

“Looking good… looking good…” he intonated his inner assessment of the data stream, making minor adjustments to the spin stabilization unit. “What’s the bar showing?” A quick glance at Jen brought her to life and she focused on her read-out panels, a bit flustered but comforted as her training kicked in and she fetched a reflexive status call from memory.

“Three green,” she said, a little more confidence in her voice. Her momentary distraction over Maeve’s reaction to the telephone call dissipated, and she was focused on the task at hand.

“Sing out if anything changes.” Kelly seemed mesmerized by his screen. He twisted a dial, fine tuning some setting in the breach vectors. The sound of the generators came to them from deep beneath the earth. It was a swelling vibrato, with deep bass overtones and a definite rumble. Maeve felt a subtle vibration building as she pressed the phone to her ear again.

“Mother?” She queried, but there was no sound from the other end of the line. “Are you still there?” The static seemed impenetrable, but she hung on, painfully distracted, eyes riveted on Kelly where he worked the main console.

“Blue line on the bar,” said Jen, with just the hint of a warning in her voice. “Vector reads five-seven.” She looked at Kelly, who gave her a momentary glance, a knot of tension furrowing his brow as he made a further adjustment.

“Now?” he asked, eyes widening with anticipation.

“Shifting into violet,” said Jen.

Kelly looked at her full on, eyes darting back to his main read-out panel. He bit at his lower lip. “Toggle the number three switch on your array!” Kelly raised his voice, emphasizing some inner decision he had been struggling with.

The spatial locus readings were solid green, but the temporal vectors were starting to shift on him: green into blue into violet. He decided to suppress his shading algorithm, hoping he could nudge the waveform back in the right direction. “Come on now,” he breathed. “Come on…”

Jen watched her readings, frowning as the color shifted again. “The bar is yellow now,” she said quickly. “Nine by five.”

“Shit!” The single word carried a cascade of emotions. Kelly covered his mouth with his hand, eyes wide, as though he were searching frantically in his mind for a solution. He must have entered a bad variable, but where? There would be no time for a diagnostic. Kelly was scanning his main readout, desperate for some clue. The spin-out looked good, and they had a stable Arch array. The power readings were fluctuating but still maintaining 97% of full capacity. The spatial locus was dead on. It had to be the temporal shade.

“Enable that switch again!” He shouted, pointing at Jen’s panel.

“What?”

“Toggle number three!”

Jen passed a moment of hesitation and returned the switch to its original position with a snap. Kelly slid over to her station, the wheels of his chair skidding on the polished tile floor. The bar was moving again, spiking up into the yellow and then falling off to the violet. Maeve was frozen, the telephone limp in her hands as she watched Kelly press the palm of his right hand to the side of his head.

“God…” he breathed, watching the dizzying array of numbers spin on a digital countdown readout. “Oh God…”

“Maeve???” The sound of her mother’s voice seemed to echo from the receiver, pinging with a trilling rhythm as if stuck in a reverberating loop. Maeve stared at the telephone, real fear in her eyes when she heard the strange sounds emanating into the room. “I’m frightened… frightened…” the echo seemed to resonate in her mind. No one else seemed to hear it.

“What’s wrong?” Maeve let the telephone slip from her grasp as if it had burned her hand.

Kelly had a desperate look on his face. “Phase inversion,” he said. “I wonder if they’ve crossed the line yet? Damn, we should have had cameras in the approach tunnel.”

“Phase inversion? Are you certain?” Maeve rushed over, leaving phone receiver dangling over the lip of the desk by its cord.

Kelly was staring at the main console, his mind racing the digital countdown indicator on the upper panel. It was speeding past 15 seconds, the millisecond displays spinning rapidly and giving the impression that time was moving much faster than it should. He had to do something, and quickly. A sudden thought occurred to him as he looked at the pattern buffer. The infusion! If they were moving as planned in the Arch corridor they would have already passed through the infusion. He should have a good signature for both of them in the pattern buffer now, an immense bank of hundreds of thousands of terabytes of computer memory, holding a virtual description, in mathematical terms, of their quantum matrix. He made a lightning fast mental calculation, looking at the reading on the temporal vector range and ciphering in his head. Then he moved, practically knocking Maeve over as he lunged for the vector gradient controls.

He thumbed a switch.

The digital clock passed through eight seconds.

His fingers moved in a blur on the keyboard, eyes glued to the screen. He gave the module the access code to the pattern buffer, and fed the data sample to the core vector guidance unit. Then he opened a protective cover on a side panel and he punched his index finger home, depressing an ominous red button.

“What are you doing?” Maeve blanched when she saw what Kelly had done. “That’s the vector loop!”

“What’s the bar doing?” Kelly shouted at Jen, ignoring Maeve for the moment. His voice had a frantic edge to it.

“Blue by one-seven point two.”

The digital clock passed three seconds.

Kelly leaned heavily on the main console, his finger poised on the buffer-loop release button as he counted to two. It seemed the longest two seconds of his life, a life he should not even be living, he realized; a life that had been stolen from the larders of Time.

He pressed the release, his breath expelling as he did so, his other hand groping to one side feeling for some support. His head felt very light, and his hands were shaking.

The digital clock ran out and a loud buzz signaled that the Arch breaching sequence had run its course. Kelly’s arm waved lazily behind him, groping the still air of the room. Maeve saw his distress and took hold of his arm at once, easing him down into a swivel chair.

“What happened?” She was as much concerned for Kelly’s condition as anything else, but her emotions seemed pulled in a hundred directions. The telephone receiver swayed back and forth, and not a sound came from the earpiece now. The console was still fluttering with digital readouts and waveform ray tracings on the thin panel displays. Kelly sat in utter stillness, pale and confused. Jen still sat at her workstation, looking from the color bar to Kelly and Maeve and then back again.

“Did something go wrong?” she ventured.

Kelly said nothing, prompting Maeve to look over her shoulder at Jen’s view panel. Now the various elements of the scene that had just played itself out began to gel in her mind, like odd, unrelated clues suddenly coalescing to a certainty. She squeezed Kelly’s hand, almost as if to assure herself that he was still there; still warm; still substantial.

“You initiated an emergency pattern loop,” she whispered, retracing the moment that had passed by in such a rush. “The countdown was at three seconds and you sent a loop command through the system.” Her voice gathered strength as the realization of what had happened solidified in her thinking. “Kelly, how could you? How could you possibly key the right variable without a computational cycle?”

Kelly gave her a vacant look. “There was no time,” he said quietly. “The temporal vectors were spiking out of the target range and I had to do something.”

“Something?” Maeve’s eyes widened. Her Committee had set down one ironclad regulation to be followed without fail in the event of any irregularity on an attempt to breach the continuum: Abort. Kelly, being a senior project team member, knew the importance of the regulation as well as anyone there, for any irregularity, beyond the obvious possibility of equipment failure, would most likely stem from an error in the calculations.

“The bar spiked into yellow—It must have been an incorrect entry on the shading variable I keyed for Nordhausen. I told him we couldn’t change the time, but I tried to shade the breach on the negative side of the target event, just for safety’s sake. Then the bar started to spike and there were only fifteen seconds on the clock. They were in the infusion and…”

“Oh God,” Maeve whispered. “But a loop, Kelly. Why initiate a vector loop?”

“It was the only thing I could think of,” Kelly began. “Actually… I thought of it last week, as a possible safety procedure for retraction.”

“Retraction?” Maeve gave him a look that immediately demanded more.

“Yes,” Kelly stammered, still physically upset by the experience. “I was thinking that once we had a signature on their temporal matrix from the infusion, we could run a loop vector, and use the timing on the cycle in conjunction with the half-life setting for retraction. Theoretically, it would allow us to run a retraction routine for every complete cycle of the loop, at specific points during the half-life decay sequence.”

“Theoretically?” Maeve’s eyes widened to emphasize her displeasure.

“Well none of this has ever been done before, Maeve,” Kelly protested. “It’s all theoretical at this point. Give me a break! We don’t even know if the breach worked.”

Maeve looked quickly at the console, finding the microphone to the PA panel in the Arch corridor. She flipped the switch and called for Paul and Robert several times, but there was no answer. Her lips tightened as she looked at Kelly, real concern in her eyes.

“So maybe it worked,” Kelly offered, hoping to look at things from the bright side.

“And maybe they’re lying unconscious in the Arch corridor,” Maeve countered. “Or maybe they’re dead! I’m going down there.”

“Wait, Maeve.” Kelly reached for her arm. “You can’t. The door is sealed and it won’t open for another five minutes until the particle flux effects have cleared.”

“Fine then,” she pulled away. “You can open the lock in five minutes. I’m going down there. God only knows what may have happened.” She looked at Jen, clearly angry.

“What?” Jen was looking from one to the other. She had been trained on the panel readouts, and knew all the appropriate status calls for her station, but very little about the actual theory and mechanism behind it all. Paul’s quiet warning to her added a sense of urgency to the situation. Something was clearly wrong, but she did not know exactly what it was.

Maeve gave her a stern look. “What does the color bar read now?”

“Blue at zero point two-five.”

“That’s close,” said Kelly trying to salvage something from the situation. “It’s well under one percent, which means—”

“Which means they’re likely to land in November,” Maeve interrupted him. “What century they end up in, however, is anybody’s guess.”

Part IV

K-T Excursion

“It’s a queer sensation, this secret belief that one stands on the brink of the world’s greatest catastrophe.”

Henry Brooke Adams

10

Time: Unknown

They arrived in a haze of icy fog, surrounded by the darkness of night. As the wet mist around them slowly dissipated they felt the chill of another world embrace them; another time. They had come from the heart of a great metropolitan city in the 21st century, and arrived in the empty darkness of the open desert, half a world away. The one common element these two places shared was the rain. They left one rain storm lumbering in from the Pacific Ocean to find another in the midst of a starless, gloomy night. The heavy overcast obscured the sky with a dreary weight.

Paul opened his eyes, groping forward with his free arm into the inky blackness around them. As the misty vapors dissipated, the dark shapes of low, rolling hills emerged in his forward field of vision. He took a deep breath, amazed at the strange smells in the air as he drank in his first taste of another time. They were through the Arch, and alive. It worked! His elation thrilled him to the bone and he was taken with an involuntary shiver.

Nordhausen still held his right arm in an iron grip, but he slowly let go. Paul could hear him breathing heavily and caught the vapor of his breath in the cold night air. “We made it through,” he said.

Nordhausen was looking around them in all directions, trying to immediately place some familiar object in his new frame of reference. He felt a queasy, dizzy feeling, as though he had just been spun around and around, and then let go to grope his way in the dark. He dropped to his knees.

“You all right?” Paul knelt beside him.

Nordhausen put a hand down to steady himself, feeling the clammy wetness of the ground broken by sharp, flinty gravel. He took a deep breath. “Amazing!” he exclaimed. “It’s so dark.”

“No city lights, no cars, no streetlamps,” said Paul. “And on a night like this we won’t even get much starlight. Did you bother to check the phase of the moon?”

“Yes,” said Nordhausen, “It was very regular that month. Full on the 1st of the month, a half moon on the 7th, dark on the 14th, and full again on the 28th. If we’re on target we should see a waning crescent for the 10th. Do you see it? It should be up by now, unless this is a pre-dawn hour.”

“Can’t make out a thing in this weather, but you’re right. It’s dark as hell. And cold!”

“We’ll find out soon enough, I suppose,” said Nordhausen.

“Are you all right?” Paul put a hand on Robert’s shoulder.

“That was weird. Breathtaking! Did you open your eyes?”

“Are you kidding?”

“You mean you closed your eyes? Oh, Paul, it was awesome. The range of color and the movement of the light was head spinning. It had a discernable rhythm to it, though. Almost… musical in organization. I’m just a little dizzy, that’s all. It’s passing. Here, help me up off these wet stones!”

“We should find some cover. It’s cold! I thought this was the desert.”

“It is the desert, but it can get down near freezing here in the winter. You don’t have much fat on those bones. I hope you dressed for the rain. I tried to warn you.”

Paul extended a hand to help Nordhausen to his feet. Their eyes were gradually adjusting to the darkness, but the light drizzle of rain masked the surrounding skyline and they could barely make out the formless undulation of the ground.

“I can see how Lawrence’s men would miss the first train,” said Nordhausen. Is that a hill over there?”

“Looks like a low ridge. There may be a wadi at the bottom that isn’t flooded out, or even a cave. Let’s move in that direction. If we can get ourselves out of the rain and hunker down until dawn, we should be able to see the Hejaz Railway from the top of that rise.”

Robert nodded his agreement and the two men began to pick their way over the broken ground. It was slow going, for the area was littered with sharp-edged rocks that were slick with the rain and made for very treacherous footing. Nordhausen nearly slipped and fell, righting himself at the last minute. He stooped for a moment, to get his breath, and his eye caught something on the ground that he didn’t expect to find.

“That’s odd,” he murmured to himself as he picked up a smooth rock and hefted it in his palm. He squinted about him, noting how the minimal light seemed to be reflected from similar stones here and there. Paul came up behind him and he struggled up onto his feet again. “A bit out of shape, I see,” he breathed.

“Me too,” said Paul. “The air seems so heavy. Maybe we’re just feeling the effects of the time shift.”

“Or the creep of old age. We’re both over forty now, you know.”

They struggled along, eventually reaching a low shelf of stone at the base of the ridge. At one point the effects of erosion had cut away the softer ground near the bed of the wadi and formed an overarching rim of rock that provided some shelter from the rain. By the time they had sloshed their way across a thin stream of runoff, they were wet, tired and shivering with the cold. They huddled in the dark, their backs pressed against the hard stone behind them to avoid the occasional wet gusts of drizzle and rain.

“What miserable weather,” said Paul.

“Not what you expected, I know,” Nordhausen replied. “At least the rain seems to be tapering off.”

“What’s that smell?” Paul screwed up his face. “Where’s all that sweet, unpolluted desert air?”

“Yes, I noticed that too. And the rain has a bitter taste to it as well. Very odd…” Nordhausen was still rolling the small rock in the palm of his hand, noting the smooth, even surface, deep in thought. He leaned out, squinting up past the lip of overhanging stone to try and spy out the moon or some guiding star. “Moon must be down,” he said. “But I think the sun will be up soon. See that red smear off there? I think we may be getting close to dawn. It seems to be growing lighter up ahead. That would be east, then. At least we’re heading in the right direction.”

“Want to look for a way up this ridge? Might warm us up.” Paul was tired, but driven by the urgency of their mission. He stood up, stooping to avoid the outcropping of rock overhead, and started down into the wadi, grateful to be moving to get some blood flowing through his limbs. The rainwater had run off quickly, and they were able to make their way along the wadi using little islands of gravely rock embedded in a fine reddish silt. Paul angled to the right, looking for a safe way up the side of the ridge and picked out a path that seemed promising. He looked over his shoulder every so often, and saw that Nordhausen was falling behind him as he climbed. The professor seemed to stop now and then, picking at the ground or peering at an occasional clump of withered plant growth. Paul gestured at him to hurry.

It was another ten minutes of hard climbing, but they eventually reached the top of the ridge. Paul squinted towards the blood-red dawn to the east, looking for some sign of the railway, but it was still too dark. Nordhausen huffed up and sat down on a flat shale, winded and perplexed.

“Should be light soon,” he said. “Look how red the horizon is. There must be heavy clouds out that way, or smoke. The light seems too diffused.”

“Can’t make out much from here,” said Paul. “God, I hope the spatial coordinates were accurate. What was that business Kelly said about shading a variable or taking off a second or two on the numbers?”

“What? Oh the variable shade would have been a temporal adjustment I asked for. Kelly wanted to be sure we arrived before the 10th. The spatial data was approximate, of course. It was the best I could do on short notice. We certainly seem to be in the desert, but who can say where?”

“That’s what worries me.” Paul flapped his arms to try and warm himself, his long robes flowing in the dim light. “We could be miles and miles away from the rail line. Lawrence and his men had camels to get around, but we’re on foot. If the spatial coordinates are off, we could be in trouble.”

Nordhausen was quiet for some time. When he spoke, his voice had a tentative quality to it, as though he was feeling his way through something in his mind, not quite certain. “It’s the temporal coordinate that worries me more. The land forms here seem too fresh and sharp.”

“What do you mean?”

“This ridge we just came up,” he explained. “There was too much smooth rock face. It should be heavily eroded—in terraces—at least that’s the typical structure of the land in this region. These hills seem odd: too unweathered; too young.”

“Well I wouldn’t worry too much about that. There’s plenty of variation in nature. Maybe we’ve climbed a big hunk of basalt.”

“That’s an igneous rock, and there shouldn’t be much of it around.”

“Well, there were basalt deposits in Egypt that served as good quarries for the pyramids, and some in the Sinai as well.”

“Not here, Paul. Most of that geology in Jordan is farther north, above the Red Sea. The landforms here should be sedimentary rock: calcite, and dolomite limestone, and perhaps some flints or marl clay beds thrown in as well. If we’re in the lower Trans-Jordan region, where we’re supposed to be, there should be very little basalt exposed to the surface like this. That rock would have to be very old.”

“Look there!” Paul pointed east toward the red horizon where the smoky clouds parted and the sunlight streaked through in hues of deep auburn and amber. The sudden illumination shocked them with the vision of a broiling sky, thick with dark, knotted clouds that seemed to smolder and glow, replete with red embers wafting up on heavy smoke. Nordhausen looked around, a troubled expression on his face.

“What a storm,” Paul exclaimed. “Beautiful, isn’t it? And terrible.” Paul’s eyes widened at the at the sight, but his excitement left him when he saw the look on Nordhausen’s face. “What’s wrong?”

The professor stood up, sniffing the cold air, clearly disturbed. “That’s not a thunderhead, Paul. Smell that?… A kind of musty, sulfuric odor, yes?”

“Almost volcanic.” Paul was noticing things now, his senses attuned to the land and sky about him as the growing light revealed more features on the gloomy landscape. He had a sinking feeling that something was amiss.

“The only volcano of note in the area would be down near Ma’an. It shouldn’t be active, however.”

“What about all the volcanic wastelands out east?”

“Dormant for thousands of years,” said Nordhausen.

“You studied that map of yours well.”

“That and a few other notes on the geology before we left.” Nordhausen was hefting the stone in his hand. “Have a look at this,” he said as he extended the polished rock to Paul. “I saw a lot of them on the ground back there.” His arm gestured down the pathway where they had struggled in the rain earlier. “It’s quartz,” he said with an air of finality. “Shocked quartz, to be precise. Notice the striations under the surface? This is very rare, but look how the lowland glitters in places out that way.” He pointed at the gravely plain. “More of these quartz deposits, whatever they are. I found several pieces of it, and lots of little glassy beads on the ground as well.”

“I’m not a geologist, Robert. What’s up?”

“Shouldn’t be here.” Nordhausen shook his head as he shielded his eyes, straining to pick out more features to the west. “We’re in the wrong place. We may have shifted east into the volcanic debris fields after all.”

“You’re telling me you can make that kind of judgment based on a few rocks?”

“Well let me put it to you this way—” Nordhausen had that tone in his voice that was just skirting the edge of sarcasm. “You wouldn’t expect to find palm trees in a conifer forest. These rocks are out of place—or we’re not where we were supposed to be. See any sand out there? It should be a broad flat plain rolling east from the rift valley edge, a dry and sandy region with occasional wadis and lots of multi-tiered islands of sedimentary rock. And this sky…” Nordhausen craned his neck up at the heavy clouds overhead. “The air is heavy, alright. It’s laden with sulfur and ash and other airborne particles. Look here.”

He stooped and groped the flat rock he had been sitting on, holding up his hand as evidence. A ruddy smear stained his palm. “I’ll wager this is all over the place. And it’s not only the rocks.” The professor held up a small blanched leaf.

“Taking samples, Robert? I thought you were interested in history, not botany and geology.”

“Couldn’t help but notice this bit here.” Nordhausen offered his last exhibit. “Fern,” he said quietly. “Nothing I recognize, exactly, but the leaf structure is very apparent. Now, how can I be plucking dead fern leaves out of the Jordanian desert in 1917?”

Paul looked at him, wanting to argue the point for hope’s sake but seeing that Nordhausen was very confident about his assessment. The sinking feeling grew to a pit of anxiety in his gut. “Great,” he said. “That’s just great. We have one chance to save the world and we botch up the coordinates. Well, if we’re not in the Arabian desert, then where the hell are we? Can you tell me that much?”

“I don’t think it’s a question of where, Paul. I think it’s a question of when.”

The implications of what Nordhausen was saying finally hit home. Something was terribly wrong in the setting all around them. The sun was struggling to rise, laboring up through the menacing sky, but it didn’t seem to be getting much lighter. The wan light was filtered by the brooding clouds, casting an eerie henna glow on all the land about them.

“But Kelly said he was just going to shade the variable a bit.” Paul’s protest seemed futile. “He said it was too late to change the time coordinate; that all he could do was nudge it a bit. I don’t understand.”

“Oh, he nudged it, alright. Lord!” Nordhausen’s eyes were alight with a sudden realization. “Shocked quartz, glass tektite bead deposits, withered fern…” Before he could voice his conclusion Paul pointed at something down on the eastern slope of the ridge.

“What’s that?”

Nordhausen followed the line of his arm, noting a strange form on the ground a few hundred yards below them. They instinctively started towards it, drawn by its smooth regular shape and blanched color in contrast to the reddish-yellow cast of the ground around them. If they had brought any sense of caution with them, it was quickly abandoned when they finally reached the spot. Nordhausen could barely believe his eyes.

“Look at this! It’s in almost pristine condition.” They were staring at a strangely familiar shape embedded in the rock face. It was an almost perfectly preserved fossil, over two meters wide; a beautifully regular shell that curved in a graceful arc from the edge of the ridge. There were long, tubular extensions from the base of the shell that reached out for several feet in curvy parallel lines before they vanished beneath the russet crust of the ground.

“What is that?”

“It’s an Ammonite!” Nordhausen smiled. “They were large squid-like creatures—very ancient. Look at the preservation! I’ve never seen anything like it; particularly exposed to the elements like this. It’s hardly calcified.”

“But what’s it doing here?”

“Oh, they’ve found quite a few fossils like this in the region,” said Nordhausen. “This whole area was once a shallow sea bed swarming with these big fellows. But that was millions of years ago. In some locations in Jordan, such as the Ajloun region, Ammonite fossils were found in building stone. Most of the time you can hardly recognize them, as their hard shells are deeply embedded in the soft limestone. You’d never see one like this!” He circled the find with obvious admiration. “Why, it’s too complete, and too well preserved.” His voice began to take on a hollow tone, losing its enthusiasm.

“It’s too young.” Paul came to the obvious conclusion, and each one looked at the other, as though waiting for an answer that would lead them out of the dilemma that was becoming ever more apparent to them.

“Shocked quartz, glass tektite bead deposits, withered fern—”

“And Ammonites.” Paul folded his arms, as much to console himself as to fend off the chill of the morning. They stared at the fossil and then looked around them at the roiling sky. The horizon was still blood-red, lightening to shades of ocher and orange. The sun was making no headway against the overriding gloom above them.

“What’s it all mean, Robert?”

“Well,” Nordhausen gathered his caliph’s robe about him and sat down, square on the smooth rounded shell of the Ammonite fossil. “It means we may very well be in Jordan, but I’m damn well certain it’s not 1917.”

11

Lawrence Berkeley Labs – 2:40 AM

Maeve stood in the great oval entrance to the Arch corridor. The sliding doors were open and she could still see the strange, milky auroras of light swirling between the metallic ribs of the Arch itself. There was a solid yellow line on the floor, and she edged toward it cautiously, keeping well back. The sound of the generators was slowly winding down, and the vibration under her feet stilled itself. She called out for Paul and Robert, peering into the montage of dissipating color, but heard only the returning echo of her own voice.

They were gone.

A flood of emotions arose as she considered the full implications of that. On the one hand she was relieved to see that the two men were not lying dead on the cold metal flooring of the corridor. The breaching sequence had worked—it had all worked—and the two men had vanished from the present Meridian into the ocean of time. Where they would emerge was anybody’s guess. They could be anywhere, though she hoped Kelly’s optimism might prove true. Now her mind returned to the error readings on the temporal vector display. The error had been numerically small. It might only be a matter of hours or days, which was the whole point of shading the temporal breaching point on the negative side of the event. Nothing could be done if they arrived too late. Early was always workable, she concluded.

Satisfied that there was nothing she could do here for the moment, she turned and headed back toward the elevator shaft, her mind still cluttered with thoughts of Kelly and the strange call from her mother. The digital clock on the elevator wall gave her a moment’s anxiety. It was nearly 3:00 AM!

Up in the control room she found Kelly hunched over his laptop, his finger tapping on a touch pad as he scrolled through a long series of numbers and formulae.

“Looking for footprints?” Maeve leaned on the back of his chair, and he gave her a tentative glance. She could see the guilt in his eyes, and the fear.

“They got through, didn’t they.”

“They went somewhere,” said Maeve. “I hope you’re going to tell me where in a second. What was the variance on the temporal readout?” She looked at Jen, but the young woman had an odd look on her face, not following what they were talking about.

“Mr. Ramer?” Jen hesitated to answer the question, prodding Kelly for help.

Kelly took a deep breath before he spoke again. “Well,” he began, “I found the error. Must have been typing fast when I entered the shading variables. I was trying to type a number sequence and I accidentally hit the shift key with my other hand.”

“And?” Maeve was waiting for the implications of Kelly’s confession.

Kelly looked at Jen for a moment, ready to come clean. “I triggered a macro I had programmed for my calculations and one of the numbers was interpreted as an exponential…”

Maeve just stared at him. “An exponential? Good God, what was the number?”

“A big one, relatively speaking.” Kelly rubbed at a trickle of perspiration on his forehead. “It raised the temporal locus variable by powers of ten instead of single integer increments. That means the readout on Jen’s board is actually reporting a much greater temporal shift than I first thought.”

“Powers of ten?” Maeve’s jaw dropped as her mind spawned a hundred fears from Kelly’s statement. It was not a matter of hours or days any longer. It was long years; decades; centuries. If they went back too far they could even run the risk of materializing under a primordial ocean! It was all too much for her, and she covered her eyes with her hand, not wanting to wrestle with the problem for a moment.

“But I have a plan,” Kelly offered. “Remember the loop command I sent through the system? I attached the pattern signatures of both Robert and Paul—you know, from the infusion data.”

“What? Kelly, the loop command was for a temporary suspension of the breaching cycle. You can’t loop the system after the infusion’s occurred!”

“Yes, under normal circumstances that would be right. But when I realized what was happening I had to do something. It was the only thing I could think of, short of simply cutting the mains and shutting the damn thing down. That probably would have killed them both in the Arch, so I ran the numbers and keyed a looping variable instead.”

“You ran the numbers? I was there, Kelly. You never went anywhere near the logarithmic generator.”

“Well… I did the calculation in my head…” The statement sounded feeble, but it was the truth and Kelly owned up to it, a bit flustered but determined. “I knew what I was trying to key for the variable, and I did the math in my head.”

“Without machine verification?” Maeve was staggered. “You mean you just took a random shot in the dark, right?”

“Well give me some credit. Look, I can’t talk about this now. I’ve got a twenty minute window and I need to make some adjustments on the chamber.”

“Adjustments? We’ve got to get them back, Kelly.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do—at least get them back on the correct coordinate.”

Maeve didn’t understand. “You planned for an emergency retraction, didn’t you?”

Jen heard the word and remembered her brief conversation with Dorland before he had left. “Doctor Dorland said something about—”

“Then do it, Kelly.” Maeve interrupted, her attention fully focused on Kelly. “As soon as possible! The world will just have to suffer for this. If you can get them back somehow…” She looked at the telephone that was still hanging limply over the edge of the desk by its cord and remembered her mother again. There was nothing she could do, and the tension and frustration of the moment welled as tears in her eyes as she spoke.

“Take it easy, Maeve.” Kelly was up, extending an arm to comfort her. “This is all my fault, but I have a plan. You’ll see.” He nodded to Jen, waving her away from the scene so he could talk with Maeve in private. “Why don’t you see about getting some tea for us all,” said Kelly. “Or better yet, I think Maeve has a bag of fresh Peets coffee we could brew. How about it, Jen?”

“Sure,” Jen helped Maeve to a chair, and Kelly noticed the dangling telephone. He walked over and hung the phone up, winking at Maeve as he did so.

“You’ll call her in the morning,” he said confidently. “Coffee, Jen. I have about fifteen minutes left to make this adjustment, and I don’t want any more mistakes.”

“Then everything is OK with Mr. Dorland and the Professor?”

“They’re fine,” said Kelly.

“I think I left the bag in the changing room with the costumes.” Maeve waved halfheartedly at the doorway.

“Right.” Jen ran off to fetch the coffee, leaving them alone for a moment.

“Trust me.” Kelly raised his eyebrows looking at Maeve. “I can do this,” he explained. “I was even sure I had the right number when I did the factor mentally. Just give me ten minutes here and I’ll have things straightened out again.”

“But how?” Maeve wanted to be convinced, but her mind could see no way out of the dilemma.

“It’s a theory I’ve been working on. I know it hasn’t been run through your committee yet, but let me explain. When the tachyon infusion floods the corridor we get a good signature on anyone inside and store it in the pattern buffers. I connected the buffers to the retraction module for situations just like this. I was trying to figure a way we could retract on command in an emergency instead of waiting for the half-life decay sequence. So… I entered a loop command during infusion, and got two signatures.”

He smiled, holding up two fingers to emphasize his point. “When the system rolls data in the pattern buffers through the retraction module I’ll have two chances to plan an operation. Normally the retraction sequence can only operate when the target time has been reached. We used the particle half-life scheme as a fail-safe at the end. If they go back too far to reach the target date, the half-life in the chamber expires and they get pulled out. But if I can plan an operation, and time it for a very specific point in the half-life decay sequence, there’s a chance to move them before the fail-safe kicks in at the end. With the loop method I can program a retraction sequence for every loop I enter. In this case I just divided the half-life duration by two and set a point for the first retraction opportunity. That gives me a chance to bring them home at the mid-point in the half life sequence… Or a chance to move them somewhere else.” He let that last bit hang, watching Maeve’s reaction carefully.

Maeve was struggling to follow the theory. “Move them?”

“Right. I can try to push them forward in time to the correct temporal coordinates! They went back too far. We both realize that now. If it was more than a few decades—”

“Hell, it was more than a few centuries, Kelly. Probably millennia!”

“Same difference,” Kelly said quickly. “They would die long before they reached the target time, so we can’t use it for retraction. That only leaves one other chance to move them—the emergency retraction sequence that was keyed to the particle half-life setting.”

“But Kelly,” Maeve still had an exasperated look on her face. “Have you looked at the time? The tsunami sequence is going to slam into the east coast in less than two hours!”

“Yes, but I can alter the half-life timing by removing material. I’ve thought about this for some time, Maeve. If I enrich the particle medium I can get a longer half-life sequence in the chamber, but if I thin it out…”

“That’s dangerous, Kelly.” Maeve had a warning in her eyes. “If you upset the particle generation you could loose the whole array. Then we’d have nothing to time the emergency retraction.”

“We’ll have to risk it.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” she protested. “You’re alive.”

“Yes, I know. I’m supposed to be dead.” Kelly looked away from her.

Maeve softened her tone. “I’m sorry, Kelly. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“But it’s true nonetheless. A lot of other people are going to be dead as well, unless I pull this thing off.” He paused for a moment, meeting her eyes. “Look, Maeve. Tell me you absolutely forbid this as head of Outcomes and Consequences, and I’ll stop right now. Then Paul and Robert languish in the void and, if they manage to survive, the retraction sequence will pull them out… whatever is left of them. In the meantime the whole Eastern Seaboard pays a visit to the bottom of the sea. Now—If I pull this off, and I’ve got ten minutes left, I have a good chance of moving them forward to the correct coordinates. I’ve already corrected the variables. All I have to do is time the particle chamber for the decay. Then, when the sequence reaches the half-way marker, the loop I sent through the system will run the retraction module as if it were bringing them home—only it will target the new coordinates I set instead. I can move them, Maeve. You’ve got to believe me.”

He stared at her, waiting in a long, tense moment. She looked at the floor, uncertain. All of her instincts screamed at her to forbid the whole thing. It was bad enough that they were tampering with the root ends of fate itself. What were they doing here? Paul was right, she thought. This is dangerous. We are dangerous—the most dangerous people in the world.

“They’re my friends.” Kelly put in one last word as he waited her out.

She decided.

“Do it.”

The words slipped out, but she gave Kelly a sympathetic glance, trying to force a smile to her lips. “But get the math right, damnit!”

“Already done,” said Kelly. He was heading for the element chamber controls when Jen came in with a carafe of coffee. “I’ll take the first cup over here.” He pointed at the half-life chamber monitors, and Jen hovered over with a steaming hot cup of Major Dickason’s blend. Kelly took one whiff and his mind was suddenly clear on what he had to do.

“Love this stuff,” he said as he settled into a chair.

He was soon hard at work, running a few calculations on his laptop and keying information into the chamber controls. He was going to thin out the mixture, and the particle density should fall off to a point where his first retraction trigger should kick in. All he had to do was time it to a certain density. He slid over to the retraction module, noticing how Jen seemed to be staring at the controls there with a worried expression on her face.

“Excuse me, young lady.” Kelly slipped into the chair. Maeve came up behind them and was looking over his shoulder as he worked. There were still five minutes until his first retraction opportunity. He flipped a series of switches and gave a command to feed the original pattern signature data into the retraction module. A red warning light flashed on the screen, catching him by surprise.

“Now what is this?” He squinted at the computer dialogue, which read: Out of memory. Please close applications or clear module memory before proceeding.

Jen started to say something. “I was going to say that Doctor Dorland told me—”

“There should be plenty of memory in this module!” Kelly was not happy. He moved the mouse pointer to view the registers and saw something he did not expect. “Who’s been screwing around with this thing?”

“Well I was going—” Jen tried again, but Kelly’s mind was racing ahead to a wrong conclusion.

“You did? You know you aren’t supposed to touch these modules!”

“I didn’t,” Jen blurted out. “But Doctor Dorland said I was supposed to watch it very closely, that’s all.”

“Paul? When did he say that?”

“Just before he left.”

“Well did you do anything here? There’s data written all through the banks and I need space to get these algorithms initiated.”

“I didn’t do a thing,” Jen defended herself. “Doctor Dorland just said to watch it closely and if the readings were to fall into the yellow, I was supposed to run some routines…” She fidgeted, searching her memory, but obviously disturbed in thinking she was being blamed.

“What routines?” Kelly’s voice had an added edge to it. The clock was spinning towards the three minute mark and he was running out of time. He was connecting his laptop even as he spoke, his attention shifting from Jen to the interface cable.

Jen closed her eyes, her smooth tan brow suddenly furrowed with concentration. “The focal routines on terminal three!” She remembered what Paul had said.

“Terminal three?” Kelly looked to his right. He moved the mouse cursor on the screen and took a look at the registers there. “Hello…”

“What is it?” Maeve leaned in to inspect the screen more closely.

