John Schettler

NEXUS POINT

A NOVEL IN TIME

An Angel Falls on Palestine

“Fare well, Do-Rahlan. Wither you have gone I cannot say.

It is my hope that your soul will be held fast in the hands of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

I have taken that which you left me—the mighty King, and marked the place where I was reading. I will hide it well, my friend, and keep fast the memory of your coming.

Remember me as one who looked with shining eyes upon thy holy face, and, should Allah smile with thee, live long in the Paradise that awaits you.”

Author Unknown

Translated from the Arabic

1187 AD

Prologue

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.

In spite of all his research and careful preparations, however, Nordhausen was a bit worried. It occurred to him that, behind all his rationalizations, he still entertained a hint of misgiving about this trip. He had wrestled with the matter internally for some time, and he knew it was risky to go off on a time jaunt without authorization. That last mission to the desert had been enough to convince him that Paul’s theory was correct. Changes in time hinged on the simplest of things: loose knots, a casual stumble, a chance meeting, something inadvertently dropped, or lost, or found. All one had to do was find these things in the research—a task that could take years, depending on the complexity of the situation. The number of potential variables was enormous! How could anyone ever hope to uncover just the right pinprick of time? It was an intimidating proposition.

The research went something like this: once you determine the thing you want to change you must then isolate all the key Meridians flowing into that Nexus Point of time and determine which one offered the best prospects for success. Any solution you devise might cause some alteration in the stream of causality, yet the change may not be the one needed to accomplish your purpose. Time had a way of accounting for small errors and deviations, like a meandering stream that eventually found its way back into the main channel.

It all seemed an impossible game of hit and miss to him, until Paul convinced him that somewhere, lost on a single wayward thread of time, a moment existed that was mated to every great event on the continuum, a whisper of inconsequential absurdity that was forever paired to the great conquerors of history, like the slaves who would ride with Ceasar in his triumph to remind him that all glory was fleeting.

The trick was finding the correct moment to alter, and the surprise was that it would never be something big, something obvious. Try to stop an asteroid from striking the earth on the day of the event and no amount of force applied at that moment might be enough to do the job. But get to it while it is far enough away, and it would only take the slightest nudge to divert its course and save the world. Try swatting aside the rifle of an assassin at the moment before he shoots, and time would find a way to frustrate your every attempt. But let the air out of the tire of his car three weeks before the day of the shooting, and all history will change.

You had to feel your way along the Meridians, groping for those little moments of insignificance that would have the right effect. Who would have thought that a disaster on the scale of Palma in 2010 could have been reversed by a train wreck in the Jordanian desert of 1917? How could one make a connection of cause and effect from such disjointed events? The research could take years. He knew now that they could never have finished that first mission without the timely help of their visitor from the future, and the subtle clues he left behind.

Yet, what a mission it was! They had set out to save the Western World from Ra’id Husan al Din, a man so bent on his war against the “Infidel” that he would sacrifice the lives of tens of millions of innocent people in a single moment of terror. It was not a symbolic stroke, as his forerunner Osama Bin Ladin had made in his September attack against the World Trade Center. No, Husan al’ Din came up with something truly awesome in scope. By comparison, it made the 9/11 attack seem like the barest foreshock to the real catastrophe that lay in store for the West: on the night before Memorial Day of the year 2010.

Husan and his operatives had finally acquired their weapon of mass destruction—a warhead of sufficient power and yield to serve in the incredible plan they had spawned. It was inevitable that someone would eventually get their hands on a nuke, but the genius of the plan led to consequences far beyond the destruction of a single city. The device was buried deep in the unstable western flank of the volcano that made up the bulk of the Island of Palma. When it went off, it super-heated huge pillars of standing water that had percolated down into old lava tubes in the side of the mountain. As the water expanded, driven by the fierce explosive venting of an eruption triggered by the blast, the flank of the volcano gave way and a massive landslide rumbled into the ocean a little after midnight, GMT. The resulting tsunami was unlike anything ever seen in modern history. It surged across the Atlantic, promising to swell up in immense waves topping three hundred feet by the time it struck the Eastern Seaboard. There was no ground on Manhattan island that high, and the loss of life would have been unthinkable in that city alone. The whole of the western shoreline of the US was doomed to share the same fate, but it never happened, and Nordhausen could still not figure out why.

The wave sequence was supposed to take over eight hours to cross the Atlantic and, in that brief interval of time, Paul Dorland’s theory had been proven correct. Someone came back on that storm drenched night and made it to the final briefing at the professor’s study. He carried an urgent message and an appeal for help. It would all work, he told them. Time travel was possible! Researchers from his own time had been trying to forestall the terror of Husan al Din for years, but they could not get back far enough on the Meridian.

From their vantage point, in some far distant future, they had discovered that the only way to save their world was to prevent the birth of the master terrorist himself. It was the key to preventing the Palma Event, a Radical Transformation according to Paul’s lexicon. Yet, try as they might, the team of future researchers who had built upon Paul’s unproven theory were foiled by another of his maxims: that great events cast a penumbra on the continuum, a time shadow that slowly calcified until it became impossible to penetrate

The interference of the Time Penumbra cast by the Palma Event had stopped every attempt the future researchers made to prevent it. They could not get through to the target year in the past but, somehow, they managed to send one man into the eye of the storm—into that calm interval between the eruption of Palma, and the arrival of the first towering wave sets on the East Coast of the United States. It was not the eruption, but the tsunami that caused the real damage. The eight hour interval was a Nexus Point, a place where time was holding it’s breath before it exhaled to some new certainty.

If someone could get back to that null point in time, they could try and help the team of researchers meeting in Nordhausen’s study find a way to use their own technology and complete the mission. Even that effort had been a chancy affair. Many died trying to penetrate the penumbra but, finally, one got through. It was a rough ride, however, and the visitor missed his mark by a full seven years. Nordhausen empathized, for he had found himself lost in the Cretaceous because of a single keystroke error that Kelly made with his calculations.

Poor Mr. Graves. He had arrived before the Arch project had even been initiated by Paul and the other team members. All he could think of doing was to find a safe place, sheltered from the mainstream of life, and wait out the days and years until the Nexus Point formed where he could do some good. The professor thought his decision to hide away in a monastery had been quite novel. He could fit himself into a routine, say virtually nothing, and minimize any chance of contamination. Nordhausen wondered how he occupied his mind for those seven long years until he could reach the hour when it would become possible to make his intervention count.

In the year 2010, Nordhausen’s time, there would be a fully functional Arch available at Lawrence Berkeley Labs. The darkening shadow of the Palma Event could not impede a traveler who left before the great tsunami had wreaked havoc on the Eastern Seaboard. That was the plan.

It seemed simple enough but, like all things that have simple beginnings, it quickly developed a momentum of its own. The first thing to be accomplished was to prevent the untimely death of one of the four central committee members, Kelly Ramer. He had been destined to die in a simple accident as he hurried to the meeting on the rain slick streets of the Bay area that night. A moment’s delay, a few seconds when a man in a gray coat stepped in front of his car, had been enough to prevent the unfortunate rendezvous and accomplish the task. Kelly was that same few seconds late to his intersection with death, and his life was spared when the traffic accident that was to kill him never happened.

That first intervention was the lever that would move all the other research team members: Paul Dorland, Chief Physicist and Theoretician; Maeve Lindford, the head of Outcomes and Consequences; Kelly Ramer, the Senior Computer Technician, and Professor Nordhausen himself, Chief Historian. They would be galvanized into action, flush with the knowledge that their experiment would work after all. Their original plan, a modest proposal to visit a performance of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in the year 1612 was soon shunted aside. The future of the whole Western World was calling now, with an urgent appeal. They had to go back and finish the mission, back to find a way to prevent the birth of the terrorist Husan al Din—but how? Kelly’s life was spared, and the clues that had been left on a note in a raincoat from the future, had been enough to set their course.

Nordhausen took some small satisfaction in the fact that he was the one who first deciphered the meaning of the visitor’s note. It was just a series of numbers that he took to be a date. 11101917-K172 became November 10, 1917, and the alphanumeric after the hyphen turned out to be an exact location on the Hejaz rail line: Kilometer 172. They had a time and a place, but the real problem was to find just what they had to accomplish if they could reach that crucial moment in time. As it turned out, that location was the scene of an ambush staged by one Lawrence of Arabia on that very day. He was planning to blow up a train to raise the fallen spirits of his men after their primary mission, a plan to destroy a bridge, had been foiled by a loose strap that sent a rifle clattering into the stony gorge to alert the Turks.

That was a perfect example of the theory. Tighten that gun strap and Lawrence goes for the bridge. He never comes to Kilometer 172 on November 10th, and a man named Masaui, fated to die in the raid, lives on instead. Somehow, that single life could change history and prevent Palma. That loose gun strap was going to change everything, and Lawrence’s ambush would end up destroying the entire Eastern Seaboard of North America.

Lawrence of Arabia! Nordhausen smiled to himself as he recalled the eerie glow he had seen about the man that last morning of the mission. He had come within a few yards of a Prime Mover, one of history’s most colorful and yet enigmatic figures. There he was, silhouetted against the slate gray dawn on a miserable wet morning, and all Nordhausen could do was gape helplessly at the man in shivering silence.

It was forbidden, of course, to have any interaction with a Prime Mover. Maeve Lindford had beat that tenet into his head a hundred times before the mission. She had been verbally fencing with Nordhausen the night before they left, dead set on preventing him from doing any real research if the project worked… well it did work. They went back alright, but Nordhausen would be damned if he could think of a single thing he had accomplished to change the history. Paul swore the same. Neither man could put their finger on anything they did to unhinge the ambush the Arabs had planned at Kilometer 172. Yet they clearly did something, stumbling about in the cold and rain, confused, tired and bewildered by the experience of traveling in time. Some tiny, insignificant event was set in motion, or prevented, by one of them. Yet they could not discern what the "Pushpoint," as Paul called it, was.

Time moved on the whisper of nothingness, on the careless whim of a humdrum second or two that no one would give the scarcest notice. He always thought it would be great men, Prime Movers all, who would forge the shape of future days. Instead it was poppycock, happenstance, odd coincidence, chance moments in the stream of time. These were the things that carried the seeds of tomorrow.

They knew they had to alter Lawrence’s mission, but how? Where was the Pushpoint? Was it the wire leading to his igniter? Faulty charges in the gelatine? Did the Turkish colonel happen upon something when he searched the railroad tracks? Could he have crushed the Pushpoint under foot as casually as he might step upon a fallen cigarette butt, grinding it into the gravel of the rail bed? Whatever it was, they had been successful. The moment they returned Maeve read them the passage in Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and it had changed. Nordhausen had used the book to help them discover the crucial meeting point on the Hejaz rail line where all of future time was waiting to be born. If it were not for that wonderful book…

Thoughts of the Seven Pillars, and the three separate drafts Lawrence had penned, shook Nordhausen from his reverie. Lawrence’s detailed written account of his exploits in the desert had proved a saving grace. It had served as a road map for them on the first trip, and now it was the firm object of Nordhausen’s desire on this second trip.

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 glow about him now that he had fled from the heroics of his desert to the relative anonymity of the English countryside. Still, he would have his book with him—the manuscript, the very first draft of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Lawrence claimed it was stolen on this train trip, and Nordhausen would soon find out if that was true.

The version of the book the professor relied upon for their first excursion to the desert 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—unless the professor could get to the bag first.

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.

Would Time punish him for this little transgression? No, he thought, this time the threat of Paradox favored his plan. If he turned the manuscript 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 their rendezvous in the desert, 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 Kilometer 172. 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.

Still, the feeling of uncertainty redoubled. The manuscript had not been recovered—not yet, but thousands of artifacts and art treasures of his day had been lost for millennia before they were finally found. What if someone was slated to find the manuscript in another hundred years? What if the find was to prove a very significant event in the life of that unborn person? Nordhausen realized that even this seemingly innocuous trip may have unforeseen consequences for future generations.

What might he do this time, and without even knowing it? He could return and find everything changed; everyone gone; lives askew and no one even realizing that the present they embraced was not meant to be; that it was all the heedless doings of a selfish man who refused to listen to the voice of caution. The misgivings spawned by Maeve’s warnings were riding him with each mile and dogging every step he took. What if he botched the mission? What if he bumped into Lawrence again at Reading Station? What if there was a struggle for the manuscript with the original thief? The prospect that he might be involved in a scuffle was not so palatable now, in spite of his sturdy cane. The more he thought, the deeper his misgivings became, but there was only one thing to do now that he was here. Get on with it! Get the damn manuscript and head home, with as little fuss and bother as possible. He would just have to suffer the consequences, whatever they might be.

Nordhausen steadied himself as the train approached the station and people began to jostle up from their seats. He was still a bit bemused by the effects of his time shift. Yes, he knew it was dangerous to open one’s eyes during transit time in the Arch, but he could not resist. The spectacle was so completely encompassing that it was worth the dizzying nausea that resulted. What would one endure, he thought, to but glimpse the face of God? Maeve did not know. She had stayed behind in the lab on the first mission. She never saw it, and Nordhausen knew that she would never understand until she stood there in the auroras and opened her eyes. There was no explaining it. You just had to open your eyes and take it in.

Perhaps he would not hear her chiding voice so sharply if she came along, just one time, and felt the exhilaration of that terrible moment in the stream of infinity. But Nordhausen was alone in this now. Nobody knew he was here—not even the simpleton of a graduate student he had press-ganged into a long night shift in the main lab facility. All the lout had to do was toggle a switch at precisely three AM; just a few hours of idle time in the lab, but eight hours for Nordhausen on his trip to England in the year 1919.

The train whistle blew its shrill warning as it slowed to enter Reading Station. 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.

He accomplished his mission, and was greatly relieved to find that nothing seemed amiss when he finally returned to the Lab. The dutiful grad student he had secreted into the facility had done his job. He toggled the switch that set Nordhausen’s retraction scheme running, and the professor was pulled back through the open gateway in Time to reappear in the Arch. In spite of the temptation to look, he made a point of keeping his eyes clenched shut this time through, to minimize the effects of the shift. As soon as his senses were clear he raced up stairs to cover his tracks in the data module. A few deletions here and there would do the job. He sent the grad student on his way with a nice monetary treat so he could enjoy the rest of the holiday weekend.

Three hours after his safe retraction he was back in his study in Berkeley, gleefully paging through Lawrence’s handwritten notes. He would celebrate Independence Day by recounting Lawrence’s efforts to bring exactly that to his Arab friends.

It had all been so easy, he thought. So painless. All of his misgivings had been for naught—aside from the hefty deposit he would have to make to cover the added electricity usage that weekend. No matter. It would be well worth it. He didn’t even have to bother with the original thief! The bag was just sitting there unattended.

Nordhausen was very pleased with himself, but he would have had a lot to think about if he had seen what actually happened after he left Reading Station. If he had seen the dusky stranger shuffle into the refreshment room, he might have thought it odd how the man singled out one isolated table in the corner and stooped to look beneath it, as though he expected to find something there. He might have been surprised at the look on the fellow’s face when the bag he expected to find was not sitting there. He might have wondered at the curse the man uttered beneath his breath, in a strange and unfamiliar tongue, and the odd way in which he surveilled the room, his eyes laden with hostility and suspicion. There was no one else there for him to blame. Nordhausen was already ninety-one years away, with a glass of good Chianti in his right hand and a self-indulgent gleam of satisfaction in his eye.

Part I

The Ammonite

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

1984 – George Orwell

1

The helo swooped low, its turbine engines whining with the descent as it made its way along the crest of a jagged ridge of weathered rock. All about them the desert was broken by fantastic shelves of striated stone erupting from a barren plain. The sun cast an amber hue on the red and black stone as they circled, painting the landscape in dark shades of scarlet and orange.

“How you got permission for this is beyond me.” Paul Dorland was seated in the comfortable back seat of the helo next to Professor Nordhausen, his long time friend and associate.

“It wasn’t easy,” said the professor over the noise of the engine. “The Jordanian government isn’t very fond of Americans these days—not after the mess we created in the region with that business in Iraq. It took some doing, Paul, but I pulled on a few favors I was owed by associates in the Middle Eastern Archeological Society. They have digs going on out here all the time: the Buller excavations at Aliba, the resources project out at Kerak, the Madaba Plains outfit near Tel Jalul—just to name a few. I convinced them to slip one more permit through the system, that’s all. If you want to get anything done in this world you never make much fuss about it. Just be as inconspicuous as possible. “

“And the helicopter?” Paul tightened his grip on the arm rest as the chopper swirled about, low to the ground now for its landing.

“Money talks, my friend.” Nordhausen smiled at him. “Particularly out here in the middle of nowhere. I rented this rig for one thousand dollars. It belongs to an independent oil drilling concern about fifty klicks east of here in the volcanic flats region.“

Paul nodded, as he ran a long fingered hand through his medium brown hair. The professor had enlisted him in this safari over a month ago, saying that it would be a good excuse for him to get out of the office and see a bit of the world. Paul had seen quite enough, but he was only too glad to join his comrade. He secretly loved the desert climes, and had looked forward to getting decked out in his khaki explorer clothing, complete with a floppy canvas archeologist hat that sat on his lap while he struggled to force some order on his hair.

Nordhausen smiled at him. “Why do you bother to try and comb that mop?” he asked with a hint of a tease in his voice. “You need a haircut.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Paul. Nordhausen had lost his battle against a steadily receding hairline long ago. Paul still rinsed out the emerging gray and tried to keep some sense of order on the top of his head. In this instance, he gave up, and put his canvas hat back on in disgust.

“You say you have people working out here in this heat?”

“Three interns,” said Nordhausen. “It’s a wonderful way to get some experience. Many students would jump at the opportunity. “

“But how did you arrange the passports, travel expenses and visas?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Paul. You act as though no one ever does anything but sit at home and watch TV. Jordan issues at least a thousand reciprocal student visas through the university. You hire them, tell them where they’re going, buy them a plane ticket and they do all the rest. It’s really quite simple.”

Paul nodded, turning his gaze to the rocky desert floor beneath them. They were hovering in a gentle downward glide, and soon the downdraft of the chopper began to kick up dust and debris.

“There!” Nordhausen leaned across Paul to point out his window. “See the campsite?”

“I don’t remember it looking like this,” said Paul.

“Of course not. There’s been plenty of erosion in these landforms over the years. You won’t recognize anything, but believe me, this is the place. I got the numbers from Kelly’s data run on the first breaching point. This was the only hill within walking distance, so I put my people in here with some nifty ground penetrating radar, and they found it!” The professor rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

The helicopter landed with a gentle thump, its bright silver blades whipping up a cloud of reddish dust. The pilot, an Arabic man, turned and flashed the two men a toothy smile from under the headset of his flight helmet.

“Wait for us,” Nordhausen yelled over the deafening noise. “We won’t be long.”

The pilot indicated thumbs up and the professor unlatched his door. “Come on!” He yelled at Paul over the swirling din.

The two men leapt out, hunching low to evade the rotating blades as they gradually slowed. Once they were away from the helo they saw three shadows emerge from the sheen of dust. The interns were out to welcome them, two young men and a woman, all of college age and decked out in khaki shorts and pith helmets.

“Greetings, professor!” The woman was the first to speak, brown ponytails tossing about under her helmet as she ran up.

“Good day, Janice. How are things going?”

“Everything is fine here, sir. “

The two men came up and there were introductions all around. “Paul Dorland,” said the professor as he draped his arm over Paul’s shoulder. “He was with me when we found the damn thing. Paul, this is Bill here with the good looks and that’s Bob with all the muscle. Now then: we haven’t much time. I’ve only got this bird for another six hours, and we have a long way to go yet. Is everything ready?”

“We have it isolated and mounted on a sturdy pallet,” said Janice.

“Was the extraction difficult? Is it well protected?”

“Came out with no trouble at all,” said Bill. “We used acetone to strengthen the tendril areas, and got a good plaster on the main segment. The moorings and cables are all in place. All we have to do is hitch everything up.”

Nordhausen clapped his hands together. “Fantastic! Let’s get started. I’ll help you two with the cables. Janice, why don’t you show Paul the dig site. I’m sure he’ll have a few fond memories.”

They started away from the helo, off through the subsiding dust until they came to the low edge of a shelving ridge. The site was very clean, well marked with stakes and string, and cleared of all the broken desert stone that had been eroding from the shale and basalt landforms for centuries. Paul saw the bundled pallet with thick mooring cables attached to the corners as the other men began dragging the lines toward the undercarriage of the helo. He was only vaguely aware of the woman trailing in his wake. She was saying something about the dig site and the weather, but Paul wasn’t listening. An inner eye was replaying scenes in his head now as he scanned the landforms about him, and he had a prickly sensation of déjà vu.

It was here, he thought. I was here…

The recollection of the swelling billows of smoke and soot in the sky returned to him. He could almost smell the sulfur in the air and hear the cold crunch of his footfalls on the iridium laced ground gravel when they climbed the ridge, sixty-five million years ago. They were the first men to travel in time, but an error in the calculation had sent them careening into the deeps of the later Cretaceous, millions of years off their target date. In spite of that, the spatial numbers had been dead on target. They were supposed to land in the desert of old Palestine, now modern day Jordan, but when they arrived they found themselves marooned on the volcanic debris of a recently reclaimed seabed—right smack on the KT boundary, the line that marked the end of the Cretaceous and the doom of the Dinosaurs.

It was here.

They had struggled up the hill, straining to find any clue to identify their location. Nordhausen was stooping to collect odd fragments of glittering quartz and dead fern fronds. It did not take them long to realize the error. The discovery of a near perfect Ammonite fossil in the side of the hill had been the last deciding clue. They were lost in time.

Paul stared at the gaping hole in the ground neatly marked by string and small wooden stakes. Nordhausen had been talking about this project for months after their mission. He called it his consolation prize and urged Paul to come with him to recover the fossil. How he planned to get it through customs was a matter Paul never had a chance to discuss with him. When he first raised the question the professor had waved him off with a typical ‘don’t worry, Paul, it’s all arranged.’

The strange feeling swept over him again. Somewhere at the edge of this dig the two of them had sat on the ridge and built a small fire—the first fire ever made by human hands on earth. They had used the supplies Maeve had secreted away in their travel garb to brew a cup of coffee. That thought prompted him to turn to the young woman at his side.

“Find anything else in the area?”

“Sir?” The girl had been watching him closely, a bit confused by his initial silence.

“Anything on the perimeter of the dig site?” He was thinking that they might have uncovered evidence of the charred rocks they left in a small circle.

“There was one thing,” said the girl. “Very odd, in fact. We found an old tin cup, just there, at the lower perimeter of the dig site. It was extremely corroded and barely recognizable. Probably was left by someone a few centuries ago, because it was obviously not native to this strata on the rock formation.”

“Of course,” said Paul with an inward smile. That sealed it for him. The interns had found the very same tin cup that they had used to brew their coffee. Somehow it had managed to remain relatively intact in the dry desert climate, sleeping quietly in the limes and shale of the hill for all of sixty-five million years. He shuddered again, feeling as though he was walking on his own grave site, a resurrected ghost returning to the place where he had chatted idly with Nordhausen about the Alvarez Theory and the demise of the Dinosaurs.

“Come on, Paul! We’ve got to get moving!” The Professor was waving at him from the base of the helicopter. He could see that the rotors were beginning to turn again, and heard the whine of the engine.

“You joining us?” He smiled at the pleasant girl at his side.

“Oh, no sir. We’re taking a rover into Amman next week. The professor wants us to return the dig site to its original condition.

“I see,” said Paul. “Covering his tracks, is he? Well you’ve done a wonderful job here. This will mean a great deal to Professor Nordhausen.” He offered a brief handshake and then hurried off, listening to Robert’s animated chatter as the professor waved him on.

“Come on, Paul, stop flirting with the ladies and get in this thing before it raises a maelstrom in all this dust.”