“There’s code here—a lot of it.” Kelly was scrolling through the data. “What did Paul tell you?” He looked at Jen again, one eye on the time.

“He just said to run this routine if the retraction module went into the yellow.” Jen pointed at the code on the screen.

“Well, he must have worked this out with a programmer and set it all up on his own. Did you hear anything about this, Maeve?”

“Not a whisper.” There was just over two minutes left on the clock.

Kelly’s mind rushed through the possibilities. What was Paul up to? If the retraction module signal went into the yellow it would mean that there was a loss of integrity on the pattern. The focal routine was probably intended to tighten things up, but it now occupied a huge chunk of memory in the retraction module and there was no room for Kelly’s operational algorithms. Something had to go. He looked at the screen, fighting off a feeling of quiet panic. If he wanted to retain Paul’s focal routine he had to delete something else. There were only two other data banks in the unit: one was occupied by the target date retraction scheme, and the other with the fail-safe half-life trigger. One of these had to go.

“Jen!” He yelled. “Take the power up to 100% again, now!”

She ran to obey, the urgency in his voice a sure prod to action.

What should he do? He had to move them or everything was lost. He decided quickly and flushed the memory for the target date retraction scheme. They were in the wrong time, and it was useless now. An error trap message dialogue flashed onto the screen: You are about to clear system critical data. Proceed?

“Yes, damnit! That’s why I pressed the clear key!” Kelly yelled at the computer screen as he gave the enter key another hard jab. The memory cleared and he swiveled quickly to engage his laptop and press the send command. Data began pouring into the retraction unit, the speed of light racing time as the seconds ticked away. He had a green board with thirty seconds to spare.

“How’s that power reading?” He shouted as he lunged toward the main console.

“Ninety-five percent,” Jen called back. They could hear the turbines shuddering somewhere in the bowels of the facility beneath them.

“It will just have to do,” said Kelly. “On my mark…” He opened three covered switches and enabled the first two, finger hovering over the third. The digital timer sounded a single tone and he pressed the last button, his face and forehead glistening with perspiration.

The particle half-life decay sequence in the chamber had reached the mid-point, the density was just right, and the retraction module lit up with an array of fluttering LEDs. Kelly was back at the screen, watching as the data was graphically displayed in a chart.

“Get over to the temporal monitor, Jen. Tell me what’s going on there.”

Jen turned to heed him and there was a noticeable dimming in the overhead lighting. Buzzers started going off all around the console as surge suppressing units warned of a major variation in the power flow.

“Not now!” Kelly shouted at the ceiling, his attention pulled there by the flickering lights, but he knew the problem was really under foot, down with the massive generators that were spinning up to provide the enormous power required for the operation. Something was wrong. There didn’t seem to be enough power available.

“Are we still at ninety-five percent on the power?” Kelly gave Jen a wide eyed look.

“Eighty-seven.”

The lights flickered again and went out. As the room plunged into darkness the battery backup units fed their long coveted energy into the consoles to keep the system LEDs glowing. They could provide power for about fifteen minutes in an emergency—just long enough to shut everything down and back up the data.

“Oh God!” Maeve said in a low voice. “I was down in the corridor… and I think I forgot to close the inner doors.” She could see the red glow of the system warning lights reflected from Kelly’s eyes in the darkened room.

12

Time: Unknown

“Where are we, Robert?” The question was ludicrous, Paul knew, but asking it with the expectation that Nordhausen would hand him a convenient answer seemed to comfort. “Nothing seems to fit with contemporary times here. Is that what you’re saying?”

The professor looked at the lump of stone in his hand, fingering it in his mind as well. “Shocked quartz,” he muttered. “You might get this sort from a particularly violent volcanic eruption.”

“Or perhaps as ejecta from a large impact,” Paul put in.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” The professor knew all too well of Paul’s life-long fascination with great disasters.

“Well look at the sky,” said Paul. “It’s well after sunrise and the atmosphere is laden with smoke and dust.”

“Consistent with an eruption.”

“Possibly…” Paul looked at the strange fossil they had discovered. “What about this Ammonite thing. How long ago did they live?”

Nordhausen thought for a moment. “They were prevalent through the later Cretaceous, and perished with the dinosaurs. This one seems quite young, but who knows when it died. Still… the other clues seem to point to the late Cretaceous as well. Ferns were flourishing; there was active continental drift going on in the plate tectonics and that would produce a lot of volcanic activity.”

“God, how long ago was that?”

“Some sixty-five million years.” Nordhausen looked around at the bleak landscape. “I suppose that would account for the lack of weathering on these ridges. Kelly sure shaded his damn variable, alright. I told you we didn’t have enough time to plan this operation. It’s nice to be early, Paul, but sixty-five million years? Good God!” The professor was finally realizing what had happened. He sat down, as though felled by the impact of the emotion. The first thing that came to him was finding a way home. “How the hell are we going to get back?” he looked at Paul, a dumbfounded look on his face.

Paul was pulled with a strange conflict of emotions. On the one hand he was still in the throes of the elation he felt in making the time shift alive. The danger inherent in the operation was obvious. Even the visitor from the future had hinted that they had suffered many deaths in the Arch. His gratitude at being alive was fed by a surge of pride and satisfaction in the accomplishment. They were through; they had shifted in time! But to where? If Nordhausen was correct then the temporal coordinates were well off the mark. It was not merely an error of hours, minutes or even days. Nordhausen seem to believe they were many centuries off—even millennia.

“You sure about this, Robert?” He didn’t want to believe that they could miss their target date so badly.

“Look around, Paul. Kelly screwed the whole thing up, can’t you see that?”

The more he stared at the ominous sky, the more Paul came to realize the truth. They were lost—buried in time. They had gone so far back that humans had not even evolved. The thought staggered him for a moment, and his face betrayed a curious mixture of awe and fear.

“Now, how the hell will we get back, would you please tell me that?” Nordhausen had already transitioned from denial to anger, and he voiced the one obvious concern that he hoped Paul could quickly amend.

“Don’t worry,” Paul was wide eyed as he looked at the terrain with new apprehension. “We won’t be here long.”

“What do you mean?” Nordhausen latched on to the statement.

“The machine is set to pull us out,” Paul explained. “Besides, Kelly is standing the watch on the shift. He’ll see what’s happened.”

“Kelly? He’s the one that got us into this fix!” Nordhausen took no solace from Paul’s argument. “It’s a miracle he didn’t have us materialize inside solid rock, or somewhere up in that, so we could just plunge to our doom.” He gestured at the smoldering sky.

“That can’t happen, “ Paul explained. “The pattern buffers prevent that sort of thing. The shift accounts for differences in the landforms over time, and moves us appropriately based on the reference point of the mass and gravity—” He stopped his explanation, seeing how Nordhausen’s face dropped as he started in on the physics. “Humans are never found alive while embedded in solid rock, or hovering a thousand feet above the atmosphere. The machine accounts for these things. Just take my word for it, OK?”

“Well this wasn’t supposed to happen either, was it?” Nordhausen would not be put off so easily.”

“Look, we missed our breaching point, that’s all.”

“Missed it? You make it sound as if we just missed a damn BART train! We landed in the middle of the fucking Cretaceous, Paul—Do you realize that?”

“Well what do you expect me to do about it?” Paul warmed to the argument a bit.

“Get us out of here, that’s what!”

“Calm down, Robert. Kelly’s will take care of us. He must have entered a bad variable.”

“No shit!”

“And he’ll find out what’s happened and take the appropriate action. Besides, the fail-safe will pull us out in time. Remember? We don’t belong here, and Time will see us safely home again.”

“Well I wish I could be so certain.” Nordhausen was still frustrated, but he slowly composed himself, accepting his fate.

Paul fingered the thin film of reddish-white substance on the rocks. “I’ll bet there’s iridium in this stuff.”

“Iridium?”

“Yes, it’s a common byproduct that fits with the major impact theory.”

“There you go with that asteroid business again. You’re not going to just sit here and talk disaster theory, are you?”

“Well why not? You put the clues together a moment ago. If we are where you think we are, then we’ve got a unique look at what may have happened during the last extinction event. No sense moping about it. Let’s do some science while we’re waiting for the retraction. All those clues were consistent with a major impact, right?”

“I suppose your going to feed me that nonsense about some mysterious dark star.”

“It’s not my theory,” Paul protested. “Alvarez and a few of his colleagues came up with the idea at U.C. Berkeley. They found all this stuff was prevalent on the K-T boundary: iridium, shocked quartz, tektites, little glass beads, and it was followed by a fern spike when most of the other pollen breeding plants died out. It’s happened before, you know.”

“Only too well,” there was a complaint in Nordhausen’s tone. “Mass extinctions seem to occur on earth every 26 million years, so they came up with the idea that a small dark star called Nemesis was disturbing debris in the Oort cloud outside the solar system, and sending a rain of asteroids and comets down on us. Yes, Paul, I’ve heard that rubbish.”

“Hell, Robert, look around! I’ll bet we’ve landed smack dab in the middle of the last major extinction event! We’re probably right on the K-T boundary, perhaps only a few years after the asteroid hit.”

The Alvarez theory had been debated for some time in the scientific community after the discovery of a thin layer of sediments in old rock formations dating back to the Cretaceous period. Iridium had been found there in concentrations well above the norm. It was a relatively rare element on earth, usually deep under the surface, but was thought to be present in asteroids that would strike the planet at regular intervals. The other clues all supported this possibility as well. Tektites and shocked quartz were also byproducts of a massive collision where the ejecta would have been thrown up into the atmosphere, falling hundreds, even thousands of miles away. The resulting obscuration was made worse as raging fires added smoke and cinder to the mix. Sunlight struggled to reach the surface, and temperatures dropped very suddenly—not a good thing for cold blooded creatures like the Dinosaurs. Mass extinction followed as hundreds of thousands of species were wiped out. It had happened before, five times, throughout the earth’s long history. The K-T event, as it was called, ushered in the new era of the Tertiary period, where humans arrived very late in the process of evolution.

“The K-T boundary. Yes, that makes good sense.” Nordhausen was finally starting to get his mind around the situation. “Looks like we’ve jumped out of the frying pan and landed in the fire. We were happily watching the sixth major extinction event, and now we get to take a peek at the fifth.”

“Sixth extinction?”

“Of course! We’re losing some 30,000 species or more per year in our time. That’s equivalent to the same die-off rate of this time period, the last great extinction that wiped out the dinos. Everyone focuses on them, God rest their souls, though the extinction in the marine life was much more severe. Maybe it was a comet or asteroid, though I’m inclined to side with the gradualists. Probably a combination of many things: climate change, competition from egg-eating mammals, volcanic activity, disease. They all played a part in the K-T event, and the asteroid was probably just the icing on the cake. It was one of your imperatives, Paul. They used to call them ‘Acts of God’ before you dreamt up your time theory, and what God wants, God gets. No more dinos.”

“Strange,” said Paul. “Is it really that bad—back home I mean?”

“What, the extinction? Certainly! Normal background loss for species is only about four or five per year. But we’ve been hard at work, day in and day out, doing the job of the next asteroid. Human civilization has had such a terrible impact on the planet that, by the time the next big hunk of rock arrives, the sixth extinction will probably have run its course. The asteroid will just be the icing on our cake, and the end of everything.”

“You mean we’re causing the sixth extinction?”

“Who else? We’ve been at it for thousands of years: invading and destroying habitats, cultivating one species in favor of another, introducing alien germs and creatures in unfamiliar environments, not to mention the pollution we cause. Hell, we’ve bred all the diversity out of wheat so we can have our toast in the morning. Now that plant is totally dependent on human cultivation to survive. That’s just one tiny example—I could go on for hours. If you ask me, we’ve been up to a great deal of mischief, just futzing about trying to amuse ourselves. Unfortunately the planet has been paying the price. The dinos are long gone and perhaps we’re next in line if things keep on. These Holy Fighters who blew up Palma are hastening the process, but the rest of us are just as guilty. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns! We spend all our energy selling trinkets and trifles to keep the masses fat and happy, while the planet is dying right beneath our feet.”

“Join the Green Party, Robert.”

“You know I’m not political. I just do my bit in the classroom when I can. I figure if we can raise a few heads at a time something might be done about it. We treat this planet like it was our own private amusement park. We’ll just amuse ourselves to death, I suppose.”

“Roger Waters,” said Paul.

“What?”

“Never mind. It was a great concert. You should have been there.” Paul’s eyes brightened with a thought. “Think there’s any dinosaurs left around here? We found that Ammonite thing. What if we come across a big dino carcass!”

“Forget it, Paul. This isn’t a romp through Jurassic Park. Enough of this nonsense. What are we talking about? Kelly botched up the numbers, just like I said he would. How the hell are we going to get back? Would you explain that to me?” Nordhausen returned to the more immediate problem. He would leave the fate of the dinosaurs, and the planet, to another time.

“We obviously can’t wait around sixty-five million years for the target trigger to pull us out,” said Paul. “But the fail-safe trigger is keyed to the half-life sequence and it should take effect in due time.”

“You mean we’re stuck here for a while? Why can’t he just pull us out now?”

“Kelly’s probably working on it,” Paul chided him. “If we went back too far, as we obviously have, the fail-safe would be timed to pull us out in due course. It’s really only a matter of hours in laboratory time. That would give us another shot at things. Kelly may be trying to hasten the process and work another solution right now.”

“Is that what happened to the visitor?”

“I think he was pulled out by the target trigger. Remember, he said he landed seven years before the target event, which was the night of our meeting. They knew they only had one shot at getting through the shadow of the Palma Event, so they didn’t program a fail-safe retraction. It was all or nothing. Our visitor just had to live out the seven years until the night of the meeting. It was his only chance of getting home—or of accomplishing his mission.”

“Must have been hell for the man, sitting there in a monastery all that time.”

“That was damn clever of him, I thought,” said Paul. “He needed to minimize contact with the outside world to prevent contamination. Find a good Trappist monastery and you can live a nice contemplative life, keeping your mouth shut most of the time so you don’t let anything slip out that could cause mischief. The danger of contamination is very real. I suppose the farther back you go, the more severe the outcome if you tamper with anything important.” He looked at his feet as he finished, almost as if he were afraid he might be squashing some insect out of existence, and all the successive generations of its offspring as well. “We’d better watch what we’re doing here.”

Nordhausen was inspecting his robes, but soon became frustrated with the situation again. “So you’re telling me you have no idea how long we’ll be here? What are we supposed to do?”

“Did you bring anything for breakfast?” Paul was very hungry, and amazingly light hearted considering the dilemma they were in. The excitement over the success of his theory was beginning to push away the disastrous implications of their failure on the time coordinates. Nordhausen gave him an infuriated look.

“Breakfast? We were supposed to be on a quick sabotage mission in the Arabian Desert. Sorry, I forgot to bring a menu.” He stuck his hands inside his robe to warm them up when he remembered the small bundle Maeve had slipped into a pocket there. He fumbled for it, and pulled it out, sniffing at the rich aroma of the coffee beans inside. “I suppose we could brew this up, if you can find a Mr. Coffee machine around here.”

Paul fished inside his own garments. “Maeve stuck something in my pockets too.” He produced a small mess kit of WWI vintage, along with a flask of water.

Nordhausen was encouraged and he searched out all his other pockets. “I’ve got a knife,” he exulted, and an old fluid lighter!” He held out the lighter and flipped the cap open to thumb the flint roller. The lighter sparked and a tiny flame leapt up from the wick.

“Good for Maeve!” Paul smiled. “Let’s look around. You gather up some of those dried out ferns and I’ll look for some rocks. Be sure you only take things that are clearly dead—nothing living, got that?”

“You honestly think I can change the Time Meridian by simply plucking a live fern out of the ground? It’s got to be more resilient than that.”

“You never know,” Paul warned him.

“Well, if you’re going to be a stickler about things, we’ll be depriving the time line of all the fertilizer it might make of the dead leaves if we burn them.” Nordhausen gave him a smug look, pleased to hand him back his own fussiness by way of argument.

“We’ll just hasten the decomposition process, that’s all. A little more cinder won’t throw this environment out of whack. I think we can safely light a small fire here, Robert.”

“Unless we burn up one of your little pushpins in the effort.”

Paul rolled his eyes. “Just look for some kindling, will you? We can crush a few of the beans inside the bag and use some cloth as a strainer. A cup of Peets would be just the thing I need right now. Sound good to you?”

Nordhausen was finally persuaded. With nothing else to be done, they set about to find a dry spot for the fire. It took them some time, and several tries on the dampened fern leaves, but they were soon able to get a very small blaze going, sufficient for boiling Paul’s water in the mess kit tin. As Nordhausen labored over the makeshift fire pit a wry grin came to Paul’s face.

“Do you realize what this is?”

“It’s a real dilemma, that’s what it is.” The professor was in a sour mood. “It’s a disaster, a catastrophe, and a big joke.”

“Right,” said Paul. “And we’ve just lit the first campfire made by human hands in the whole history of the earth!”

Nordhausen gave him an odd look. “Why, I suppose you’re right. Now we’re going to sit here drinking coffee while we watch the dinosaurs die off. If anything else goes wrong on this mission we’ll probably end up getting stuck here.”

“Maybe we should have waited for Maeve,” Paul exclaimed with a wry edge of humor. “I mean, you and I can’t do much about launching the human race from this point.”

“Very funny.” Nordhausen was not amused. “What makes you think we would have to populate the earth from this point—to be certain the human race evolves? That’s a bit selfish, Paul. Under your theory the only moral thing we could do here if we don’t get pulled back would be to kill ourselves. I remember the issue being discussed in Maeve’s committee. They even planned a little painless suicide kit for stranded time travelers.”

Paul sighed heavily, his mood deflating considerably. “I almost forgot about that,” he said looking around.

“About what?”

“This suicide business.” They had missed the mark, by the widest possible margin, and the mission was turning into the same disaster that had initiated it. He wondered if Time had not simply played an immensely cruel joke on them, sending them off to the K-T event to watch how the dinosaurs died while preventing them from tampering with the event that would lead to the demise of their own species. Perhaps nothing could alter the accelerating momentum of the sixth extinction that Nordhausen had talked about. Perhaps the Holy Fighters were only feeding a little more fuel into the fire that would soon extinguish the human race on earth forever.

He thought about it all, as he sipped the coffee when it was ready. The steamy vapors and rich, earthy taste made him long for home. He no longer wanted to hunt dinosaurs or postulate on the theory of their demise. The professor was right. If anything else went amiss they might never see their own time again, and they would have to kill themselves. That thought sent him spiraling down to another level.

“Robert,” he said softly.

Nordhausen was savoring his coffee, studying the clouds overhead as they were driven by a rising wind. “What now?” He said, his reverie interrupted.

“You know you were right about that.”

“Right about what?”

“We do have to kill ourselves if we get stuck here.”

“What? God, you really are a piece of work. Things are bad enough and now you’re talking about suicide.”

“But we’d have to do it, Robert. Don’t you understand? This bit with the fire is the least of our worries. Did you notice that I used up all the water?”

“What’s that got to do with anything, were you planning on drowning me?”

“No, you idiot. I used all the water so we could boil it and prevent any organisms from getting into this environment.”

Nordhausen gave him a dismissive wave. “That’s nonsense. We’re both walking nurseries for a host of parasites, bacteria and possibly even viruses in our own bodies. In fact, if you want to look at things from an evolutionary standpoint, we’re just a convenient way for bacteria to get around on the planet. It once took take decades for bugs to migrate from one habitat to another. Now, when some idiot drinks bad water in Kinshasa and takes a midnight flight to Paris, everything in his gut is along for the ride! Look, don’t worry about this. The environment here is robust enough to deal with anything we’ve brought back with us. I’d be more worried about taking things forward in time, if I were you. Suppose this muck is crawling with some super bacteria that died out millions of years ago. If your fail-safe thing works, then we’d be bringing the damn bug home with a vengeance.”

“I guess we’d have to kill ourselves first then, wouldn’t we?”

“Oh, be quiet.” Nordhausen was tired of arguing with him.

“How would we do it?” Paul tacked on one last thought.

“I suppose I could wait until you go to sleep tonight and just bash your skull in with one of these rocks.” Nordhausen gave him a look that was intended to end the conversation.

“No,” Paul lapsed on foolishly. “I think the best thing would be to just find a high cliff somewhere and throw ourselves off. We’d have to hope you are right about the environment fending off the bugs in our gut. I’d hate to think about the prospect of burning ourselves alive.”

“Will you shut up about this!”

Paul held up an arm in a placating gesture. At least, he thought, he wouldn’t die here alone. He looked at the fire, seeing the flames burning low. “I’ll see about finding some more of that dead fern,” he said wandering off. He went round the shoulder of the hill and spied out some beds of dry grass and fern in the distance. By the time he had gathered enough for the fire and returned he was surprised to find Nordhausen gone.

“Robert?” The fire had gone out and the tin cup Nordhausen had been using lay tilted on its side. It was fearsomely cold. He was taken by an involuntary shiver as he looked around in the gloom for any sign of the professor. He shouted again, but his voice seemed to die in the heavy stillness of the air. Now where would Nordhausen go? Was he out collecting shocked quartz? He searched the ground for any obvious sign of disturbance but there were no footprints to be seen. A queasy feeling came to him as he squinted at the gloomy horizon.

“Nordhausen?” His voice seemed very distant, thin and distended, almost an echo. He realized that he was loosing consciousness, and he slipped to the damp, pasty ground, thinking that the noxious gasses in the atmosphere must be overcoming him. Maybe Nordhausen wandered off to look for something and collapsed. Maybe they weren’t going to make it out of here alive after all. They wouldn’t have to jump off a cliff or burn themselves up. The fire and brimstone of the fifth extinction was going to chalk up its first two primates, long before they ever had the chance to evolve… His head swam and his vision blurred.

He was very cold.

Part V

The Desert

“I seek refuge, with the Lord of the Dawn,

From the mischief of created things;

From the mischief of darkness as it overspreads;

From the mischief of those who practice

Secret Arts…”

Sura CXIII – Koran

“Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.”

Alfred Lord Tennyson: Locksley Hall

13

Hejaz Railway – November, 1917

Dorland remembered the dizzying spin in his head and the awful sensation of cold. He suddenly felt light as a feather, insubstantial, his life ebbing away on the chilled breath of the wind. The dark morning faded and he seemed to drift for a moment, vapor-like, a phantom hovering over the wrecked barren landscape about him. Then strange lights rushed at him from all directions and he shut his eyes, fighting off a rising sensation of nausea as he slipped away into unconsciousness.

When he regained his awareness again he was lying on the ground, shivering and wet. The air had a strangely sweet smell to it, cleaned by a recent rain and laden with the scent of fresh washed stones. He moved, struggling to his feet on instinct, his body driven by some involuntary compulsion that he seemed to have no control over. The dizziness that had felled him a moment before was still with him, though not as severe. His vision swam, a blur of shadow and wet mist.

He felt his legs moving in a jerky, reflexive rhythm as he struggled for footing on the damp earth. He was walking; stumbling across the undulating ground in the night, a solitary ghost on a dark, lifeless plain. Time passed unheeded, and he heard a faint sound rumbling in the distance, like rolling thunder that never ceased. He moved on, with aimless abandon, entranced by the fading memory of the brilliant lights in his mind. Some inner compass carried him west, though he did not know that at the time. As he walked and stumbled over sharp-edged shale and clumps of gray rock, he heard a strangely familiar sound emerging from the low rumble in the distance.

There was a rhythm to the sound, and a steady urgency as it resolved itself in his mind. A faint, high note sounded above the churning wash and his brain attached a meaning to the sound at last. He struggled to focus his eyes, looking around him to try and locate the sound. A dim light glazed across his field of vision and he turned towards it, his ambling pathway suddenly attached to the wavering light on the black horizon.

A cool wind struck him full in the face when he turned. The ground under his feet was suddenly flat and firm, a bed of smaller rocks reducing to a fine gravel. Each footfall made a distinctive crunch on the scattered stone, and then his feet struck something hard and he fell.

He passed a moment of darkness where his awareness faded with a prickly sensation of light headedness. Then the blood rushed to his temples and he felt the icy touch of hard metal against his cheek. A strange humming rang in his ears, an eerie resonance of the sound he had heard earlier. He moved his arm, hand groping forward in the murky night, until he was able to sense the cold rim of an iron-hard shape on the ground near his head. His mind began to make gradual sense of the clues it was fed and he realized, at last, that he had stumbled upon the bed of a railroad.

The emergence of something familiar in the bleak landscape gave him a reference point to rally on. His sense of self gathered strength and he remembered who he was now, and what he was supposed to be doing. An inner voice, the voice that had narrated his experience for as long as he could remember, began to speak to him again. We were wrong, it said. We must have simply landed on the volcanic debris fields earlier, far from our intended drop point. I was looking for Nordhausen and must have fallen and hit my head. Who knows how long I’ve been wandering around out here?

He struggled up on one elbow, noting the lattice of coarse wood beams spaced at regular intervals between two metal rails. The place had a name in his mind now, and his sensibilities sharpened somewhat. His attention was soon focused on the sky, looking for the telltale drifts of cinder and smoky ash. Instead he saw streaks of gray-black clouds, which thinned in places to open on patches of starry sky.

This can’t be right, he said to himself again. It was morning before—a brooding red dawn with that strange sulfuric smell on the air. Now it was night again. Could he have passed out from the noxious fumes and then wandered all day in a half-daze until he found this place?

The singing of the metal rail line tugged at his attention and he struggled up onto unsteady feet, looking for some source of the sound. Off to his right he immediately saw the strange light again, closer now, and brighter. He knew at once that a train was coming, and some guarded corner of his mind whispered a warning to him. He began to move, stumbling over the rail lines and making his way along the tracks. Dizziness returned in waves, then receded. The sound of the train changed in tempo, and he heard a hissing release of pent up steam. He dimly perceived the sooty, black billow of smoke bloom from the bulk of a massive shape lit by a single eye of yellow light.

The churning sound slowed and the intervals that spaced its chugging rhythm grew ever longer. He heard the squeal of metal on metal and a last hiss of steam. The train was stopping. The voice in his mind began to clamor at him now, urging him to move, to get off the rail bed and hide. He tried to obey, nearly tripping over a large rock at the side of the rail line. As he struggled to keep his footing, the ground seemed to vanish beneath him and he fell, rolling down the side of a short, sandy embankment. His vision danced again, the dizziness returning as he groped the damp earth for some sense of perspective in the inky darkness. He was soon able to pull himself up onto his feet again, and began stumbling away in into the desert.

Voices came to him, faint and far away. He remembered Nordhausen, wondering what had become of his friend. The voices grew louder, more insistent, though he did not know what they were saying. Formless shapes seemed to materialize before him as his head lightened again and he swayed, faint and cold.

The next thing he remembered was the sound of another voice braying at him in an unfamiliar tongue. Hands were on him now, hard and cruel as they gripped his arms and shoulders, dragging him along. His feet struggled to move in a half-hearted, instinctive effort but, more often than not, his leather boots scuffed on the sand and gravel beneath him as he was pulled along. The hissing sound grew near and he was thrust hard against the flat, regular surface of something like a wall. His sensibilities were stirred by the jolt and he realized he had been pushed against the side of a train car, propped up by two rough looking men with dark beards and foul breath. Another man was peering at him, his fat lips moving as he spoke in an unintelligible voice.

The man reached out and took hold of his chin, squeezing his cheeks as he shook his head slightly. Then he seemed to come to some conclusion and strode away into the dark. A few moments later, Paul was dragged off again in the iron grip of his bearded captors. For the first time Paul realized these men must be soldiers. His mind was sluggish and late in sorting out the clues: they were dressed in uniform, and carried rifles slung over their backs above bandoliers of ammunition.

He knew what was happening to him now. This was the rail line in the Hejaz. Kelly had found a way to move them back on the target. This must be one of the trains manned by Turkish soldiers. But which train? What day was it? The warning voice in his mind began to nag at him again, and a flutter of anxiety stirred in his chest.

He felt himself being lifted, dragged up a short flight of steps, and pushed through a narrow door. It was a train coach that had been cleared of its normal seating and furnished with a few simple desks and chairs, probably an officer’s coach, he thought. The relative warmth of the room was a scant comfort to him, and his eyes adjusted to the light of a single oil lamp guttering on a flat wooden desk to one side of the coach. There was a man seated there, dark and stiff in bearing. The light gleamed on his sleek black hair and he stared at Paul with a contemptuous look. His lips seemed to smirk below the dark stain of a thin mustache. Paul could see that the man wore insignia of rank, possibly a Captain, or most likely a Colonel in charge of this troop train.

The man looked away for a moment turning his attention to a sheaf of paperwork on the desk. He dipped his ink pen into a shallow well and traced a few tentative strokes on a register with a dispassionate look on his face. As one hand pressed a stiff finger down the long list of names on his register, the other casually flicked off a checkmark here and there. The ink pen hovered over the paper briefly, and then he started to write. When no mark appeared on the paper he looked and saw that his pen was out of ink. He reached to dip it again in the ever diminishing pool of black ink, but then thought the better of it. With a sigh he put the pen down and turned his attention to the guards.

He spoke to the men in a hard edged voice. Though Paul could not understand anything that was said, it was clear that the Colonel was not pleased with this interruption. The man’s eyes shifted to Paul again, narrowing with curiosity. He pursed his lips, deciding something, and gestured at the overhead rail that ran along the edge of the roof to provide a hand hold while the train was moving.

There was no doubt in Paul’s mind now. He had stumbled onto the railway, and now he was taken by the Turks. Lord, help me, he thought. What day is it? Where exactly am I? Is this one of the trains Nordhausen had talked about? A thousand questions began to prey upon him now, and each one added to the queasy sense of alarm and fear in his chest.

Paul felt the guards tighten their grip on him, stretching his arms up overhead and binding his wrists to a cold metal rail near the roof. The leather ties were pulled tight and bit at his hands when the guards released him. Paul struggled to gain his footing, letting his legs take the weight of his body to ease the strain. He was able to stand, though his legs felt tired and weak.

The man at the desk waved at the guards again and they snapped off a crisp salute before tramping out through the narrow doorway, which closed in a creaking thump behind them. Paul’s eyes began to focus on the other man, noting his clean, well kept uniform and the polished leather of his belt and boots. But his vision was still a bit blurry; his thinking hazy in the unfamiliar setting.

The man spoke to him in a foreign tongue that he knew must be Turkish. He had no comprehension of what the officer was saying, but if his tone was any indication, the man was making some derisive remark, his eyes replete with accusation as he spoke. The officer stood up suddenly and stepped closer, staring at him with curious regard. He looked him up and down, then his hand began feeling at Paul’s robes, groping the loose folds of his soiled clothing. His disgust seemed to redouble, and he reached out, rudely snatching Paul’s headdress away and throwing it to the ground.

The officer shouted something at him, and when Paul did not answer he was struck a sharp blow on the side of his face. The slap from the officer’s open palm was just enough to shake Paul’s senses from the doldrums that had fogged them. His eyes rolled, then grew more focused. The officer slapped him again.

“Damn!” the invective slipped from Paul’s lips before he realized what he was saying. He wanted to remain mute, to endure the interrogation as though deaf and dumb, but he did not yet have the presence of mind to control himself. The officer’s eyes widened at the remark, and he seemed to immediately come to a new assessment of his captive.

“Ah, English,” he said with a satisfied grin, though his lips hardened to a half smile that bore no good will. “English!” The officer’s hands were on him now, tugging at his Arabian garb until he had torn the robes open and exposed the khaki tunic and trousers that Paul wore beneath them. As he did so, the mess kit and a small cloth bag with the remnant of the coffee Maeve had given to Nordhausen, spilled to the floor. The officer knelt briefly to retrieve them. He set the miss kit on the wooden desk and slowly raised the cloth bag to his nose, snuffing the contents with a pleased look on his face.

“You are far from home, English.” The man’s speech had a thick middle-eastern accent, but Paul understood him. “Now what are you doing here wandering about in the desert a hundred miles from British lines?”

The officer was still holding the coffee bag at his lips, savoring the rich aroma of the beans. “This is very good, English. How could you know I was needing coffee tonight?”

The man set the coffee bag aside, his face hardening as he studied Paul more carefully. Light gleamed from a medallion pinned on his chest, and Paul’s eye was drawn to a silver star, the center finished in a thin, red enamel with a crescent moon superimposed upon it. The pointed arcs reached up around an emblem in the center. His long study of military history recognized it as the badge of honor that some came to call the Iron Crescent. He looked for other insignia, noting the braided shoulder pauldrons that designated this man’s rank. Yes, he was a Colonel, just as Paul had guessed. But Paul’s gaze was soon drawn to the man’s hand where he was drawing a long, sharp field knife from a leather scabbard at his side. His heart pulsed with a beat of fear.

“You will curse at me, but yet not speak?” The Colonel hefted the knife in his hand, approaching Paul with bad intent. The blade was at his cheek, cold and sharp, and all vestiges of the fog that had bedeviled him soon fled. Paul’s heart thumped in his chest as the Turkish officer moved the knife slowly along the side of his face, resting the blade on his slender neck.

“You shave well, English.” The colonel smirked as he spoke, “but you miss a spot or two under your chin.” His features hardened as he used the knife to slowly force Paul’s chin up, looking him full in the face. “Now you will answer me, or I will finish the job for you, but I assure you, I am no barber.”

Paul felt the edge of the knife at his throat, and his breath came faster with the anxiety of the moment. His mind was beset with the arguments he had made to Nordhausen over their camp fire earlier. The risk of contamination was very real. If he said anything to this man he might alter the time line, change things in some unperceived way that no one would ever realize until the damage was done. The only moral thing to do would be to remain silent. Wasn’t he the one who had argued about committing suicide to avoid contamination? He remembered the conversation well, but here, with the cold edge of a knife at his throat, he was not so brave or righteous as he once thought. He felt his body tense up, instinctively squirming away from the edge of the blade, his neck tense, wrists straining at the leather cords that bound his arms overhead.

“Why do I find you here in the desert, English? I ask you one last time.” The knife twisted and he felt a sharp prick under his chin.

Paul knew that to be caught in British kit, behind enemy lines, was a quick ticket to torture and possibly death. What should he say? “Not English…” The words slipped out again, tumbling into the tense stillness of the room. The Colonel’s dark eyes were alight with the flickering flame of the oil lamp on the desk. He removed the knife, a pleased smile on his face.

“Not English? You wear English trousers, an English soldier’s shirt, though you hide them badly.” The Colonel’s hands groped along his sides, making their way down to his waist with hard searching fingers squeezing at his body as they went. “You are an English spy,” he breathed as he continued his search, forcing his hands into every pocket. He found Nordhausen’s lighter where Paul had tucked it away in his trouser pocket after they lit the fire.

“Another gift,” he grinned as he fished it out. Then, satisfied that Paul harbored no weapons, he stepped back, slipping the knife into its leather scabbard. His attention was momentarily drawn to the lighter, and he flicked it open, turning to retrieve a rolled cigarette from the desk behind him. The lighter sparked and flamed to life. Paul was grateful to have the man away from him, and the Colonel seemed somewhat mollified as he lit his cigarette.