They clambered inside the small craft, sealing out the billowing haze and quickly fastening their seat harnesses. Nordhausen gave the pilot a reassuring pat on the shoulder and the engine revved up to maximum for the takeoff.

“How heavy is it?” Paul strained to see the cables tightening to taut lines of woven steel as the chopper lifted off.

“God only knows,” said Nordhausen over the noise. “This fellow says he can haul a little over a ton, and I don’t think we’re pulling that much. Besides, we’ll be at a relatively low altitude, and the lift capability of the helo will be at its maximum.“ He leaned forward and handed the pilot something he had written on a scrap of paper. The man nodded and began fiddling with controls on his dash panel.

“What was that?” Paul was curious.

“Our heading,” said Nordhausen. “We’re going to swing out into the open desert for about twenty minutes, and then turn south by southwest at Wadi Safra. Another few hours should do the trick.”

“Do the trick? What do you mean another few hours? That will take us well beyond Amman.”

“Precisely.”

“Well, why waste the fuel? Are you sight seeing? Our plane leaves from Amman tomorrow. How do you plan to get this thing through customs?”

“You’ll see. Just leave everything to me, Paul. As a matter of fact, we’re going to fly over some of the most spectacular terrain on the globe in a few hours, so sit back and enjoy the ride. Wait until we get to Wadi Rumm—The Valley of the Moon! I hear there’s a series of natural rock formations the locals call ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.’ How’s that ring to you, eh?” The professor flashed him a smile, clearly excited about his recovery of the book.

“What? Wadi Rumm is well south of Amman. Just east of Akaba.” Paul had never been there before, but he had spent hours pouring over maps of the region and he also remembered his history quite well. Lawrence often used the spectacular gorges of Wadi Rumm as a hide away during his raiding missions in 1917. He wrote about it all in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, one of Paul’s favorite reads—particularly after his mission to the Hejaz the previous year.

“Yes, and we should be there in a little under two hours.“ Nordhausen smiled but Paul pursed his lips, suddenly suspicious.

“What are you up to, Robert?” He wished he had Maeve at hand, as she said that so much better than he could.

“Do you realize what we have, Paul? I was here last month, just before they started the extraction. The fossil is amazing! It may be one of the very few complete Ammonite fossils found anywhere—if not the only one. Why, you can even see impressions in the eye socket. It’s wonderful!”

“Yes, yes, it’s fabulous,” echoed Paul. “But what about customs? Are you telling me the Jordanians are just going to let you fly away with this thing, no questions asked?”

“Exactly,” said Nordhausen. “Why should they ask? I’m supposed to be working a wadi terrace site at Baidar. Hell, they’ve got plenty of Ammonite fossils, lots of them at Wala Mujib, not far from our dig. Why should they care about this one?”

“Are you kidding? You just said it was one of a kind. If this thing is in the pristine condition you describe, then they will damn well care about it. What’s going on here? Are you telling me you’re going to try and steal the damn thing?”

“No, not at all. We’re going to steal the damn thing! The two of us. We found it, didn’t we? Sixty five fucking million years ago, my friend! If that isn’t an argument for first rights, then what is?”

“Oh, God!” Paul put his hand on his forehead, clearly upset. It was another classic Nordhausen caper. Now, more than ever, he wished Maeve were here so the two of them could nail the professor’s ears to his head. “Are you crazy?” He burst out in frustration. “You mean to say this guy is some kind of smuggler or something?” Paul thumbed at the pilot who was oblivious of the argument heating up behind him in the passenger’s compartment.

“Something like that.” Nordhausen had a grin on his face in spite of Paul’s rising temper. “We’ll be over Wadi Safra in a minute and then we make our turn to bypass Amman. To answer your earlier question, yes. We are sight seeing—that is if we get caught for any reason. But I don’t expect much trouble. It’s just a nice little jaunt through Wadi Rumm. The place gets all sort of tourist traffic like this and, once we’re in the gorge, it’s almost impossible to track us on radar.”

“Oh, crap!” Paul was really angry now. “This isn’t the U.S., Robert. We have no civil rights in this country. If we get caught, we’ll end up in a jail cell for twenty years! How could you do this?”

“With three interns and a helicopter, that’s how.” The professor was not phased by Paul’s argument. “And a ship, of course.”

“A ship?”

“Certainly. We disappear at Wadi Rumm and stay as low to the ground as we can after that while we make the run out to the Arabesque on the Red Sea.”

“The Arabesque?”

“Wonderful name, isn’t it? I had it registered that way, but it’s officially a freighter out of Yemen.”

“And you plan on landing this thing on the deck?”

“No, I’ve got a heavy duty net all set up in the main hold. All we have to do is get over the bay and ease this baby in. Then we scramble down a rope and it’s off to Port Sudan. The Crew will get the thing in a good packing crate on the way. We’ll just tuck it away in the hold and nobody will be the wiser.”

Paul was dumbfounded. He just stared at his friend with a blank expression on his face. “Just scramble down a rope? Damnit, Robert! Do you realize the war on terror is still going on, even if we did manage to prevent the disaster on Palma. There’s a US Navy task force in the Red Sea and here we go trying to smuggle Jordanian national property onto a ship bound for Sudan! You are crazy. Certifiably insane. I think that last time jaunt was enough to scramble your brain. Maeve was absolutely right about you.”

“Oh, please. This hasn’t got anything to do with the Time Meridian. OK, I’ll admit that my trip to London was a bit out of the ordinary—”

“That’s quite an understatement. It was risky! Very dangerous—just like this little scheme. Only this time you have implicated me.”

“Serves you right. Payback’s a bitch, eh Paul?”

“Payback? What are you talking about?”

“Aren’t you the one who dragged me off to the late Cretaceous in the first place?”

“You still harping on that? Blame Kelly, not me. I had no idea we were going to end up brewing coffee on the KT boundary.”

“Yes? Well I’m holding you accountable in any case. You were in on the discovery of this thing sixty-five million years ago, and so you’re in on this now.” He folded his arms, holding his ground even if he was beginning to feel a little guilty. “Don’t worry, Paul,” he began again. “I’ve got this whole thing planned. You’ll see.”

Paul was going to say something else, but he lapsed into a sullen silence, resting his chin on his fist and turning away to look out the window. Nordhausen went on for a while, offering more assurances and revealing a few more details of his plan: they were going to slip off the freighter in Port Sudan and catch a plane that was waiting on a small airstrip north of the city. The ship would make its innocent way to Houston, and they would reclaim their prize a month later at a warehouse on the wharf.

Paul wouldn’t say a word. He kept a stony silence for some time, and that, more than anything, began to wear down the professor’s arguments. Eventually Nordhausen lapsed into silence as well, until he finally spied the tawny cathedral spikes of Wadi Rumm in the distance. Tall pillars of ochre rock thrust up from the gorge in a setting that rivaled the Four Corners region of the US, or the Grand Canyon, for its natural beauty.

“Awesome, isn’t it?” Nordhausen tried to get Paul’s mind off the situation and interest him in the towering rock formations as the chopper lowered its altitude to slip into the gorge.

Paul said nothing. He remained frozen, as flinty as the wind sculpted canyons about them until Nordhausen swallowed his pride and apologized.

“OK, I’m sorry, Paul. I realize this wasn’t fair. And I wasn’t serious with that bit about payback earlier. Kelly botched the numbers on that first mission and it wasn’t your fault. At least we found the Ammonite! Now we’ve got the damn thing, and we’ll be over the Red Sea in half an hour. That puts us in international waters and safely out of the country. With any luck we’ll be in Port Sudan tomorrow night and I’ll treat you to a wonderful dinner at this little dive near the harbor. They’ve got some of the best seafood that I’ve ever—”

“Look there!” Paul had noticed something in the distance.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” The professor was gaping at the rock formations in the gorge, pleased that he had managed to get Paul to say something after more than an hour of silent treatment, but Paul was pointing at something else.

“See that aircraft over there?” He reached down under his seat to retrieve a small pair of binoculars. He was focusing in on the sighting while Nordhausen began explaining things away again.

“Probably just a tourist flight.”

“I don’t think so…” Paul was turning the knob to get a better focus. “Looks like another helo. That’s the RJAF. Lord! Now we’re in for it!”

“What do you mean?” The professor was reaching for the binoculars. “What’s the RJAF?”

“The Royal Jordanian Air Force,” said Paul with a deflated look on his face. “I knew something like this was going to happen. I just knew it.”

2

Paul squinted through his binoculars again. “Yup, that’s a Super-Puma, if I’m not mistaken. They fly search and rescue ops for the RJAF, and probably make border patrol runs as well, particularly in an area like this where the radar signatures are blocked. Now, what do you think they’ll do with us when they catch up?”

“What makes you think they’re interested in us?”

The professor was distracted by the squawk of the gain control on the radio. The pilot was adjusting his reception and speaking in Arabic, and the modulation of his voice spoke clearly across the cultural barriers—he was nervous. A moment later he leaned back and motioned to the two men in the cabin.

“Bad news,” he said with a thick Middle Eastern accent. “Very bad. Maybe we land soon.”

“What? Land?” Nordhausen was aghast. “No we can’t land. We’ve got a precious artifact hanging from the damn undercarriage.” He shook his head and gestured to the west where they could just make out the dim haze of Red Sea. “Go that way!”

“No, No…” The Arab pilot was clearly upset. He pointed at the distant aircraft. “Air Force. We land for inspection. Very sorry. Too bad, yes?”

“Too bad, NO!” Nordhausen was adamant. He kept shaking his head. “Ship waiting!” Then he realized that it was pointless to bandy half-grown English phrases with this man. He reached forward, his fingers twitching as he gestured for the pilot to hand him the radio microphone. “Let me have that thing and I’ll sort this business out.”

The pilot was clearly annoyed, but Nordhausen had hold of the mike and he thumbed it heavily as he began to speak. “Hello there, may I be of service?” He looked at the pilot. “Does this thing have a speaker? How will I hear them?” His gestures indicated what he wanted and the pilot flipped a switch to enable the cabin PA.

“You suppose they know any English?” He looked at Paul as he squinted at the radio handset mike.

Paul rolled his eyes. “You’re in luck. A Chinese pilot can’t land in Peking without knowing English. It’s the universal language of flight everywhere on earth. But what the hell do you think you’re going to tell them? Excuse me, gentlemen, but we’re making off with a national treasure.” He mocked the professor to dig in his point.

There was a wash of static on the speaker, an then they heard a voice, speaking English, but heavily accented.

“This is the Royal Jordanian Air Force Border Patrol. Who are you? What are you doing out here? Over.”

Robert thumbed the mike switch. “Archeology team,” he began. “We’re working a permitted dig out near Bailar Ridge. It’s all been cleared through the University of Amman.”

“I thought you said we were going to be tourists,” Paul hissed, but Nordhausen shushed him.

“This is better. A good lie always needs a hint of truth in it to be believed.”

There was a long silence before the signal came back.

“You are a long way from Bailar. Are you lost? Do you need assistance? Over.”

“Lost? No, we’re well on our way. No problem at all.”

Again a silence.

“You’re supposed to say over when you finish speaking,” Paul put in.

“Be quiet and let me handle this!” Nordhausen gave him the wide eyed look he was famous for when anyone dared challenge his assertions.

“What are you carrying? Over.”

“Carrying? Oh… We’re moving supplies to a dig party in Wadi Rumm. Returning borrowed equipment.”

“You are landing soon? Over.”

“Just long enough to off load this equipment. Then we’ll be heading north to Bailar again.”

“I assume, you have filed a valid flight plan. Please read us your number. Over.”

Robert instinctively cupped his hand over the mike as if the men in the other aircraft could hear him. He rasped out a question to Paul, who couldn’t help breaking into a smile with the scene. “What does he mean by that?”

“Don’t worry, they can’t hear us until you press the send button, Robert. And what he means is this: when you fly somewhere in a small craft like this you file a flight plan. They want your plan number so they can verify you. The jig is up, my friend.”

“Shit!” Nordhausen’s charade was beginning to unravel. The voice on the other aircraft came back again, more impatient.