The smell of burning tobacco filled the room and the officer took a long drag, breathing the smoke out slowly as he finished. “Very nice,” he said, seeming to warm to the situation. “So this new British General, Allenby, has a little fire in his belly after all. The Arabs took Akaba for him and now he thinks he can just waltz into Jerusalem. No doubt you have been sent here to scout the situation out, yes?” Then a strange look came over the man’ s face, as though another possibility had occurred to him. “Yes,” he said with a tight smile. “The Arabs and the British—like fleas on a dog. Well, we have heard these rumors about a British officer, who has been leading Arab vagrants on raids against our facilities and rail lines. And what do I have before me here?” He smiled again, eyes gleaming with suspicion.

Good lord, thought Paul. The man thinks I’m Lawrence! But what else would he think? When they decided on their costuming Maeve had come up with the idea for wearing British uniforms beneath Arab robes. It was a wonderful fail-safe if they ran into Arabs in the desert. The Turks were another matter, however, and Paul knew he was in very serious trouble. Here I’ve gone and done the one thing we had to avoid at all costs, he thought. The look on the Turkish Colonel’s face told him it was going to be a very long, painful night.

14

Lawrence Berkeley Labs – 3:10 AM

Kelly stared at the green progress bars on the temporal monitor as the retraction sequence progressed. The power outage had plunged the room into darkness, but emergency lighting kicked in, painting thin red cones of light across the consoles. He bit his lip, counting inwardly as Maeve rushed to his side.

“I’m sorry, Kelly. I was so wrapped up with what was happening that I just wasn’t thinking. I can’t remember if I closed the inner doors to the corridor or not. Isn’t there an indicator on one of these panels somewhere?” She searched about, a desperate, pleading look on her face.

Kelly finished counting, and a second or two later the overhead lights flickered on again. Power fed back into the consoles and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“Secondary systems kicked in,” he said. “We’re drawing auxiliary power from the city. Pacific Gas and Electric isn’t going to like us in the morning, but we have a contract to draw reserve power in the event of a turbine failure.” His mind soon returned to the problem that was uppermost in his thoughts, eyes searching the temporal monitor. The green progress bar moved from left to right across his screen, and digital numbers displayed above it, winking from the last reported variance position to show the latest readings.

“The math looks good, Maeve. The indicators are holding green and the variance factor is falling off towards zero.”

“Thank God,” she whispered. “What about the doors?”

“Don’t worry about it. The system won’t engage with the doors open. The problem was somewhere else.”

“What? Well why didn’t you say something?”

“I was too damn busy watching these readouts. If we had any more than a fifteen second gap before the auxiliary power kicked in we stood a chance to loose the spinout on the singularity. That really would have been a disaster. Looks like the power held above 85%, however. Jen, get down there and see what Tom says about this, will you? We can’t draw support from the city grid for very long. I need those turbines back up to speed, and fast.”

His attention was fixated on the temporal monitor now, as it continued the playback of the data on the shift. The event had already transpired, but the computer was lagging behind, its main processors just too slow to keep up with the data flow in real time. They had compensated for the lack of sufficient processor speed by installing huge arrays of memory. Now, as the computer read one bank of stored information after another, it ran its analysis and translated the results into graphics and numerical readouts on the screen.

“We should have had a stronger processor bank for this unit,” Kelly muttered. “I can’t react to anything that happens this way. If something went wrong this time, there’s not a thing I can do about it. Look how far behind the data flow is. I think we probably lost a processor bank in here when the power fluctuated. Damn things are so sensitive, and these battery backups just aren’t up to snuff.”

“How does it look?” Maeve pointed at the screen.

“Not bad…” Kelly kept watching. “The line is nice and green; numbers are falling off to zero…” He lapsed into silence as he watched.

Maeve was suddenly uncomfortable again. She looked at the screen and saw that the single green line began to change. Now it appeared that there were two bars that were making up the thickness of the progress line, and one was falling behind the other. She realized that there were two parallel lines moving in tandem, making a steady progress across the screen. Kelly noticed it as well.

“What’s going on here,” he murmured.

“A problem?” Maeve’s voice inflected the question in both of their minds. “The line is still solid green, Kelly. Look, your variance is just about nil.”

Kelly watched, his own mental processes racing in time with the data on the screen. The shift looked good, but there was definitely something amiss. He rolled some dials on the console, enhancing the brightness and contrast of the readouts. There was no mistaking it now. The adjustment clearly indicated that he had two parallel lines, not one unified line as he expected; as he hoped.

“What is it?” Maeve was beside herself, still not quite over the notion that she had caused the problem.

“The shift looks good,” said Kelly, “But…”

“But what?”

Kelly looked at her, scratching his head before he spoke. “Well it doesn’t look as though they were both—”

“Tom says not to worry!” Jen was shouting as she ran up the stairs from the lower level. She hastened up, winded with the exertion, but clearly elated to bring up the good news. “He says one of the breakers tripped due to some outside interference, but he got the circuits back on line again.”

“Outside interference?”

“Yeah,” Jen nodded. “He thinks maybe we caught some lightning and the rods couldn’t handle the juice. Must have been a direct hit.”

Maeve had a frustrated look on her face. “Kelly, what were you going to say?”

“Great, Jen,” Kelly was still distracted, and a sudden thought threw him further off the track. “Can we roll it back up to full power in twenty minutes?”

“I’ll go ask.” Jen fished her hands out of the pockets of her khaki shorts, turned on her heels, and ran off, her long brown legs carrying her quickly toward the stairwell again.

“Kelly!” Maeve gave him a wide-eyed stare.

“Right…” Kelly leaned in to study the lines on the screen again. He watched the numbers keep falling, pleased to see they were rolling ever more slowly toward zero. He knew they would settle there in the end. His math was good. “Well,” he said with a sigh. “We moved them, but not at the same time.”

Maeve stared at him, waiting for more information.

“See the lines?” Kelly pointed at the screen with a pen. “See how the bottom line is just a tick behind the other? They’re both moving, but not at the same time. That damn power dip was just enough to throw the sync off. Looks like the system compensated by grabbing one a few seconds before the other. Let me run a verification routine.”

He slid his chair over to a terminal to his left and began keying some system commands. “There,” he said as he finished. “We should know the final variance in a moment.”

“They shifted at different times?” Maeve’s own processing was finally catching up.

“There it is,” Kelly pointed at the screen. “Hell, it’s only a little off. Just 0.00168 discrepancy. Hardly a nudge!”

“And that means what?” Maeve wanted it in English, and she wanted it now.

“Well, they both hit the bull’s eye, numerically speaking. They’re going to be right on the target time; perhaps only a few days or even hours off. The only thing is that one is going to arrive before the other.” He shifted back to the temporal monitor. “Yup,” he concluded as he spun his chair around to look at her. “I wonder who’s going to arrive first?”

15

The Desert – November, 1917

Nordhausen was lying face down on a low dune of wet sand. He did not know how long he had been there. All he could remember were surreal dreams of swirling auroras that danced in hues of red and milky green. He awoke, groggy; with a sickly queasiness in the pit of his stomach and a strange lightness of head. The night air surrounded him with a frosty cold, and the layers of clothing provided little comfort. He rolled over, staring up at the clouds. A wet mist shrouded the landscape but, here and there, the dark vapors parted and he could see the stars in a sable sky, cold and remote.

He immediately looked for the moon, finding a spot low on the horizon where the darkness seemed smudged with a hoary glow of diffused gray light. He watched the area for some time, wondering what had happened to him and where he was. One moment he had been sitting quietly by the campfire, sulking over his fate, and then that strange sense of weightlessness had come over him, a feathery lightness accompanied by a sudden chill. It occurred to him that he had been sleeping here, lost in the kaleidoscope of water colored dreams, for many hours.

He looked around him. Where was the circle of stones they had built for the fire; where was the exquisite bare white fossil of the Ammonite they had discovered; where was Paul? As he took his situation in he suddenly realized that the entire landscape about him was different than he remembered. Before they had been on the smooth brow of a low hill, part of a winding ridge. Now he lay upon flat, sandy ground, and the only rise in elevation he could see anywhere about him was some distance off. The sky had a different quality to it as well, clean and fresh where once it had been choked with smoky ash. What was going on here?

Perhaps I’m back, he thought. He never really did understand how the machine was supposed to work. Paul tried to explain it to him many times, but he could never get his mind around the physics. The one metaphor that seemed to stick in his head was the image of Paul’s long arm extending back to hold open the elevator door when they stepped off into the outer corridor. He remembered what his friend had said then: ‘The door we’re about to open is going to remain open for us, Robert… Time will extend an arm and keep the portal open…’

It was the only sensible thing he could think of to account for the change. The mission had failed. Kelly botched the numbers, just as he knew he would, and they went so far back in time that it was a miracle they survived it. At least Paul was correct with his time theory, he mused. How did he explain it? Something in the infusion expired and they got pulled back into their own time. That was the only way he could understand it, like a sand clock running out of grains. Thankfully, it happened after only a few hours, and they were saved from the agony of the dying Cretaceous.

“Well, I suppose it would be too much to ask to be delivered safe and sound to the comfort of my study again,” he said aloud. “And what has happened to Paul?”

He squinted into the darkness, looking for any sign of his friend, but the cold, empty desert surrounded him on every side, stretching away to bleak horizons. He stood up, on unsteady legs, and felt the blood pound at his temples with the effort. It seems that time travel had a very severe physical effect, so he gave himself a moment to compose himself.

They had failed. Now he was lost in the Jordanian desert; perhaps miles from the nearest road. He decided the best thing to do would be to head for the high ground in the distance. That way he could take in the lay of the land and sort out what to do. Perhaps he might even start a fire to attract attention. He determined to go over all of this with the Operations Group when he got back to California. They should have told him the spatial location was going to remain fixed at the target coordinates! Had he known this was going to happen he would have insisted that they take some kind of emergency transponder beacon with them, no matter what Maeve and her silly Outcomes committee said about it.

The more he thought about his situation the more sullen and despondent he became. The fate of the world has been sealed, he concluded. This penumbra business with the Palma Event was going to cause some kind of interference and they wouldn’t be able to go through it again, at least not without a great deal of trouble. A pity, he thought, imagining the chaos that must be reigning on the Eastern Seaboard. There was nothing more he could do about it, God rest their souls. Perhaps they could try a second time, but something told him that it was all too late. Maybe the machine would never work again.

He sighed, chagrined by the thought that he might not have the chance to visit the Globe Theatre. For that matter, his hopes at catching a glimpse of Lawrence had been foiled as well. All he saw of this mission was a sour sky full of smoke and volcanic debris, and the fossil, of course. They had certainly ended up somewhere, and the discovery of the Ammonite fossil had been the high point of it all for him. Perhaps he could fish the spatial coordinates from Kelly and fly back out here in a month or so with a few students for a dig. If the remains were still anywhere near the surface it would be a splendid recovery, and might even stand as evidence that they had actually gone somewhere. He resolved to discuss the matter with Paul and Maeve the instant he got back.

But where was Paul? He pulled up short with that thought again, and searched about him, calling out Paul’s name at the top of his voice. There was no answer.

Just like him to get himself lost. Where did he wander off to? He said he was only going to look for a few more dead fern leaves for the fire and then… He was suddenly struck by the thought that Paul may still be stranded in time. What if the damn retraction scheme was limited to a certain radius around their entry point? Paul may have wandered just outside its influence. He passed a moment of deep misgiving, thinking that his long time friend may be doomed to a lonesome existence in the deeps of time, the only human being alive on the planet, and fifty million years to wait for company. Then he remembered how Paul had been worrying over the possibility of contamination and brooding about the necessity of killing himself to prevent complications to the future time lines. Where was he? He wished he was here, nagging at him again with some silly temporal concept or physics problem.

Poor Paul. The memory of his friend’s voice returned to him once more, offering a note of solace as he spoke about Time. ‘She knows we don’t belong on this side of the door, Robert, and she won’t rest until we’re safe in our own Meridian again. You’ll see.’

That thought gave him some hope, and he resolved to plod on and find some higher ground. If Paul were around he would probably do the same thing. It was bound to be light soon, and perhaps he would catch a glimpse of a road. There had to be traffic of some kind in the area. He would find his way out of this mess soon enough.

He started off, his mind rummaging about with his worry. What if he couldn’t find a road? He had no water, and no food. Lord, he didn’t even have any money with him! How was he supposed to get back to California? It reminded him of a cruel joke the Freshmen would play on the newly elected president of the Sophomore class at the university. They would waylay the poor sap, and put him on a plane to some random destination with nothing more than a single dime in his pocket. That’s exactly the way he felt now, kidnapped by Paul’s time machine and set adrift in the desert without so much as a dime for a telephone call to console him.

He trudged on, intent on making the rise ahead of him before first light. Almost as if to reassure himself, he stopped from time to time to study the ground, looking for any sign of tektite glass or shocked quartz. He found none.

The light mist became a rain, and he gathered his Arabic robes about him, trying to hold in as much body heat as possible. His feet ached in the boots that Maeve had forced upon him, and he was tired, hungry and wet. There’s bound to be a village nearby, he thought, and soon had his first prospect of finding help. He stumbled around a low rise and saw the wavering light of a small campfire guttering in the distance. His spirits rose immediately, and he smiled inwardly as he made for the light.

It occurred to him that it might not be wise to just come stampeding up on some sheep herder’s camp in the dark, so he started waving his arms and shouting as he approached the place, intent on eliciting aid.

“Hello!” he shouted. “Anyone there?”

There was a scuffling sound in the distance and then he was surprised by the sharp crack of a gun. A bullet whizzed by and he instinctively fell to the ground in a panic. Another shot was fired, passing wide of the mark and vanishing in the darkness. He heard a voice muttering something, and quiet footfalls.

Now what have I gone and done, he thought? This ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ attitude would have been expected in the desert on a dismal night like this. He saw a shadowy form drifting to his right, barely silhouetted against the horizon. There was no good shouting at the man, he realized. Who would speak English here? The only thing to do, he reasoned, was to play possum and hope the man would not find him. Then he could eventually slip away to find more agreeable assistance.

He waited, stilling his breath for what seemed an awfully long time and peering into the dark for any sign of his attacker. He had fallen on a sharp stone and, as he tried to roll away from it, he heard a crisp metallic click behind his right ear.

“Entabeh!” A voice spoke in a sibilant whisper behind him. He did not know what the man was saying, but the note of caution in his tone was obvious enough.

“Don’t shoot,” he said, raising both hands to demonstrate that he was unarmed. It was foolish to say anything more, but he rambled on just the same. “I’m unarmed. I’m lost and seeking help. I mean you no harm.”

“Ayez eh? Rayeh feen?”

Nordhausen turned slowly and saw a scraggly, bearded man behind him, his head swathed in henna cloth with a simple black circlet at the crown. The dim light revealed dull gleam of metal, and Nordhausen saw that a pistol was aimed at his belly. The professor eyed the gun with some trepidation.

“No need for that,” he said. “I mean you no harm. I’m lost, that’s all.”

“Ismack eh? Shoe betiimal?” The man squinted at him in the dark, still guarded as he approached the professor and extended his other arm towards him. He fingered the sash at Nordhausen’s waist and searched cautiously, his dark eyes watching the professor’s every move. Nordhausen stayed very still, understanding that the man wanted to make a cursory search to see if he was armed.

“I mean no harm,” he said again. “I’m lost, you see. Just trying to reach help and get to a telephone. Is there a telephone nearby, or perhaps a radio? Do you have a vehicle with you?”

The man gestured that he should be silent, and Nordhausen waited, frustrated that he could not make himself understood. The local was looking him over very closely, suspicion growing in his eyes as he leaned in to have a closer look at Nordhausen’s face.

“Eh dah?” The man seemed confused by Nordhausen’s appearance, and the professor realized the idea of masquerading as an Arab had some definite liabilities. He decided to try and use sign language, cautiously placing his open palms on his chest as he spoke again.

“I’m an American,” he started, indicating himself. “A scientist from Lawrence Labs in Berkeley; here on a mission.” That wasn’t helpful, he thought, but the man stepped back, his head cocked to one side.

“Aurens?” The tone of his voice carried a note of excitement.

Nordhausen did not catch the implications of the man’s reply at first, and he tried again. “A-mer-i-can,” he sounded out the word, patting his chest. “Lost.”

The stranger eyed him suspiciously again, gesturing at his belt line. “Eftah,” he said, waving the pistol in his hand.

Nordhausen saw that he wanted him to open his robes. Cautious fellow, he thought, but he undid the sash and let the gown fall open, feeling a bit silly to be standing there in wet khaki trousers and a British officer’s uniform from the First World War. How will this help my story if I manage to get to the authorities? It occurred to him that Americans may not be particularly welcome here. The chaos of the Middle East in recent years had built up a tremendous resentment among common Muslims against the West, and America in particular. Most of the population of the region would be Jordanian Palestinians, and they were not very well disposed to foreigners. Old news stories of Western reporters and missionaries taken as hostages and brutally murdered came to mind, and he was suddenly very afraid, and angry again that no one had told him he would remain at the spatial coordinates of the drop site when they shifted home.

The man had a very different reaction to Nordhausen’s uniform, however. He stooped to have a closer look, noting the thick belt at Nordhausen’s waist, and the high, leather army boots.

“English?” The word was badly spoken, but Nordhausen understood it. He was momentarily taken by surprise. How would he come to that assessment, he wondered?

“Sadiq, English.” The man smiled at him and Nordhausen saw that he was missing one tooth. “Sadiq Aurens?”

Nordhausen caught the hint of a name the second time the man spoke the word. His mind whirled for a moment, remembering what Maeve had said about coming across local Arabs in the desert. It couldn’t be so, he thought, his eyes searching the horizon. The rain had stopped and the clouds parted to reveal a crescent moon in the sky, low on the horizon. It suddenly occurred to him that he should be seeing the glow of urban centers on the horizon as well. Even if he was in the desert, the light from major cities like Amman and others would still be visible, but all was pitch black.

“Good God,” he breathed. “What’s happened? Where am I?”

The stranger gave him an odd look. “Sadiq Aurens?”

The moon was wrong. It was full the night they went through the Arch. Something went wrong on the retraction! That thought jarred his thinking for a moment until he remembered what Paul had said about Kelly on the watch. ‘He’ll see what’s happened and make adjustments.’ What has Kelly done?

“Taa’la maei,” the man gestured toward the distant camp fire. He no longer brandished the gun but he was nonetheless insistent that the professor start moving as he indicated. Nordhausen started walking, and the man fell in at his side, just slightly behind, chattering away as they went. The professor didn’t understand anything he was saying, but occasionally the word ‘English’ or ‘Aurens’ would come through again. It dawned on him, with a sinking feeling, that he had not reached his own time after all. Kelly botched the retraction, he thought at first, but upon consideration he realized this was probably not the case. He made his adjustment, Nordhausen concluded. He made one last attempt at getting us to the right temporal coordinates. If he was anywhere close, I’m still nearly a hundred years in the past! The stranger didn’t react to the word American, but he immediately recognized my uniform as English. And he called me Aurens. He can’t possibly think I’m Lawrence of Arabia.

“Oh God,” Nordhausen breathed. Kelly had moved them forward in time to the right coordinates. He wasn’t home, as he first thought. He was back in the middle of the First World War. How did this happen? Paul said there were only two chances for retraction—one triggered to the target date, and the other some kind of fail-safe system they had programmed. Kelly must have used up one of his trump cards to get them back on target. The mission was on, then. He had an Arab in with him mouthing the word Aurens and the whole thing was still on. But would he ever make it home?

A sensation of real anxiety enfolded him as he realized the weight of the operation was descending heavily on his shoulders again. He wasn’t home. Now he had to figure out just exactly where he was. He had to find the rail line, and discover what day it was. He had to pick the right train and decide what to do about it. Paul said he and Maeve had the whole thing figured out, but they never had time to go over it with him. Oh God, he thought. I have to unravel all this mischief and save the world after all. I have to find Paul’s little Pushpin and figure out what to do. It was imperative. He whispered a silent invocation to any deity who would hear him, and hoped he would get it all right.

Part VI

Chance Meetings

“The nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.”

Marcus Aurelius: Meditations IV

“By wondrous accident perchance may one grope out a needle in a load of hay…”

John Taylor: A Kicksy Winsey VII

16

Hejaz Railway – November, 1917

Paul was wishing he was somewhere else. The leather thongs that bound his wrists were tight and painful, and the stern regard of the Turkish Colonel was beginning to unnerve him. At least he had put away the knife, though Paul did not hold out much hope for himself in this situation. The man had obviously concluded he was a spy, and he knew that a lengthy interrogation was probably in order for him now.

The Colonel took a long drag on his cigarette, studying Paul closely. “Not English, you say? You are certainly not an Arab. What mischief are you up to in the night? What are you doing here?”

Paul looked at him, unwilling to speak, but he could see that it would only be a matter of time if he resisted this man’s questions—and very painful time at that. He resolved to answer him, hoping to thread his way through the interrogation without saying anything too damaging. Perhaps he could plead that he was a non-combatant and invoke the Geneva convention as a shield. Then he realized that the convention had not even been adopted until well after this war. He would be at the mercy of this man, no matter what he decided.

“I am an American,” he began cautiously, “a writer.”

The Colonel eyed him with suspicion. “You are wearing a British uniform.”

“It was necessary,” said Paul. “The British insisted.”

“They insisted? How very much like them.” The Colonel stood up, leaning close to Paul and studying his face and hands. “You are not a soldier,” he concluded. “That much is clear. Yet it does not take a soldier to be a spy. Why are you here?” The tone of his voice made it evident to Paul that he was not convinced. “Are you trying to make the world safe for democracy, as your President Wilson has said? There are no Americans in this region. Speak!”

“No, I am not a soldier—only a writer. My government does not know I am here.”

“Oh? And what do you think you will see here? There is nothing here but the desert, unless, of course, you are interested in our trains. The battle is a hundred miles from this place. I think you are a spy.”

“I am not a spy, I write books, that’s all. You can see that I am unarmed.”

The Colonel regarded him in silence, his cigarette building a long ash as it burned. He took another drag, his eyes narrowing above the red glow of the cigarette tip in the darkness of the room.

Paul hoped the man could see that he was not a soldier. Can’t he tell by my accent that I’m not English? He probably thinks I was sent here by the British, though, and he’ll want to get at the reason soon enough.

“You know I can have you shot without a second thought for concealing that British uniform beneath these robes. Who do you think you are fooling?”

Paul did not answer.

“Yes, you are fooling no one. The British are fools, just as you are to come here. Perhaps you are one of the men the British have sent to incite these Arabs, yes? You were wandering near the rail lines, and the Arabs have been a nuisance. I think you were planning some mischief here, American. Yes—you are an American. I can make mischief as well.” The warning in his eyes was apparent.

His cigarette burned down to a nub and he let it fall to the floor, grinding the ash under his boot. “Perhaps,” he said, “I should give you something to write about. How did you come here?” The question was hard, whip like, and laden with the implication of a threat.

Paul had to think fast. He needed a credible story, and his mind scoured through memories of the history to come up with something plausible. “I wanted to write,” he said haltingly. “Yes, I had to come in through a British controlled port, but my luggage was mishandled and I was given British kit in compensation.”

“What port?” The question was sudden and sharp.

“Cairo… And I came across Suez to try and reach the front.”

“Oh? Where is the front?”

Paul searched his recollection, desperate for a credible answer. He could quote chapter and verse when it came to events in the Second World War, but he had not given much study to the first. He equivocated. “With Allenby,” he said, buying time.

“Allenby, yes I suppose there is a front here now, thanks to him. He had a surprise for us at Beersheba last week. He stole around our flank with his horse soldiers. He wants Jerusalem, but we will not give it to him so easily. Still, this does not explain your presence here.”

“As I said,” Paul continued. “I came in through British lines, but I do not answer to them. I am here on my own. I write books, that is all—history books. I merely wished to see the war for myself. They would not give me permission to come here to the desert, but I snuck away, concealed in these Arab robes.”

“You think me a fool? You come wandering through the night in the middle of a rain storm to study for your books? I do not believe you. I think you are watching the movements of our trains, and that you would tell everything you see here to the British if you could. Yes?”

“I ran into trouble with the locals,” Paul groped for some way out of the situation. “I had to flee for my life. I knew there was a railroad to the west and so I started walking, hoping to find my way.”

“Where? To Amman? To Damascus? You are very far from both for a man with only his two legs to take him about. Did you think you could beg passage on one of our trains—dressed like that?”

The Colonel moved suddenly, striking Paul hard on the cheek with the back of his hand. Paul winced with the blow, wondering if it would not have been better to just keep silent.

“That is for lying to me,” the Colonel said in a low voice. “The rest you will get in a moment or two. But first, I must assure myself that the tracks are clear ahead and that no other writers and reporters are lurking in the night.”

He gave Paul a derisive glance and strode to the doorway, pulling it open and shouting orders at the guards outside his coach in Turkish. The men ran to respond, their boots crunching on the gravel bed of the rail line, receding into the distance as they went.

“Now,” said the Colonel, turning back to Paul. “We are quite alone.”

Paul did not like the sound of that, and was afraid that the man was going to strike him again—or worse. Perhaps he wanted to get rid of any witnesses, or perhaps he merely wished to savor the rest of his interrogation with some aberrant sense of privacy. Thankfully, the Colonel sat down at his desk, eying the coffee bag and taking it up to sample the aroma again.

“Very good,” he said hefting the bag in his hand. “I have been missing my coffee for three nights now, so I will light an oil stove and try your beans before we continue. Perhaps,” he finished with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, “it will lighten my mood.” The smile the Colonel flashed at him gave Paul little comfort.

He was some time, lighting a small oil stove and pouring water from a canteen into a dented tin pot. He took a moment to inspect Paul’s mess kit more closely, coming to silent conclusions about what he saw there, but saying nothing. Paul wondered how it was that the man spoke English. He chanced a question, knowing that he invited another sharp rebuke, but hoping to strike some accord with the man if he could.

“You speak English very well,” he flattered. “Were you educated in the West?”

The Colonel looked at him as though he had been interrupted by a discordant noise. But his eyes softened a bit and he answered. “Educated? I have been educated in many places. One must know his enemy if he is to fight him. Are you surprised I speak your language? Most British are when I first address them. Oh, the fun is in listening first, of course; listening to their idle chatter when they think me nothing more than an ignorant Muslim. The arrogance of the British is well known. They believe the rest of the world is here for their pleasure, and they have set themselves to meddling in the affairs of men in every quarter of the globe. They will learn. We will teach them.”

The Colonel seemed to delight in lecturing Paul now, who was clearly a captive audience. “I suppose it was inevitable that we would end up fighting the British one day. I think the Young Turks have found war with England more to their liking. With the Russians things did not go so well. That was Enver Pasha’s fault. He was worried about the Armenians again, and the Caucasus. The British were building two ships for the Sultan’s Navy, but Mr. Churchill thought better of giving them to us when they were finished. I think he knew we must fight one day as well. It is a pity that Enver Pasha did not know it. The Germans were only too eager to give us ships, and he used them to shell the Russian base at Odessa so he could have his little war with the Russians. He thought he would become a general, you see, though he had never even commanded as much as a regiment before. When the Russians declared war on us he had a fatwa read to declare a holy war in reprisal. Then he thought to lead our Holy Army of Islam into the Caucasus against the Russians. That did not go so well for us, but the Russians believed they were in danger nonetheless. They begged your English friends to help them, and the British came to attack the Dardanelles. Now we have war on every border.”

“You wear the Gallipoli Star,” said Paul eyeing the badge on the Colonel’s shirt. He realized that is was only called that in the West, and corrected himself. “The Iron Crescent is a sign of bravery, yes?”

The colonel gave him a sour look, but there was a hint of pride in his eyes. “You know it?” He thumbed the gilded star on his chest. “I fought with Mustapha Kemal at Sulva Bay. We taught the British their first lesson there. They had to learn again at the siege of Kut in Mesopotamia. That was a hard lesson. Do you know that they offered us two million pounds sterling for Townsend’s head? The English think they can buy what force of arms fails to deliver them in plunder. The have no honor in war. We should have run them out of Egypt long ago. If not for a few cackling chickens we might have done so! Yes, I was also with Djemal when he took 25,000 men across the Sinai on camels and tried to slip across the Suez. A few chickens gave us away in the dark that night. One of the squads had taken them along, against orders, because they grew tired of olives and biscuits. As we approached the canal the chickens got loose and alerted the British. So much for that adventure.” He sighed, grinding his coffee hard as he spoke, his voice laden with a note of discontent. “Now I am here, riding trains back and forth from Damascus to Amman and listening to Allenby’s guns. He may have stolen a march on us at Beersheba last week, but we will make him pay for the ground. Let him have Gaza, what is there?”

Paul was surprised that the Colonel spoke so freely. The story about the abortive attempt to cross the Suez was as significant to him as it was amusing to the Colonel. Chickens! Everyone thinks the great events of history turn on the decisions of generals and statesmen, but it was just as likely that the real hinge of fate here was a loose clasp on a chicken coop. He saw the errant little thread of causality dangling from the story, an insignificant moment of disobedience by a hungry squad of soldiers that may have given the whole operation away. It was just such a moment that he was seeking now; perhaps on this very train. He desperately wanted to know what day it was, and gain some sense of his location. He watched the Colonel working at his coffee, and wondered if he dared say anything more. The Colonel was slowly grinding the coffee beans in the bottom of a metal cup. Paul knew it was dangerous, but he chanced another remark.

“I have heard the thunder in the desert, but it is not the rain.” The sound returned to them in the distance, a dull rolling rumble at the edge of their awareness.

The Colonel gave him a dark glance. “Yes, that would be your British friends,” he said with a twist of derision in his voice. “Artillery. That is the one thing the British do well, I’m afraid. They do make good artillery. But we, too, have guns; and we know how to use them.”

His water was ready at the boil and he reached for the tin pot, pouring the steaming liquid into his cup. The aroma of coffee redoubled as the ground beans bloomed and a light brown foam welled at the lip of the cup. The Colonel leaned down to smell the dark, rich coffee, clearly pleased. “This is very fresh,” he said. “Where did you get it? I have not had coffee like this for many months.”

Paul hesitated, and then decided to simply tell the truth. “I brought it with me from America.”

“America? They do not grow coffee in America.”

“From San Francisco—where I live.” He hoped he might convince the man that he was not a British spy, so he rambled on. “It is imported there. I think the blend is Arabica, with beans from Sumatra as well.” He was beginning to think that a good cup of Major Dickason’s blend would work its wonders on the man and soften his mood.

“That is one thing the Arabs do well,” said the Colonel. “They make good coffee, though they put too much spice in it. I do not take it that way.” He stirred his cup slowly, looking at Paul with a little curiosity now, the hardness in his voice moderated somewhat. “And the Arabs also like to blow up my trains,” he added. “Did you know that, American? Perhaps you have been helping them.”

Paul was afraid the interrogation was going to begin again, but he thought it dangerous to remain silent at the remark. “I would not know how to go about it,” he said, with all honesty.

The Colonel smiled at the remark. “I wonder,” he said quietly. “The Bey may wonder as well when I bring you to Deraa. If you live so long.” He tacked that last bit on as he sipped at the coffee, a satisfied look on his face.

“You are going to Derra?” Paul could not get himself into any more trouble, so he ventured on. He wondered if he could ascertain what day it was. “I was hoping to reach there by week’s end.”

The Colonel looked as though he would laugh, but his mood shifted suddenly. “You are a bit too curious for one in your situation. You wish to go to Deraa? Why? Is there something there you wish to see?”

“The city,” said Paul. “The people.”

“The defensive works, perhaps; the gun emplacements? Notes for your history books, I suppose. You may think yourself a non-combatant, but I do not think the Bey will be so gracious in his assessment. Yes, I think I will save you for him. He fancies your kind: soft men; men of letters and words. We will stop in Deraa along the way and I will introduce you. He will enjoy your conversation. I do not!”

He sipped at his cup again. “But your coffee is good,” he finished with wry humor. “I think you are an American. But do not forget: the United States has joined the war now, and so you are just as much an enemy as the English. Yes! I have the reports here in my briefcase. The Germans have killed the first American soldiers in Europe only a few days ago. They will kill many more when the Russians go home to their revolution. Perhaps the generals have sent your likes into the area to cause trouble for us here, just as the British do with these Arabs. I’m afraid that is exactly what the Bey will think, my friend. And that is what I think as well. You are a spy.” He took a deep draught from his coffee cup and stood up, very suddenly. “Now,” he said with a dark grin, “you will tell me something of why you have really come to the desert, and why you wish to see our cities and towns.” He took hold of Paul’s chin, his grip hard and cold. “I cannot give you to the Bey without knowing these things. He will discover it all for himself, of course, but you will tell me first—and you will tell me now.”

The Colonel’s hand moved to Paul’s throat, and he swallowed hard as he felt the fingers tighten on his wind pipe. So much for Major Dickason’s blend, he thought. I should have brought Guatemala.

17

Lawrence Berkeley Labs – 3:15 AM

Kelly was studying the monitors, noting the final diagnostic numbers coming in on the time shift and feeling quite pleased with himself. His theory had worked! If a loop command was sent through the system during the tachyon infusion multiple signatures could be captured for storage in the pattern buffers. Theoretically, there could be as many signatures as the memory capacity allowed, and for each one he knew he could now time the particle density and decay sequences to initiate a jump to a new point on the continuum. It was a novel idea that no one had ever anticipated, a child of his own speculation that had been given a rough birthing in the emergency that had just transpired.

“I’ll call it a Ramer Loop,” he said to himself, almost forgetting that Maeve was still there, hovering over his shoulder and trying to make sense of the readouts.

“Are they on target?”

“Sure,” said Kelly, an air of jubilancy relieving the stress of the last fifteen minutes. “I got them both in tight on the coordinates. At least that’s what the system reads. Looks like one arrived a day ahead of the other, however.”

“Will they be on the right spatial coordinates?”

“I hope so.”

Maeve didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean you hope so? Can’t you tell?”

“Well, it depends if they’ve moved or not when they were on their original breaching point. This was just a temporal shift. I left the spatial variables as they were. The shift just moved them forward in time, that’s all. The only spatial variance would be the proximity algorithm—you know, so they won’t materialize inside a boulder or under water. That could separate them a bit. The quantum gravity matrix handles that. But if they wandered off at the original site, they’re likely to be off by that much on this shift. I wouldn’t worry about it. How far could they go?”

“But what about the time differential,” Maeve was still fishing, driven by her natural instinct to leave no stone unturned. She wanted things right, ever so right, and the untidy nature of this first breach of the continuum was unnerving. “They’ve only been gone a few minutes here, but in the alternate time they could have lived out years.”

“Theoretically.”

“Yes, theoretically—it’s all about the theory at this point, but we’re making it practical now. We’ve got to be careful, and we have to get it right. Isn’t there a way you can see about their spatial shift?”