“I repeat: What is your flight plan number, please. Over.”

Nordhausen had a desperate look on his face. “We never filed one.” He made his confession to Paul, but was still cupping the mike handset close to his chest. Paul just folded his arms and waited, letting the professor boil in his own stew.

Robert fiddled with the mike. “I say oh… fiver… two…” he was clicking the send button on and off as he spoke to deliberately break up his transmission.

“Say again, blue helo. You are breaking up. Over.”

“Must be… damn hills… Over.” Nordhausen was going to play his game for as long as he could. “Think we can outrun that thing, Paul?”

“A Super-Puma? Not a chance. Particularly with a ton of contraband dangling from the undercarriage.”

“Speed this thing up!” Robert gave the Arab pilot a rude gesture, but the man was very upset and kept shaking his head in the negative.

“This very bad,” he said with a pleading tone. “Maybe we land now, yes?”

“Absolutely not! I’m paying you a thousand dollars for this run. So get this thing moving!”

“Blue Helo, Blue Helo. We do not copy. Say again. Over.”

The professor was very frustrated now. All his careful planning was coming to naught on this single mischance, and he knew Paul would never let him hear the end of it. It was obvious to him that the men in the other aircraft were going to crank the scenario up a notch in a moment. He needed time, but what should he do?

“Radio bad…” he shouted at the mike. “Landing soon…. Have a nice day. Over and out.”

“Landing soon?” The pilot understood what he wanted to hear in any case, and began to lower his altitude.

“See here,” Nordhausen complained. “You pay no attention to that other helo and just get us out over the Red Sea.”

“No, no, no…” The pilot was shaking his head, sweat dampening his Arabic headdress.

“Yes, yes, yes. Go that way!” Nordhausen pointed. “Fast!” He rolled his hand over and over to illustrate his point, but the pilot wanted nothing more to do with him. Robert could see the man needed other persuasion, and the professor knew just what to do. He reached into a small haversack in the side compartment and, to Paul’s amazement, produced a Glock pistol!

“Allah u akbar…” There was obvious fear in the pilot’s eyes now as Nordhausen brandished the weapon. “You go to the sea!” he pointed the way. “Hurry! Go fast! What the hell’s a Super-Puma, Paul?”

Paul was aghast. “You are crazy. What are you doing with a gun?”

“What does it look like I’m doing, for God’s sake? I’m hijacking this man’s helicopter! Now what’s a Super-Puma, and how do you make our odds of reaching the coast before that thing catches up?”

Paul clasped both hands on the sides of his head, unwilling to believe this was happening. “What’s a Super-Puma? It’s a Eurocopter—One of the Big Cats, at least that’s what they call the military version. It’s big, but relatively fast, and has a mean bite. What’s a Super-Puma? How about forward mounted search radar, torpedoes, Exocet missiles on side mounted pylons—but don’t worry about those. They’re for killing ships like the Arabesque. They’ll probably just blast the hell out of us with those two nasty rocket pods… or perhaps they’ll just fly along side and riddle us with fifty-caliber machine gun rounds from the gun mount. That’s what a Super-Puma is, Robert! Now, what are you going to do with that sidearm? You going to take pot shots at the damn thing when it realizes we aren’t responding to military orders? We’re in some deep shit, my friend. This is crazy!”

Nordhausen had a desperate look on his face. He ran his forearm over his brow as he worked the situation through. “Now what…” he breathed.

“Now what?” Paul was still firing his salvo. “Let’s see: grand theft, piracy, smuggling, hijacking, armed assault, failure to yield, and navigating without a valid flight plan. This thing started off with an infraction and has mushroomed into a life sentence for the both of us. Congratulations, professor. You’ve got your Ammonite.” He folded his arms again, sullen and angry at the fate that had overtaken them. It appeared that the other aircraft had exactly that in mind. It was getting closer, gaining on them with each passing moment.

Nordhausen was finally forced to admit his defeat. “Alright, alright. Then land the damn thing.” He looked out the window, secreting the Glock back into his satchel. To his surprise, he caught sight of a small group of men on camels in the wadi below. “There!” He shouted, grasping at this one last straw before they sank. “Land there—near that little caravan! But be careful. You have to hover and then move off to one side so we don’t hit the cargo.”

“Yes, yes…” The pilot saw where he was pointing and was only too glad to comply.

As they descended, the Jordanian Air Force unit closed on their position, still high overhead. Nordhausen tried one last trick, hoping to persuade them that their delivery run was innocuous. He spoke into the radio mike again. “All’s well, RJAF. We see our dig team below… making our delivery now… Thanks for the escort. Over.” He crossed his fingers as the pilot maneuvered to land, deftly sidestepping as he set the precious cargo down first and then jogged off to the left in a powered hover.

The wild plume of dust and haze threw a mask over the whole scene below, but Nordhausen knew he had to play his ruse out to the hilt. “OK, Paul. I’m going out to talk to those buggers. You stay here and keep this pilot company.” Then to the pilot he said: “And you wait here, yes? One thousand dollars!” he reminded him of the hefty investment he had in this excursion.

The pilot gave him a nervous grin, nodding his head in the affirmative. Nordhausen opened his door and was out of the helo, bending low as he ran toward the small string of camels. There were three men, and their animals were fitted with light packs. Two wore traditional Arab robes and headdress, but the third had a pith helmet on, and the professor thought the man looked Western in appearance. They were staring at Nordhausen with blank expressions as he approached.

Paul watched the scene unfold, amazed at the mess they had gotten themselves into. He saw how Robert played to the chopper overhead. First he strode boldly up to the man with the pith helmet and extended his hand in greeting. Then he looked up at the Jordanian Air Force chopper, waving warmly as if wishing them a fond farewell. The Puma hovered for a time, and, to Paul’s great surprise, it turned slowly away and started back up the gorge.

“Well I’ll be…”

At that moment he heard the helo engines revving up again and saw the Arab pilot pull hard on the line release handle. The primary mooring cable snaked loose with a dry metallic rattle and Paul felt the small bird begin to lift off. It was immediately clear to him that this pilot had every intention of abandoning Nordhausen and his illegal cargo, and making off while he could.

“Wait!” Paul shouted over the rising din, but the Arab pilot paid him no heed. Paul had the barest moment to decide what to do. Should he fish out the professor’s Glock pistol and become a party to the hijacking? The chopper began to move gently upward.

“Damn it, Nordhausen!” Paul swore. “I should leave you here with your Ammonite and –“ he moved on reflex, doing exactly the opposite of what his words expressed. He lunged to grab their supply satchels and squirmed out of his seat harness.

“Hold on, will you? I’m getting off too!”

The pilot was more worried about the other helicopter, looking warily over his shoulder as he began to apply more power to the engine. Paul had his door open in a second and leapt to the hot sand in a whirlwind of blowing dust. Then the small blue helo lifted up, with a final burst of power, and began to edge away from the landing site. The thrumming of its engine increased, and the craft angled quickly north. Paul hunched on the ground until the downdraft subsided. He coughed, rubbing the soot from his face and eyes as he started to struggle up onto his feet. Nordhausen was at his side in an instant.

“You idiot!” he was yelling at Paul as he pulled hard to get him on his feet. “I told you to keep an eye on that bastard!”

“No, you’re the idiot here,” Paul shot back angrily. “Did you expect me to threaten him with your pistol? The man is scared shitless. He’s lucky that Puma crew is lazy today. Maybe they were low on fuel. I just can’t imagine them leaving us without an inspection. Why, your little ruse could have just as easily been interpreted as a drug delivery or something. We should all be heading for a jail cell in Amman by now.”

“Well we aren’t. My ploy worked. They thought we were telling the truth!”

“You better hope your pilot keeps his mouth shut or the RJAF will be back here in a heartbeat. Now, what are we going to do, drag your Ammonite fossil another twenty miles to the coast, build a raft with palm fronds and float the damn thing out to your tramp steamer?”

Nordhausen was still caught between his anger and the elation he felt at escaping the scrutiny of the authorities. “That no good scorpion! I should have known better.”

“Well, it serves you right,” said Paul. “Stick a pistol in someone’s face and you generally get a bad reaction.”

Nordhausen noticed the satchels. “Good, at least you had the presence of mind to grab the supplies.” The professor was quickly transitioning in his thinking and wondering how to proceed. He had to secure the fossil first. They could easily cover it with sand to keep it from prying eyes. Then they could hitch a ride with these camelmen and—

When he turned to look for the small caravan it was gone. While the professor hurried over to Paul to drag him up from the swirling dust of the downdraft, the wayfarers had spurred their camels and loped off around the rim of a tumbled rock formation. They were gone. Nordhausen’s jaw dropped with the discovery, and he immediately shouted at the top of his lungs. The only sound that returned was the haranguing echo of his own voice resounding from the canyon walls. It was worse than anything Paul could have said. He had blown the mission completely now, and he threw his canvas hat down in disgust, settling to rest on the bundled shape of the Ammonite fossil.

The echo receded and there was nothing but the dry, hot wind to comfort them now. They were alone in Wadi Rumm, over twenty miles from the coast and obviously unwelcome guests, from the reaction of the camelmen. The irony of the moment finally struck Paul and he burst out laughing.

“What’s so damn funny?” Nordhausen was in no mood for jest.

“Well it’s just that you look exactly like you did the first time we were in this desert—sitting there on the Ammonite with a bewildered, angry expression on your face. And you’re probably wondering the same thing: how the hell are we going to get back now? Am I right?”

Nordhausen glared at him and Paul relented. “OK, we got ourselves into quite a mess here. I’ll let you off the hook. We had better do something about concealing the fossil. Then we can find shelter from this damnable sun. Thank god we have at least three days food and plenty of water in the satchels. I’d run after those camels, but I don’t think they have any intention of helping us. What a scene!” He laughed again, until Nordhausen’s sullen demeanor began to melt and a wry smile played over his features. The professor rubbed the stubble on his chin and put his hat on to shield his bald head from the searing sun.

“Let’s get started,” he said halfheartedly. There’s a couple of dig shovels on the pallet. Damn that Arab pilot! I should have stuck that pistol right up his snout!”

3

They were some time, laboring to scrape the sand away from the sides of the bundled fossil until it slowly subsided into a depression in the dunes. By the time they had heaped enough sand to conceal it, they were both tired and drenched with sweat. The heat was merciless, and they were already drawing heavily on the supply of water from the satchels.

“Thank God!” said Paul as he threw down his shovel and collapsed on the sand. “I’m exhausted.”

“No shit!” Nordhausen was breathing heavily, his shirt and canvas hat well soaked with the effort of their labors. “I think we’ve covered the damn thing well enough. Give me some water, I’m dying in this heat!”

“Take it easy,” Paul cautioned. “We only brought a few liters with us and who knows how long we’re going to be out here.”

“Don’t worry,” said Nordhausen, intent on swilling the water down. He ran a forearm over his brow and took a last swallow of water from the canteen, his eyes clearly betraying the fatigue and anxiety that had taken hold of them. The water was going to be a problem, unless they found a spring or well soon, and they had exhausted themselves with the digging. Now they had to find shelter and get out of the sun, or they would soon join their ammonite fossil for eternity, just another pair of bleached skeletons swallowed by the desert. The Professor immediately expressed his concern.

“This sun is killing me,” he breathed.

“We better head for the canyon wall,” Paul concurred. “With any luck we might find a cave or some other protected area. Then we can decide just how four or five liters of water is going to sustain us here.”

“God!” Nordhausen was finally realizing the depth of their dilemma. “I know there was a Camel Corps station built around an old fort somewhere in the area, and there are occasional Bedouins leading small tour groups. Someone will come along… but, on second thought, I don’t think we should count on help from the locals. The police ride about on camels here too, and we don’t want to attract any undue attention.”

“Right, so we’ll just wait until we’re desperate, I suppose.”

“Oh, don’t worry about the water. There are natural springs running from the rim of the canyon, and we should be able to find something soon enough. Remember? This was Lawrence’s hiding place. In fact, there was a well watered spring with a little punch bowl out on Jabal Rumm where Lawrence used to soak himself during their layovers here.” He rubbed his hands together at the thought. “Just what I need right now. Come on. Let’s find shelter and rest up until sunset. If we decide to move then we’ll have to trek it by night and sleep by day, just like Lawrence did in the movie.”