Kelly thought for a minute. “Well, there should be a signal trace I could run down. Then I could do a comparison study on the spatial coordinates relative to the trace—”

“Run it down.” Maeve waved a hand at the consoles, gesturing randomly at the intimidating wall of machinery as she prodded Kelly to action.

“Now? I was going to work on the particle chamber and make sure it’s set right for the final retraction. If I don’t balance the element sampling right it could be critical.”

“You mean we might not get them back?”

“Look, we’ll get them back, OK?” Kelly gave her a frustrated look. “I just think I’d better fine tune the chamber to be sure. It will only take about ten minutes. Then I’ll run that comparison study for you, though by that time it won’t matter much. They are where they are, Maeve, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can only move them one more time, and that’s to bring them back here.”

Maeve sighed, but she understood what he was saying, nodding agreement. Kelly stood up and put his arm around her. “Hey, I know this has been hard on you—on all of us. Imagine what they must be going through. We’re doing everything we possibly can for them, and we’ll get them both home just fine. You’ll see.”

Maeve smiled, wanting to be persuaded, but still driven by the need to know, to have a sense of some certainty about it all. “I think I need some of that coffee Jen made,” she said.

“I’ll get you a cup.”

She saw him searching about to locate the pot and decided his time would be better spent elsewhere. “Don’t bother. Get started on that tune-up job you were talking about. I’ll get the coffee myself. We haven’t much time.”

“Right,” said Kelly, and he diverted to the chamber console.

Maeve spotted the coffee and retrieved a mug from a supply cabinet on the far wall. “I wonder where they ended up after the first shift,” she mused.

“What? God only knows,” said Kelly. “I suppose we could do a full diagnostic on the shift—we will do that, but there won’t be time tonight.”

“You said the variance factor was off exponentially.”

“Nasty little error, that one.” Kelly was already tinkering with the particle chamber settings, pleased that the element readings were holding stable and he seemed to have good control. The particle density was building up nicely after the shift, and he glanced at the clock, relieved to see that he had ample time before his final retraction. It was 3:20 AM.”

“What was the range of that error. Any way to do a little quick multiplication and see if you can ballpark it?”

“Oh, I did that earlier.”

Maeve gave him a long look. “Well?”

Kelly was focused on the task in front of him, but he paused, eyes rolling a moment as he considered. “They went for quite a ride, I think. Somewhere in the early Tertiary, or late—”

“How long ago was that?” Maeve did not immediately recognize the term and was waiting for a simple number. “Are you talking in hundreds of years, or thousands?”

Kelly smiled. “More like millions. Maybe sixty-five million years or so—give or take a few hundred thousand.”

Maeve practically choked on her coffee. “Sixty-five million years? God, Kelly. I had no idea they were that far off the target!”

“Like I said, it was either the early Tertiary or late Cretaceous.”

“Then we’re talking dinosaurs here?” Maeve was amazed.

“A real Crichton-Spielberg moment,” said Kelly with a laugh. “I’ll bet they were scared shitless. Hopefully, they were only there for a brief time. I’m sure they probably figured out they were off target. I mean, the place was a seabed just a few thousand years before they showed up.”

“God, what if it still was a seabed.” She assumed the worst.

“Relax, they’d land at the surface. The references are almost foolproof.”

“How would you like to be plopped down in the middle of a primordial sea and forced to swim for the nearest shore in Arabic robes. Lord, Kelly, how can you take this so calmly! Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”

“What, so you could worry about it? Look, I’m sorry. I was keying data fast and I made a mistake. I got them out of there as quickly as I could.”

“Well how do we even know they’re still alive?”

“We don’t know.” Kelly put it as plainly as he could. “We’ve just got to have a little faith, that’s all.”

She was going to say something, but took a sip of coffee instead, imposing an interval of calm on herself. She stared at the control consoles, fighting off the rising sense of frustration and helplessness that had been preying upon her since the call from her mother came in. Something had happened there, she thought. Just as Kelly pressed his looping command I had a strange sense of déjà vu. I could hear my mother’s voice resonating, echoing in my head over and over, and then it just vanished. She glanced at the phone, thinking about the moment. What was it the stranger had said? We’re in a deep void. Whatever we’ve done to the time lines will be determined in the next few minutes and, until then, the universe is holding its breath.

Kelly had returned to his chamber controls, working away as if nothing was wrong at all. He was supposed to be dead. She knew he must be feeling something about all of this, but he was able to set his emotions aside for the moment and focus on the task at hand. Every thing he did now, every calculation, every twist of a dial or flick of a switch, was subtly altering the shape of the world they had all been living in before. Kelly was a Free Variable. He was alive for some reason, and he was right, they had to have a little faith in the things that reason might bring.

She chided herself, watching his example, and realized she had been quite hard on him when it seemed like things were spinning out of control. He was doing the best he could, and it was amazing to her that he could manipulate the hardware and software as he did. Calculating new temporal coordinates in his head on the fly had been an incredible feat, but he pulled it off. The bank of machinery seemed so impersonal and unfeeling to her, like a lot of technology did. As if cars and televisions and computers were not enough, now there were going to be time machines to deal with.

Outcomes and Consequences—that was her charge. Even though she had been as excited as all the other senior team members at the prospect of success, the reality of it all was much more intimidating than she thought it would be. They could travel in time. It all worked! All of Paul’s time theory was a real phenomena now. The glossary of novel terms he dreamt up were all going to form the root of an entire new lexicon of thought and experience for humans. She thought back to the last time a project of this scope had been attempted, the Manhattan project during World War Two. They were going to unleash the power of the atom for the first time. What was it Oppenheimer had said? ‘Now I am become God, the destroyer of all things.’

The Arch made that discovery pale by comparison. They had gone to great pains to avoid taking government funding for the project. It had all been achieved with private money and corporate donations, leasing out facilities and equipment wherever possible. The government had exercised routine permitting authority but, as far as they were concerned, this was all a theoretical study project. The few inspectors they had entertained seemed politely ignorant of the physics involved, and heedless of the implication should the project succeed. They never thought it was anything more than a bunch of arcane science wizards playing with ideas. Had they known we were actually going to make a practical attempt…

Visions of men in black suits with earpieces and hand guns flooded into her mind, born of a hundred science fiction movies and X-Files episodes. She shuddered to realize that the cliché images would probably play out just that way now. When the team announced that they had actually made the theory real—actually traveled in time, the government was going to descend on the project like a pack of vultures. Now that their Outcome had been proven to be a practical reality, the resulting Consequences were going to be mind-boggling. She looked ahead, realizing the staggering implications of the technology Kelly was quietly tuning in the corner alcove. They could change things; they could change anything! Now they were not merely made destroyers, but creators as well. It was no metaphor. They had become Gods. They could go back and alter the time line in any way they chose. There was a part of her that never believed it could be possible. Now it was.

A complete government lock-down on the facility would be inevitable, she knew. They would move in and take control at once. The whole thing would be surrounded with the highest possible security, and the military-industrial establishment that Eisenhower had once warned of was going to shift into high gear. Now there would be time wars, where competing interests would battle for control of the future through clever infections of the past. If they wanted someone killed, they would just go back and prune the family tree a bit. If they wanted funding they could just go back and buy lots of a few well chosen stocks and tuck them away in a holding company.

These were just the simplest possible examples that came to her mind. The Arch made anything possible—anything at all. And the strangest thing about it was that no one would ever know about it. The time-line would change, and all would seem as though it was quietly the same. Only a select few, those who held forth in the intervals of void during the missions, like this one, would ever know or recall the way things once were. The whole universe outside the void would rewrite itself but, to those inside, at the hub of the wheel, the memory of the old life would live on, a last faint recollection of the universe as it once was.

This was Paul’s theory—that while everything physical would change in the new time-line, the living recollection of people protected in a Deep Nexus would remain unaltered. The void was both a place and an experience. It had something to do with human consciousness—a living, vibrating energy of the soul that was unfathomable and yet so real. She would remember her mother’s phone call forever, but her mother might never make the call.

She shook herself, the eerie feeling of Paradox creeping into her thinking now like a wolf in the dark. As she looked at the clock, watching the seconds tick away, she wondered if things had not already changed. Her eyes shifted to the desk drawer where they had hidden Nordhausen’s copy of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. According to the theory if the book survived it would be subtly altered. Perhaps it was already different, she thought. Perhaps she had an answer to the most immediate question right there in the desk. Were they alive or dead? Did they succeed or fail? All she had to do was go over and open the drawer.

She drifted over to the desk, setting her coffee mug on the table top with an unsteady hand. A feeling of intense anxiety thrummed in her chest. She was the one who berated Kelly not to open the book until at least four AM. She looked at the clock, watching the minutes slip away. The tension was almost too much for her.

Kelly finished what he was doing and turned to look for her. He seemed startled by what he saw. “What’s wrong, Maeve?”

She saw him moving towards her, as though in slow motion. “Maeve…?”

18

The Desert – November, 1917

“Mokhaiam,” the man flashed a toothless grin at Nordhausen, gesturing towards a small fire where had dug out a shallow pit in the nook of a low depression. “Shurba,” he said, pointing at a pot on the fire. He indicated for Nordhausen to sit, smiling graciously when he did and offering a small bow.

To the professor’s surprise, his captor, now apparently his host, put two fingers to his lips and made a loud whistle. Nordhausen instinctively craned his neck about, thinking it was some signal that would spell no good for him. Instead he saw another man emerge from the darkness and approach the camp, and it was soon obvious that the two were in league. They began speaking to one another in Arabic, and Nordhausen tried to get some sense of what they were saying by listening to the tone of their voices.

“Well Hassan, we have caught more than a desert hare! Who is he?”

“Not Serahin, as we thought. Look at his face. He is an Englishman. Perhaps a friend of El Aurens, yes? He spoke that name to me earlier when I caught him.”

“But what is he doing here?”

“Who can say? Perhaps he means to find Aurens in the desert. He is close by, you know.”

“You have seen him today?”

“I have heard of his doings. He comes from Abu Sawana tonight. He was looking for a bridge near Tell el Shehab, but nothing happened there. One of the Serahin porters dropped his rifle, or so I have heard. Of course he claimed the strap came unfastened, but no matter. It was enough to alert the Turks at the bridge. The Serahin grew restless when the Turkish guards fired and they threw the gelatine explosives into the ravine! They are useless. Aurens should have come to us for men.”

“But Tell el Shehab is nearly two days march from here. Is this true?”

“I have heard it told this way. They gave up their quest for the bridge there and lit up the whole plain as they fled east into the desert. The dogs are still barking at their heels, but Aurens escaped. They reached the rail line at daybreak yesterday, cutting the telegraph wires for spite. They must do something, yes? So now it is said that they wish to blow up a train—perhaps tomorrow!”

“Then this man is with Aurens party? Another Englishman?”

“Perhaps so. He may have fallen behind when Aurens fled east. They left a few lame camels at Abayda before they went for the bridge, and sent many men back to Abu Sawana. Perhaps he is sick, this one. He is certainly lost.”

“Yes, he seems very upset. Did you strike him, brother?”

“On my honor, I did not! You heard him yourself. He must have seen our campfire. But any man who would bellow like a wild camel on a night like this may very well be sick. Perhaps we should feed him.”

“Yes, feed him. You may give him my portion of the soup. I can wait until morning. Let us make him a coffee as well.”

Nordhausen knew nothing of what the men had said, though he heard the name Aurens spoken many times. They can’t believe I’m Lawrence, he thought, somewhat amused with his situation. Lawrence could speak Arabic, and they certainly know that I am ignorant on that count. Now he watched closely as one man set about warming a thin broth in a simple tin cup. The thought that he had been doing that very same thing just a few hours—or fifty million years ago—brought an inward smile to the professor. The other man was rummaging at a threadbare bundle, looking for something. They eyed him with great curiosity, giving him sidelong glances as they worked at the fire. He saw that the second man was trying to make coffee. The aroma of Arabica beans was a sweet solace to him, and he instinctively reached for the bundle of Major Dickason’s blend, patting his robes.

The men gave him a cautious look, but saw they he meant no harm and continued with their chores at the fire. Now what’s happened to the coffee, he wondered? I suppose I left it back in the Cretaceous! The thought twisted in his mind with a cruel sense of incredulity. He could still scarcely believe they had been there! Maeve was not going to like this, he thought. She’ll wag her finger at us and lecture us both for littering the time line. Well, it can’t be helped now.

The toothless man that had found him extended the warm cup and Nordhausen took it with a gracious smile. They both watched him very carefully as he tipped the cup and sipped the broth. It had a pungent taste, with a lot of cardamom spice as well. He slurped it down, and the two Arabs smiled at one another, obviously pleased. When he had finished, the second man, shorter and built more slightly than the first, began to pour a small kettle of hot water into a gourd. The aroma of the coffee was soon all that Nordhausen could think of.

He waited patiently as they served him in a small ceramic cup. When he sipped it he found that it was very strong, and sickly sweet with spice. He was grateful nonetheless, and nodded his approval while the Arabs smiled and took their portion. They sat about the fire for some time, sipping their coffee and listening to the night. The rain had abated, but there was still a low rumble in the distance. Nordhausen wondered if another front was moving in from the west, but the winds were wrong. He realized, at last, that he must be hearing the sound of the guns on the real front, many miles to the west at Gaza. He chanced to speak.

“Allenby,” he pointed west at the sound, and the Arabs gave him a blank look.

One man smiled knowingly. “English,” he said. “Boom, boom, boom.” He mimicked the sound of explosions.

“Yes,” said Nordhausen. “Artillery. English guns, or perhaps Turkish guns.” He smiled at them, but suddenly realized that the sound of the guns could be a clue to the date. He searched his mind, trying to recall the history he had been cramming into his head before they left. The whole point of this raid was that Lawrence was trying to create a distraction and disrupt the Turkish supply route on the rail line heading west from Deraa. The Yarmuk bridge over the gorge near Tell el Shehab was his primary objective, but they were discovered as they were trying to position the gelatine charges and the operation was a failure.

Allenby surprised the Turks at Beersheba on the last day of October, and the front, static for many months, suddenly came unhinged. It took Allenby a week or so to actually turn the flank at Beersheba, but with that place compromised on their left, the Turks gave up their positions anchored on the coast near Gaza and retreated north.

Nordhausen listened to the guns, smiling inwardly at the irony of the situation. The fighting in Gaza had started here in 1917, and it would continue on, in one way or another, for the next hundred years. Allenby would be pushing up the coast now, and closing on Junction Station, a key depot along the line to Jerusalem. He looked for the moon again, remembering that it would be half on the 7th and waning to dark on the 14th. It was somewhere between now, a waning crescent. Whatever Kelly did, he was very close to the target date they wanted, assuming they had the right month or year. He might just be listening to the first or second battle for Gaza in the distant west. They had been fought months before in March and April. He strained to see the sky, frustrated by the rifts of dark gray clouds. No, he thought. This is not the spring. It is Autumn. I’m listening to the third battle of Gaza and the advance on Junction Station. I’m sure of it.

He sipped his coffee, and his mind was clarified by the caffeine. A sudden thought came to him and he threw out a word to his Arab hosts. “Minifir,” he said, looking from one to the other.

The men reacted at once, staring at one another and then at Nordhausen with clear recognition.

“Minifir,” the professor said again. “I go there.” He patted his chest, then walked his fingers on the damp ground. “To Minifir. Yes?”

“He must be with Aurens,” the toothless man spoke to his brother. “Allah be praised. That would be the place they will look for a train tomorrow! This one may be lost.”

“He wishes to rejoin Aurens at Minifir.” The slight man returned, and he noted how their strange English guest in the robes of a Sherif reacted, his eyes brightening at the word. “I think we should take him there, Hassan. Perhaps we will be given some reward.” Enthusiasm brought life to his weathered, brown face, and his eyes, always moving this way and that, seemed to reflect the greed in his heart.

“We may even be allowed to join the raiding party!” The toothless man flashed a wide grin. “There will certainly be plunder when they blow up the train.”

“Yes, plunder! And if we take this man to Minifir we will certainly have a part in that. It would only be just, yes?”

“God’s will, my brother. But if we are to go to Minifir we cannot stay here tonight. We must go as soon as possible.”

“I will stow the camp.” The slight man began to hastily snatch up odds and ends about the campfire and stuff them into a burlap sack. “Minifir!” he smiled, and he seemed very pleased.

Nordhausen was still holding his small earthenware cup of coffee limply in one hand as he watched. “Yes,” he said, returning the man’s smile. “Minifir.” Then he realized that the men were gathering up their effects and making ready to break camp. “You mean now?” Nordhausen looked from one man to the other.

“Ana ismee, Hassan,” the toothless man said to him as he stood up. He indicated himself, placing both hands on his chest. Then he pointed at the other man. “Hakeem,” he said. The slight man nodded his head, and the professor followed their example, placing a hand over his heart.

“Nordhausen,” he exclaimed, getting a broad smile in return.

The toothless man named Hassan pointed into the darkness of the desert. “Kidha Minifir!”

They were soon ready to go, and Nordhausen struggled up, immediately feeling the pinch of the boots that were still too tight. He hoped the place was not far. He was very tired, though the soup and coffee had helped to restore him somewhat. His robes and uniform had dried out a bit while he sat by the fire and he gathered them close about him, bracing himself for what might be a long, cold march. Still, he was inwardly elated at the chance that had brought him upon these two men.

Paul is right, he thought. Great events turn on the insignificant, and the odd chance that pricks your finger as you muddle through the haystack of time. Where was Paul, he wondered? Would he have as much luck in the desert tonight? Nordhausen realized that he could lose all contact with him if he wandered off with these two Arabs now. There was nothing else he could do, however, and he set off, his feet aching with each step he took.

Part VII

The Least of Things

“The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences; of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence, of insect vexations which sting us and fly away… Of pleasures that pass before us and are dissipated…”

Samuel Johnson: Boswell’s Life

“…Seeing straight is only an illusion. We do these things in sheer vapidity of mind, not deliberately, not consciously even. To make out that we were reasoned cool minds, ruling our courses and contemporaries, is vanity. Things happen, and we do our best to keep in the saddle.”

T.E. Lawrence – In a Letter to Frederick Manning

5/15/1930

19

Hejaz Railway – November, 1917

When the Colonel’s fingers tightened on Paul’s throat he had visions of Lawrence in Deraa, and a night of scalding torture at the hands of this man. Wasn’t that what he intended? He was going to take me to the Bey, perhaps the very same man Lawrence would meet next year when the Arab campaign came this far north again after Jerusalem fell. He gasped for his breath, desperately thinking what he should do. If I resist, he thought, the Colonel will undoubtedly ratchet up his administrations until the words are torn from me in agony. But if I were to tell him what he wants—to tell him the truth, he would not believe me.

It was a strange moment of humor, flashing through his mind in the flickering of a few seconds as he imagined the Colonel’s reaction when he burst out that he was come from the far future to look for a man named Masaui. Why? He did not know, though it was certainly a matter of life or death. If Masaui lived, then he must die—if he died, then he must live. He could not say any of that, for it would not ease his pain in the slightest to tell this man the truth. The only course, then, was to lie. But he had to lie convincingly, or the man was likely to keep digging, to keep choking, until the breath of life would be lost to them all.

What can I say that would be believable and yet not reveal anything that might cause havoc in the time line? His mind reached for any strand that might support him in the history, even as his hands tightened on the leather straps that bound him. He decided to chance something, his eyes signaling his submission more than anything else, as he could not speak with the Colonel’s hand tight on his throat.

“You wish to speak?” The Colonel’s had moved from his throat to grasp at his chin. “You wish to tell me why you are here now, and what mischief you plan?” He released Paul with a hard jolt, clearly disgusted. “A Turkish soldier would have endured much more. You Americans are weak.”

Paul choked, trying to clear his throat. “You would have your way in the end,” he croaked, his voice barely a whisper.

“That is so,” said the Colonel. He could see that Paul could barely speak, and poured a small measure of water into a cup, raising it to Paul’s lips to allow him a drink.

“Thank you,” Paul managed to get the words out.

“No, do not thank me. I am not gracious. Believe me, you will get far worse than that if you spin out lies. Now tell me: why are you here?”

Paul met the man’s eyes briefly, and ventured out onto the thin ice between them. “The bridge,” he said haltingly. Nordhausen had told him something about a bridge. Where was it? Yarmuk! Perhaps he could cover his retreat with a small cloak of truth after all. “They were going for the bridge at Yarmuk.”

“Yarmuk? The gorge near Tell el Shehab?”

“Yes,” Paul whispered. “It controls the rail line out of Deraa back of Turkish lines in front of Jerusalem. They were trying to choke your supply lines. I was to find the rail line and create a diversion here, so that Lawrence could pass west unhindered.”

“Ah… Lawrence! Yes, we have heard of him. He has been causing a great deal of trouble. So now the Americans think to get in on the act, do they?” He gave Paul a cruel look, his eyes searching him to ferret out any hint of deception. Paul only hoped that the information he revealed was not given too early. If Kelly had the shift coordinates right this time, the attempt must be underway now, or else it has already failed, he thought. In any case, the Colonel will have to send a telegraph to give warning of this, or at least try and get confirmation. Lawrence and his men cut the telegraph wires when they reached the rail line after fleeing from the bridge. The message would never get through, but the Colonel would try to send it just the same. It could buy him an interval of peace so he could gather his wits and figure a way out of this dilemma.

“There is something about you I do not like…” The Colonel let the words hang for a time, threatening. “You are no soldier, and you are no spy, yet you do the work of a spy just the same. You wear Arab robes badly, and British kit beneath—and yet you are neither. You are an American, you say, but I think there is something odd about you. Very odd….”

Paul averted his eyes, fearing to say more. The Colonel strode back and forth in front of him, then paused, leaning on the table as he stared at him. He picked up his coffee cup and took another long sip, savoring it as he came to some silent conclusion in his mind.

“I will see about this,” he said in a menacing tone. “It will be simple enough to determine the truth of this.” He was up and moving to the back of the small coach, reaching for a cord that dangled from the ceiling. A hard jerk set a bell clanging, and Paul realized that he must be summoning his guards again. The sound of boots crunching on the gravel of the rail bed came in hasty response.

The Colonel walked slowly to the door, his eyes on Paul, dark and hostile. The guards arrived and the Colonel spoke to them in the hard guttural of Turkish. Then he stepped through the entrance and was gone.

Paul was alone in the coach now, though he knew the Colonel must have posted the guards outside. The door was slightly ajar, and he could hear the men speaking in low voices, though he could not see them. He tried his bonds again, frustrated by the thick leather straps. He pulled hard, knowing it was probably futile, but was suddenly surprised that the strap gave way! The stitching on the loop of leather where the buckle was attached had come undone, and the strap slid open, releasing its tight grip on his hands. One of the guards outside must have heard him move, and the door squeaked open.

Paul froze, keeping his arms extended overhead and closing his eyes. He squinted and saw the silhouette of a man at the entrance against the early light of a gray morning. The man seemed to chortle to himself, then turned and went back down the steps, convinced that Paul was strung up for the Colonel’s pleasure and represented no threat. Undoubtedly, they had witnessed many such scenes before.

Paul’s arms ached, and he moved them ever so slowly, careful not to let the buckle clink on the metal bar. He extricated himself, realizing that it was dangerous to move at all. Still, he had to do something. He could not simply wait here until the Colonel returned with more questions. He swallowed hard, his throat still sore where the man had choked him before he was wise enough to speak. The early dawn was casting its dull, sallow light through a window at the far end of the coach. He considered trying to make for it, hoping his boots would not happen upon some loose floorboard and give his movement away.

At that moment there was a high pitched squeal from the front of the train. A subtle vibration told Paul that the engine was churning up again, making ready to resume the journey. There was a sound of footsteps on the outer landing, and Paul reached for the overhead bar again, extending his arms as before. To his surprise and relief the door was pulled shut, and he heard the sound of a bolt securing it from the outside. The train jolted, then began to move. For a time, at least, he was going to be locked away in the Colonel’s coach. The guards undoubtedly remained outside, riding on the outer porch.

He knew the Colonel would return in time. He probably went forward see about getting a telegraph sent. The train started to move again, and he was stranded somewhere along the line, probably angry at the engineer. Paul knew that he didn’t have much time. If the Colonel boarded another car, he might have a brief interval of peace, but if he was still outside on the rail bed it would be a simple matter to wait until his coach came up from behind so he could jump on board.

What day was it? That was the one burning question still in Paul’s mind. He had to locate himself on the continuum and determine what he might do. With no other recourse, he searched about, thinking he might find something to indicate the date. A convenient calendar was too much to hope for, but he soon spied a battered leather brief on the floor beside the desk where the Colonel had been sitting. Recollections of Maeve’s admonition to Nordhausen came to him again. She had warned him not to touch anything in Shakespeare’s office at the Globe, worried that he would do something to contaminate the time line. Paul had little choice, he knew. What harm could he do by inspecting the brief?

He moved cautiously, grateful that the sound of the train would now cover his movements. A moment later he had the brief open and was squinting at a sheaf of papers inside. It appeared to be a long list of names, perhaps a passenger manifest or troop roster, but he could see no information to indicate what day it might be. He shuffled through the papers, noting a series of ink check marks next to a few of the names. The Colonel had been going over the list, and picking out certain individuals—all Arabic. He was just about to give up his quest when his eye fell on a name that shook him with its importance: Masaui! He looked closely and saw that the ink pen had started to scratch a mark there, but had failed. Masaui was on this train. He was here, and the Colonel was just about to mark off his name when the guards interrupted him.

He considered his situation, struggling to remember the long discussion he had with Maeve about the three trains. The first train was irrelevant, they had concluded. The second train, the one Lawrence blew up in his time line, was the key. That was the doom they were struggling to overturn. If that train passed unhindered they hoped it would be enough to alter the fate of Masaui. The first train took them by surprise, he remembered. It came from the north in the early morning and they did not see it in the rain and mist. The second train came at mid-day—from the south! The Colonel said this train was heading for Damascus. Yes, he had threatened to drop him off for a session with the Bey when they reached Deraa, not far north of Kilometer 172 where Lawrence was planning his raid.

He knew at once that he was on the second train, and Masaui was here with him, perhaps a passenger or even a Turkish soldier. Lord, thought Paul, he might be one of the guards right outside this door for all I know. He thought the better of that, for if Masaui was here, and his doom was death in Lawrence’s attack, then he must be farther forward on the train. The rear coaches were always the safest because the raiders primary intent was to destroy the valuable engines.

As he considered the situation a great doubt began to settle on him. The names on the list he had found cast a shadow on his thinking. What if they were to be selected out for some reason, and possibly assigned elsewhere; even put off the train? There were depot stations every twenty kilometers along the rail line. It appeared that Masaui had been intended for inclusion in the group, but his name was not clearly marked. What if this selection ended up saving these men from whatever fate this train was to suffer in the hours ahead? It would be a simple matter to mark the name. Could the simple stroke of an ink pen be a lever strong enough to move distant events in the future? He realized he could never be sure. He was muddling about, uncertain of what to do. Nordhausen was right: they could have researched this mission for months before having any chance at understanding the immensely complex relationships that drove the continuum forward.

How could he possibly intervene on Masaui’s behalf? What was he to do, burst out and shout the man’s name in the hopes he would turn his head with sudden recognition? Even if he did find him, what could he say that the man would understand? What could he do? Suppose he succeeded, and then found that Masaui needed to die here today instead? This simple black and white was suddenly marred by muddying shades of gray, confusing him even more.

No, if he was to do anything at all it must be something to spare this train. He had to rely on the single important clue in the note they found—Kilometer 172. He discarded his worry that the selection on the roster might be something that would spare Masaui. The clue from the coat pocket of the future was very pointed. If Masaui was here, then he was fated to arrive at Kilometer 172. But what should he do? Should he warn the Turks that Arabs were lying in wait for them at Minifir? If he did that he risked exposing Lawrence to unacceptable danger. His mind wrestled with the problem. He was on the second train; heading north. This must be the dawn of November 10th, he thought.

He tried to remember things that Nordhausen had told him about the history. By now Lawrence and his men would be waiting at Minifir, and the last of the gelatine charges would be laid under a low arch over a defile at the base of that hill. It was probably six or seven in the morning now, and this train was somewhere north of Amman, heading for a fateful rendezvous at mid-day. He had about six hours then, another cruel six hour interval where he could act to do something to spare this train. If he could manage it somehow, and survive, the final fail-safe retraction scheme should pull him out.

Where was Nordhausen? What was he doing? Was he here on this temporal reference point, or still trapped in the late Cretaceous? Something told him that Nordhausen had shifted forward in time as well. He’s probably doing the same thing I am, thought Paul, just trying to figure out where he is and decide what to do about it. One of us, he knew, has to succeed.

20

Lawrence Labs, Berkeley – 3:30 AM

“What’s wrong, Maeve?” Kelly was up from his chair, moving quickly to Maeve’s side where she stood near the desk. Her hand was shaking and she seemed distraught, as though struck by some traumatic realization. As Kelly reached her, she settled into a chair by the desk, pale and drawn. When she looked at him her eyes concealed something, yet he saw fear there, and concern.

“I’ll… I’ll be alright,” she said softly. “I guess this has all been a bit much for me. I’ve been up since eight AM yesterday, and trying to run on coffee. I get a bit shaky when I haven’t eaten, that’s all.”

“You sure?” He was not quite convinced.

“Really, I’ll be fine. I just needed to get off my feet for a few moments.”

Kelly waved his hands about slowly, as if to test the air around her. “You aren’t planning to go and vanish on me now, are you?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said.

“Well, there’s bound to be something to eat around here. Where’s Jen?”

“You sent her down stairs to see about the power.”

“Yes…” Kelly’s attention drifted and his gaze was pulled to the main console again. He looked at the clock. “Shouldn’t be long now. I hope that power is stable. The city is going to hate us tomorrow, but I’m going to leave the outside taps in place until we complete the retraction sequence. Can you hang on for a few minutes? Then we can all celebrate and go out and get a big breakfast somewhere.”

“Right…” She gave him a halfhearted smile as he slipped away with a backward glance in return. When she was certain he was safely preoccupied with his work on the operations boards her gaze wandered to the desk drawer where they had hidden Nordhausen’s copy of the Seven Pillars away. She was possessed with an almost irresistible urge to open the drawer. The answer to a question she had been silently asking herself all evening was right there, unless it was still too early. They should wait until four AM. That would be eleven minutes before the first waves were scheduled to hit on the coast near Cape Hatteras. The tsunami sequence would ripple down the Eastern Seaboard after that, and the time line would be so irrevocably damaged that it would become unchangeable.

The sense of anxiety that she felt was almost paralyzing. The second hands were ticking away, but the time seemed to slip by with agonizing slowness. She knew that Paul and Robert could be living out hours or days in the past, perhaps struggling for their very lives. All she had to do was wait another fifteen or twenty minutes, but it seemed an impossible burden. She started to reach for the drawer handle, then stopped herself, exerting all her willpower to suspend the motion of her hand. I can’t, she urged herself inwardly. I’ve just got to wait it out.

She looked at Kelly, almost longingly now, tears starting at the corners of her eyes. By great effort, she composed herself, brushing the tears away as she watched him. Then she noticed that tense, silent alertness that always indicated he was calculating something in his head. He was leaning in, peering at one of the monitors, and the look on his face began to change.

“Hello…” He muttered to himself, but she was immediately aware that something was amiss. She forced herself to her feet, glancing at the desk drawer one last time as she made her way softly to his side.

“Something up?” Her voice carried the question with as little insistence as possible, almost afraid to learn that anything else could be wrong with this mission.

“Integrity…” Kelly was slowly adjusting a dial, somewhat disgruntled, as though he was trying to tune in bad TV reception. “The integrity is a bit loose on one of the patterns.”

Maeve forced herself to watch for a moment before she asked him to explain that. Under normal circumstances she would have pulled it out of him immediately, but not now, not with the clock ticking away in her mind and heart; not with the fear she hid inside like an infant swaddled in uncertainty.

“This isn’t good…” Kelly was speaking more to himself now than Maeve, but she let it pass, in spite of the sense of alarm that continued to well within her. He was toggling switches, and shifting sideways to look at the information on another flat-panel monitor, his elbow leaning heavily on the desk, chin in hand.

“Shit,” he said. “This thing is getting strange on me now.”

She bit her lip, waiting. He looked around and saw the obvious emotion on her face and apologized. “Sorry, Maeve. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging like that. Look, could you yell down and see if you can get Jen up here? Ask her if the turbines are OK. I’m going to need some volts here in a second.”

She wanted to stay and find out what was wrong, but she knew it would only distract him. Her fears would inspire one question after another, and the answers would never be enough to dispel that awful sense of doubt she felt now. She nodded to him and started off, knowing that he would need all his attention and powers of concentration now.

Kelly returned to his monitors with his own doubts as well. The integrity on one of the patterns had begun to loosen up. It was starting to look like a pre-retraction scatter, yet the chamber wasn’t timed to pull them out until eleven after four. He had re-adjusted the time himself before he moved them forward on the original target coordinates. That maneuver had used the primary pattern signatures, but it worked. Now this second, and final, pattern signature was showing signs of definite integrity loss. Was it a real phenomenon, or simply a hardware failure? He was flipping one diagnostic switch after another, and everything was still in the green on systems and memory. Yet something was clearly wrong. As the seconds passed he realized that they were going to lose their integrity on the alternate time line if he didn’t do something about it. A retraction sequence was building up on its own!

He squinted at the readings… No… It was only affecting one of the two patterns. The other was holding its integrity well. His mind struggled with the problem. When they shifted forward in time, there had been a slight variance on the synchronization. They moved, but as the centuries fled in their wake, one of the two patterns began to fall ever so slightly behind. The actual error was very small when the shift concluded, only hours off the target. Now he realized that the synchronization module was having difficulty with the variance as they approached retraction time. It wanted them together, and they had become separated, both temporally and most likely spatially as well. The sync processors were probably working at full bore right now, he thought. In fact, he wagered the sync module might actually be responsible for the integrity loss.

He flipped a switch, checking his hunch, and immediately saw that he was correct. The sync module was keyed to the fail-safe routines in the programming. If something went askew on the sync it was programmed to compensate. Now Kelly knew what was happening. The module lost its handle on them as a pair, he thought. It wants to bring them home one at a time.

Maeve was back, with Jen running at her heels. They were both breathless from coming up the stairs, and Maeve looked really pale, as though the extra effort without food or sleep was wearing her down.

“You can have ninety-five percent,” Jen called. “Tom says that he’ll have another five percent in ten minutes. The turbines are looking good.”

“Thank God for that,” said Kelly, but his attention was immediately pulled to the particle chamber. “This is going to be close.”

Maeve watched him run to the chamber infusion control station, sure that something was very wrong again. She wanted to go to him and drag out the problem so she could help carry the burden, but instead she reached for the back of a chair, bracing herself. Jen saw her hand slip, and gave her a concerned look.

“You OK, Miss Lindford?

“I’ll be fine,” Maeve started to wave her off; then thought again. “Jen, is there anything to eat? I’m just famished.” She settled onto the chair, eyes following Kelly’s every movement.

“Hey, I brought a sandwich with me and only ate half. Wait a second. I’ll get you something to drink as well.”

“Thanks,” Maeve smiled, but her attention was on Kelly again at once. It was as if she was afraid to take her eyes off him. She wanted to shout at him to tell her what was going on, but she restrained herself. He said the integrity was off. Now he’s at the infusion chamber and he’s been worrying about the power. That can only mean a retraction scheme is in the works. But it’s too early! She looked at the clock and saw that it was only 3:50 AM. They had another ten minutes until the retraction processors were supposed to kick in. She dimly remembered something Kelly had done with the pattern buffers. He had been looking for memory in the retraction module, and something was taking up space. He had to delete one of the two retraction schemes in order to make room for his shift data. Now there was only one retraction scheme left.

She couldn’t bear it any longer, forcing herself to get up go to him. “This doesn’t look good,” she said softly.

Kelly looked over his shoulder. “Can’t explain everything now, but stay close. I’m going to need some help here in a second.”

“They’re moving,” she said, a dullness in her voice, as though it had already happened and there was nothing they could do about it now.

“Yes, one of them is starting to slip. The sync had trouble and the fail-safe routines kicked in. The module decided it couldn’t bring them both home at once, so it’s pulling someone out now. I’ve got to reset the infusion density readings fast! Otherwise there won’t be enough gas in the tank to get the other one home. It’s complicated…” He gave her a quick glance, hoping he had said enough to deflect another question. Thankfully, she said nothing.

Jen came up with half a sandwich and a can of soda. “Are we doing the retraction now?” She handed the food to Maeve and Kelly waved her into a chair to his left.

“Get on the retraction module, Jen. I want you to enable on my command. Understand?”

“Sure,” she said, a bit bewildered, but moving more on reflex than anything else.

“Maeve? Can you keep an eye on the integrity readout?”

“I’m on it.” Maeve turned to find the right monitor, and soon they were all hunched forward over their screens, though Maeve kept casting sidelong glances at Kelly as she watched the readings.

“What’s the integrity?” Kelly was still moving dials, making fine adjustments to the particle chamber density.

“Number two is holding fine, the other is falling toward the yellow.”

“Shit!” Kelly vented some steam and made a last adjustment. “OK, that will have to do. If that integrity falls below eighty percent I want you to yell at me. OK?”

“It’s at eighty-three, but still moving.”

Kelly ran to the logarithmic station and was on a chair at the keyboard in a flash. His fingers moved in a blur as he typed. The focus on his features was intense. Maeve watched the integrity reading fall through eighty-two percent, but said nothing. She wanted him to give his full attention to the task before him.

Kelly finished his entry and gave the send command. Processors moved at the speed of light, but it seemed an eerie stillness had settled over the room. They were all breathless, suspended in the passage of a few brief seconds that stretched out to an eternity. Then Kelly moved. He had his answer and he slid back from the workstation, his chair rolling madly across the tiled floor on its wheels as he scudded over to the main control panel. He checked the power and was relieved to see it was steady at ninety-five percent.

“On my mark… Now Jen! Enable the retraction scheme on pattern one.”

“Pattern one?” Jen was momentarily lost. Her eyes glazed across the controls, looking for a familiar anchor.

“Toggle the number one switch and hit enter!” Kelly shouted at her, and she moved at last.

There was a humming sound as the module came to life. Kelly fed a last second variable into the system and the module picked it up from the logarithmic generator. He was already moving off his chair and running toward the particle chamber controls. “Watch that retraction line, Jen. Are we green?”

“Looks good—Green one hundred.”

“Integrity?”

Maeve shook herself. “Eighty-one point three.”

“OK… the chamber is responding. Density looks good.

“Integrity below eighty!” Maeve gave him a pleading look.

“Damn it!” Kelly ran back to the retraction module. “This is going to be right on the edge.”

Jen could see what he was worried about. The line was moving, scudding forward on the temporal monitor, but fading slightly as it went. The integrity was slipping into the yellow. She suddenly remembered Paul’s last words to her before he left. “What about the focal routines on terminal three?” She gave Kelly a questioning look.

The information took a second to register in Kelly’s thoughts. Terminal three? Yes! That was the code someone had entered into the module. He had to dump one of his retraction schemes to enable the last shift because it was taking up so much room. “What exactly did he say to you, Jen?”

“Well, he said to watch the retraction closely, and if there was a problem I was supposed to—”

“Enable the focal routines on terminal three!” Kelly finished for her and he was already reaching over her for the switch, flipping it on with a terse motion.

“That’s helping!” Maeve called from the other side of the console. “Integrity has jumped three percent… Five percent. It’s over ninety now.” Her voice carried the first note of hope she had felt for some time.

“Good for you, Paul,” Kelly breathed. “Good for you, old buddy.” He eased back, heaving a great sigh of relief. “Well, we may just pull this thing off after all.” He gave them a broad smile.

Jen sighed with relief. “I wonder which one is coming back,” she said. “Will it be Doctor Dorland, or Professor Nordhausen?”

Kelly gave her a smile. “Well,” he said, “we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we.”

21

The Desert – November, 1917

They were some time, traveling over hard, rocky ground broken by occasional swathes of wet sand. Each footfall was a slow, incremental pain to Nordhausen, and he wished he had his comfortable walking shoes, no matter what Maeve might think about the possibility of contaminating the time line. Their track took them eastward under a low, cloudy sky backlit by the pale light of a fading moon. Along the way his two Arab companions chatted amiably to themselves, casting occasional glances at the professor.

Nordhausen suffered along in silence, distracting himself with the puzzle of what he hoped to accomplish when they reached their destination. Paul said they had figured everything out, but it was a pity he never bothered to share the information. He found himself going over the account of the incident in Lawrence’s Seven Pillars, somewhat amused that he was recalling details of an experience that had not even been lived yet, at least not at this point in the continuum.

He sniffed the cold night air, smelling rain on the wind. If Lawrence’s account was accurate the weather should worsen as they approached dawn. That must still be several hours off, he reasoned, as there was no sign of light on the horizon. There would already be a train heading south from Damascus through Deraa. It would arrive in the early morning, nearly catching Lawrence and his men by complete surprise as they were planning the placement of their gelatine charges.

The details Lawrence had penned in his account of this incident were the only comfort Nordhausen had. He was going to place the charge under the main arch of a low bridge, well hidden, deep beneath a railroad tie. The bridge, little more than a four meter masonry arch, supported the track as it crossed a shallow culvert at the base of the twin hills called Minifir. They had only sixty yards of wire with them, all that they thought they would need for the attack on the Yarmuk bridge but barely enough for blowing up a train. Their change of plans presented a bit of a problem. The approach to the arch lay across the relatively exposed ground of a runoff channel that wound down from the base of the hill. Lawrence would take some time, hiding the wires in the rocky culvert and extending them up the wide mouth of this channel. Nordhausen remembered that he would single out a small isolated bush as the terminal end of the wire, a convenient place for him to attach his exploder. Even there, some fifty yards from the rail line, he would be painfully exposed to the passing train. It was a dangerous situation.

Now, how am I supposed to get at that damnable wire, he thought? After the first train took them by surprise, Lawrence posted lookouts on high ground to both the north and south so they would not miss another opportunity. He buried his wires and they just waited the whole morning out, huddling under their cloaks to conserve heat against the cold gray drizzle of the rain. Six hours, he thought. If we can get to Minifir by dawn I’ll have that much time to do something about this. The second train, the one coming up from Amman, would be spotted by the south lookouts around noon. It would reach the ambush site about an hour later. Whatever I do, it will have to be accomplished in those six hours.

The irony of the interval did not escape him. They had six hours to figure a way to get him to Minifir on November 10, 1917. Now that he was here he would have another six to save the world. He considered that, realizing that his two Arab guides could present some problem. He heard them speaking of Lawrence, and it was clear to him that they probably believed he was a lost member of Lawrence’s party. That was the difficulty now. Nordhausen knew he could not afford to make contact with the men who lay hidden on the craggy slopes of Minifir. The thought that he might catch a glimpse of the legendary Lawrence of Arabia was an exciting lure to him, but he could hear Maeve’s warning whispers with every step he took. There was no way he could allow himself to come face to face with the man. How would he explain himself?

He thought about that, knowing that he had to have some contingency plan should fate work its awkward magic. Could he tell Lawrence he had been sent from Cairo to see about him? He was sure that his obvious American accent and sketchy knowledge of the people and doings there would be an immediate giveaway. Lawrence would see though him at once. Could he claim to be a lost traveler, perhaps a pilgrim on the road to Mecca? That avenue offered more prospect of believability. He could say he was an American history professor trying to retrace the old pilgrim’s road to Mecca on sabbatical. Most people took the train now, but the old caravan road was still there.

Trains to Mecca! That had been the first intrusion of the modern West into the long history of the Arabic speaking world. The local tribesmen had made a living for generations, charging 40 to 60 pounds sterling to caravan the believers along the pilgrim’s road to Mecca. Then came the Hejaz rail line, and a journey of two months by camel was reduced to a few days by train for a tenth the cost. Angered by the loss of their income, the tribesman mounted futile attacks against the cold, unfeeling iron rails and the trains they carried. But they would be coerced to carry on that fight for other reasons when the First World War broke out.

The rail line through the Hejaz was the extension of Ottoman power into the heart of Arabia. When hostilities erupted the pilgrims were quickly replaced by Turkish soldiers trying to prop up the Sultan’s empire and the Arabs had accepted this yoke for a time. Though Turkey was a secular society, it was at least rooted in the Muslim traditions and culture. Now, however, the Arabs were becoming pawns in the hands of the Western Generals. Germany and England both wanted to use the Arabs for their own ends.

Germany had ambitions of forcing a great wedge down through the Middle East and Central Asia by igniting a Holy Jihad against the British and French colonies there. It was the Kaiser’s dream to have a pair of strong metal rails all the way from Berlin to the Persian Gulf—steel lines that would cut across the map and sever overland connections between the Mediterranean and the heart of Britain’s colonial empire, India. For her part, Britain struggled to prevent this, and to wield the Arab uprising as a foil against the Ottoman Turks. This was how the game began, a struggle of power and competition—a clash of interests that would take many decades to work itself out. While the German hope of fomenting a Holy War against the British failed, England had a little more luck with Lawrence and the Arab uprising. Why did they fight for Britain, Nordhausen wondered? Lawrence believed they were fighting for their independence, yet this war would ignite a nationalist fervor in the Arabs that would burn, unsatisfied, for another century.

The dominoes of history seemed so clear to him now as he reviewed it all in his thoughts. One thing led to another, a line of causality that would end on the island of Palma nearly a century later. The onerous peace imposed upon Germany in the Treaty of Versailles would prove fertile ground for Hitler’s radical views. World War II would result, with its hideous gas chambers, and it would lead to a fervent desire of the oppressed Jews of Europe to seek a homeland of their own in Israel. That the land of Palestine was already occupied by Arabic peoples did not matter. The Western powers had been slicing up the desert and giving it away for years, what harm would there be in making one more slice? Unfortunately, the birth of Israel would leave the Palestinians without a homeland, and the nationalist desires ignited by Lawrence and others would go unfulfilled.

With sudden clarity Nordhausen realized that he was just another soldier in the battle that had been unfolding for decades. Here he was trying to save the world, but whose world, he wondered? The long battle that had begun here in the deserts of the Trans- Jordan would reach a fever pitch in the early 21st century. It would culminate in a climax of terror that would send the slopes of a long unstable volcanic island thundering into the sea—surely an act of God. He was certain that Ra’id Husan al Din and his Holy Fighters would view it that way. They were listening to a different voice whispering in their minds and hearts as they brandished the gleaming edge of a scimitar against the West. It was the will of Allah.

Nordhausen realized that the sword that was even now being drawn from its scabbard in the Arab rebellion of 1917 would eventually cleave the side of that mountain, and spell the doom of the West. He was here to make sure that never happened; to render that stroke as feeble as the pathetic attacks the Arabs mounted against the rails of steel that scored the holy soil of their deserts. In a way, he was just another Lawrence—sent back into the desert to make sure the West had its way in the end. The layers of clothing he wore were a fitting metaphor of what he was about. He was an American, covered in British kit and then wrapped in the robes of a Sheikh—a wolf in sheep’s clothing, to be sure. Now he was worrying that he might meet the other beasts on the prowl in the night—that he might cross paths with Lawrence himself!

He sighed, inwardly realizing that, if he succeeded and they managed to pull him back to his own time again, he could have the satisfaction of reading about the encounter in Lawrence’s Seven Pillars. That notion released him from his reverie with a note of alarm. The more he thought about it, the more risky his mission seemed. Maeve was correct. He knew he had to do everything in his power to avoid contact with a Prime Mover. He would just have to find a way of ditching his Arab guides once he got Minifir in sight. That might end up being a task all on its own. Suppose they insist I follow them? They’re the ones with the gun.

He drew his robes tighter about him, wincing as he stumbled over a loose shale. His heart ached as well, for he was bothered by sudden misgivings about his mission, and the grim realization that it was the West that would always land the final blow. The technology represented by the Arch was absolute power. It was greater than the doings of any man; greater, perhaps, than the labors of a God. It all seemed a bit unfair to him now. He realized that he was a soldier sent from the distant future to ensure the continuation of a way of life—a wolf set loose in the Holy Lands, intent upon preserving the continuum for the West.

He didn’t like being a wolf, he thought. His feet hurt.

Part VIII

Pushpoint

“Little drops of water, little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.

So the little moments, humble though they be.

Make the mighty ages of eternity.”

Julie A. Fletcher-Carney: Little Things

“A little thing comforts us because a little thing afflicts.”

Pascal: Pensées

22

Hejaz Railway – November, 1917

Paul knew he did not have much time. The train was moving slowly, and gathering speed. If the Colonel was waiting for his car to come up from behind he could be at the doorstep any moment. Paul eyed the window at the back of the coach, and crept that way, keeping low. When he reached it he peered over the lip of the window sill, cautiously taking in the gray morning as it painted the tumbled landscape in sallow strokes of hazy light. The sky was still dark and low, with the threat of rain.

He examined the window latch and saw that it would be easy enough to force it open and slip out. What should he do? If he was caught here like this the Colonel was just the sort to shoot first and ask questions later. If he jumped from the moving train at this point he could be hopeless miles away from the ambush at Kilometer 172. That was the key. He remembered working it all through with Maeve. They decided that the best way to try and spare the second train was to get at the wires somehow. If he was to have any chance of doing that he had to get as close as possible to the ambush. How could he remain on board and yet be undetected?

Nordhausen said it was an old locomotive, overburdened, and prone to many stops along the way. If he could hide himself he might have a chance to slip off as they approached Minifir. But he had to make it seem as though he were gone. He moved on an impulse, unfastening the latch and forcing the window open. The sound of the train blew in with the cold morning air. He breathed deeply, suddenly feeling very much alive. He wanted to stay that way, and the adrenaline in his system began to gear him up for the trial ahead.

He stuck his head out of the train and felt the cold mist on his face. He could not see much, but it looked like he could get up on the roof from here. Thankfully, this window was on the opposite side of the train from where the Colonel had exited. What would he think when he returned to his coach and found his prisoner missing? Would he stop the train and begin a search?

Paul realized that it all depended on when the Colonel returned. If he was planning to reach his coach soon, then Paul had no choice and he had to act now. If the Colonel was riding out this segment on another train car, then it would probably be another twenty kilometers before the train would stop again. I want him to think I’ve jumped, he thought. That way he won’t be likely to mount a serious search.

He padded back to the desk, and found the Colonel’s ink pen next to a half filled dipper. He took a leaf of paper from the man’s brief and dipped the pen to write a note on the back… “Good-Bye, Colonel. I’m off to my desert. I hope you enjoy the coffee!” A moment later he was squeezing up through the window, gathering his robes tight about him and grateful for his long, slim build. He was hoping the Colonel was forward on another car.

He won’t stop the train, Paul thought. He’s a man on a mission. There’s another train coming down from Damascus and he has to clear the rail line by at least reaching Deraa before it gets there. Besides, I could be anywhere in a twenty kilometer area for all he would know. A search would take too much of his precious time. No, he’ll just curse me, punish the guards, and move on.

He passed a precarious moment, his body extended out of the window as he strained to gain a hand hold near the roof. He managed it with one arm, then the other, as he slipped up through the window and struggled to pull himself up with as little noise as possible. His boots thumped on the window sill, but he made it. Wind ruffled his lanky frame as he settled onto the roof and stretched out behind a raised manifold. The guards assigned to his coach were very close, just at the rear of the car on a low porch. Paul squinted into the chill wind, looking ahead to see if there might be a better place where he could conceal himself. If he moved forward he would be farther from these two guards, but he would risk discovery. The noise of the train had masked his movements thus far, but he had been climbing on the roof of an empty car. The cars ahead were probably packed with troops and officers, and someone could easily hear him on the roof if he risked moving.

He decided to let well enough alone, and stay put, lying as low as he could and using the manifold to break the cold wind that washed over his body. There was a wide, shallow groove in the roof, probably a gutter, and he wedged himself into it, trying to conceal as much of his body as possible. It was going to be a miserable ride, he thought, cold and wet when the rains began again. If the guards on the porch saw their Colonel had not returned, would they venture inside the coach to warm themselves? He couldn’t bother himself with all the potential possibilities any longer. He had made his choice, a single cast of the die, and his fate would now have to ride upon it. If I’m discovered, he thought, then I’ll just have to keep my wits about me and hope they don’t shoot me down. Anything I can do to delay, and get myself closer to Kilometer 172, plays in my favor.

Thankfully, circumstances appeared to favor his bold move and he was not immediately discovered. His guess about the Colonel was about to be severely tested. He sensed a gradual slowing of the train, and strained to see ahead, catching the vague shape of a low, squat building complex off to the left. There was a water tower with a wind mill, and a few plain wood buildings.

The line curved a bit as they approached the depot and Paul caught the dark shape of a man emerging from a small wood-framed guard house at the edge of the station. He squeezed himself low, hoping his body would remain concealed in the depression of the gutter on the roof. His heart beat faster as the train came to a gradual stop. The moment of truth was soon upon him when he heard the crunch of heavy boots on the gravel bed of the station. Several men were making their way towards the back of the train.

The engine hissed and vented a billow of gray-white steam. Paul waited, breathless when he heard boots on the porch at the back of his car. Harsh shouts of alarm sounded and he heard someone jostling at the window just below his position. He closed his eyes, as if the darkness behind his eyelids would serve to hide him from the Turks. Another voice sounded, low and threatening, and Paul immediately recognized it as the Colonel. He had come back to his coach and was clearly not pleased to find his captive missing.

Time seemed suspended and Paul gritted his teeth as he waited out what seemed like an interminable interval. Then the shouting began again as the Colonel was obviously chastising the guards who had been posted on the porch. He heard a hard slap, like the leather of a glove being raked across a man’s face. There were harsh words, and Paul’s temples pounded with the tension. This was the moment. What would the Colonel do next?

The train was starting to move again, gliding slowly forward on squeaky wheels. Apparently this was just a brief stop, possibly to deliver a mailbag or some other goods to the depot. The Colonel used the interval to return to his coach, but he was still embroiled in a shouting fest with his guards as the train began to gather momentum. Paul heard the hard scrape of the window being shut below him, and he breathed a sigh of relief. His guess had been right. The Colonel had a schedule to keep and he knew it would be fruitless to launch a search for his missing prisoner. God help the guards, thought Paul. I hope Masaui was not one of those men. He closed his eyes again, imagining what the Colonel must be doing in the coach below.

It would take him some time to compose himself, Paul thought. The poor guards were probably standing there under his withering stare. He would let them wait in the silence of his anger, their faces red and scared with the shame of his punishing blows, their eyes sullen and diverted to the soiled floor of the coach. Then Paul heard a sharp order and the sound of the guards hurrying back through the door to the outer porch.

Paul knew that the Colonel would soon be settling in to his chair at the desk, mulling and brooding over the loss of his prisoner. The hard thump of a fist on the desk top was audible even through the roof and over the growing noise of the train. Paul smiled, knowing that the Colonel must have seen his note.

Well, he thought, the man will certainly think he was right about me after reading that note. He said I was a spy, and I suppose I am—though not nearly so clever as the Colonel might suspect.

“Enjoy the coffee,” Paul whispered to himself with a smile. The coffee and the cigarette lighter were the only consolation the Colonel would take from the incident. Paul hoped that he was not littering the time line by leaving them behind. The Colonel would undoubtedly drink the coffee in the hours ahead. What would he do with the lighter? Would he keep it as a reminder of his days in the desert? Would he pass it on to his son as an heirloom? Might it turn up in some pawn shop years hence?

The cold wind increased, and a drift of rain began to fall as Paul huddled on the roof. The train moved quickly on, but any time it encountered an upward grade, it slowed noticeably. That was his one hope: Minifir was a hill and the train would labor on the grade and slow to a crawl. With any luck Paul hoped he could slip away unnoticed when it was safe to make a jump. It was all he could think of for the moment—that and the Colonel sulking in the train car below him. There was nothing he could do now but wait. The train rumbled on, and they were both still riding the rails of the same Meridian. But time was running out, and a moment of fate awaited them, not far ahead in the gray sallow dawn of November 10th, 1917.

23

Minifir – 10, November, 1917

After a dreary night of painful marching, the Arabs led Nordhausen to the tumbled skirts of a low hill. They moved very quietly as they approached the place, and the professor wondered if they had reached Minifir at last. The land seemed empty around them, shrouded in misty rain, but dawn was not far off. Nordhausen was still worried that they would stumble on Lawrence’s men. What should he do in that event? If I let myself be taken, he thought, these two fellows will tell the raiders I’m seeking Lawrence and I’ll find myself on a collision course with a Prime Mover.

His guides seemed tireless, but when they reached the lowlands of the hill, they stopped and indicated that it was time to rest. The toothless Hassan spied out a low overarching spur of rock that promised some break against the weather and began clearing away small stones and gravel beneath it. Hakeem, the thin, scraggly man, was searching about for any sign of wood that might still be dry enough to light a small fire. Nordhausen was only too glad for the rest, and he tugged at his boots, yanking them off to rub his sore feet. Hassan grinned at him, pointing for the amusement of his brother as the professor soothed his weary feet and reluctantly pulled the leather boots on again. The moisture had dampened them and they were slowly re-conforming to the shape of his feet, though still too tight for comfortable use.

They settled into a small camp, and Nordhausen passed some anxiety as they began to light the fire. The damp wood was sure to smoke and draw attention. Then he realized, that if the entry coordinates had been accurate, they would now be on the opposite side of the hill from where Lawrence and his men were hiding. That thought gave him some comfort, and he edged as close to the small fire as he could, braving the gray-brown smoke for the chance of a little warmth. He was hoping the Arabs had something to eat, and was pleased to see that they produced a small tin pot from their haversacks and cooked up a serving of spiced rice.

They ate in silence, but with great relish, taking turns dipping their fingers into the pan for clumps of thick, gummy rice. The simple meal was followed with another blessed serving of sweetened coffee. Nordhausen bowed graciously when they served him, thankful for the civility and simple hospitality of these two men. It’s a pity, he thought, that I shall have to repay this kindness by stealing away in the dark. He decided his planned course of action as they ate. The Arabs gave every indication that they intended to rest here for a time, and they were arranging their sleeping mats, or so Nordhausen thought.

He later realized that these were prayer mats, and the men soon oriented themselves to the south, in the direction of Mecca, kneeling to chant a simple prayer. Nordhausen watched in solemn silence, realizing how appropriate it seemed that these men should prostrate themselves and acknowledge some higher power and authority over their lives. It would be natural for any man to reach for this grace at the end of a hard labor, particularly in a place as barren and empty as this one.

He thought about his own life, littered with books and technology of the 21st century. When a student once asked him if could pick any time to live in, and any place, he remembered how he had answered, without hesitation—this time, and this place. He opened his arms expansively to his simple study at the edge of Berkeley in 21st Century America. He thought it a grand existence, full of knowledge, comfort and opportunity. But the student seemed almost surprised to hear such an answer from a professor of history. What about all the nonsense, the television advertisements, the marketing, the noise and pollution? He could still hear the young man’s arguments: It’s a world of cell phones and stock trades, and all the feeling has gone out of it. Better than the plague, Nordhausen had explained, and hordes of barbarians ravaging the countryside. Better than tyrannical dictators, disease, crushing poverty, deprivation and social inequity of the past.

The student scratched his head, still not satisfied. Yes, he had argued, it was a comfortable life, but instead of God we had astronomy, and the voices of poets and philosophers were drowned out by utter triviality like Jerry Springer, the WWF, Madonna and Britney Spears. Nordhausen had offered a knowing smile. There’s nothing Plato did that was any more significant than Jerry Springer, he said, tugging at the young man’s thinking. In the grand scheme of things, the sun did not care one way or another. It would burn in fiery indifference and then go nova to incinerate the whole—or collapse into a black hole and vanish. Nordhausen passed a brief moment recalling his startling foray to the edge of the Cretaceous and the demise of the dinosaurs. The world got on quite well without them, he thought, and it will get on quite well without us as well. From this perspective all things were trivial. The greater part of a man’s life was simply spent moving from one humdrum moment to another. At least his life in America offered him a comfortable chair, a warm bed, and all the food he could eat.

Still, there was something that tugged at him as he watched the two men bend themselves to prayer. The moment of quiet humility seemed to touch him in an unexpected way. Some men turned inward to find their sense of purpose and self, yet others were constantly reaching for meaning outside themselves—a notion or realization that would allow them to affirm that they were something more than animated dust. A quote from Andre Malraux came to mind: ‘The greatest mystery was not that we have been flung at random among the profusion of the earth and the galaxy of the stars, but that in this prison we can fashion images of ourselves sufficiently powerful to deny our nothingness.’

Some men built castles and glittering skyscrapers of wealth that reached up through the neon aurora of glowing cities—other men knocked them down. Osama Bin Laden had been such a man, and after him Ra’id Husan al Din. Such men, scorned by the Western World, came to see themselves as agents of God. Surely the Islamic radicals may have taken this point of view to justify the war of terror they prosecuted against the West in the early years of the new millennium. Nordhausen realized that this was also the month before the Hadj, the holy pilgrimage to Mecca that would be making its way along this very rail line if not for the interference of the war. Back home at this time people would be contemplating the next big sale at the mall to get a start on their Christmas shopping.

That was the difference, he thought. There was something about these people that would always be in opposition to Western ways, and Western domination. Their whole view of the world was radically different. The West preached that a man’s fate was his own; that he was free to speak his mind, claim his stake of land, and answer only to the inner voice of his own personal freedom. The Arabs, however, listened to another voice. Above and beyond the petty ambitions of men, the voice of Allah was the single overarching guide in the affairs of Muslim society. It was Allah who gave and denied, and his will permeated all things. The Muslim world was not driven by its own inner ‘manifest destiny,’ but rather by the sublime will of Allah, something external, beyond the reach of man, but ever beckoning. The West did not hear the voice of Allah and, to many Muslims, it was a Godless, materialistic society driven by greed. It was a land of marvels, of secret arts, of unbelievers and infidels.

He passed a moment of rumination, recalling another quip, this time by Alexander Pope: ‘Tis with our judgment as our watches. None go just alike, yet each believes his own.’ The professor measured time by his own watch, and it had a distinctive Western meter. Its ticking was echoed in the sound of telegraphs thrumming in the wires that were strung across the desert on stark, weathered shards of long dead trees. Its first intrusive sound reverberated in the chugging and grinding of metal wheels on rails of steel, and the choking billow of black smoke and steam from the locomotives they carried. It would continue on, ticking louder and louder in the ears of the men who wore these Arabic robes in earnest, until it threatened to drown out their voices altogether, and the sound of the evening call to prayer was replaced by the yammering yodel of an auctioneer.

I should be the one praying, he thought. What on earth am I doing here? I’ve been bounced from the Fifth Extinction to the First World War on a mission to save the Eastern Seaboard from utter destruction. It will be light soon and I have to slink off and try to find Paul’s little Pushpoint somewhere, to unravel all the long steeped plans hatched by the grandchildren of men like Hassan and Hakeem. I should be quaking in my tight leather boots here, but I feel absolutely fearless—as if nothing I do, or fail to do, will matter in the slightest.

He shook his head, writing off these dark thoughts to his weariness and the general disorientation he must be struggling with after two time shifts. Perhaps it was a kind of post-temporal shift anxiety that was setting in, he mused. Perhaps he was just a nihilist at heart.

The men finished their prayers and settled in under their damp robes to try and get some sleep. Nordhausen stood up to stretch, if only to see what kind of reaction he would get. He wandered off a bit and emptied his bladder, so as to set a template for his planned movements later. He came back and tried to sleep, but as the skies began to lighten to an early dawn he rose quietly and wandered away again, pausing to relieve himself, as before, in case one of the Arabs had taken notice. He hoped they would simply nod off again while he stretched with apparent indifference. Then he slunk away, picking a path that he hoped would bring him to the Hejaz Rail.

The first few minutes were somewhat anxious. Would they discover his ploy and come after him? He tried to move as carefully as he could, avoiding rough ground where his boots might crunch on the flinty rock. On occasion he ventured up onto a flat shelf of stone, moving quietly so as to mask his trail. He doubted if he could really elude experienced Arab trackers in their own back yard for long. If these men wanted to find him again, they probably would. He had only to work his mischief before he was discovered.

That thought plagued him as ever. What was he to do? The dull glint of the morning on a dark streak across the lighter drifts of sand ahead told him he had reached the rail line. He found a large rock to hide behind and studied the ground for a moment. Oddly, the sun was rising behind him, so he had actually come out of the east, and not the west as he first thought. Kelly botched his numbers again—no wonder he couldn’t find Paul! He focused his thoughts on the narrative he had crammed into his head before they started the mission.

Lawrence and his men were here the previous night. He worked himself closer, trying to get a good view of the ground above him. The ridge was a saddle shaped formation, with higher ground forming two distinctive humps. He knew that there would soon be lookouts posted at a water cairn on the south hump, and more men watching from a cluster of ruins on the northern hill. Lawrence was in the center, where a watercourse ran down from the cleavage of the hills towards the rail line. It would dig out a shallow culvert, and his charge would be laid under a wooden tie on the arch of a low rail support.

A distant thrum broke the morning stillness and he looked to see a short train hustling along at full speed to the south. The first train! It was the one that had taken all the Arabs by surprise that morning. They were scrambling to hide themselves, and he now knew exactly where Lawrence was. If his narrative was accurate, he would be huddling under the arch below the rail line. Once the first train gets clear he’ll finish burying the wires and spend a good deal of time going over the ground to hide any traces of the ambush. Then he would work his way up the watercourse, as far as his wire would allow, to a low bush. It was a dangerously exposed position and Nordhausen passed a moment of admiration that Lawrence would risk himself, setting off the detonation not more than fifty yards from the rail line. His Arab raiders were hiding in the hills above, waiting to attack when the train derailed.

This was the time to move, he thought. Lawrence posted lookouts in response to the surprise and disappointment of missing of the first train. They won’t be watching from the high ground yet, and the dismal weather might provide enough cover to mask my approach.

He started forward, running over the narrative again and again in his mind. Lawrence would bury his wires and then they would all huddle under their cloaks for long dull hours while they waited for the second train. It was probably somewhere north of Amman by now, and heading this way. He moved with as much stealth as he could, mind racing and feet aching with every step. He was soon quite winded and light headed, and he paused to catch his breath. A dizzy nausea seemed to wash over him, or perhaps it was only the nagging early morning hunger he was prone to.

After some time he had gained a good position, very close to the watercourse between the two hills. He rested, tired and sweaty in spite of the cold. He was not used to this kind of physical exertion. The elements and the fatigue and stress of these last hours were wearing on him heavily. He squinted at the ground ahead, suddenly elated to see a scraggly bush, just where Lawrence said it would be! He knew that the wires would end there. It was a single known point where this errant thread of history would poke near the surface and be exposed enough for him to find it. Then what would he do? The only thing he could think of was to work back a bit on the line and make a subtle cut in the wire.

Even as he considered this the motion of a man in Arabic robes caught his attention. He was making his way up from the rail line with a quick gait. He was a short fellow, yet his movements were studied and sure. As Nordhausen watched, it seemed to him that he could almost see an amber glow radiating from the man and surrounding him with an aura of purpose. He knew at once who this was. He gaped in awe, all thought of caution abandoning him, as he watched the man go straight to the low bush and fuss about at the base of the plant for a time. Then the figure stood up, surveying the ground around him with an almost regal regard. Nordhausen froze when it seemed that the man was looking right at him, sensing the presence of something out of place in the landscape. Time passed in utter stillness, then a drift of cold, gray mist shrouded the man from his view and, when it cleared, he saw that the stranger was making his way slowly up the side of the hill along the narrowing path of the watercourse.

Lawrence! His head was suddenly very light and Nordhausen realized that he had been holding his breath the whole time. He had nearly come face to face with a Prime Mover! The image of the man was still fixed in his mind, and the eerie amber glow that enveloped him still left a ghostly impression. Was it real or only something added to the scene by his own imagination? Nordhausen sighed, squinting to try and see where Lawrence had gone. He shuddered, taken by a chill on the morning mist. His hands were shaking.

Time was passing, and he forced himself to move. It was his moment of truth, he thought. As he crawled forward toward the distant bush he tried to steel himself with the awful weight of responsibility that had fallen square upon his shoulders. He was going to save the world, yet he was quaking now like a child approaching some great and mysterious altar of confirmation. He had only to crawl another thirty yards or so and he could grasp the cord of Time in the palm of his hand. It was just ahead: Paul’s little pushpin, or Pushpoint as he always corrected him… Just a little farther… a short creeping crawl on the stony ground of infinity. He was very cold.

24

Minifir – 10, November, 1917 – 7:10 AM

“What is he doing brother?” Hakeem had rolled silently to one side and was leaning close to his brother’s face, his voice frosty on the crisp morning air.

“It is nothing. He waters the desert. Perhaps our coffee is too strong for the English. Go back to sleep.” Hassan shifted on his mat, still trying to avoid the troublesome stone he had overlooked when he prepared the place for sleeping.

“No brother, he is wandering away from the camp.” Hakeem whispered to him with more urgency now, and Hassan reluctantly rolled and craned his neck to see. The strange Englishman was stretching and strolling slowly toward the edge of the shallow depression where they had set their camp. Hakeem was not mistaken. The man’s movements belied a hint of caution to indicate that he was up to something. Each step took him a little farther from the camp site, and he seemed to be making great pains to walk as silently as possible.

“Does he think to sneak away from us? I can hear his army boots grinding the gravel in my sleep,” said Hakeem. “He moves like a wounded camel.”

“Yes, but where is he going?” Hassan rose slowly, propping himself on one elbow. “Let us wait a moment. When he is out of sight we will gather up the camp and see what mischief he plans.”

“He is a thankless guest!” Hakeem expressed his disapproval. “It is not fitting to eat at a man’s fire and then steal away like a thief when he takes his rest.”