“What?”

“You know—when they crossed the Sun’s Anvil in the Nefud, on the way to Akaba.”

Paul shook his head. “Well they had camels, if you recall, and to drift off and slip from the saddle was as good as a death sentence. They knew better than to test the desert by day. Can we walk twenty miles in a single night? We’d be lucky to make one or two miles an hour in this terrain.” He paused, searching about them for a moment.

“Will you look at this place?” Paul had finally taken the time to survey their surroundings. They were in a wide valley, perhaps two miles across, and rimmed by sheer sandstone formations that seemed to thrust up from the undulating pink sand of the valley floor, like behemoths breaking through the swell of the ocean. The lower base of some formations was surrounded with a tumbled scatter of granite boulders and rock. Closer to the walls of the canyon there were more varied rock formations, well weathered, with near horizontal striations indicating their obvious sedimentary origins. The rosy sands swept up to the base of these formations, like waves washing against a ragged coastline. They gave the whole canyon the impression of a narrow bay, awash in flowing pink sand accented by lighter drifts of white that seemed to undulate along the lower terrain, like lines of frothy waves making their way to the shore. Over all, the great mass of Jabal Rumm rose to the imposing height of some 1500 feet, its sloping top lording over the canyon with a quiet regard. The valley had an eerie, awesome beauty about it, much like the Grand Canyon in Arizona, only on a smaller scale.

“Yes, this is the most beautiful location on the whole plain of Jordan,” said Nordhausen. “There’s an old fort out here somewhere, with ruins of a Nabataean Temple nearby.”

“Naba what?”

“They were an ancient people who lived in the region dating back to a thousand years BC. They built Petra, if you are familiar with that site. It was the center of a quiet little empire that had settlements hidden all through the region, with secret caches of water and a strategy of economic trade as their primary means of wielding power. This particular region was a meeting spot for caravans carrying incense from Arabia and Persia up to the King’s Road and Petra. The Nabataeans put quite a strangle hold on the Romans at one time. The temple ruins in this region probably date from that period, perhaps the 1st century BC. Tourists used to visit them, but they’ve been largely ignored in recent years. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find something interesting!”

“Something interesting? You going to try and make this an archeological dig? And what about your ship? Isn’t the Arabesque expecting us soon? I must say, Robert, this was one wild ride.” Paul shielded his eyes as he looked around. “We’re well north of the main body of the Red Sea here. If we go due west we’ll hit the Gulf of Akaba. Is that where your ship is waiting?”

“The ship? Oh, we can forget about her for the time being. The rendezvous was supposed to be taking place right now. They’ll only wait a few hours before pulling up anchor and moving on. I’m afraid our charter on the Arabesque will have to be a write-off. Looks like we’re going to miss our dinner in Port Sudan tomorrow night as well. Shit! I shelled out fifteen hundred bucks for the charter flight to Cairo.”

“Cairo?”

“We couldn’t fly out of Amman, so I got tickets from Cairo. Thought we’d take a peek at the sphinx while we were there and—“

“Stop right there.” Paul held up a warning hand. “I don’t think I can stand to hear what you had planned for that little excursion. Well, get up. We’d better get started. It’s hot as hell out here.”

“I’m losing about five thousand bucks on this fiasco,” Nordhausen continued in his complaint.

“Serves you right.” Paul rubbed a bit of salt in the wounds as they started away toward the canyon edge. “Well then how do you propose to get us home, Robert?”

Nordhausen flashed him a smile. “Akaba! We’re going to follow in Lawrence’s footsteps, my friend. It’s the only settlement with air or sea connections nearby, and I think twenty or thirty miles should get us there.”

“Akaba? That’s going to be a very hard trek.”

“Well if Old Moses could make it on his way to the Wilderness of Zin, then we should do just fine.”

They were some time making their way over the rivulets of sand and small islets of crumbling rock. With each step the imposing formations of the canyon wall grew nearer, and they made their way to a deeply cloven sector that promised good shelter and shade from the sun. They were very tired when they reached it, after little more than a mile, and Paul had great misgivings about the long trek ahead of them to Akaba. When they reached the folded face of the rock, it was clear that neither one had any intention of beginning that journey soon.

“Let’s work our way into this rock face,” Nordhausen suggested. “The further back we get the cooler it is likely to be. Some of these fissures reach into the canyon walls for hundreds of feet or more. They’ve been eroding out for millennium.”

“That way looks promising.” Paul pointed at a gaping aperture where two large rock formations met in a fragmented collision. They climbed up over the large ochre boulders at the base of the fissure, and saw that the way did indeed wind into the hillside for some distance. It was just wide enough for two to walk abreast in the beginning, but the striated walls of smooth russet stone soon began to close in on them, and they took to single file, with Paul in the lead. His thin, angular frame had little difficulty negotiating the narrower spots, though Nordhausen complained as he squeezed around a turn in the fissure, hoping it would not dead-end on them.

It was already much cooler, which was the only consolation they had from the trek thus far, apart from the spectacular scenery. It was not long before Paul noticed the fissure beginning to widen out, opening on a sand drift the led up a gentle hill to the mouth of a cave.

Nordhausen hustled up behind him and was pleased to see the yawning portal ahead of them, wreathed in shadow. “Come on then,” he said, urging Paul on. “Are you worried about bears, or bandits? We’d be lucky to find anything else alive out here for miles—aside from those bastards on the camels. I wonder who they were?”

“Probably a small touring party.”

“But that fellow I was playing to—you know, the one with the pith helmet on. He looked European.”

“Some whacky college professor on sabbatical—or out to raid the nearest archeological dig site and make off with national antiquities perhaps?” Paul flashed a smile at his companion to let him know he would not labor the issue.

“This looks like a good spot to camp for the night,” said Nordhausen.

They were inside the mouth of the cave now, a leaf shaped feature scored into the rock that climbed some fifty feet over head. The professor leaned back, staring up at the cathedral of beautifully shaped stone. Colors of amber and rusty rose swirled along the contours of the cave walls to meet in a hard line, high above them. The ground was still sandy in places, with small rocks scattered on the floor of the cave.

As the professor began to clear an area to settle in, Paul took a moment to wander about the cave, working his way deeper into the fissure until he was lost in shadow. A moment later his voice echoed in the still chamber, resonant with a hint of urgency. “Nordhausen! Come here. I’ve found something!”

The professor gave a disconsolate sigh. “What? My, God, Paul. Let’s get some food going. Get over here and stop fooling around, will you?”

“No. You’ve got to see this. It’s weird!”

Robert shook his head, but he knew his friend well enough. He would have to humor him if he wanted to get a campfire going any time soon. “All right,” he said. “But what are we eating?”

He worked his way to the back of the cave, edging around a few large rocks thrusting up from the ground. He was hungry, and tired, and in no mood for Paul’s whimsical discoveries. Oddly, there was a passage at the back of the cave that sloped down at a steep angle.

“Paul?” The professor squinted in the deepening gloom. “Where are you?”

“Down here! Come on, it’s not far. Just keep following the passage, and keep to the right.”

Nordhausen pressed on, grumbling to himself as he went and feeling his way along the smooth rock as the darkness surrounded him. It was very cool. At least he could take some comfort from that. Soon he caught a glimmer of light, and realized that Paul had a small flashlight with him up ahead. He hurried on.

“Now what in the hell are you talking about—“ he stopped short when he saw what Paul was pointing at. There was a wide pool of water ahead, shimmering with a curious green hue in the light of Paul’s flashlight. “What did I tell you!” Nordhausen was exonerated. “All the water we need. It should be nice and cool! Just what I was hoping for. Probably one of those Nabatean water caches I was talking about.”

“Guess again,” said Paul. “It’s quite warm—almost hot. There must be a hot spring under this area. The ambient air temperature couldn’t produce this heat.”

Nordhausen was at his side at last, stooping to test the temperature with his hand. “Ouch! Why didn’t you warn me?”

“You would have tested it for yourself anyway,” Paul smiled. “But the temperature is not the only odd thing. Look at this!” Paul flicked off his flashlight and the darkness surrounded them. A moment later Nordhausen was amazed to see the entire pool of water glowing softly with an eerie green luminescence.

“Very strange,” he whispered. “ Is there something in the rock here?”

“No, I think it’s bio-luminescence,” said Paul.

“Bio-luminescence? I thought that was found mainly in the deep oceans.”

“It is. But they’ve isolated some weird bacteria in surface water that has this sort of glow about it. I read some papers on this last year, in fact. There’s more.” Paul flicked on his flashlight again and leaned toward Nordhausen. He was showing him a thin medallion that he wore on a chain about his neck, and even in the yellow cone of light it, too, had a strange green glow.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a radiation dosimeter from the lab,” said Paul. “I must have forgotten to take it off before I left the hotel in Amman. Oh, don’t worry, the green indicates safe levels—not much more than you get from direct sunlight. But there is no sunlight here. So, what’s causing this?”

“Are you suggesting the water is radioactive?”

Paul flicked off the flashlight and the chamber was effused with the milky green glow again. “Something’s going on here,” he said. “I wonder if this is an Oklo reaction?”

“What the devil is an Oklo reaction?”

“It’s that paper I was telling you about. The French discovered it at a mine in Gabon, Africa. They were mining uranium at Oklo and shipping the stuff off to France when they found that one of the shipments was very depleted.”

“Depleted?”

“Yes. It had a very low concentration of the fissionable isotope U-235, and it caused quite a scare at the time. They thought someone had managed to extract the isotope illegally.”

“Extract it? From raw ore? That’s highly unlikely. They probably just got a bad shipment.”

“Not exactly,” said Paul, and Nordhausen sensed that he was about to get a physics lecture. “You see, the concentration in natural ore is always at a constant level of 0.72 percent. Nature is very cooperative in that, and it’s actually one of the key tests the Atomic Energy Security guys make on all shipments. Variation in that isotope is a safe watch principle to detect tampering.”

“So what did they find out?”

“Well, they sent a big inspection team to Gabon and scoured the Oklo site pretty good. They were convinced that something was afoot but, to their surprise, they found an odd natural process at work.”

“Natural process?”

“Yes. Uranium is soluble in water in the presence of oxygen, and they found a nice underground stream at Oklo, deep in the mine.”

“So the isotope was leeched out by the water?” Nordhausen was trying to leap ahead to the right stone as he followed Paul across the stream of his thought.

“No, it doesn’t work that way. Oh, you might get a few uranyl ions in the water, but nothing like what they found. In order to deplete the ore sample to the degree it was degraded the U-235 actually had to be consumed in some way—in a reaction!”

“How is that possible in a stream bed?” Nordhausen was not seeing the opposite shore yet.

“Bacteria!” Paul sprung the answer on him. “Some sort of algal microorganism in the water was finding a way to concentrate the uranium that did leech out of the rocks and, by God, they did their job so well that a reaction started.”

“What are you talking about? Don’t you need a reactor chamber and fuel rods and all kinds of power for that?”

“The fuel was there in the U-235, and the reactor chamber, or chambers to be more precise, were the bacteria! They concentrated the stuff and, when you get to a certain critical mass in any one place, a reaction starts—on a very low level, mind you, but very well controlled. In fact, they theorize that it might have been sustained for over a million years! Imagine that—a natural nuclear reactor providing sustained power. They measured the estimated electrical output at many kilowatts, sighed with relief that no terrorism was involved, and called the whole thing an Oklo reaction.”

“And you think this is a pool of radioactive algae?”

“Possibly.”

“Shit, there goes the drinking water—let alone the nice cool bath I was hoping for.”

Paul caught the green reflection of the pool in Nordhausen’s eyes as he spoke. “Come on,” he said, flicking the flashlight back on. “There has to be some stream feeding this pool. We’ll find other water around here if we look for it.”

It was not long before he spied a suspicious crevice deep in the throat of a side cave. It gleamed with a sheen of water that seemed to be oozing down from the ceiling of the cave.