“The English are a strange people,” said Hassan. “Look, he has rounded the spur of the hill. Gather up the camp and we will follow him.”

The two men moved quickly, rolling their belongings into the center of the prayer mats and binding both ends with a hemp cord. Hassan took a moment to extinguish all signs of their fire, blending sand and loose soil into the pit and scattering a few rocks about the site. They would leave the place exactly as they found it, making as little impression on the land as possible.

“Shall we pray, brother?” He gestured to the scrawny Hakeem. “The day is upon us.”

“And what of the Englishman?”

“He will not get far, and we will find him easily enough. The English are not difficult to find in the desert. They think the land is set before them for their pleasure, and they abuse it with every step. His trail will be obvious. How can such people be so mighty in the world?”

“They make wonderful things.”

“Mischievous things,” Hassan chided. “A rifle is one thing, but these metal trains and strange machines that take to the air—”

“They are terrible, but wonderful,” said Hakeem.

“They are an abomination. Do you envy them?” His voice scolded. “We will pray first, and then go.”

“But we have already prayed, brother. He will escape us.”

“It was dark before. Now comes the sun. Do not worry about the Englishman. He will not get very far.”

They stooped quietly to the earth, facing south with a low bow to the holy places that slept beyond the far horizon. Hassan began to pray.

“Falaq – The Dawn is come. In the name of God the most gracious, the most merciful. I seek refuge with the Lord of the Dawn.”

“From the mischief of created things,” said Hakeem, knowing why his elder brother had chosen this prayer.

“From the mischief of darkness as it overspreads,” said Hassan, “and from the mischief of those who practice secret arts.”

“And from the mischief of the envious one, as he practices envy.” Hakeem bowed low, as if to seek forgiveness in the bosom of the earth.

“Then let us rise in the protection of Allah, and greet the day.”

They were soon on the trail of their guest, studying the ground where he had crept away and reading his movements with little difficulty. “The mist will hide him, brother, but we must keep our distance nonetheless. When the daylight comes we will see what he is planning.”

“Perhaps he is only impatient,” said Hakeem. “He wishes to find el Aurens again.”

“Yes, but he is likely to find a bullet in the head first. The Serahin are riding with Aurens on this raid. They are a foolish people. They will shoot at anything that moves in the desert, and then run to find holes in the sand. We must be cautious as well.”

“Ha! We are of the Harith! Our heritage reaches back two thousand years in this land. The Serahin are very young. They will not see us. If they do, they will think us spirits moving on the morning mist and pluck out their beards with fear.”

“Well said, brother.”

They moved, like silent phantoms, their footfalls light on the ground and rocks as they threaded a nimble path through the stony terrain. It was not long before they caught sight of the Englishman, and they smiled to see how he lumbered along, trying his best to be stealthy, but failing badly. The man seemed to be making his way around the northernmost hump of Minifir, and he was bent on reaching the furrowed land between the twin hills where the rains had cleared a runoff channel that flowed down to the rail line.

They watched how he crouched behind a large boulder, and then Hakeem looked at his brother with wide eyes. “A machine is coming!”

Hassan listened, his eyes first searching the skies but then drifting to the horizon as he realized a train was hastening down from the north. They saw it a moment later, moving with bothersome noise and unfeeling urgency as it squealed along the metal rails. A column of dark smoke belched from a coal-black stack on the front of the engine. It dragged a short line of closed box-cars behind it, and Hassan gave them a disdainful smirk.

“By God the clatter of such things,” he breathed.

“How fast it goes!” Hakeem’s eyes betrayed a glint of fascination, but the glance from his elder brother squelched his enthusiasm.

“Not so fast as a good stallion from our father’s herd.”

“Oh, no,” Hakeem was quick to agree, though his thoughts harbored a hint of doubt.

“And it stinks as well.” Hassan gave the train a dismissive wave. “Nothing should be about such noise and haste at this hour of the morning. It is unseemly.”

“We are fortunate el Aurens let it pass, brother. Only six cars and not much for plunder.”

“Yes, he will wait for a long train. He is the only Englishman with any sense in his head. Sometimes I think he must have the blood of our people in him.”

“Could this be so?”

“I have heard it spoken.”

“Look, brother, the other Englishman is moving again.”

“He thinks to creep up on the Serahin while they are hiding themselves from that machine,” said Hassan. “Let us follow him as well.”

They moved closer, their gray robes hugging the ground like silent fog. Their quarry was awkward and obviously fatigued. His movements seemed sluggish and strained.

“The man’s boots are too tight for him,” said Hakeem.

“Yes, he should have thrown them away. How can he feel the ground? A good pair of sandals would have served him better.”

They crept forward in Nordhausen’s wake, until they had rounded the northern hill and were well into the cloven depression in the center. They paused, watching where the Englishman seemed to crouch in tense anticipation.

“Look how his hand shakes,” Hassan breathed.

“Hush, brother!” Hakeem hissed a sibilant warning. He had spied movement and saw another man, in white Meccan robes, coming up from the rail line. Hakeem squinted at the figure as the two brothers pressed themselves flat on the ground. “It is him!”

“El Aurens?” Hassan’s eyes and ears were not so good as his younger brother.

“Yes! Allah be praised. I know him by his headdress. Look, he makes for that low sage in the middle of the wadi. Should we go to him, brother? Perhaps he will let us join his raiding party.”

“Quiet!” Hassan gave him a warning stare. “We must see what the Englishman is about. Why does he not move? Surely he has labored to meet this man here.”

They waited, expecting their quarry to announce himself and complete the tryst that he had obviously been planning, but the Englishman did not move. It was almost as if he did not want to reveal himself, as if he was afraid to be seen. Hakeem was still gaping in awe as he watched the resplendent figure of Aurens while he worked the earth at the base of the low sage. Then the man stood up, looking over the ground as if he sensed the presence of the three intruders. The two Arab brothers lowered their faces to the earth and joined the quiet stillness of the morning, invisible to all but the most careful eyes.

A white mist seemed to descend from the sky, veiling the ground ahead. When it parted they saw that Aurens was making his way up the side of the hill, probably to join the Serahin raiders who waited there. They caught a brief glimpse of the Englishman, crawling forward with labored effort through the vapors that still shrouded the hillside. He seemed to be making for the same low sage that Aurens had visited.

“Ah!” Hassan breathed a sigh of realization. “This was to be a secret meeting, Hakeem. Look! Perhaps Aurens left something at the roots of that sage yonder.”

“A message?” Hakeem suggested the first thing that came to mind. “Or perhaps gold? Why would he not speak with this man face to face?”

“The English are devious people,” said Hassan with obvious suspicion in his voice. “Some say they come here only for what they think they might keep when the war is finished. Some say they would use us to beat upon the Turks, and then go home when we have won their war for them. I do not like this. There is mischief here.”

“Brother!” Hakeem seemed to be searching the ground ahead, his eyes darting about with alarm. “The Englishman!”

“Will you shout so the Serahin will hear us?” Hassan started to chastise his younger brother again, until he realized the cause of his surprise. He peered into the misted gully, looking this way and that, but seeing nothing.

“He is gone brother,” Hakkem mouthed the words with great surprise. “The Englishman is gone!”

“What is this?” Hassan was not so quick to believe. “He must have scrambled off to meet El Aurens. Are you sure you do not see him? Look closely. He must be there.”

“I see nothing.” Hakeem’s eyes watered over with fear. “I saw him crawling to reach the sage, and then… a moment later…” His hand cupped his chin, covering his mouth as if he feared to say more.

“This cannot be.” Hassan tried to keep his voice low, but his frustration was obvious. The two men looked at one another, each trying to surmise the answer to the riddle in the other’s eyes. The haunting howl of a wild dog pack came to them from afar, breaking the tense stillness of the morning. There was a slight breeze sweeping up the wadi from the open lands beyond, yet the mist ahead seemed impervious, hanging like frosty vapor over the ground.

Hakeem shivered with a sudden chill of fear. “The Beni Hillal,” he rasped. He was speaking of the ancient peoples who had first settled this land. They were long since gone from the earth now, but tales were still told to frighten children from wandering too far from their campfires in the desert. The Beni Hillal had built all the old forts, six haunted towers and many water cairns in this region, in the deeps of time, long ago. They were gone now, but it was said that their dogs still roamed the night, and howled at the first light of the dawn, restlessly seeking their masters.

“Be still brother, you speak nonsense.” Hassan was not one to believe the old myth, though his eyes betrayed a moment of fear as the distant wail of the dogs swelled and then faded to wretched silence. “They are but jackals; hyaenas, nothing more.”

“The Beni Hillal!” Hakeem was not dissuaded. His fear was unseemly, and he hid his face from his brother, ashamed that he should be so unnerved. Yet his eyes had seen a strange thing just now, and it shook his frame with fright. The Englishman was there, not twenty meters ahead on the stony bed of the wadi. He moved, his frame shaken by unseen hands. The white mist descended upon him, and Hakeem thought he could feel the morning air grow colder, as though chilled by the breath of some unnatural thing. When he looked again, the Englishman was gone. He had vanished! By God, by Holy God, he was gone!

He covered his face. “Allah be praised,” he whispered. “Protect us from the mischief of those who practice secret arts…” The words of the morning prayer returned to him, haunting and replete with new meaning. He was very frightened.

Hassan saw his brother’s fear, but he fought to quell the rising sense of unease in his own heart. He must see this thing for himself. The Englishman must be there. How far could he have crawled, or even run? He would go and look for the man. “Wait here, brother. Do not be fearful. Allah, our God, protects us. I will go and see where the Englishman has run. You will see.” He gave his younger brother a reassuring nod and started off, creeping low on the ground as he made his way forward. He would steal up on the low sage and see what mystery it struggled to hide from the gray morning.

When he was half way to the place, he felt a frosty chill on the air. The ground itself seemed icy to his touch and he drew his hands back from the stones, suddenly afraid. He shivered, struggling to master his emotions. He would not be shamed before his brother. He was elder, and he must not give way to the terror in his heart. He prayed to Allah, that he be protected from the darkness that seemed to surround his mind, and he forced himself to creep forward, his hands shaking in spite of every effort.

He made his way to the low sage, but there was no sign of the Englishman, or of Aurens. He stood up, looking this way and that, confused and frightened. Then his foot struck something hard that had been concealed beneath the plant. He looked to see the squat, rusted box of an exploder. He had nearly knocked it on its side with the frantic movements of his search. El Aurens had put it there to fire the charges hidden beneath the rail line. God save him, he must not lay hands upon this thing. He searched about, desperate for some sign of the Englishman, but he was nowhere to be seen. He studied the ground, using all his art and craft for reading the signs of passing feet, but it was clear to him that only one man had come to this place, and he had been very careful to mask his passage. Where would the Englishman go if not here? A great doubt descended on him, like the darkness he sought refuge from in his morning prayer. There was mischief here, strange, unaccountable mischief. He turned and fled, back along the trail he had taken, but he edged away from the cold spot in the earth, unwilling to traverse that ground a second time. When he reached his brother the fear in his eyes was obvious, though he struggled to master it.

“I do not need plunder,” he breathed.

“Nor I.”

“I am weary of following this Englishman. Let him go. He must suffer the fate that Allah has ordained for him.”

Hakeem nodded his approval. All thought of joining Aurens and his raid on the Turkish trains had left him. They were very far from home, and he wanted to get as far from this place as he could. In truth, he was terrified, and he had seen the same fear in the eyes of his elder brother, though he would never speak of this aloud. It was unseemly. It was unholy.

It was wrong.

Part IX

Retraction

“Have you come to the Red Sea place in your life,

Where, in spite of all you can do,

There is no way out, there is no way back,

There is no other way but through?”

Annie Johnson Flint: At the Place of the Sea

“I have set my life upon a cast,

And I will stand the hazard of the die.”

Shakespeare: Richard III, Act V.iv

25

Hejaz Railway, Minifir – 10, November, 1917 – 11:50 AM

Whether by chance or great good fortune, Paul’s quiet presence on the roof of the officer’s coach was not noticed as the train made its way inexorably north. He passed a moment of anxiety when the train went through another small outpost. Several of the buildings at the station there were high enough to spy him from an upper window, but no one seemed to be looking. He remained utterly still, appearing no more than a vagabond stowaway to any who might see him. One soldier did make a passing glance as the train rolled through its last depot before Minifir. The mail bags had been thrown from a box-car while the train was still moving, and the soldier gave Paul a curious look. Apparently he had seen such stowaways before. A lone Arab hardly seemed worth the effort to raise an alarm. It was an insignificant trespass and nothing came of the incident.

Paul clung to his precarious post, cold and wet; still shivering from the night and taking little comfort from the occasional fingers of sunlight that filtered through the dark gray clouds. The train made its way north, and he soon spied a telltale rise in the ground ahead, which resolved into the looming shape of a double hillock. They were approaching Minifir at last! Kilometer 172 lay nestled in the lee of these inconsequential hills, though Paul knew they marked the outermost edge of a twisted Nexus Point of history. The Meridian of Time would pass beneath their unknowing watch, like the rail line, and lead on to events of overwhelming significance.

Who would have thought that the fate of the Western World would be decided here, he mused. What was it? He strained his eyes against the gloom, as if he could ferret out the telltale sign of the Pushpoint that was nestled in the tumbled folds of those hills; as if it might be glowing with significance and impossible to miss. Was it a thing, an object, or merely something Lawrence or Masaui does, that unleashes the wrath of the Holy Fighters years hence? Then his thought returned to more immediate matters. At their present speed those hills could not be more than an hour away. How could he act to spare this train? All his hopes rested on this single chance, he realized. The train had been making frequent stops to move coal forward from the tender to the engine. It often slowed to a near crawl on any upward grade they encountered. Paul gambled that, as the train approached the higher ground at Minifir, it would slow enough for him to leap from the roof. If I don’t break a leg, he thought, I just may have time to slip away and do something—but what?

His heart raced and he tried to fend off that awful feeling of rising anxiety in his gut. It had to be something with the charges Lawrence laid, or the wires. He had to find a way to get ahead of the train. Oh, God, stop this thing for me! Burn that coal. Do something! Lawrence had lookouts on the south hill by now. The raiders were already taking their positions, ready to cast their pent up anger and frustration at the train in reprisal for the failed mission at the Yarmuk Bridge, the same anger and frustration that would eventually lead to the Palma Event. I’m riding a death train, he thought. If I don’t get off I’ll be completely exposed to fire from the hills above when Lawrence ignites his charge and derails the locomotive.

The minutes rolled past, each one marked by the barren spike of a sun-bleached telegraph pole, and the Meridian of Time seemed to be strung between them, extending forward and backward from this point with awful certainty. He had to cut that wire. It was the only thing he could think of now. He had to get off this train and run ahead to find and sever the buried nerve that would fire the explosive charges. It was imperative.

The train pulled on, chugging and panting up a gently rising grade. It began to slow perceptibly, its engine wheezing along with the added effort of the climb. It was as if he had passed some imperceptible event horizon, and was falling toward the hungry void of a black hole. Each moment seemed longer than the last as the train continued to slow. Time was stretched out thin, with impossible suspense, and he could do nothing but wait, hoping for the moment he knew must be here for him. Then it came. The engine belched and came to a halt, very near the base of the southernmost hill. It was time.

His senses sharpened in response to the flush of adrenaline in his system. His heart raced, pumping blood to animate his cold, stiff limbs. It was now. He struggled up, burdened by the sodden, muddied robes of a sheikh. He managed to perched himself on hands and knees. If he jumped now would the Colonel see him? What about the two guards?

He started to move, as quietly as he could, to a place on the roof where he thought he would have the best chance at escaping unseen. Then the harsh sound of the Colonel’s voice came to him from the back of the coach. The man was up and yelling something at the two guards that had been posted on the outer porch. They responded with quick movements, jumping down and running forward toward the stalled engine. They were probably carrying orders or questions from the Colonel, Paul knew. He froze, terrified, while the men ran past the car. He was afraid they would cast a casual glance and see him poised on the roof like a rain drenched cat. Thankfully, they were too eager to obey their officer, and sped away without incident.

Paul caught the aroma of burning tobacco and realized that the Colonel must be savoring one of his cigarettes as he stretched his legs on the other side of the coach. He could not just sit here, he had to move. Gathering his resolve, he edged to the side of the coach and peered down to be certain the Colonel had not wandered to this side of the car. You just have to throw yourself in sometimes, he thought, but he knew if he jumped from this height the sound would certainly be heard. Then he was saved by the high pitched squeal of the engine as it vented steam and smoke. Without a second thought, he plunged over the edge.

The ground came up hard and fast and he tumbled on the stony bank, taking a painful fall. His lanky frame shuddered, but he was not seriously hurt, save for the jab of a sharp flint on his left shoulder when he rolled down the bank. The engine hissed to silence, but the noise of the venting had been enough to mask the sound of his fall. He surveyed the ground, crouching low and edging back from the rail line to seek cover in the undulating terrain. Now he was thankful for the threatening, overcast sky. A brief squall of rain was sweeping in, and it would keep heads and faces tucked away inside the train. There were many open cars crammed with Turkish soldiers near the front, but he was far enough away to have a reasonable chance of hiding.

He moved again, picking his way from one small rock to another leafless patch of desert scrub. There was very little vegetation, but he made use of any cover he could find. As the minutes passed he saw that he had put a hundred meters between himself and the train. Then he spied a low rise in the ground that ran parallel to the rail line. Once he got behind it, he could move faster, hastening forward to the relative safety of the hills.

By the time he had cleared the front of the train he was already breathless with his effort. The anxiety drove him on, however, and he forced his tired limbs to stagger forward. He reached the hills, and skirted the lower edge of the southernmost hump. He was very weary, his arms and legs moving with leaden sluggishness now. What’s wrong with me, he thought? I can’t be this much out of shape. He was very near the culvert where Lawrence had most likely placed his gelatine mine. For a brief moment, he realized that he might be walking forward in the last few moments of his life. The train whistle blew, its raucous call cutting the cold morning air. It was followed by the telltale chug of the engine as it strained to gather momentum. They were coming.

Sweat streamed from his brow and clouded his eyes as he forced himself to struggle forward. He realized he was losing any hope of stealth, for the effort to walk was draining enough. God, give me strength, he whispered, show me the way. Show me what to do…

“Who is that?” Khazen, the servant of Ali ibn el Hussein spoke in a low whisper. He was peering from the lip of a ridge on the southern hump of Minifir, pointing at a lone figure far below them near the rail line. “Is that your son again, Hamud? I told you to send him back with the animals!”

“I did as much. He is tending the camels on the other side of the hill.”

“Then who is that? The idiot! He will draw the attention of the Turks and give our position away. What is he doing there?”

“I do not know him.” Hamud was squinting into the pale light, grateful that the rain squall blowing in from the north was thinning out a bit and a spot of sunlight was breaking through the clouds.

“Where is his headdress?” Khazen’s voice gathered more urgency. He was reaching for his rifle. “Strange… He has no beard. Could it be one of the horse tenders?”

“You cannot fire,” said Hamud with a wide-eyed glance. “That will warn the Turks for certain!”

“Curse the man, look how he stumbles about like a drunken fool!”

“Yes, something is wrong with him—See? He has fallen behind that rock.”

“Let us hope he has the good sense to stay there. When Aurens fires the charge I will go to see about this fool. If he is one of the Serahin, I will strike his face for what he has done here. Was it not one of the Serahin who slipped and fell near the Yarmuk bridge?”

“He claimed his rifle strap broke. It was the will of Allah.”

“Perhaps, but this is the work of a fool. Has the man no sense?”

“Quiet now,” Hamud whispered. “The train comes.”

The two men hunched behind their ridge, waiting out the interval of time marked by the slow chugging progress of the train. It crept along, gathering a little speed as it came. The smoke from the squat engine was thick and black, freshly fueled by new coal that had been brought forward from the tender. Khazen looked and saw that it was very near the low arch support where Aurens had laid his mine. Even now his hand would be on the plunger of the exploder, ready to strike a blow against this infernal machine and set loose the wrath of the raiders. He rubbed his palms together in restless anticipation. God is great, he prayed. Let him strike down those who dare to trample the Pilgrim Road to Mecca. He waited, knowing that Allah would certainly hear him and answer with the explosive din of righteous anger when the charge went off.

It was written.

26

Lawrence Berkeley Labs: 4:00 AM

Kelly breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, we’ve got one back. Indicators are showing a successful retraction. Can you get down there and see about it, Maeve?”

Maeve hesitated, afraid to leave the room, her thoughts beset with the same inner fear that had been nagging at her for the last hour. “Aren’t you coming?” She seemed unwilling to leave Kelly’s side.

“I’ve got to set this last particle infusion. Lord, look at the time! We’ve one more fish on the line. If I don’t get this particle density right, we may lose him.” He was already sliding to the Particle Chamber controls, his features furrowed with the intensity of his effort. Maeve lingered near the main console, biting at her fingernail. Kelly gave her a sidelong glance with a gentle verbal nudge. “Come on, lady. Who knows what’s happened to them? You’ve got to clear the Arch corridor before I can ramp back up to full power. I’ll hold it at 85% until 4:05. Can you get down there quick and see what’s up?”

“Right…” Maeve forced herself to move. Kelly was correct. What could she do for him here but get in the way? She found herself eyeing the clock on the wall and then the desk drawer where Nordhausen’s copy of the Seven Pillars had been secreted away. It was 4:00 AM! The success or failure of the mission would be detailed in the passage where Lawrence described the raid at Kilometer 172. It was written. If they were successful the second train should have passed unhindered. If they failed then Kelly would have one last shot at adjusting the retraction scheme to give them a little more time, but that already seemed well underway. She started towards the heavy doors that would lead to the lower chambers but her curiosity was just too strong, pulling her back, and dragging her over to the desk.

As she reached for the drawer handle, she saw that her hand was shaking. What was wrong with her? Someone was down there in the Arch and she was dallying about like a frightened doe. A moment’s weakness or a moment’s resolve, she knew not which, found her lunging at the drawer and pulling it open. She closed her eyes as she did so, afraid that the book might not even be there when she looked. When she opened them she saw the same worn volume that Nordhausen had been reading from earlier. Greatly relieved, she snatched up the book and started for the door. Kelly was so intent on his adjustments that he never even noticed her. She fought the urge to open the book right then and there, while she was still here in the room with Kelly, and this time she mastered her impulse and tucked the volume safely under her arm. She was head of Outcomes and Consequences, and she had the result of this mission clearly penned in the lines of Lawrence’s narrative—at least that was her hope.

Clinging to that possibility, she turned her mind to the Arch and the help that might be needed there. Someone was already in the tunnel and, with any luck, Kelly would bring home the last of the travelers in just a few minutes. She leapt through the door, making sure she closed and sealed every portal as she went. The brief ride in the elevator seemed an eternity. Her arm tightened on the book, tensely holding it in place so she would not be tempted to look at it. Then the elevator whisked open and she started through towards the last heavy lock, intent on what she would find on the other side.

When she finally opened the inner door the intense cold reached out for her with clammy fingers of ice. The lights in the corridor were moving in a milky sheen of auroras, sweeping along the curved walls of the tunnel with a ghostly effect. She was shaking with fear as she stepped across the threshold of the inner door, peering into the montage of frosty light for any sign of life.

“Paul? Robert?” Her voice quavered out a plaintive call. “Is anyone there?”

“Maeve?” The words seemed to resound from the walls with a tremulous echo. “Is that you, Maeve?” There was more clarity now, and more presence in the voice that spoke to her from the glimmering heart of the Arch. It sounded like Professor Nordhausen! She edged up the corridor, but when she came to the thick yellow line her instincts told her to stop and go no further. It was a safety protocol that had been drummed into them many times in the long meetings before the project launch date. Never cross the line during retraction. The Arch was still active, and there would be no pattern signature on an outsider stored in the memory buffers. The traveler had to come to you. That was something they would have to fix, she told herself. What if someone came through unconscious at a moment like this? She tucked that thought away and focused on the situation at hand.

“Robert? Yes, it’s Maeve. Are you alright?”

“What? Thank God! I can see again. Lord, let me get these damn boots off!”

“Robert, you need to move now. Understand?”

“Just a moment… damn things…”

The lights in the corridor dissipated somewhat and Maeve could see a shadowy form seated square in the center of the Arch, tugging at his boot and muttering something inaudible. “No Robert, leave the boots on. You have to move right now. You need to get out of the Arch so we can bring Paul through. Do you understand me?”

There was no reply, but she could hear Nordhausen grunting with the effort to pull off his boot. God, what time was it? Another voice came to her, thin and distant on the intercom system. “Clear that Arch corridor, Maeve! I need to ramp this baby up again…” the cellophane crackle of static drowned out Kelly’s voice. She had to do something quickly, and her emotions finally snapped with the weight of all the stress and tension.

“Damn it, Robert! Get your ass over here! Now!”

The sharpness of her tone had an immediate effect. Nordhausen had heard that edge in her voice before, but never like this. He stood up on shaky legs. “Well, this is a fine greeting—”

“Move it!”

He moved. The shadow became a familiar face and form swaddled in long muddied robes and clumping along like a crippled man, one boot half way off. She grabbed him with one arm, taking a firm hold on his sullied robes as she pulled him over the yellow line. “Let’s go,” she ordered. “You can tell me all about it on the other side of the lock!”

“Oh yes,” said Nordhausen, remembering the cautions at last. “But what about Paul?”

Maeve dragged him along and he nearly fell as she guided him firmly through the inner lock and squeezed through behind. The lights in the corridor were swirling again, spinning over the walls with dizzying speed. She shoved the door closed and secured the lock. Nordhausen had collapsed in a heap to the floor, but her only thought was to signal Kelly. She spied the intercom and pressed the send button.

“It’s Nordhausen, and we’re clear, Kelly. Go get Paul!”

“Roger that…”

The sound of the turbines surrounded them as they revved up to full power. She looked at Nordhausen, and breathed heavily, granting him a moment’s sympathy. “Sorry, Robert, but we were in a little rush there. Here, let me help you get those boots off.”

She set the copy of the Seven Pillars down and moved to render assistance. Nordhausen had a glassy-eyed expression on his face, and he seemed listless and unfocused. Must be the effects of the shift, she thought, feeling more concern for him now. She got the boots off, and then removed his headdress, surprised to see how drenched he was, wet with grit and sandy mud.

“How did I get here?” Nordhausen was looking around him, still quite confused. “Kelly botched the damn numbers… Just like I said…”

“There now, take it easy.” She wished she had brought along some food or at least fresh water. The poor man was shivering with cold, and she felt an icy chill just being near to him. That was another thing they would have to fix. There would be a trained reception team for reorientation and first-aid during every retraction. “We’ll get you upstairs and see about some warm clothes and a blanket. Can you hang on here for just a moment?”

Robert’s eyes searched for her face, struggling to focus. “Oh Maeve… It’s so beautiful… So beautiful when you go through. But I’m a bit queasy. Where’s Paul? Did he make it back? Lord… do you realize where we were? I was sitting by the fire and then it started. Paul was off somewhere and we got separated—”

“Yes, we followed everything on the monitors.” Maeve ran her hand gently across his cheek, swiping away a clump of mud.

“I couldn’t find him after that. God only knows what happened to the poor devil.”

“He’ll be fine,” her voice soothed. “Kelly’s bringing him through in just another moment.”

The sound of the turbines wailed around them and Maeve knew that the final retraction was only seconds away. The breach they had driven into the fabric of the continuum was yawning open and the secret arts of quantum physics were reaching in to reclaim the last traveler, jealously pulling him back to the time where he belonged.

“I couldn’t find him…” Nordhausen blanched and passed out, keeling over to one side. Maeve moved quickly to cradle his fall, lowering him gently to the cold floor. She checked his eyes and saw that retinal response still looked good. His pulse was strong and steady. He would be fine. She settled him as best she could and waited out the impossibly long seconds that remained. Then a strange sound came to her, rising from the din of the turbines.

She listened, trying to place the sound into some familiar frame of reference. There was a long distended wash of noise, punctuated by the rhythmic panting of some metallic engine. Her first thought was that the turbines had fallen out of sync, but the more she listened the more she came to feel that she was hearing the sound of a passing train! A high pitched whistle added weight to the impression, and then the sound faded away, a desolate echo, empty and forlorn. Something brayed at its heels, like a pack of dogs chasing in its wake. The sound of the turbines devoured the echo and it was gone.

Her eyes were drawn at once to the copy of the Seven Pillars. It would take about three minutes for the retraction scheme to play itself out. She had to know.

Anxiety pulsed at her temples again as she reached for the book to open it. The place was clearly marked. All she had to do was read the passage now to see what had happened. She began turning the pages, her eyes mirroring the terrible sense of dread she felt. A part of her did not want to know what fate was ordained in those lines, but she pressed on, the dry pages rattling as she made her way to the passage Nordhausen had marked. Her finger traced down the page with a tremulous quiver, and she began to read.

27

Minifir, 10 November, 1917 – 1:10 PM

The train was making good time, but as they approached the higher ground leading up to a pair of low hills, the gentle upward grade began to slow the engine down. It was time for another infusion of coal. They had been four hours since their last stop, not even pausing to offload cargo at Zerga, the largest town along this stretch of the rail line. There was no time. The train had to get up to Mafrak north of these hills as soon as possible. Better yet would be Deraa, for the rail spurs there were plentiful, and this was a long train.

The Colonel in charge of the train looked at his watch. It was just after 1:00 PM and they were moving again after a very brief coaling stop. The engineer seemed intent on making the last bend and heading up past the hills of Minifir before he stopped again. This was a dangerous place, for the Arabs often came here to watch the movement of the trains from the ruins above. The Turkish rail patrols were not so enthusiastic in the rain, and this stretch of the line was not well guarded. It was a good place for an ambush.

He squinted at a streak of bright sunlight as it pierced the dark clouds that still hunched low over the landscape. The sky was beautifully backlit with the mid-day sun, but it only managed to finger its way through the clouds in places, with long amber streaks of gold. The head of the train reached the middle point of the twin hills where a shallow runoff channel made its way down from the cleavage. There was a low rail support arch there that might make a tempting target. The Colonel had read reports about an attack here earlier in the year, and the Arabs, like a bad habit, always continued to bother.

The Colonel leaned out of his coach window, the wind ruffling the careful smear of his oiled hair a bit. He looked ahead to see the engine pass the bridge without mishap, and then something caught his eye a little ways up the culvert of the channel. It was an Arab! His eyes narrowed with suspicion when he saw the man, and he instinctively scanned the hills above for any sign of movement. The train gave a high pitched whistle, adding a note of urgency to the moment. He could see that the soldiers in the open cars at the head of the train were taking notice of the solitary figure as well. Some of the officers were leaning out of their cars with spy glasses to get a better look at the man. The Colonel did not have his handy, but his suspicions were sharpening his senses with each passing moment.

The man was just sitting there. He seemed no more than a solitary Bedu shepherd come down to watch the train pass by. To the Colonel’s surprise, the man began to wave at the soldiers as the cars rolled by, one by one. He was sitting by a low desert scrub, as lonesome and solitary as this single man, its leafless branches waving in the rising wind, even as the Arab waved at the train in greeting. There was almost something impudent in the man’s movements—a haughty sense of ridicule. The Colonel gave much thought to the notion that this could be the escaped prisoner, returned to mock his would be captors one last time. Would the man be such a fool?

Anger burned at the back of his neck, and he pushed himself back into the coach, striding over to pull on the bell. Three harsh clangs were the signal to stop the train. He would have a look and see if this man would wave and smirk at him in the end. When he returned to the window, however, the Arab was gone. The Colonel’s suspicions redoubled, feeding coal to his rising anger.

By the time the long train stopped it had taken his trailing coach and brake car far beyond the point where the Arab had been sitting. The Colonel tramped to his porch and fumed at the brakeman in the last car, shaking his fist at the man. He jumped from the porch, shouting for a sergeant and another officer to join him. A glance at his watch told him that the slow progress of the last hour was putting him behind schedule again. No matter. He would have a careful look at the rail lines at least, and see if there were any telltale signs of hidden wire or explosives.

Why would the man just sit there if he meant to blow up a mine? The question ground on his mind even as his boots crunched the rocky soil of the rail bed. Where could he have gone? He scanned the hills, shielding his eyes from the sudden brightness of the luminous clouds, but saw no sign of movement. A careful search of the rail bed revealed no trace of mischief. Curse the man! His commander, Jemal Pasha was on the next train, probably hurtling south to Deraa by now. This delay was more time than he could afford. He had to clear the line. He had to reach Deraa, or Mafrak at the very least, before his Corps Commander arrived. He could at least report that he had stopped to scout this place, and found nothing of interest or concern here but a lone Arab shepherd. As for the American? He would keep that matter to himself. Perhaps he could assuage the Bey’s curiosity when he reached Deraa by finding him someone soft and willing. With a last reluctant kick of his boot on the sandy soil, he waved at his sergeants and started back to the train.

No one could have been more surprised than Lawrence when he pushed down on the plunger of the exploder to detonate the train. Nothing happened! He pulled it back and plunged down again and again, but the exploder would not ignite his mine. Something must have gone wrong with the wires, he thought, or the gear inside his rusty old box. Now he was fifty meters from the train with eight open cars crammed full of curious Turkish soldiers! He was completely exposed, and there was no point in trying to make a run for it. The Turks would just leap from their train and hunt him down like a rabbit. He had sixty men in the hills above, but this train was laden with nearly two hundred rifles, and a host of overly curious officers who were peering from the windows of the trailing coaches, peeping at him through spy glasses. The mine would have evened the odds, but it did not go off.

He considered what to do, realizing that his only option was to sit exactly where he was and let providence decide. Leave it to fortune and fate, or as the Arabs might say, ‘let it rest in the bosom of Allah.’ He passed a few tense moments, smiling inwardly at the ridiculous quirk that had set him here in plain sight of his enemies, a wholesome piece of fruit, ripe for the plucking. His smile soon became a smirk, then a wave as he warmed to the moment, a feeling of invulnerability cloaking him as the train rolled by.

When it had finally moved a good distance off, he carefully buried his wires. The last cars slid around a bend in the culvert, so he scooped up the exploder, and stole off like a shadow into the hills. This entire mission had been plagued by bad luck! First a loose gun strap at the Yarmuk bridge set them fleeing wildly across the desert with mad dogs, Turks and distressed peasants on their heels. They cut a few telegraph wires but needed more than that to assuage their bruised sense of pride and honor. So they decided to blow up a train, and sat for twelve long hours beneath the sodden twin humps of Minifir. They missed the first one in the thick morning mist but were well prepared to meet the mid-day train from Amman. Now this… The Arabs would soon begin to say that there was an evil eye among them, and that the mission was doomed to failure.

There was nothing to be done, he thought. He would pull them together and they would try again. He looked at the rusty exploder as he made his way to a hiding spot a safe distance from the rail line, wondering what had gone wrong. The clanging of a bell gave him pause. He passed a moment of concern when the train glided to a halt about 500 meters up the line. It was an old, wheezing engine and perhaps they needed more coal to get up a good head of steam. He watched while a small patrol of officers made their way up the rail line to inspect the area. If they discovered his wires he would have to give the signal to flee to the animals and run shamefully back into the desert. Thankfully, they found nothing and the train was soon underway again.