“Probably a sink or punch bowl up there somewhere that has been collecting rainwater. I’ll bet our stream is on the other side of this gash. Here—hold the flashlight while I squeeze through.”

“Well, be careful,” Nordhausen warned him. “Suppose that leads into some deep underground aquifer of irradiated water! Now that I think of it, that might be just the thing to straighten you out.”

“Very funny,” said Paul. He was already up onto a low ledge and working his way into the glistening wet fissure.”

“Hold on,” said Nordhausen. “You’ll need a canteen if you find anything. Give me a second to fetch one. Do you think you can stand a moment here in the dark? I’ll need the flashlight to find my way back to our campsite.”

Paul was already through the crack, but he stuck his face out with a wry smile. “Well, get moving! I think your canteen will do quite nicely. You’ve practically emptied the thing on the walk in.”

“Right,” said Nordhausen. “I’ll just be a moment,” and he started off, the glowing beam of the flashlight wiggling away with him in the dark.

The professor had only been gone a few minutes when Paul noticed a faint green sheen emanating from the darkness ahead of him. As his eyes adjusted he could see that the same eerie phosphorescence was present here, and the fissure had simply opened to another deep hollow of the cave they were in. He thought he heard the faint sound of running water ahead, though the noise had an odd, distended timbre, as though coming from a great distance away. His curiosity led him forward a few steps. The sound increased with each halting footfall, and he suddenly caught the cool, moist flow of an updraft.

He leaned into it, relieved to feel the chill of the air on his body yet a bit surprised that a hot artesian spring would generate such a cool updraft. Wait until Robert feels this, he thought. It was obvious why the Arabs used this as a hiding place throughout their history. I wonder why no one ever documented this. Look how it glows. Natural underground air conditioning and lighting. What a find!

He was so elated with his discovery that he failed to see the chasm that was just underfoot. His next step dangled for a heart throbbing moment, looking for firm ground. Then he suddenly found himself plunging over the edge of a shadowy precipice in a convulsion of fear and anxiety.

He was falling. In a flash his mind leapt ahead to the image of an agonizing death on jagged rocks. The adrenaline animated his lanky frame and limbs in a fitful clawing motion as he plummeted into the depths, amazed at the prickly feeling that raised goose bumps on his flesh. There was a strange sensation—icy cold, and the milky green glow on the chasm walls rushed by in a dizzying wash of light. So this is what it’s like to die, he thought. A wave of nausea overcame him and he closed his eyes in terror, dreading the moment when his body would smash into the rocky bottom. And then he was amazed to feel the hard slap and splash of cold water when he plunged into a deep underground pool, terrified, yet alive and unharmed.

Part II

Nothing Is Written

“Nothing is written, and everything is permitted.”

– Ismaili Saying

4

Maeve was riding back along the bridle path on her favorite horse, Giselle. The late afternoon sun was dappling through the oak trees in the valley, and the air had a warm sweetness to it that spoke of fresh sage. She reminded herself to stop and collect some at the trailhead. It would be just the thing to season that pot roast she had planned for the evening meal. But now there was more simmering in her mind than the roast. She had been thinking her way through the events of these last few months, trying to place everything into context and impose some semblance of order. While the challenges of the time travel project delighted her, the consequences that could result from it all were overwhelming.

Outcomes and Consequences—that was her mission in life these days. The dangers inherent in the enterprise, once only speculation about contamination and fateful effects, had suddenly been made painfully obvious to her. Kelly nearly vanished in the cold frost of Paradox. She had been thinking a lot about that in recent days, and running whole segments of the mission over in her mind.

From the moment when the unseen future first knocked on Nordhausen’s door in the person of Robert Graves, she had an odd feeling that there was something amiss in the whole equation—something she could not quite work out in her probability algorithms. And that something irked her like a shirt that needed ironing. It sat like unwashed dishes on her kitchen countertops, and waited like an unpaid bill on her desk—things that Maeve would never allow in the carefully managed space of her own personal life.

She kept everything in quiet order, and the structure of her world was wholly predictable at any given moment. She would ride Gizelle back up the bridle path, and give her a good rub down in the stables. She would take the Subaru into town on the way home and stop by Noah’s for bagels and a shmear. And she wouldn’t forget that fresh sage for the pot roast either. The steady certainty of her life had been something in which she took great solace—something of her own making. It was an extension of her considerable will power, and the determined competence she thrust against any problem the world would dare to concoct for her. Up until now she had been quite content in her world, with outcomes that were wholly satisfactory—until Kelly vanished.

Time travel, it seemed, could be quite untidy.

She thought back over the mission again, for the hundredth time. Everything had been so rushed that it was hard to get at the details of her recollection now. There were two moments that still bothered her. The first was the odd telephone call from her mother that pulled her away from the forward end of the mission. She remembered the strange echo of her mother’s voice reverberating in the receiver, as if some infernal loop had already begun; as if time was suspended in the repetition of her mother’s last words, undecided, uncertain, and afraid.

That uncertainty had become a real feeling for her at that moment—not just a nagging, misplaced cipher in her probability algorithms. It settled into her with a pulsing beat of anxiety, and it never quite went away. Even now, months after Robert and Paul had returned to the present, she still felt its presence, like the thrumming of adrenaline in her chest. The world was not the way she always fancied it to be. Now, nothing was certain; nothing fixed and determined—not even the past.

For someone who had always labored to define clear and well established borders, this defiant ‘quantum uncertainty’ in time travel was a daunting and frightening prospect. Heisenberg, damn him, was right. He predicted that physical quantities and properties fluctuate randomly and therefore can never be accurately known. While the effect of this uncertainty was most evident on the sub-atomic level, where things like the speed and charge of particles could be highly unpredictable, the fact remained that this basic uncertainty was at the core of all reality—if that term could be applied in any meaningful way. Put simply: nothing was written. That is how Paul would say it, imitating Lawrence with the remark. She realized now that she hated the whole notion inherent in that statement.

Nothing was written; nothing forbidden, and everything was permitted. That was the chaos that now sat hunched in the center of her mind like an old, unwelcome hobgoblin to plague her thinking. She wanted it out, wanted it gone, wanted things wrapped in nice neat boxes again, and stacked up just so. But the world would never be that way for her again. All of her careful habits, all the meticulous checks and balances that governed her life, were futile efforts at imposing order on chaos. It was very unsettling, to say the least.

She remembered that awful moment in the lab when she had first realized the full implication of all of this. She had suddenly hit on the idea that, if the mission was successful, and the history was actually changed, then the book Lawrence wrote about his exploits in the desert would also have to change.

She had been reading through it the last week or so, wondering what it must have been like for Robert and Paul to actually be there. With each episode she found herself wondering if this was the real story of the event, or something that had been altered again and again by the shifting eddies of time. Lawrence had written three versions of the book before it settled down. Now, even though he was dead and gone, the text was still being re-written!

The Seven Pillars, a metaphor for solidity and truth, suddenly seemed to be built upon very shaky ground. Perhaps there was something in the human heart that reached for a truth that was unalterable. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, wrote Keats, or what’s a heaven for? Knowing, or believing that there was something out there that was fixed and permanent, had long been a comfort to the human soul. Now the Arch had proved that anything was possible, and any semblance of truth, as she once knew it, was gone from her life. She had firm ground under her feet when she walked into the Lab that night, but now all was quicksand. Nothing was certain, not even the comfort of finished, printed text in the books that she so loved all her life.

She remembered how they had started that night with an argument about Shakespeare. They were worried that Nordhausen’s wayward curiosity might contaminate the time line. The man wanted to go rifling through Shakespeare’s office and she resolved, then and there, that he would not set one foot out of her sight if the Arch actually worked. It wasn’t merely Nordhausen’s eccentric temperament that she was determined to set a watch on—it was Shakespeare! The thought that the professor might do something to alter a single word of that man’s verse was the most compelling argument anyone could make against the time project that night. If Paul’s theory was correct, then a carelessly spoken word to a stranger in the past, a heedless stumble in the dark, a mislaid object, could wreak havoc on future time. It would be as if Shakespeare ‘never writ.’ The most maddening thing was that they might not even know what they had done to alter the record of time. Things would simply change—just like Lawrence’s narrative in The Seven Pillars. She would reach for The Tempest on her library shelf one night and find it missing, gone, annihilated. Worse yet, she might never know the damage was done.

The thought that every book in her library was now subject to sudden revision had become a seed of a deep discomfort, and it was growing in her with each day that passed. She could lose any one of them: Bronte, Whitman, Keats, all blown away with the slightest breath of time. That volume of poetry she had been reading last night—would it be the same tonight? It was more than unnerving to her now, it was frightening. It wasn’t merely words and books that could change on a whim, it was everything. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle had finally come home to roost.

She remembered how she had confronted her greatest fear at the end of the mission. Robert and Paul were still flushed and dizzy with the elation of their return. The Arch was a scintillating montage of light and the generators were whining as they strained to provide the power required for the retraction jump. She recalled the excitement she had first felt with Robert’s return. Then Paul came through and everyone was safe at last. She had the barest moment of relief before that odd rumble shuddered through the Arch, like a ghostly train passing in the night. A howling sound droned in its wake, and she felt the fear gather strength within her.

Things were different.

She knew it even before she dared to look at the pages of The Seven Pillars. Something had changed and she could feel it like a shift in the weather, a faint, yet palpable variation in the certainty of her life. Something had changed.

That was the moment she knew Kelly was gone. Before they ever took the elevator ride up to the main lab she knew, in her heart of hearts, that he would not be there. The twisted ripple of Paradox was at work. Heisenberg was running wild. Everything was different now.

When Paul found the farewell note Kelly had scrawled, she could barely bring herself to look at it. The errant strokes of his pen were strokes upon her heart. She knew this moment was waiting for them all if the mission was a success. It was simple logic: if the Palma Event never happened, then there would be no reason for Mr. Graves to come back and seek their help. It was Graves who made everything possible: first by preventing Kelly’s untimely death, and then by tucking that little clue away in his raincoat. If Graves never came, then…

Kelly was gone.

Time railed in a confounding loop of Paradox, and lashed out at anything that did not belong on the changed Meridian. Paul tried to explain it to them once. He said that the notion of Paradox was so insulting to time that she would find a way to punish the offenders for their mischief. Paradox was not a mind-puzzle, but a real effect. It was a cleansing and healing force of time that promised nothing less than annihilation for all those who would dare to meddle, and it wanted to charge Kelly with his life. Kelly did not belong. His presence could no longer be accounted for, and the quantum foam of uncertainty wanted to simply engulf his life and suck it away to oblivion. At least that is what they believed at first. His miraculous reappearance at the memorial service had shaken them all—Maeve more than any other.

Nothing was written—not even death, it seemed. Kelly was saved and snatched away to some distant Nexus Point in the future. She did not yet understand how they did it, but apparently they knew something more about the continuum than she could divine at this point, and so she lived with the mystery, as she lived again with Kelly.

The months that passed brought them much closer. The love she felt taken away from her before its time finally began to bloom, and she took great joy in her relationship with him. Oh, he had his quirks and his silliness, as all men did—particularly when he was around Paul. But there was something in the intensity of his moods, the expression of his poetry, and his simple intelligent reflection on almost any subject that she dearly loved. She did not appreciate the notion that all of this was the artifact of some careless incident from the past—that it was all as temporal as the phases of the moon. Somehow, she wanted to find that same permanence and sureness in her love that she so labored for in the world she built around her. She did not want her love to become a fool of time, but rather, as Shakespeare had so artfully expressed it, ‘an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.’

The life she had now with Kelly was always at risk in her mind, as much as her heart wanted that permanence. She knew that it had been stolen from time like a chip slipped under the table when the dealer was looking the other way. As much as she tried to put the fear aside, it persisted in her now, and each day was an effort to master that feeling in the safe little rituals of her everyday life.