In war, he thought, recalling the words of Caesar, ‘actions of great importance are often the result of trivial causes.’ They would simply have to wait it out and hope for better luck when the next train came down from Damascus. One way or another, he knew, he would strike his blow and bring his Arab brothers home with all the loot their greedy hands could carry.

It was only a matter of time.

Part X

Outcomes & Consequences

“Destiny has two ways of crushing us—

By refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.”

Henri Amiel: Journal

“In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments—there are consequences.”

Robert G. Ingersoll: Some Reasons Why

28

Lawrence Berkeley Labs: 4:05 AM

Kelly was working feverishly at the Chamber Mix Controls. The particle infusion looked good, but he was worried that the element levels would not give him enough density to trigger the final retraction. He nudged the levels again, adding weight to the mix until he satisfied himself that there was little more he could do. A glance at the clock set his heart racing. He had to get full power now, or they would lose Paul forever. He raced to the main console thumbing the intercom to shout through the microphone. “Clear that Arch corridor, Maeve! I need to ramp this baby up again.” There was a burst of interference and he passed a breathless moment, looking at Jen as they both listened for a response. Then Maeve’s voice returned, faint but audible.

“It’s Nordhausen, and we’re clear, Kelly. Go get Paul!”

“Roger that.” Kelly waved at Jen with a winding motion of his wrist, and she toggled a switch on the board to open the floodgates of energy required for a time shift. The building seemed to shudder in response, and Kelly only hoped the turbines would hold out another five minutes.

“Ninety-five,” Jen called out the readings. “One hundred!”

“I’m on it!” Kelly moved quickly, his hands streaking over the controls to enable the retraction scheme. “Those focal routines still look good,” he said aloud. “I think we have a pattern lock.”

Jen was a bit flustered in the excitement of the moment, but she fell back on familiar ground and began reading the shift monitor for temporal integrity. “Green at 1.00,” she said, excitement rising in her voice. “Zero variance.”

“Come on in, Paul. Come on now, buddy.” Kelly watched the neon glow of the progress bar until it traversed his screen to finality. “I think we’ve done it!” He clapped his hands with jubilation.

Even as he turned to flash a broad grin at Jen, a sharp spat of energy leapt from the main console and a shower of sparks cascaded from the winking rows of display lights. Kelly made a fast cutting motion across his neck. “Cut the power!” He yelled over the fuming explosion but was cut off from Jen’s station by a sheet of white flame.

“Shit! God damn electrical fire!” He whirled around, looking for an extinguisher.

Jen managed to deactivate the main power switch, and the explosive fury of the fire dissipated in a shower of sizzling sparks. Kelly was across the room, his elbow smashing the glass door of the extinguisher closet. He dragged out the dry chemical extinguisher and pulled at the safety tab as he ran back to the console. Jen was leaning back from the blazing panel and shielding her eyes from the white tongues of flame. Kelly waved her away, and the hollow whoosh of the extinguisher spat its chalky vapor on the blaze, enveloping it in a billowing fog. After three intense bursts from the extinguisher, the fire hissed out and thin curls of dark smoke spiraled up from the display board.

“Jen, get down and tell Tom to roll everything back through standby. He can take it down to zero in ten minutes. There’s nothing else we can do with the console in this shape. I only hope we managed to pull this off.”

A voice crackled from the intercom speaker below. “You’ve landed your last fish, Kelly.”

“Thank God.” Kelly suddenly felt faint. The tension of the last several hours all seemed to unwind and his arms and legs felt like jelly. “I better sit down for a minute.” He looked for a chair, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“Congratulations, Mr. Ramer.” Jen gave him a warm smile, glad that the project had been successful. Then she turned to run to the staircase. “I’ll tell Tom to shut everything down.” She slipped through the door and was gone.

Kelly slumped in a chair, breathing hard. He decided to lower his head to his knees to get some blood flowing. How could he be so light headed with his heart pounding like this? The adrenaline of the retraction and the fire emergency was still driving his pulse in a feverish rhythm. He gained a little clarity of thought and looked around the room.

We did it, he thought. We pulled the whole thing off! He glanced at the clock and saw that they still had another three minutes before the first tsunami waves were due to hit the coast off Cape Hatteras—if there was still any emergency at all. Where was that radio Nordhausen had with him? He looked around, hoping to see the shortwave sitting comfortably on a nearby console, but it was nowhere to be found. Then he remembered what Paul had told him about the book. If they altered the time line the book should change as well. All he had to do was read the passage Nordhausen had marked for him. How did it go? The echo of Paul’s words returned to him. He was supposed to read up on the second train. If it gets through without incident, everything would be fine. Everything fine…

He stood up, on unsteady legs, and shuffled to the desk where they had hidden the book away. The drawer was slightly ajar, but he gave it no heed. He reached down, missing the drawer handle at first and groping to take hold and pull it open. There was nothing there but a few file folders. Did he have the right drawer? A check of the others came up empty. The book was gone.

Kelly stood there, a bemused expression on his face. It was gone. Something had happened, he thought. Something knocked old Lawrence right out of the God damned time line! He never wrote his book! It was the only possible explanation, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, suddenly dizzy.

“Crap…” he said aloud in a low voice. His mind played out a thousand possibilities, imagination painting the images in his head in a flashing rush. They did something to contaminate the time line, he thought. Lawrence may have been exposed or even killed. Maeve tried to warn us about this. You don’t fool with a Prime Mover! Something happened to prevent him from writing his book.

A voice intruded on the stillness of the room “You there Kelly?” It was Maeve speaking over the intercom again.

He forced himself to move, leaning in the direction he wanted to go and hoping his feet would stay under him. The microphone on the desk… The microphone…

“You there, Kelly? Answer me!” Maeve’s voice had a frantic edge to it.

He reached out for the mike, getting one hand on it as he spoke. “Book’s gone…” His voice sounded so strange to him, thin and distant.

“What? Kelly? Thank god! You’re OK.” The sound of someone else speaking in the background came to him and he recognized the voice of his long time friend. “Hey there, mister! Spent a lovely couple of hours in the park. Nice going, Kelly. I knew you could do it.”

The voices sounded far away, like distant memories. It was Paul! He was alive and well. Kelly smiled, lowering himself slowly to a chair by the microphone. “The book…” he tried to speak but his voice was unwilling.

“I’ve got it here!” Maeve seemed elated as she spoke, yet her words were an echo in Kelly’s mind now, quavering through his thoughts with an almost haunting resonance.

What did she say? She had the book? She must have taken it when she went down to help Nordhausen! Then everything was all right after all! He sighed to himself, feeling warm and satisfied. Lawrence was unharmed, or at least he lived long enough to write his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Everything was fine now. Paul and Robert were safe and sound. It was wonderful… Wonderful…

He was thinking of poetry now. The words just came to him at times like this, and he found himself reaching into his shirt pocket for the little notebook and pen he always kept there. He would write things down when the words came. It was the only way to keep them from evaporating into the ether of his mind. There was a thought wrapped up with the words, as if some inner voice was speaking a great truth to him, knowing something he only now began to guess at, and gently calling him to listen.

He heard the voice speaking the words and at last he knew why he was dizzy, and why Maeve had the book, and why Paul was happily safe with Robert in the chamber of the Arch. It had all worked out fine. Only now he would face the truth that had been whispering from some dark corner of his soul ever since the first knock of the visitor on Nordhausen’s study door.

He was very tired, drained of all energy, but he managed to drag his pen over the notebook, wanting to write down the words in his head. They were not his words this time, but they spoke with the resonance of his innermost soul. He tried to scrawl them on the narrow page, but his hand moved with a languid slowness, and he could not write. So he just sat quietly and listened to the words in his mind.

“From that full meridian of my glory

I haste now to my setting: I shall fall

Like a bright exhalation in the evening

And no man see me more…”

It was the great bard himself, whispering in his ear. Shakespeare had something for everyone. He passed a fleeting moment, thinking how it would have been so wonderful to go back to the Globe as they first planned. Just to see the play, he thought; just to sit there quietly and watch the old master at the flood tide of his life. Then everything had changed when the news came over his car radio. Everything had changed.

Yes, he thought. They came back for me, but I wasn’t supposed to make it this far. I wasn’t supposed to be here… His mind grew quiet, but his hand still struggled to move, managing just one word on the page that captured the essence of Shakespeare’s verse. Would it stay there when I go, or vanish like the memory of my life? Would any of it stay put for very long?

He didn’t know.

29

Lawrence Berkeley Labs: Arch Safety Lock 4:12 AM

“He’s OK!” Maeve was beaming as she greeted Paul with the warmth they deserved. “Kelly is fine!”

“Good man,” said Paul. He looked at Nordhausen where he was just coming around again after passing out on the floor. “What happened to Robert?”

“Oh, don’t worry. He was just disoriented from the retraction. Look, he’s coming to now.”

“I’ll vouch for that. If you open your eyes it’s, fabulous, but it will make you sick to your stomach when your finish the shift. I’m a bit light-headed myself, but I think I’ll be fine.”

Maeve was helping Nordhausen up onto one elbow. “Look at the two of you! You look like a pair of pups who’ve been out playing in the mud!”

“Well, it was raining. You try sneaking around in the Jordanian desert in the rain and mud for twelve hours and see what your laundry bill looks like.”

“Twelve hours?”

“At least that long,” Paul explained. “After we got to our proper coordinates, that is.”

“Kelly botched the numbers.” Nordhausen was getting his wits about him and returned to the same tired complaint he had been making all along. “He sent us half way to eternity!”

“That gave us quite a scare,” said Maeve. “He was rushing to key the final numbers and accidentally put something in as an exponent. You shifted by powers of ten.”

“Good lord!” Nordhausen’s eyes were focused now, and registering the proper touch of outrage. “That would account for the Ammonite fossil we found. We were probably way back in the—”

“In the late Cretaceous.” Maeve finished for him. “We got the readings and I nearly wet my pants. Kelly did something during the tachyon infusion, however. He sent a loop command through the system and got a double reading on your pattern signatures. Then he used one copy to move you back on target. The last one brought you both home.”

“Thank God for that,” said Paul. Then he pointed an accusing finger at Nordhausen. “Where the hell were you?”

“What? Well I was going to ask you the same thing. Weren’t you the one warning me about not stepping on the plants and such. Then you go wandering off and the next thing I know I’m face down in a pile of wet sand. What happened to you?”

“I came back to the fire and found you gone. Before I had time to get mad about it I must have shifted forward. I’m not sure where I ended up at first. The shift surprised me and I saw too much.”

“Did you open your eyes this time?” The professor had an excited look on his face.

“Too long,” said Paul. “It made me sick and dizzy. I was stumbling along in the desert and came upon the rail line. Then the Turks came up and—”

“The Turks!” Maeve gave him a wide-eyed look. “I’ll bet that was fun.”

“No shit!” Paul could still fee the hard clutch of the Colonel’s fingers on his throat. He spent a few moments recounting his ordeal in the officer’s coach, and his chance escape because of the loose buckle on the leather strap. “See what I mean, Robert? It was just a loose thread or two that ended up setting me free. Otherwise I might have been strung up for the Colonel’s pleasure the whole damn time. I can only imagine the effect on the man if I was still tied up when the retraction shift started.”

“Well, it all worked out because of one of your little push pins,” said the professor. Paul frowned at him for getting the terminology wrong again, but said nothing. “So tell me,” Nordhausen leaned forward, “how did you manage to sabotage the wires?”

“What?” Paul gave him a surprised look. “I was hoping you managed to do that. I never got near them.”

“What are you saying?” Nordhausen sat up straight. “I was close, you know. Very close. I even saw Lawrence! It was amazing. He came up from the rail line and set his exploder right by the little bush he talks about in Seven Pillars. I could barely contain myself. He seemed to have this aura around him—at least I thought I saw an odd corona about his form.”

“Little bush?” The professor never filled Paul in on all the details he crammed into his head before the mission started.

“Yes, there was a bush where he was planning to hide the ends of the wire so he could get to them easily when the train came.” He told the story of his encounter with the two Arabs in the desert, and how he stole away in the early dawn to see what he could do on his own. “I gave them the slip,” he beamed, “and I swear, I was within thirty yards of that bush when everything started to get fuzzy on me. The final retraction must have pulled me out, but I never touched the exploder, or the wire for that matter. I was hoping you would finish the job, Paul.”

“I wish I could take credit, but I never got anywhere near the wires either.” They both looked at Maeve, hoping she would produce the answer for them.

“Well,” she said, “this confirms my argument about wandering around in history, doesn’t it. Who knows what you actually did to change things, but you did something. It could have been anything at all. We may never know in the end.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Nordhausen. I’ve studied history for decades and I’ve often remarked how much of it just seems to happen on its own. Oh yes, the kings and princes and generals and emperors thought they had it all firmly in hand. In the end, however, they were doing little more than blundering about, just as we were. In fact, Lawrence expressed the same feeling about the writing of his book. How did he say it? ‘Things happen, and we do our best to keep in the saddle.’ Those were the words of one of your Prime Movers, Paul.”

“Doesn’t sound very comforting, does it?” Paul scratched the back of his head. “The notion that we change things unknowingly, that history turns on the slightest whim, is unnerving. Now do you know why I was so concerned about contamination?”

“Yes, but did it change?” Nordhausen was pointing at the book lying on the floor of the safety lock chamber. “Did you read it, Maeve?”

“Yes. I was frightened out of my wits, but I found the passage and read it just before Paul came through. Our assumption is correct. We all remember clearly that the second train was the one Lawrence blew up, right?”

“That’s how I remember the narrative,” said Nordhausen, and Paul gave him a nod of agreement.

“Right then,” Maeve continued. “As it reads now, the second train rolls on by without incident. Well, not entirely without incident. Lawrence was sitting with his exploder and the damn thing failed to ignite the charges.” She recounted the passage she had read, relating how Lawrence had been exposed on the open ground, waving at the Turks on the train with a silly grin on his face. “Look here,” she said with some delight. “He even penned an illustration into this version of the narrative!”

She flipped open the book and they were amazed to see that Lawrence had drawn a little cartoon to illustrate his plight. “And it goes on to show that they waited for the third train, just as we hoped. Lawrence managed to fix the exploder box—apparently that was the Pushpoint, Paul. He recounts working on the interior of the box to set it right, and when the third train showed up their mine went off without a hitch. But we still came very close to ‘mucking things up,’ as you would say professor. Do you know who was on the third train?”

Paul and Robert waited her out, speechless. “Jemal Pasha, the Commander of the whole Turkish Corps in that region. He was traveling with his Headquarters Company to try and get closer to the disintegrating front in that area.”

“Yes,” said Paul. “The Colonel and I had a little chat about it. He spoke English fairly well. Allenby had just pushed the Turks out of Beersheba.”

“Well, we could have gotten the man killed!” Maeve gave him a peeved look. “But lucky for the both of you, he survived the attack. Lawrence and his men grabbed some booty and fled into the desert. I don’t know what you did, exactly, but it altered the mechanism of the exploder box and changed this narrative dramatically. I can only hope it changed the rest of the continuum as well…” Her voice trailed off a bit as she said that, and a squall of concern clouded her features.

“Where’s Kelly,” said Nordhausen? “He should be down here celebrating with us!”

“He’s late again,” Paul chimed, still rummaging through his memory of the trip to try and figure out what he could have done to cause the exploder box to fail.

“Get him on the intercom.” Nordhausen was pointing at the call box on the far wall.

“You mean you haven’t checked the radio yet, Maeve?”

“Checked the radio? Well, as you can see, I’ve been a little preoccupied these last few minutes.”

“Look at the time,” said Nordhausen. “It’s 4:20 AM. You said the first waves were scheduled to hit the coast at 4:11. Come on! I left my radio in the changing room upstairs. Let’s get up there and see what else has changed.”

Paul helped the professor to his feet, and they opened the outer door of the safety lock, making their way back to the elevator for the long ride up to the surface. Paul tried the intercom on the way up, but no one answered. “I wonder where Kelly went,” he said. The low moaning sound of the descending turbines added a somber note to the scene. It sounded like a pack of howling dogs, lost and forlorn in the distance.

Maeve stood in sullen silence. Each mention of Kelly’s name seemed like a lash upon her and, as the seconds passed, the cruel whip of her understanding began to score her with a growing pain. She already feared what the others had not even begun to guess at, though the look on Paul’s face began to betray a small hint of anxiety as the elevator doors swished open at the top. He’s thinking about it now, she thought. God, don’t let it be so.

They reached the last great door and activated the controls to swing it back on the gleaming metal hinges. It glided open and they stepped through the portal to the control room, eyes adjusting to the darkness. A purple haze drifted over the consoles, and the emergency lighting projected long radiant cones through the vapors. Paul rushed in, almost tripping on a swivel chair that was square in the center of the room. The circular control consoles arched around him, still dimly lit by battery power. He sniffed the air, smelling something wrong.

“What happened, here,” he began? “Smells like they had a fire. Where’s Kelly?”

“Looks like they put it out there at the main console.” Nordhausen pointed at the streaks of dark char on the silver plating of the console panels. There was obvious evidence of a fire, and the whole area was dusted with the white powder of a chemical extinguisher that was lying on the floor. “Kelly?” he called out, but no one answered. “Well, perhaps he’s gone down to see Tom about shutting this contraption off. Can you hear the turbines winding down? We must have tripped circuit breakers all over the Bay Area with all the power this thing requires.”

“Yes,” said Paul, “that must be it.” He gave Maeve a quick glance and was disturbed to see a single teardrop well at the corner of her eye and trace a solitary path along her cheek. Was it the smoke in the room irritating her eyes? He started to say something but held his thoughts for a moment.

“I’ll get the radio.” Nordhausen diverted his attention to getting some news on the Palma Event. He rushed off towards the changing room, nearly tripping on the sodden robes of his costume as he went.

Paul was looking around the room, and he spied a chair off by the communications console. He walked over, eyes searching the area for any sign or clue. He did not know exactly what he was looking for, but his senses were keenly alert just the same. When he reached the chair he encountered a palpable cold spot on the misty air and shuddered.

I’m just suffering from the cold and the rain in the desert, he tried to tell himself, even though he knew better. He extended an arm, feeling forward to the chair like a blind man groping the darkness. He felt a frosty tingle, the cold handshake of Time, and he knew why Maeve was crying. Something in him resisted the thoughts that welled in his mind. He did not want them to be so. Then his eye spied a crumpled notebook on the console that seemed oddly out of place.

Maeve was padding softly to the scene behind him. She wrapped her arms close about her when she encountered the icy chill near the chair. Then she stopped, as if frozen with emotion, unwilling to take one single step further and have her senses confirm the terrible sadness that seemed to settle on her now. Paul looked at her with knowing eyes.

He reached for the notebook and strained to see the single word that was written there. Tears welled in his eyes as he read it. Then he slowly extended the note to Maeve. She stepped back, one arm out in front of her as if she thought to ward off the inevitable truth by refusing to look. Then she softened, her hand opening with gentle affirmation, and taking the notebook from Paul. She held it for a moment, then raised it to her breast, a sacred object that branded her with memories and hopes that she could neither embrace nor shun. She looked at the notepad and recognized the errant scrawl of Kelly’s handwriting.

There was only one word: ‘Goodbye.’

Nordhausen came running up, breathless with elation. “We did it,” he shouted. “I’ve tuned in the BBC and there’s not a hint or a whisper of anything wrong! Oh, there’s some news about a high water warning because of a minor earthquake on the Canary Islands. Isn’t that odd? It was augmented by a storm surge from an early hurricane, but no real threat seems to be developing. The season normally begins this weekend, but hurricane Auda is running up a six foot storm surge off the Carolinas. Word is Bermuda got hit pretty hard, but nothing all that threatening to the coast. They posted a warning, but no mandatory evacuation order.”

“Yes, we know,” said Maeve softly. She was still staring at the notepad.

“What do you mean?” Nordhausen looked at them, surprised to see the wet, sad eyes and long faces. “What’s wrong with you people? Don’t you understand? We were successful! Old Ra’id Husan al Din and his Holy Fighters never blew up their volcano. We saved millions of lives tonight and you’re standing there like it was a funeral or something. Why, what would our visitor from the future think to see you like this?”

Paul gave him a vacant look, taking a long slow breath before he spoke. “He never came, Robert.”

“What’s that? Who never came? Now where is Kelly—has he come up to hear the good news yet?”

Paul was not quite sure how to explain things. He looked at Maeve, and saw that she was giving him the same searching eyes, hoping he might understand something she had overlooked, something that would work just one more magical change on the continuum and bring Kelly back to them.

Paul cleared his voice and tried to speak. Emotion closed its fingers on his throat, like the cold, strong fingers of the Turkish Colonel. “Mr. Graves… the visitor. I don’t think he ever came last night.”

“What?” Nordhausen gave him an exasperated look. “Well of course he came. How else do you suppose we pulled this thing off?” A light of realization flashed in his eyes. “There you go with this time theory business again. What are you saying? I remember the man clearly. Don’t you remember him as well?” He looked at Maeve for support, noticing her tears for the first time. “What in God’s name is going on here?”

“It’s difficult…” Paul gathered his thoughts. “Do you still remember the meeting, Robert? Do you still recall our discussion about Shakespeare and all that business about the Bermuda Papers?”

“Of course I do. I may be a bit shaken up by this little excursion through the halls of infinity, but I’m not daft. What are you asking?”

“We can remember it all because we were protected in a Deep Nexus.” Nordhausen frowned at him and he tried to explain. “Yes, I remember the visitor as well. I’m sure Maeve will say the same. He said we were in a Deep Nexus, and that makes us all Free Radicals. Don’t you see? They created the Nexus when they came back here. It started when the visitor first stepped in front of Kelly’s car to delay him on the way to the meeting. The continuum was at risk from that very instant, and a Deep Nexus formed.”

“What the hell is this nonsense all about?” Nordhausen was in no mood for another long treatise on Time theory. He was tired and awfully hungry. He wanted food and coffee and a warm bed. They could sort it all through in twelve hours. A sinking feeling settled over him.

“A Deep Nexus is a point of maximum risk on any Time Meridian,” Paul went on, piecing things together in his mind as he spoke. Maeve listened silently, nodding inwardly as he retraced the pathways where her own fear had walked with her earlier. “Once a Nexus forms, it’s as if time is holding its breath. Any willful agent caught in the Nexus becomes a Free Radical, capable of making profound alterations in the eventual course of Time as it leaves that point. We were all caught up in this the moment Kelly was saved from the accident that was supposed to claim his life last night. A Deep Nexus is surrounded by Paradox, Robert. It’s Time’s way of isolating the Meridian and protecting it until it solidifies to some definite purpose, some new certainty. The Nexus held us all safe until we took some action to bring clarity to the situation. Who knows what we did while we were muddling about in the history, as you would say, but it was enough to reach a certain conclusion, and the Nexus began to dissipate. Once that happens, and the continuum is free to move forward again, Paradox will see to anything that doesn’t belong. It’s Time’s way of cleaning up after our mischief here. Do you understand?”

The professor listened in silence, his intellect slowly pushing his emotions aside as he struggled to grasp what Paul was saying. He had gone from confusion, to elation, to outrage and now this. A nameless sadness seemed to settle on him, and he thought he was beginning to appreciate the tears in the eyes of his friends. “Then, you’re saying the visitor never came? But I remember the man!”

“Yes, we remember him. We were protected in the void. Now Paradox is taking control of the situation and cleaning up any loose ends. Poor Kelly. Don’t you see, Robert? There was no Palma Event—not in the time continuum as it stands now. They never came back, because nothing ever happened. Yes, we all remember that Kelly’s life was spared by their intervention, but not in this time line—not in the world we have around us now. Paradox is real—that’s what the visitor tried to warn us about. I always thought is was just some impossible puzzle that would send your mind in an endless loop, but that’s not what Paradox is at all. It’s a natural force, a consequence, and it holds us all accountable for every action we take. Even if we remember the visitor, the change we made in the time line removed his reason for being here—cancelled out the effect he had on the continuum before we were all swept into the Nexus Point, because he never had any reason to come. It was as if he was never here.”

“And he never saved Kelly.” Nordhausen’s voice faded away. He set the shortwave on the console and moved closer to Paul and Maeve, arms extended, reaching for them, gathering them in to a wide embrace. They drew together, joined in their understanding and their sorrow, and shared a long moment of quiet tears in the silence of the smoky room. At last the professor spoke, reciting one of his old favorites. It just seemed to hit on the nub of the moment, and whispered the only consolation he could offer. “Destiny has two ways of crushing us,” he said softly. “By refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.”

30

Memorial – Berkeley, California – The Present

The green sward of the memorial park was broken by winding flagstone pathways, trimmed with well cultivated rows of carnations and roses. The sky was blue and clear, with a gentle breeze blowing in from the bay. Paul looked over his shoulder as he walked to greet the others, his eyes climbing the Berkeley Hills and reaching for the place where Lawrence Labs lay nestled there—a portal on infinity. He carried a small parcel under one arm, handling it with an almost reverent care. Up ahead, at the edge of a gently rising knoll, Robert and Maeve were waiting beside the freshly turned earth of a shallow grave. It was just large enough to hold the few things they had decided to inter here, for there were no remains of their friend to lay to rest.

Kelly had vanished without the slightest trace, except for the single word on his notebook. There was nothing to fill a casket, or even an urn, but in keeping with the traditions they had lived with, they had all decided to bury a few tokens of his life here in a quiet setting, watched by the hills where he had lived most of his adult years.

Paul greeted his companions with a half-hearted smile. This moment weighed heavily on him, for Kelly was one of those very few people in his life where the shared roots of a long friendship reached deep into the past, even to the days of his youth. Nordhausen also carried the burden of sorrow heavily. He was one of the same inner circle that bound Paul and Kelly together, and they had gone to college together at St. Mary’s College in Moraga over twenty years ago. It would be very hard for both of them to say goodbye. Kelly’s death, his disappearance, his absence, would leave a gaping hole in both their lives that seemed impossible to ever fill.

It was said that Time would heal all wounds, but not this one, thought Paul. Not all the days and years that remained to him could measure the gulf that yawned in his soul. His friend was gone.

For Maeve, the sorrow was twofold. While she did not share the long years of friendship that made up Paul and Robert’s history with Kelly, she had harbored a slowly germinating feeling for him, one that she had guarded and nurtured over the brief time she served with the team. Three years seemed all too short a time to come to know someone, but she had learned a great deal about Kelly from the volume of poetry he had published not long ago. She still remembered when she first saw it on his coffee table during one of their Outcome briefings on the planned Shakespeare mission. Her curiosity had been aroused, and she sought out a copy to have a secret look the following week. How surprised she was to learn that, in addition to the endless ciphers of mathematics and computer networks that occupied his working hours, there was another side to Kelly that he kept very private. He was an avid reader, a lover of classical music, and a poet!

The hours she had spent with his verse, unbeknownst to him, had brought her into touch with this hidden, artful side of Kelly Ramer, deeply sensitive, wonderfully expressive, and laden with heartfelt understanding of the world. She read his poetry, taking it in a little at a time over the next month, and delighting in the secret tryst she had with his mind and heart each night before she slept. Oddly, she never said a word about it to Kelly. The business of their work together had not given her an opportunity to find the right setting, the right moment, to walk this new ground with him. But she knew, on some quiet level of her being, that his verse had wooed her heart in a way he might never have intended. She was falling in love with him, uncertain of her feeling, yet compulsively drawn to the flame his muse had ignited in her. Now he was gone. All she had left was the slim book of poetry under her arm—her token for the memorial service. She would read a few verses here and then lay the book to rest. It would be some time, she knew, before he really died. He would live in the feeling she still carried for years to come.

“Morning, Paul.” Nordhausen was the first to break the silence. “What did you bring?”

Paul looked at the parcel under his arm, thinking whether he wanted to say anything or not. He was carrying things that only the dearest of friends shared. Robert would understand, for his voice was one of those clowning on the CD copy of a tape the three of them had made over twenty-five years ago. “Something from the Eternal Tape Archives,” he said softly, and Nordhausen nodded his understanding, eyes betraying a gleam of wetness. Paul carried something else as well, but he would keep that to himself. It was another disk, this time an enhanced DVD file he had taken from the security camera system that monitored operations in the control room of their Lawrence Lab facility.

He was always one to document things. The tape recording of the meeting they held in Nordhausen’s study the night before the mission had turned out to be instrumental in allowing future generations to discover why they never acted to reverse the Palma Event themselves. He often wondered what they heard on that tape. The visitor said there had been a phone call with news of Kelly’s accident. The grief that struck them all when they learned of his death had been so debilitating, that they lost that one brief interval where they could have acted to reverse the terrible vengeance of Ra’id Husan al Din. He was struck by the irony of it all—a real ‘damned if you do; damned if you don’t’ conundrum. Now, here they were, grieving Kelly’s passing as they might have in the old time line, in the lives they had all brought to that fateful meeting the week before.

Along with his private archival copy of all their adolescent bantering, Paul also carried the visual record of the last few moments of Kelly’s existence in the Deep Nexus that had sheltered them all during the operation. Kelly was sitting on a chair by the communications console, with the most sublime expression on his face. He reached into his shirt pocket to pull out the dog-eared notebook he carried to catch and store errant phrases that often came to him in the course of his day. Many of them would end up in his poetry. This one was his last goodbye. Paul didn’t want the others to see the recording, though he had watched it over and over himself. No matter how many times he viewed it, the impact was always the same. He was there, alive and smiling at some great inner realization that was playing itself out in his mind, then he faded in a white mist, and was gone. Paul swallowed hard, emotion hobbling his voice. “What about you?” He managed to get it out, gesturing softly to a box Nordhausen was holding.

“A few mementos,” he said quietly. “And a bit of sheet music I wrote for him. I was going to try it on recorder, but I wrote it for piano. I’ll play it for you one day.”

They passed a few moments in silence, and then Maeve decided to begin the ceremony, stooping to light the four wreathed candles that were set by the shallow grave. She reached for words, wondering if she dared to express her true thoughts. Then she decided that truth was the one thing she owed him now, in gracious thanks for all the moments he had given her with his poetry.

“I loved him,” she said haltingly. Then she looked at Robert and Paul to let them see that in her face. “I found him in a place he never thought many people would look—in his verse. He kept it private for so long, but when I first read his poetry my whole understanding of the man was shaped anew. I would love to share a brief reading here with you. I know you’ve read it all before.”

She opened her book and turned to the place she had marked. Then she began to read. It was a wonderful poem Kelly had penned about his experience riding at night in the front seat of the car with his father, a distant and mysterious figure that always seemed to haunt Kelly’s thoughts. They had stopped to see something in the sky—the Aurora Borealis, alive and moving in the night where they never expected it, above the back roads of Pennsylvania. She read from Kelly’s book:

“On the horizon there was an airplane

controlled by an invisible hand

supported by nothing tangible

its contrails extruded like webbing.

What it that? the young me thinks

as I stand in the backyard, before brothers,

before school, before the inlaid mosaic

that contains the days between

that sight and this moment existed.

It is as far away as yesterday

a moment that returns on the prick of a pin…”

The poem continued until it came to the sighting of the Auroras, and Kelly’s poem recounted the moment his father had held him up in his arms to see them for the first time. Both Paul and Robert knew it well and, as Maeve read, they could not help but think of the radiant light of the Arch and the amazing range of color and motion when they traveled through that portal.

“Then sudden nimbus, glamour

clots of color! The sky was on fire!

My father lifted me in his arms

to watch the green curtain that washed

and streamed across the vivid sky

immense and shifting and silent…

At that moment he was a confidant

who abandoned me in a place

that was not an abode of daylight.

“Through the years he tarried

in my dreamtime on occasion

as if to find a remembrance

of things lost when he proclaimed

the sky to me, as if to hunt

for me in the viridian billow

of imagination. You weren’t supposed

to stay there. It isn’t holy, come back!

his voice echoed from a distance…”

Maeve’s voice broke at that point, choked with emotion. She could read no further, but repeated that last invocation, the words of Kelly’s father in the poem, but now her own. “You weren’t supposed to stay there… Come back!” Tears claimed her, and she lapsed into silence, but Paul knew the words of the poem by heart, and he recited them to himself while they waited, hearing Kelly’s voice in his mind.

He watched while Maeve closed her book, setting it in the shallow grave. Nordhausen placed his box there as well.

“He was a great friend,” he said.

“A brother,” said Paul.

“But he was always late,” said Maeve with a half smile lending a little light to her eyes.

“And he botched the numbers!” Nordhausen laughed now, and the moment lightened for them all. The distant sounds of the city all around them intruded on the silence. Paul looked and saw a dark limousine pulling into the park, and he gave it no second thought, another caravan to Auld Lang Syne.

He stooped and hovered over the four burning candles, giving Robert and Maeve a subtle glance to seek their approval. They nodded, and he reached out to pinch the tip of one candle, watching the thin curls of smoke that had once been such a vibrant flame. They dissipated on the light morning breeze, gone forever. Three candles remained, still burning, yet diminished.

‘Time is the fire in which we all burn,’ thought Paul, recalling a favorite maxim. At that moment he felt a shudder, and the strange sense that he had lived this moment before. He hunched his shoulders, standing up, and somewhat surprised to see that Robert seemed to be looking around him, as though aware of something odd in the setting; something vaguely disturbing.

“Did you feel that?”

“I felt something,” said Paul. “Did you feel it, Maeve?”

“Was it an earthquake?”

“Not much of one if it was,” said Paul. “Just the slightest ripple at my back and then this odd sensation that something had happened.”

Someone was approaching the knoll, wending along the curved flagstone pathway, face shrouded in the eaves of a coat, flowers in hand. Another mourner, thought Paul, though he could not see any other ceremonies staging on the grounds. It was probably someone come to lay flowers on his mother’s grave. He fingered the parcel he had brought, and stooped to lay it in the shallow grave next to the other tokens. When he stood up he was surprised to see that the interloper had come up behind them. Someone must have ordered flowers, he thought; perhaps Jen, or Tom, or one of the other project team members.

Someone spoke and they all turned to greet the stranger. “Well,” said the voice, “I now have the dubious distinction of being the only person to ever actually show up late for his own funeral!”

Paul’s heart leapt at the sound There was no mistaking it—Kelly! He was filled with an elation unlike any he could remember in his life. How could it be? He was alive. He was here! Robert and Maeve beamed with joy. Their astonishment had given way to emotion and, one by one, they embraced him by the knoll, tears of sorrow becoming the outward sign of their delight and wonder.

“You had better light that candle again, Paul,” said Kelly. “Then I’ll tell you what happened and we can all go over to Peets and have some coffee.”

They were flabbergasted, but Paul’s mind immediately began to try and reach for understanding, the tenets of his time theory dressing out the possibilities in his thinking. When Kelly began to speak, however, they could hardly believe what he was telling them.

“They pulled me out.” He began at the moment of his disappearance there in the lab. “Can you believe that? I thought I was dying—I thought Time was making good on its claim to my life at last, but they pulled me out.”