She sighed, feeling Gizelle stir beneath her, as if aware of the unsettled mood that had fallen upon her. She was reaching the head of the bridle trail now, and she needed to stop and look for that sage, and perhaps a sprig or two of wild thyme while she was at it. She put the strange notions in her head aside for a while, and thought about dinner with Kelly. He was probably finishing up the data run at the lab now, and they would meet at her apartment in two hours. Or at least she thought they would. She could never be certain of anything again.

Heisenberg be damned!

5

The dinner was long over and they were settling in with a cup of coffee before Kelly got up the courage to broach the subject with Maeve. He had been working through the data runs from the mission, documenting everything for permanent archival records as they contemplated the termination of the project. Maeve had been the strongest proponent for shutting everything down, with Nordhausen arguing most of the other side, as one might expect. The historians had a taste of the sublime power of the Arch, and they wanted more. Outcomes and Consequences, with the burden of making sure everything turned out all right, knew just how dangerous the technology could be. It was Nordhausen’s curiosity and the excitement of discovery against Maeve’s prudence and reasoned caution—with just the right dash of fear thrown in for good measure. In the end, the uncertainties about the future of the technology had proved a strong argument.

Maeve gathered momentum when she forced them to consider the real implications of the project. How long could they keep something like the Arch a secret? The government was certain to find out what they were doing, if they didn’t already have their suspicions. Once that happened they would certainly move in and take the whole project over as a matter of ‘national security.’ Nothing could be more inimical to the project team leaders than that thought. Once the Feds got their hands on the technology there would be no end to it. The knowledge would certainly leak out, and the resulting proliferation issue would give rise to conflicts that would be stupefying. “Suppose they use the Arch as a weapon,” Maeve had argued. “You know it’s inevitable if we don’t shut this down. One side will try to use the Arch to undo the other, and the result will make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like child’s play.”

The long silence in the room had choked Nordhausen’s argument to death that night. They would shut it all down. Paul convinced everyone to stick by the cover story that this was all just an effort to poke around in the theoretical physics. They were just playing with particles in the micro-scale of an accelerator scheme—just tickling Heisenberg on the chin. He would write the paper for the physics department and they would all have to find a way to make it worth something to the private investors. He was certain they could squeeze two or three patents out of the whole thing, and these should provide enough reward for the key contributors.

Their lease on the facility had another six months, and that gave them plenty of time to tie up loose ends and plan how they could best put the whole thing quietly behind them. Three months later Kelly was just completing his data packing, scouring the numbers for any red flag that would be difficult to explain to an auditor or an over zealous investigator. The problem seemed innocuous at first. There was something amiss in the power usage curve.

Someone had transposed some numbers, and the more he looked into it the more suspicious he became. It was not long before he uncovered some log entries that put him on to the culprit. Nordhausen had copied some data blocks into the machine two weeks ago, but the information was not in the archives. A check of the logs showed some very spotty deletions, and the file sizes and system clock dates all corresponded to a single evening in early July.

“I checked the sign-in sheets for the lab,” he told Maeve as he stirred his coffee. “There was only one shift reported that weekend because of the Independence Day holiday. Everyone left early on Friday, but a grad student was in for three hours that night, and it was just logged as a routine security call.”

“So, what’s the problem?” Maeve asked. “Was he fishing around in the data?” Her fears got the best of her. “Oh, Kelly, what if this guy was working for the Feds? Do you think he found anything?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Kelly assured her. “All the vital system files are encrypted.” He shifted in his chair, looking for a more comfortable position as he considered what he was about to say next. “I found one other thing in the accounting log that set me thinking,” he explained.

“The accounting log? I thought that was closed and sent off to the auditors last month?”

“It was, but I was just running checksums on the file blocks on that disk when I noticed something out of place. There was a deposit listed with a revised file date—a rather large deposit.”

“I’m not following you.” Maeve reached for the Arabian steaming pot that she used to serve coffee, and slowly tilted the long golden neck to warm her cup. “Are you saying someone tried to cover up a deposit? A withdrawal is one thing, but a deposit? Do we have an unknown benefactor who might be trying to get in on a share of the patent royalties?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Kelly. “But it does make sense.” He considered the issue for a moment, then discarded it. “No, on second thought it would not explain the other clues.”

“Clues? You’re making this sound like a mystery novel. What are you getting at?”

Kelly heaved a sigh and decided to let his suspicions tumble out. Still, he was careful in how he approached the matter. After all, he was talking about a mutual friend.

“Did Robert have any further discussion with you about the project after our meeting in June?”

“Nordhausen? No, I haven’t seen him for several weeks now. The last I heard he was yanking on Paul’s arm to fly over to Jordan with him. It seems he has some sentimental attachment to a fossil he claims to have discovered on their first jump.”

“Yes, the Ammonite. He told me about that. In fact, he’s over there right now. I’m surprised he convinced Paul to go. They left last weekend and won’t be back for another ten days. But this is different.” He scratched the back of his neck and Maeve was immediately on guard. She had seen Kelly make that gesture before, and it was always the preamble to something uncomfortable he felt he needed to say.

“There’s something going on here, isn’t there?”

“Well, you said it yourself: why would someone want to try and cover up a deposit to the project bank account? Only a few people could even get access to that account to do such a thing, and it wouldn’t be hard to track down the dates with the auditor.”

“So?”

“So I gave him a call.”

“And?” Maeve let just a pinch of impatience creep into her voice.”

Kelly hesitated for the briefest moment and then let the matter go. “The deposit was made on Monday the 5th of July, and the system file discrepancies were all traced to the 3rd.”

“You mean right after you discovered a grad student had come in on a holiday weekend…” Maeve was starting to piece things together now. “Get to the point, Kelly. Your coffee is getting cold and I’m not letting you touch that pot until you come out with this.” She fixed him with that hazel-eyed stare that had won so many victories for her in the Outcomes Committee.

“The deposit was made by Robert,” he said nonchalantly.

“Nordhausen?” Maeve seemed genuinely surprised. “What do you figure he was up to—salving a guilty conscience for all the money he cost us with research? Lord, he spent nearly ten percent of the budget trying to isolate vectors for the Shakespeare mission, and then the whole thing was trashed at the last minute. Maybe he was feeling guilty.”

“I’d like to think so but—“

“But you know him as well as I do. OK, Kelly. What was he up to this time?”

Kelly could feel the heat entering her tone and he wondered if he had made a mistake in bringing this up. Yet he had come this far, and there was no way to back out gracefully now that he had dangled out these irregularities. He tried to explain.

“Well, the numbers were pretty significant—in file size, I mean. There were several hundred terabytes of data with altered checksums, and the whole block had been shunted off to the recycling bin. That was erased, but I was able to recover the base code for the data blocks and—“

“English please.”

Kelly scratched the back of his neck again and Maeve’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Only one thing could account for that much data,” he explained. “Oh, he used the secondary drive system, and had everything running through the simulator to make it look like it was just a trial run and all, but the data transfer tags were pretty clear.” He resisted the urge to explain the technical discrepancies and acceded to Maeve’s request. “It was coordinate information—temporal and spatial.”

“Coordinate info? For the Arch?”

“Yup.” He let that simple affirmation sit with her for a moment before he said anything else.

Maeve was staring at the Arabian coffee server, her eyes riveted to the gold plating as though inscribing her thoughts there. “And the money?”

It seemed to Kelly that she had already come to some inner conclusion, but she wanted to hear what he thought just to confirm her growing suspicion. “There was a spike in the electricity usage that month and the deposit was just enough to neatly balance our books.” He didn’t want to say any more.

Maeve pursed her lips until they were nearly white. She set her coffee cup on the settee, as if she was unwilling to hold anything as delicate as inlaid china while she let her emotions run with this latest surprise. There was a faint tremor in her hand as she released it. Kelly was just about to say something but she held up a warning hand to silence him. He had that pleading look in his eyes, as if all of this was his fault, but Maeve knew better.

“What in God’s name is that man up to,” she breathed, and the question was more an accusation. “He was running numbers and using gobs of electricity on the holiday weekend—when no one would be around to bother him. And you say he had a grad student sign in for a routine security call? Baloney! He used it, Kelly. He used the Arch, damn him. I knew something like this was going to happen if I let him out of my sight. I just knew it!”

She stood up, her knee jostling the service tray on the settee and Kelly put his hand on his forehead, regretting his candor and hoping he had not re-ignited the long-standing feud between Research and Outcomes.

Maeve’s anger continued to vent. “We’re going to have to lock that place down now, lease or no lease. My god—I still can’t believe he would try something like this. No clearance, no outcome study: the risk was enormous! How could he have run the calculations? It took us nine months to get good numbers on the Shakespeare drop.”

“Well, you can get a pretty good bead on spatial coordinates without even using an Arion system. As for the temporal numbers—”

“Where? Where did he go, Kelly?” Maeve seized on that now, and it was clear that she was very concerned about contamination.

“Like I said, I could only retrieve the base code, and there wasn’t enough data to work that out.”

“Then we’ve got to get over there and keep digging. I want to know what he did, and I want to know it tonight.” She folded her arms, as if trying to set some boundary of civility on her anger. But Kelly had seen Maeve like this before. He knew that they were in for a long night in the lab.

“Do you really want to do this now? I mean, Robert is in Jordan for the next ten days. What’s the rush?”

“What’s the rush? Don’t you realize what this means? He used the Arch! The last time we tried that we changed everything and you nearly got killed!” She sat down. Very flustered. “Damn him,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. I was reading Dickinson last night, and now…”

“Emily Dickinson? What has that got to do with any of this?”

“Oh nothing—at least I hope as much. But the thought that the poem I read last night wasn’t the one she wrote –“ She came up short, her anger choking off her voice. “If there’s one line of that poetry changed—one word—I’m going to roast Nordhausen over a slow fire!” She fixed Kelly with that determined stare that said she would do exactly that.

“We better get started,” he sighed. “Bring the coffee. We’ll need it.”

6

Nordhausen stumbled his way back through the winding cave, struggling to remember which way they had turned when they explored earlier. He made a left when he should have taken a right, but the false corridor soon reached a dead end and the error self-corrected. He reached the upper level of the subterranean formation a moment later, and was pleased to see the rosy red light of the setting sun framed in the irregular opening of the outermost crevasse. But, to his surprise, the picture was not an empty landscape! Two men appeared silhouetted in the opening, and he came up short, caught unawares.

A moment’s hesitation passed when he realized that they could easily be one of the touring groups he had told Paul about earlier. His start was soon colored with the elation of discovery and good luck as he realized that they would certainly have transportation nearby—possibly a bus or landrover. He hastened forward, rushing toward the mouth of the cave with a greeting on his lips, only to find the men had quickly unshouldered firearms and leveled them at him in a gesture that was clearly hostile.

“Don’t shoot!” he said instinctively. “I mean you no harm. Lord, am I ever glad to see you. We thought we would have to hike all the way to Akaba from here. Thank God!” He extended his open palms to indicate his friendly intent, but the men just stared at him with dark, surly glances. Nordhausen saw that they were clearly Arabic, both dressed in loose fitting robes and head dress, with weathered olive faces colored by the usual facial hair. One wore a full beard, and the other sported a trimmed goatee. “English?” he asked gingerly, realizing that the men probably did not understand a word of his greeting. He began to have flashbacks of his brief sojourn in the desert with the two Arab guides he had encountered. Then he recognized a checkered scarf at the throat of the bearded man, and he suddenly knew that these were the same men he had sought to pull into his ruse when the helicopter made its forced landing to escape the authorities! Could we have caught up to that little caravan, he wondered? Perhaps they meant to shelter here as well.

When the third man appeared in the cave opening, all doubt was removed. The white pith helmet and khaki overcoat were impossible to mistake. Before Nordhausen could say another word the apparent Westerner made a terse gesture, his fingers snapping to accent his command and the two Arabs rushed forward to seize the professor by the arms, dragging him rudely back to the cave opening in spite of his flustered protests.

“English?” The Westerner grinned at him. “What are you doing here? And do not say you are lost! We have been watching you for some time.”

“Thank god,” Nordhausen began, relieved that he could at least communicate with the man. The stranger’s thick accent made Nordhausen realize this man was Arabic as well. The notion that they were Bedouin brigands emerged in his mind as he winced with the hard grip of his assailants. “Is this necessary? You can see I mean you no harm.” He gave his captors a wan smile, but they glared at him just the same.