“What do you mean?” Robert was too shocked by Kelly’s appearance to even begin to reason things out.

“The Nexus was failing here, at our point in the continuum where we had been safe in the lab all those hours. You changed the time line—at least one of you did. I had been thinking about it all night. If you guys fixed this thing, then what reason would the visitor have to come back and save me?”

“Paradox,” said Paul.

“Bad ass Paradox,” Kelly reinforced him at once. “But as long as I was in the void, in the Deep Nexus, I was safe. It began to dissipate when you came back through the Arch. It was then that I knew my time had come. I was feeling light headed—very strange; all thin and distended, like a vapor. I closed my eyes and, to my surprise, I woke up on a glistening metal table, surrounded in a cone of yellow light. I thought I was about to meet my maker at last, but you know who leaned in to say hello? The visitor! Damn, was I shocked.”

“You mean Graves?” Robert was catching up, his mind following in the wake of his emotion.

“Hell yes!” Kelly gave them his famous smile. “You know what he said? Get this: ‘Did you find the note in my coat?’ The guy says this and I nearly shit my pants!”

That was one thing Paul loved about Kelly. For someone with his eloquence of expression when he turned his mind to poetry, he was wonderfully common and unassuming when he was excited, and could swear with the best of them. It was the magnificent duality of the man that made him what he was. He could listen to Mozart in one ear and Pink Floyd in the other.

“It took a while for me to understand what had happened,” Kelly went on. “The Nexus was failing in our time, but they created the whole damn thing when they sent Mr. Graves back in the first place. In their time the Nexus was still holding firm. They’ve been at this a while, you see, and the equipment they have there is phenomenal. Paradox was the problem. You said it yourself, Paul: Paradox was waiting to clean up after our mischief, and I was right at the top of the list. Our friends from tomorrow knew that, however, and they pulled me out—in the nick of time, if you will.”

“But how is that possible?” Paul scratched his head. “You can’t move someone in time without getting a pattern signature on them from the tachyon infusion. There was no signature on you, Kelly. You were never even in the Arch.”

Kelly smiled. “That may be true now,” he said with a wry smile, “but there’s one other way you can pick someone up. It’s very difficult, damn near impossible, in fact. They don’t like to do it—in fact they have a rule against ever doing it, except in special emergencies like this. You have to know exactly where the person is—and I mean exactly. If you can get that as close to a certainty as possible, you can move someone. Let’s just say our friends from tomorrow have had a little more time to refine things.”

“But how would they know where you would be,” asked Robert? “Lord, they would have to target a specific place with the spatial coordinates, at precisely the right time.”

“That they did.” Kelly looked at Paul. “They had a little help in working that out.”

They all looked at him, not understanding what he meant with that. There was a great deal more he wanted to tell them, but he tried to sum up the situation quickly.

“It’s like this,” he concluded. “They were able to pull me to the safety of the Nexus on their end before it dissipated. It gave them enough time to neutralize the Paradox Reaction—Just their way of saying thanks for what we had accomplished, I suppose. They were able to stabilize me—it took several hours in their time; it was years in this Meridian.”

“You mean there was still a chance they could lose you?”

“It was a very close call,” said Kelly. “I was gone for some time. You all finished out your ceremony here and lived many…” He caught himself, suddenly afraid to say more, then nodded his head to one side, coming to a new conclusion. “What’s the harm. I was going to say you lived many long years without me in this Meridian, but that’s all changed now. They asked me if I wanted to stay with them, or go back. That was an easy choice for me, but they had to spend a long time with the issue in Outcomes and Consequences before I finally got approval for the move. If they sent me back it would revise this Meridian again, you see. So this is all new!” He raised his arms expansively, as if to take in the whole of the world about them. “And it’s all ours.”

Paul burst out laughing. “You changed the continuum?”

“Ran the numbers myself.”

“Hope you got the exponents right!” Robert could not help himself.

Maeve had been so quiet, just looking at the three of them with a broad smile on her face the whole time. She reached out and quietly took Kelly by the hand, as if to test for herself if he was real, substantial; if he was truly there.

Kelly looked at her warmly. “Something tells me I’m going to spend a long time with this hand in mine.” He gave her a reassuring squeeze.

“Well come on, people!” Nordhausen waved his hands in front of Kelly’s eyes to break the spell. “What are we standing here for? Let’s get over to Peets and we can talk the hours away over coffee. I want to hear all about this.” He stooped to recover his box. From the shallow grave, and Paul moved to get his parcel as well.

“Wait!” Kelly held up a warning hand. They looked at him, afraid that it had all been a mirage and that he would melt away into a cold fog at a moment’s notice. “Leave everything there,” Kelly whispered. The sound of a dog barked at the far end of the park, and he cocked his head to heed it, a strange look on his face. “Leave everything where it is. Let’s bury it in place and set the stone Maeve brought for the grave.”

Paul looked at him, slowly understanding. They had to know exactly where he was to pull him forward, he thought. Exactly! They saw the DVD file from the security camera. They must have excavated this grave site as part of their research on the incident. That’s why we have to leave it all here, safe and undisturbed.

“But this is all precious,” said Nordhausen. “It will be ruined.”

“Do exactly what he says,” said Paul, and he gave Kelly a knowing wink. There was only one last thing that was bothering him. As he understood things now, Kelly’s return was a round trip ticket. Once they took his pattern signature in the Tachyon infusion, the fail-safe systems would eventually reach the half-life trigger and pull him back to the future. Did they have some way of slowing down the decay sequence? “Kelly,” he whispered while Robert and Maeve began to bury the memorial tokens, “what about the final retraction sequence?”

“No pattern signature,” Kelly whispered back. “I insisted on it. This is a one way trip, Paul. They don’t have a signature on me any longer, so you’re stuck with me.”

“And Paradox?”

“Once this stone is in place I will be just fine. It’s the one thing I had to do—It’s our Pushpoint, Paul.”

They were setting the grave stone in place, smiling with the irony of it all. This planned memorial to his death would stand a guard on his life now, through all the days that remained to him. Kelly winked at Paul, excusing himself for a moment and walking to the cool green grass of the burial knoll.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” he said with a grin, dancing a little jig on his own grave. Then they all joined arms and started back along the flagstone pathway of a new life together. They were going to begin it with good strong cup of Peets coffee—Major Dickason’s Blend.

Epilogue

The Nordhausen Caper – England – November, 1919

The train reached the station at precisely 12:00 noon, and Nordhausen smiled at the legendary British sense of punctuality. It was the daily run out of London to Oxford, making its way there in a roundabout way by following the meandering line of the Thames as it curled north of Windsor. It was stopping at Reading now, near the confluence of the Kennet River and the Thames. They would hold over here for half an hour, and then turn north to cross the Berkshire Downs and come up upon Oxford from the south.

The professor had been very careful in his research this time, following every clue he could dig up on the matter that was now afoot. He was very pleased that he had been able to dress himself so well for the part he hoped to play here, a stolid English gentlemen in dark wool and pinstripes topped off with a typical derby of the period. His shoes were immaculately polished, and this time they were very well fitted. The memory of his trek across the desert in those tight leather boots still sent a twinge to his toes when he thought of it. A gold chain adorned his vest, linking smartly to the pocket watch his grandfather had given him years ago. Even though Maeve had not had the chance to subject him to her careful scrutiny before he left, he was well satisfied that there was nothing about his appearance that would arouse the slightest suspicion or undue interest. He seemed the perfect English banker, out on business, which is exactly the image he intended to project.

No, Maeve never had the chance to get her claws into me this time, he smirked to himself. In fact, no one knew he was here at all, not even the hapless graduate assistant he had press-ganged into a late shift on the mission. The lad had been given one simple task. He was to throw a switch at precisely 3:00 AM, and bother with nothing else.

It’s a pity this all has to end, he thought. There’s so much more we could learn with the technology. Why, we’ve hardly gone anywhere! That business with Lawrence and Kelly was enough to put the proverbial ‘Fear of the Lord’ into Paul’s poor heart. I don’t suppose I blame him for taking Maeve’s side in this. That was a near run thing with Kelly. I still don’t quite understand it all myself.

The project was being shut down, of course. Maeve had argued it from the very first moment when things began to settle back into normalcy after Kelly’s return. She strung out a hundred reasons why the Arch should never be used again, all well and good, but terribly disheartening to Nordhausen. He had been the Doubting Thomas up until the moment when he first plunged through the portal of the Arch. Seeing was believing, and he saw enough on that first mission to whet his appetite for more and more and more. He had opposed himself to Maeve in the long discussions over the future of the project. In time, Kelly had come round to Maeve’s side to tip the balance toward discontinuing things. Paul floated for a while, undecided, reluctant to abandon his long held theories that had been vindicated with such an amazing effect.

Eventually he came to fear the dangers involved in the technology more than he could appreciate the prospects it offered. It wasn’t that difficult to keep a lid on what they had accomplished that night. There had only been two other people at the facility when they took their stroll though the Trans-Jordan in 1917. Tom was oblivious of virtually everything that happened, for he had been down with the generators the whole time. As for Jen, she had been quietly persuaded that they should all stick to the cover story and say the project failed. Paul had a key hand in that. He finally managed to get that girl into bed!

Nordhausen smiled to think of the two of them now. Paul always did have a romantic streak in him. Thankfully, she was as impressionable as she was willing, and the secret was kept quiet. They would write some papers about it all and the investors would benefit by a few patents that would be developed from the technology. Most just shook their heads and bowed to the inward suspicion they held all along—that time travel was impossible. No one else, of course, knew anything more about it.

Still, the dire consequences and horrendous outcomes Maeve painted for them had eventually prevailed over Nordhausen’s arguments. He had tried his best to tantalize them with the prospects and potentials the Arch offered. They could have learned so much. Imagine watching Caesar crossing his Rubicon, or wandering through the great Pyramid of Giza. Imagine listening to one of Plato’s soliloquies, visiting the Parthenon in all its glory, or watching the intrepid defense of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. Imagine stealing up Mount Calvary and catching a glimpse of the crucifixion, or better yet, the resurrection! It seemed that every argument he made rebounded on him. The thought that they would muddy the waters of history and contaminate any of these crucial events was too much in the end. They had already stood witness to one resurrection, Maeve said, closing the matter.

Oddly, they still had not discovered what it was they did to reverse the Palma Event. Paul’s Pushpoint was hiding there somewhere, he thought, but no one could discern what it was.

He sighed with resignation. So much history would remain comfortably unknown, safe in the shrouding mists of time. The day he gave in on the matter was the day he hatched his little plan for one last mission—on the sly, of course. He simply had to try it one more time, no matter what the danger. He would plan things very carefully, research it all right down to his derby and shoes. He would parse out the mathematics through his graduate intern contacts. He could spread the calculations through the heads of ten to twelve different people, and no one would ever see the whole, or know what they were for. He would hire an expert to simply verify his final solution on an Arion mainframe, telling him it was all some arcane physics program. He would slip in late at night, and set it up so that he would only be gone for an hour or so. That was all the time it would take him. No one would know about it until after the fact. Then he would apologize, offer to pay for the electrical bill for a month out of his own pocket, and swear that he would never so much as think about doing something like this again.

Just for good measure, and to lessen the scourge he knew he would have to endure from Maeve as his penance, he chose something simple; something that would not upset anything. He would just go back and solve one of history’s little enigmas, that’s all. It would be a wonderful postscript to the mission he had taken with Paul, and it wouldn’t harm a flea on Mother Time’s back.

So here he was, riding in coach number seven as it rolled into Reading Station west of London on a crisp November day in 1919. He would bide his time, watching carefully from his window seat until his quarry left the train and made his way over to the ‘Refreshment Room’ for a mid-day tea and crumpet. The man would be carrying a messenger’s bag, of the sort they used to transport important papers, currency, or gold. Why his mark selected such a bag was beyond him. Surely it would be hard to overlook where he was going to leave it haphazardly under the table in the Refreshment Room. Surely it would be a severe temptation to anyone who found it.

Nordhausen planned to head for that very room in just a minute or two. He waited patiently, counting out the seconds, and then stood up with a clear resolve. He hefted the stout walking cane he had brought along, as if to test its strength for the odd use he had in mind. It was a solid piece of lacquered hickory, with a burnished brass cap. It would serve him quite well, he thought, as long as he kept a bit of guts behind it.

He would make his way into the station and take a seat in the Refreshment Room, very close to Lawrence himself. Yes, it was Lawrence he had come to see again. His presence on the train had been well documented, and Nordhausen was sure he would be here. The professor wondered whether he would still have that eerie amber glow about him now that he had fled from the heroics of his desert exploits to the relative anonymity of English Society again. Still, he would have his book with him—the manuscript, the very first draft of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. If his claim that it was lost, or stolen on this very train trip was true, Nordhausen would soon find out.

The version of the book the professor relied upon for their harrowing excursion to Kilometer 172 was actually the third draft Lawrence made of the story. The first he lost, on this very trip to Oxford. The second he destroyed himself, perhaps out of grief for what he failed to accomplish, or some hidden shame that would dog him the rest of his brief life. The third would survive to become the classic that had saved the Western World, but the first two copies of the manuscript were never found. There was no point trying to get at the second draft. The research was too hazy in that direction. But this first draft was right here on the train, in the bank messenger’s bag, and reputedly left under his table when Lawrence stopped here for a brief refreshment. Someone was going to try and make off with it, and that someone was going to feel the sharp crack of Nordhausen’s cane before the hour was through.

Lawrence would reach Oxford, and realize his bag was gone. He would place a call to the Reading Station, in the hopes that someone there would recover it. The professor thought about that for a moment. Should he turn the bag over to the Station Master? He would still be able to read it, as it would undoubtedly be published at some time. The more he considered the matter, however, the more he began to hear the snarl and growl of Paradox on the fringes of his surreptitious plan.

No, this time the threat of Paradox favored his plan. If he turned it in, then Lawrence would not have to re-write the book as he did later that year. If the story was altered, ever so slightly, then the clues which led them all to Kilometer 172 might never be there. Everything could come unraveled in that event… Everything. Maeve was really quite correct in the end. They would change things without even knowing it, just as they did at Minifir. He couldn’t take the risk, so he decided to take the bag instead. After all, it was lost and never recovered. It was probably taken by some ignorant station worker who did not have the slightest appreciation of what he was stealing, or even who his poor victim was! All he had to do was make certain Lawrence was well away on his train before he recovered it, and if someone got to it first, he had his cane.

The professor rubbed his hands in anticipation. He would see to the matter once and for all. If history could find no use for the precious draft, he would be quite happy to take it under his loving wing, and fly away.

And that is exactly what he did.

The End

Afterword

“The hardest strokes of heaven fall in history upon those who imagine that they can control things in a sovereign manner, playing providence not only for themselves but for the far future – reaching out into the future with the wrong kind of farsightedness, and gambling on a lot of risky calculations in which there must never be a single mistake.”

English Historian Sir Herbert Butterfield

“Certainty about prediction is an illusion. One thing that history keeps teaching us is that the future is full of surprises and outwits all our certitudes.”

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Time travel has always been a favorite grazing field for me. Ever since I first saw the H.G. Wells classic as a youth, and read his story, I have been fascinated with the thought that some day humans might learn to travel in time. Perhaps they will, though people like Steven Hawking, who have pondered the physics deeply, don’t seem to think it very likely, or even possible. Hawking’s argument, that we should be awash with time travelers from the future if it ever becomes possible to visit the past, was recounted through Nordhausen’s voice at the outset of the book. The time theory that was vindicated by the appearance of Mr. Graves was my answer to Hawking’s challenge.

One of two possibilities present themselves when considering this question. The first is that we don’t see time travelers from the future because they have no interest in visiting us, a solution our egos might find hard to swallow. The second is even more perplexing: we are seeing time travelers from the future, only they are the reason for the many strange UFO sightings that have occurred in recent years—not beings from another planet. Would this explain why the aliens many abductees claim to remember appear so human in form, like strangely evolved primates? I shudder to think that the entire UFO phenomenon is actually subtle tampering by future time travelers. Perhaps, as Maeve feared, a Time War is going on, and the late 20th Century became a particularly fertile field for battle. Or perhaps we are being visited, but the travelers are very clever about concealing themselves.

As the characters begin to realize in Part II – The Dreamers, this technology would be the most powerful invention ever created by human hands and minds. It would allow the owners to shape the future by altering the past, and cement their power and influence in the continuum. But, like the secret of the atomic bomb, would it not eventually leak out and be acquired by forces opposing the society that first uses it? Time War is the inevitable result. Perhaps such a conflict would lead to massive alterations in the continuum as each side searches the past for Pushpoints they can use to their own advantage. As the opposing forces undertake missions, only those protected in the Deep Nexus created at the moment of the mission would be privy to the Outcomes and Consequences of their tampering. They would become a secret society—a knowing elite, who hold the reins of fate and destiny. No one else would realize how history has changed, and it is a disquieting feeling to think that we may be living in such an altered time line at this very moment! Time may be a difficult steed to tame, however. The controllers may end up changing things without intending it or even knowing how the time line was altered.

The notion that history changes because of small and seemingly inconsequential events has been in my head for many years. While the great figures of the past have been crowned with halos in the light of history, like the amber corona that seemed to surround Lawrence when Professor Nordhausen saw him in the desert, I think that events turn at the whim of little things. I have encountered many of these little ‘quirks of fate’ in the history over the years. One event comes to mind immediately.

Just after the fall of France in WWII, the Germans were going to meet with the Spanish Minister to negotiate the possible alliance of Spain with the Axis. Such an event would have given Germany many fine posts to make their prosecution of the U-Boat wars in the Atlantic much easier. With the loss of Gibraltar, British sea power in the Mediterranean would have been severely hampered. Before the Allies even considered the Operation Torch landings in North Africa, they would have had to re-take Gibraltar. Any number of other consequences present themselves, but Spain never joined the Axis. The reason why, however, was hidden in the milieu of time that surrounded the planned meeting.

The Spanish minister was traveling by train to meet with Ribentrop, Hitler and other German negotiators. It was raining and it so happens that the roof of his car had a nasty leak, a nuisance that so discomfited him that the minister was completely irate and out of sorts when he finally reached the meeting. His anger apparently carried over to the negotiations, and he was so adamant and testy that both Hitler and Ribentrop concluded that the Spanish could not be dealt with. Spain ended up joining the Allies instead. Was it a leaky roof in a train car that had turned the hinge of fate? I like to think that it did.

In Meridian I make reference to several of these little incidents called “Pushpoints” in the lexicon of Paul Dorland’s time theory. Lawrence’s raid on the Yarmuk bridge was indeed foiled by a loose rifle strap that sent the gun clattering down the side of a cliff and gave the attackers away. Here is the actual passage as written in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence. They were just sneaking up to the abutment of the Yarmuk Bridge when…

“We reached the naked abutment, and drew ourselves forward on our faces in the shadow of its rails till we could nearly touch the grey skeleton of underhung girders, and see the single sentry leaning against the other abutment, sixty yards across the gulf. Whilst we watched, he began to move slowly up and down, up and down, before his fire, without ever setting foot on the dizzy bridge. I lay staring at him fascinated, as if planless and helpless, while Fahad shuffled back by the abutment wall where it sprang clear of the hillside.

This was no good, for I wanted to attack the girders themselves; so I crept away to bring the gelatine bearers. Before I reached them there was the loud clatter of a dropped rifle and a scrambling fall from up the bank. The sentry started and stared up at the noise. He saw, high up, in the zone of light with which the rising moon slowly made beautiful the gorge, the machine-gunners climbing down to a new position in the receding shadow. He challenged loudly, then lifted his rifle and fired, while yelling the guard out.

Instantly all was complete confusion.”

Similarly, the story about the disobedient platoon of Turkish soldiers and their chickens in the Sinai is also a documented incident. In Meridian the Pushpoint was hiding in the exploder box Lawrence planted by the small bush to ignite his charges. The inadvertent stumble of the Arab who went forward to see what had happened to Nordhausen caused the box to fail.

Finding these seemingly insignificant triggers in time can prove a daunting task. This is why historians, and time researchers, will be the chief strategists of any future Time War. They must find that loose cartwheel, errant bit of twine or some other pebble in the shoe of the great movers and shakers of historical events. The question of whether time will resist such changes, and demonstrate a certain resilience in spite of human tampering, is open. For example, as Paul Dorland realized at the outset, it might be very easy to delay the departure of the Virginia Colony fleet from Plymouth and, by so doing, prevent the fleet from being scattered in the storm. There would have been no shipwreck on Bermuda, and no Bermuda Pamphlets. But would this have meant that Shakespeare never writes the Tempest? Would the inspiration for the play come to him in some other way?

As a last brief note I wanted to recount the incident at Kilometer 172 as written by T.E. Lawrence himself. In my story, I began by using my “poetic license” to change the event so that the second train was the one blown up in the world Nordhausen and Dorland live in. Their labors aimed at sparing the second train and seeking the destruction of train three instead. (This is, as you will see, the actual history of that event, as recounted below in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence.)

“I could not hear the train coming, but trusted, and knelt ready for perhaps half an hour, when the suspense became intolerable, and I signaled to know what was up. They sent down to say it was coming very slowly, and was an enormously long train. Our appetites stiffened. The longer it was the more would be the loot. Then came word that it had stopped. It moved again.

Finally, near one o’clock, I heard it panting. The locomotive was evidently defective (all these wood-fired trains were bad), and the heavy load on the up-gradient was proving too much for its capacity. I crouched behind my bush, while it crawled slowly into view past the south cutting, and along the bank above my head towards the culvert. The first ten trucks were open trucks, crowded with troops. However once again it was too late to choose, so when the engine was squarely over the mine I pushed down the handle of the exploder. Nothing happened. I sawed it up and down four times.

Still nothing happened; and I realized that it had gone out of order, and that I was kneeling on a naked bank, with a Turkish troop train crawling past fifty yards away. The bush, which had seemed a foot high, shrank smaller than a fig-leaf; and I felt myself the most distinct object in the country-side. Behind me was an open valley for two hundred yards to the cover where my Arabs were waiting and wondering what I was at. It was impossible to make a bolt for it, or the Turks would step off the train and finish us. If I sat still, there might be just a hope of my being ignored as a casual Bedouin.

So there I sat, counting for sheer life, while eighteen open trucks, three box-wagons, and three officers’ coaches dragged by. The engine panted slower and slower, and I thought every moment that it would break down. The troops took no great notice of me, but the officers were interested, and came out to the little platforms at the ends of their carriages, pointing and staring. I waved back at them, grinning nervously, and feeling an improbable shepherd in my Meccan dress, with its twisted golden circlet about my head.”

This was the train commanded by my Turkish Colonel, and the train that almost carried Paul Dorland into the heart of the moment at Kilometer 172. So, as the history reads today, it was indeed a little quirk of fate that saved train number two. Lawrence fixed his exploder box, waited for the third train, and blew that one up instead. While the characters never really find out how their tampering worked its magic on the time line, I can let you all in on a little secret. Masaui was on train two, and he was meant to die in the raid. In fact, the Colonel was just about to tick off his name on a list for some uncomfortable scrutiny that would end up in his being posted to the forward train cars—the most undesirable place on the train when considering the prospect of ambush. Paul’s capture interrupted the Colonel, and Masaui stayed where he was, on train car number seven. When the train was spared he went on to lead an insignificant life, surviving the war and leaving behind three children—two boys and a girl.

Years later that girl caught the eye of the man who was to father the novel’s unseen villain Ra’id Husan al Din. This man was so taken with the beauty of the girl that he married her—instead of the woman who gave birth to our villain. And so, dear readers, the dastardly terrorist, who’s name meant “Sword of the Faith,” was never born. I thought it only fitting to let Time give us one small jab in the ribs with the minor earthquake that happened on the island instead of the catastrophic Palma Event. The West was spared to live out the time line we find ourselves in now.

According to Dr. Simon Day, however, the western flank of the volcano on Palma is indeed weakening and is destined to collapse into the sea one day. When that might happen is anybody’s guess, but it is only a matter of time. As groups like Al Qaeda, the Foundation, escalate their attacks to a grand scale, dire warnings are appearing on the Internet, and infusing all mainstream media in our current time line. One has only to scroll through the news channels or browse the Internet to find them. Beyond the ‘newsworthy’ saturation coverage of sniper attacks, car bombs, attacks on oil tankers, embassies and army barracks, we get even more ominous chatter. At the heart of the Islamic threat is a real insistence that they are enacting the divine will of Allah—a retribution against those who do not embrace that faith.

As an example, I found a proclamation that was eerily in sync with my story posted on the net. The terrorist statement read by the BBC announcer in the scene where Mr. Graves reveals the plot by Husan al Din was pulled right from the flotsam and jetsam of an Internet newsgroup. It was a warning sent to the “alt.prophecies.nostradamus” newsgroup, and it was quoted verbatim in my story.

“We are patient, forgiving. We are seekers only of peace, but as Allah chooses, then the command is given for the seas to rise and pound the shore. We are but an instrument, to that power. As the oceans are made up of an uncountable number of individual drops of serene waters, when Allah commands, those drops come together to form the most powerful force on earth, the ocean of Believers, who’s waves of faith become the hammer upon which justice is delivered to all followers of Satan.”

This mentality, using religion as a shield to justify one’s acts of cruelty and murder, is all too common to the mindset of any radical group. It is hardly unique to the Islamic radicals. Let us not forget the numerous Crusades sanctioned by Catholic Popes, and the slaughter of innocents in those campaigns, where Muslim women and children were literally boiled and eaten by some of the starving warriors of the Christian faith. It seems that every major religion has used this “sinners in the hands of an angry God” motif at one time or another to justify inhuman deeds. In my story, the clash of cultures and world views between Islam and the West are simply the latest iteration of that old demon called “Holy War” by some men and “Just War” by others.

In Meridian, it becomes “Time War” when the mission to the Hejaz in 1917 stands as the first use of time travel technology to alter or render null the willful and catastrophic act of a terrorist group. While the primary team members labored to keep the outcome secret, the long years stretching into the future will give ample opportunity for later generations to discover what actually happened. Suppose some dissenting group in that time objects, and uses the resurrected technology of the Arch to try and change the Meridian again?

Sequels In the Meridian Series

This idea of “Time War” is developed further in future volumes of the Meridian series. The first sequel, entitled “Nexus Point,” focuses on Paul Dorland as he makes an unusual discovery in Wadi Rumm, the marvelous valley where the movie Lawrence of Arabia was filmed near Akaba. Paul stumbles into something that reveals this Time War is now actually underway, and the milieu of the Crusades has become a particularly fertile battleground for two shadowy groups from the future who seek to bend the lines of fate in their favor. A second volume, “Touchstone,” is written from the perspective of Nordhausen. It will begin with another of the Professor’s secret little “capers,” a trip to old London about the time of the Sherlock Holmes milieu. When he visits the British Museum to see the now famous “Rosetta Stone” he discovers that the stone has been chipped and damaged. The portion of the vast black basalt that once held the Egyptian hieroglyphics is gone! As a consequence, no one ever made the connection this touchstone is famous for, and the Egyptian hieroglyphs remain a mystery… except to Nordhausen. He returns to the present at Berkeley Labs and discovers that he, and he alone, can read and understand the cryptic Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Beset with remorse, Nordhausen confesses his caper to Paul. He is afraid that he’s done something to change the Time Meridian, but cannot imagine what. When someone tampers with the memorial site protecting Kelly’s place in this Meridian, however, Paul becomes suspicious. It could only have been accomplished by an unseen adversary from the future. In the words of Nordhausen’s favorite literary sleuth Sherlock Holmes, “something is afoot!” Now the professor, Paul and the other team members must labor to discover who has tampered with the time line, and why.

Lots of fun ahead for Meridian fans!

Please visit www.dharma6.com or www.writingshop.ws for information on the sequel to this novel, and other work by the author.

John Schettler

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the poets, thinkers, historical figures and writers for their pointed words of wisdom used in the quotations that lead the major sections of this story. Their words are all properly attributed in the references or in the narrative if spoken by any of the characters in the novel for added emphasis.

Gracious thanks to T.E. Lawrence, not only for the courage of his exploits in the desert, but also for the integrity of his heart, and the marvelous accounting he wrote for us three times in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Lawrence was one of the first believers in “self published” books. He started his own little publishing concern to build his ‘seven pillared worthy house,’ and put the story in book form for future generations. Indeed, my eyes were shining when I first read that wonderful book.

Thanks also to Richard Gylgayton for his tireless editorial wisdom, and the segment of poetry quoted by Maeve from Kelly’s book at the memorial service that ends this novel. Kelly’s character was actually inspired by Richard, my long time friend and writing associate, and yes, he has published a book of poetry! You can read the entire poem, along with all of Richard’s other fine poetry in his recently released volume entitled “Full Canvas.” Available on amazon.com.

TIME GLOSSARY

From Dorland’s Theory

CLARITY – Clear or good understanding of a temporal locus, pattern, event, Outcome or Consequence.

CONSEQUENCE – An undesired result achieved by a temporal Transformation – Usually referring to the negative (ie) Sometimes certain Consequences must be accepted in order to achieve a desired Outcome.

CONVOLUTION – The relative difficulty or complexity of a given temporal event or condition.

DEEP NEXUS – Sometimes called a “Void” – A crucial, significant Nexus Point where radical alteration of the time line is possible.

DENSITY – A relative term describing factor counts in temporal events.

FACTOR – An element contributing to convolution in temporal events.

FINALITY – A catastrophic Grand Imperative (like the Cuthulu asteroid strike that led to the eradication of the dinosaurs and other life.)

FREE RADICAL – A dangerous, erratic variable in the course of temporal events – usually only existing within a Deep Nexus.

GREAT VOID – An interminable shadow or Penumbra cast by a Grand Imperative.

HAZE – Obscurity in the understanding of a temporal situation or event.

IMPERATIVE – An event in time which must happen – Usually a natural event. A Grand Imperative is a natural event of special significance. Some Grand Imperatives can become a Finality.

INEVITABILITY – A progression of events that is inexorable and unalterable.

INITIATOR – A person directly responsible for a new time Meridian (Like Mohammed, or Christ). A Prime Mover of great significance.

LEVER – A secondary contributor to movement in a series of events.

MERIDIAN – An established line of temporal events on the continuum.

NEXUS POINT – A point of connection, intersection or branching of one or more Meridians in the time continuum.

NODE – A specific point on a time Meridian.

OUTCOME – A desired result achieved by a temporal Transformation – Usually referring to the positive.

PARADOX – Time’s way of correcting errors in the time continuum. Paradox is a real force, and quite dangerous. It kills or erases people and objects from the time line when unaccountable complications arise from their actions. A Paradox is NOT simply a thorny problem, it is a real effect and force of annihilation. A kind of “Anti-Time”

PENUMBRA – The shadow of influence on future events cast by an Imperative.

POINT OF ORIGIN – The temporal locus where a person or object becomes a Prime Mover.

PRIME MOVER – A primary causative lever or agent for an event – usually a person but sometimes an object.

PUSH POINT – A moment of insignificance that gives rise to a key event on a time Meridian. Often associated with a Prime Mover.

RADICAL TRANSFORMATION – A catastrophic alteration of the Temporal Condition.

TEMPORAL CONDITION – The matrix, pattern or state of affairs in a given time period.

TRANSFORMATION – Any change in a time Meridian that alters a future Temporal Condition.

TRANSFORMER – A person who causes a Transformation.

VARIATION – A subtle change in a time Meridian that does not significantly alter Temporal Conditions.

WILLFUL EVENT – Events resulting from decisions or actions taken by human beings.

The Writing Shop Press

The Writing Shop is a confederation of writers, poets and artists who are delighted to take advantage of the wonders of digital printing technology to offer their creative work to others.

Have you written a book that you simply must see through to printer’s ink? Please visit us at www.writingshop.ws and learn about our services for new authors.

Novels by John Schettler:

Meridian – A Novel In Time

ForeWord Magazine’s Silver Medal Winner

For Science Fiction Book Of The Year

2002

Nexus Point – Book II in the Meridian Series

Science Fiction

2003

Touchstone – Book III in the Meridian Series

Science Fiction – Featuring Mark Prost aka “Nordhausen”

with John Schettler

2009

Other Books By John Schettler:

Taklamakan – The Land Of No Return

A Novel of the Silk Road

Historical Fiction

2001

Steamboat Slough

A Psychological Mystery Thriller

2004

Wild Zone

Book I in the Dharman Series

Science Fiction – With Richard Gylgayton.

2002

Mother Heart

Book II in the Dharman Series

Science Fiction

Coming Soon!

For availability and orders please visit:

www.writingshop.ws – or – www.dharma6.com

AWARDS & RECOGNITION FOR MERIDIAN

ForeWord Magazine’s

SILVER MEDAL WINNER

For Science Fiction

“Book of the Year”

2002

&

“Honorable Mention”

Writer’s Digest

Genre Fiction

“Book of the Year”

2002

Rated 9.5 out of 10

WRITER’S DIGEST REVIEW OF MERIDIAN:

“The ending is both believable and satisfying, and the writing is top-notch. This is a nine and a half on a scale of ten. It should have been snapped up by a commercial publisher.”

“A striking cover and excellent production values make this a book one would pick off a rack. That would be a rewarding move, for Meridian is a science fiction novel combining history, quantum theory, and time travel in a highly intriguing manner. The author has a firm grasp of concepts here, and his understanding of the potential danger of travel into the past is finely tuned. The team of scientists involved in developing the Arch, their device for moving through time, is composed of interesting people who seem very real and compelling.

The plot is more than complex, yet he keeps it very clear to the reader. The return through time of a man from the future comes at a point when a mega tsunami, caused by the collapse of a wall of a volcano in the Canary Islands, is on its way toward the U.S. His enigmatic message, that they alone can avert the disaster through returning to 1917 and changing a small detail in the career of T.E. Lawrence, sets the team on a perilous course.”

Writer’s Digest: “Book of the Year” Contest

Judge’s official review and commentary

Copyright Notice

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Meridian, Copyright©2002, John A. Schettler

All Rights Reserved

No part of this file may be duplicated, distributed, stored in any medium, or sold without expressed, written permission by the author.

ISBN: 0-9713170-1-1

John Schettler – john@writingshop.ws

A publication of:

The Writing Shop Press

www.writingshop.ws

Rev: 07/03

Content

John Schettler
MERIDIAN
A NOVEL IN TIME

Part I The Tempest

1

2

3

Part II The Dreamers

4

5

6

Part III The Arch

7

8

9

Part IV K-T Excursion

10

11

12

Part V The Desert

13

14

15

Part VI Chance Meetings

16

17

18

Part VII The Least of Things

19

20

21

Part VIII Pushpoint

22

23

24

Part IX Retraction

25

26

27

Part X Outcomes & Consequences

28

29

30

Epilogue

Afterword

Acknowledgements

TIME GLOSSARY From Dorland’s Theory

The Writing Shop Press

Novels by John Schettler:

Other Books By John Schettler:

AWARDS & RECOGNITION FOR MERIDIAN

WRITER’S DIGEST REVIEW OF MERIDIAN:

Copyright Notice