The man in Western dress gave another command in Arabic, and one man took a firm hold on Nordhausen, pulling his arms behind his back while the other patted him down in a cursory search. Once satisfied that he was not armed, the leader nodded and the Bedu guards released the professor, stepping back to either side, guns still at the ready.

“Who are you?” The leader said tersely, and the impatience in his tone of voice was obvious.

“I’m a professor of history and archeology. We’re out here on a dig, you see, and we were landing supplies for our team.”

“That is a lie!” The man’s assertion was so cold and sharp that the warning was implicit. “Another lie and I will have my guards do a more thorough search. You spent an hour burying the cache you dropped, and I would guess it is not something you wished to share with the RJAF, or anyone else, for that matter. What were you carrying?”

The man’s tone convinced Nordhausen that he had better leave off his little ruse and come clean. It would be a simple enough matter for these men to go and unearth his treasure. Besides, Paul was waiting for him in the dark of the cave. He decided to let out with the truth, and he told the man about his Ammonite.

“What I said was true,” he began. “To a point, that is. I am a history professor, and I was working with a dig crew some miles east. We discovered an interesting fossil, and I was moving it to a safer location for study. That’s all.”

“Interesting fossil? You mean valuable, yes?”

“It was an Ammonite, if you must know.”

“Ammonite? What is that? A mineral?”

“No. It was an ancient sea creature—dating back many millions of years. A real museum piece, in fact.”

“Only you do not work for a museum—am I correct?”

The man was going to peel the onion one way or another. There was no point in coloring the truth with him. “No,” he admitted. “I was recovering the find for personal reasons. I’m a bit of a collector.”

“Ah, then you were not simply moving it to a safer location for study.” The man’s tone had a mocking edge to it now. “It is illegal to collect such things—for personal reasons. You were thinking to steal it, then. You are a bit of a thief as well, I see. That is why you waved at me like a monkey when you leapt from your helicopter. Yes? The RJAF was on to you and you thought to cover your escape somehow. How very clever! This Ammonite must be worth a great deal of money to take such a risk.”

Robert gave the man a blank stare. “Yes, yes, it’s all true.” He was still thinking of poor Paul, but he wanted to get this conversation to civil ground before he brought him into this. “All except the money. I may have been taking the fossil out without permits but I’m no thief as you suggest. I had no intention of selling my find. Why, I would never dream of such a thing! If you must know, I was planning to mount it on the wall of my office. After all, the thing was mine. I discovered it you see, and I put a great deal of time an effort into the recovery. I’m sure things can be worked out to everyone’s satisfaction and, if the Jordanian government wants restitution, I would be happy to comply.”

“How gracious of you.” Robert’s questioner did not sound accommodating. “You are an American, from the sound of things. Americans are not welcome here, as you must know. They have been stealing from us long enough. I can tell you of many other things they take from this land without permits—like all Westerners. You think all this is here for your pleasure, eh?” He gestured broadly to the sweeping expanse of the Wadi valley, barely visible through the winding fissure behind him. “And the Arabs are just quaint little people of the desert who must be amenable to your every desire.” The man’s eyes narrowed above a thin, brown nose. “Where is your friend?” The question was pointed, with just a bit of anger sharpening the words.

“My friend? Why, he’s waiting for me in the cave. We were going to make camp and we were looking for water.”

The man seemed very unhappy with this revelation. “In this cave?” He seemed to stare past Robert, squinting into the throat of the cave. “Is he armed?”

“Armed?” Nordhausen figured the man was worried that Paul had them in his gun sights. “Well, we did have a pistol with us, but I wouldn’t be concerned. Paul’s not the sort to do anything foolish.”

“Oh? Yet he is in your company, yes? He is an accomplice, is he not? Call him! And you had best hope that he is as prudent as you believe.”

“By what right do you go about ordering strangers, sir?” Robert mustered a little indignation, his mood rankling with the temper of this man.

“You would prefer that I send my men in to search for him? They may not be so gentle in that event.”

Nordhausen waved the men off and called out, his voice receding to an echo in the cave, but there was no answer. “Oh, come now, Paul. Don’t be difficult here.” Robert looked at the group leader with a shrug. “I left him just a moment ago,” he explained, “but, as you can see, I have the flashlight, and it is very dark inside. Perhaps he has lost his way. Why, I was stumbling on dead ends even with the advantage of the light. I’m sure he can hear us. Give him a moment.”

The leader was not convinced. “He hears but does not speak.” He snapped his fingers again, flicking his wrist at one of the Bedu guards. The bearded man stepped past Robert, obviously intent of searching Paul out.

“Now see here—“ Nordhausen was justifiably concerned. He had dragged Paul into this mess and he felt bad enough already. Paul was taking it all with his usual good humor and even temperedness, but the thought that these men would drag his friend out like a scoundrel kindled a protective instinct in him. “There’s no need to be uncivilized about this now. We were just seeking shelter from the sun, and water.”

“Water is a precious commodity in the desert,” said the leader. “These caves are very special to us. They belong to the Bedu who live in this valley. It is not wise to enter a man’s home unbidden, or to drink from his water without permission. Yet you Americans would not understand that, would you?”

“Oh, come now? You’re saying this cave is someone’s home? Why, it’s completely empty—no sign of habitation at all. Surely you would not deny a man shelter and water in a desert like this? Spare me your bruised Arabic pride. If you think we have wronged you, say so plainly and decide what you’re going to do about it.” The professor was recovering a measure of his own pride now, and he was tired of being questioned like a schoolboy by this man. “Otherwise you can take your men and leave the two of us alone here, if you will. We’ll find our way to Akaba on our own if you refuse to help us.”

The leader tensed as Nordhausen spoke, clearly annoyed. He cocked his head to one side, as though suddenly perplexed. Then he stepped closer, resolved, and to Nordhausen’s surprise he delivered a hard slap to the side of the professor’s face. “That is for the insult,” he said bruskly. The other man flashed Nordhausen a toothy smile, a look a pleasure plain on his gnarled face.

“Leave the two of you alone, you say? Do I think you have wronged me? A thief comes to my homeland and thinks to take me for a fool. And he enters a place where it is death to come unbidden. Do I think you have wronged me? Well I will let you in on a little secret, my American friend. You will regret this day, because now I must decide what to do about this intrusion. And may Allah lay his hand upon me, for I do not feel merciful with beggars and thieves.”

Part III

The Well of Souls

“That is the way,” he said.

“But there are no stairs!”

“You must throw yourself in. There is no other way.”

The Golden Key – George MacDonald

7

The Sami sat musing in the tower, his mind filled with the recollection of the of seven young initiates. He could still see the red flush of youth upon their cheeks, and the light of hope and discovery shining in their eyes. The image of their naked bodies lingered in his mind, their smooth, brown skin gleaming in the guttering torchlight, freshly oiled with sweetened liniment as they listened, for the very first time, to all that they must learn.

He had seen many others come before him, naked and willing, ready to pledge themselves to a great cause, and the iron will of one master. Seven gates would be set before them, and they must pass each one in turn. Yet how many would reach the last gate? How many would come to the knowledge of that final truth?

He smiled to himself, for the very notion of truth seemed a strange thing to him now. His hand strayed to the long grey beard on his lap, painted with the glow of the torchlight. His dark eyes seemed to catch and hold the icy fire of cold stars, sharp and remote as they followed his thoughts, gazing at the high lancet window of the tower.

Seven boys had come to him, listened to him, as though spellbound with enchantment. Did they even understand a single word of all he had spoken?

“I do not say these things for any benefit or hope of worldly gain,” he told them, “but only that in hearing them you might be brought to the hidden truth that underlies the whole of the world. Yes, for long you have walked, as shadows walk, seeing and hearing only the barest thread of the cloak of that truth. And while all you have heard may be holy and good, it is nothing compared to the things that will be revealed to you.”

How unseemly of him to use the word truth, he thought. It was nothing—nothing at all. That was the heart of it: all piety, dignity, and forms of behavior; every ablution, offering, rite and prayer, every oath shall come to dust. Even the five pillars of the faith would crumble and fall and the feet of the faithful will turn no more to seek the holy places. Every leaf of the Holy Koran itself will vanish and become empty paper, and all memory of those words will be forgotten.

So it was nothing, nothing at all.

He breathed deeply, taking in the scent of incense where it burned beside him at the edge of a small iron brazier. The thin wisps of purple smoke trailed up from the burner, and his thoughts danced with them. It was all as this, he thought: just so much smoke, so much vapor to be swept away by a great wind. Form and shape were but illusion. Time was a mystery, without purpose, and nothing could be predicted. Nothing was certain, nothing true, nothing written…

That was, in fact, the only truth: uncertainty. It was not a notion for simple minds. It was not something the young would easily embrace or understand. But the Sami was not young. He had seen too many days, lived, and then lived again. Once he thought each day of life was a precious thing, to be savored for the moment and then lost. He knew better now. Once he held tightly, with greed and avarice, and the desire that plagues all men, but no longer. Once he feared loss, knew tears, mourned death. But all that was forgotten and his eyes were finally open. Now he knew the whole of it. Every stroke of the hand or pen, every spoken word, every deed, be it valorous or vile, every hour of the day could be renewed and made again. Nothing was written, and all belief was a futile thing.

And he knew one thing more: that if nothing was written then everything was permitted. Every prohibition and sanction, every stay and all restraint was mere folly. A man could do whatever he pleased, without fear of reproach or condemnation. Only one thing mattered—action. A man’s actions would give birth to the world he lived in. If he found them suitable, then he lived in peace. If he found them unsuitable, then all could be made new. Every destiny could be written anew, and every purpose undone. How strange it was to know this. How strange it was to be the master, sitting at the wheel and spinning anew the threads of Time as he desired. The masses of men moved in ignorance, but he could pronounce all judgment, and every fate was his to command.

The Sami paused in his muse, the faintest inkling of a smile playing upon his dry lips. His eyes narrowed, as with some inner mirth. He moved his arm, seeing the shadow it cast on the hard stone floor and he recalled how the torch keeper had swayed his hand before those seven young boys. The torch moved, this way and that, with ritual motion. Its flickering light cast wild shadows about the room as the seven initiates looked on. It was his cue to recite the next intonation of the ritual.

“Do not be deceived by the changing of appearances,” he told them. “Nothing is as it seems. Everything is mere shadow: the life you have brought to this place, and everything you have ever known—is all a shadow that may dance at the beck and call of he who holds the light.“

As if on cue the drum began beating in his mind again, slow and steady, its dark rhythm cut by the quavering of a horn in the hollowed roots of the castle. He closed his eyes, seeing the servants appear before the seven boys, draped in silken white with bright red sashes trimmed in gold. Each one held a gold chalice, adorned with many jewels. They glided to face the seven initiates, and slowly descended until they rested on their haunches holding out the golden cups before them in offering. He remembered how he had exhorted the boys to take the cups and drink… drink and forget.

With that the Sami opened his eyes, folding his cloak about him in the chill of the room. He knew what would happen to them, seven bright boys too eager for the truth. They would tip the cups and drink, and a languorous mist would fill their minds when the strange haze of the brew enveloped them. Their senses would soon grow dull, and then vividly sharp again. Shadows and sounds would become one. Form and movement would merge; substance and thought would each wear the same garment. Then they would grow still, their eyes heavy with sleep, until, one by one, the cups would fall from their trembling hands and they would swoon in a dreamless sleep.

He did not wait to watch them slip and fall beneath that wild enchantment, for he had other errands to perform. Soon they would awaken in Paradise, or so it would seem. The guards would carry the sleeping boys away, through secret hallways to a hidden garden of delight. For two days they would languish in oblivion, and then awaken. The chamber maids would be at hand to greet them, and platters of fruit and every delicacy imaginable would be set before them. They would be fed milk and honeyed bread, and drink the finest mead that could be had. And each night the maidens would smooth soft, oiled hands over their lean bodies. They would know every pleasure, and the boy in each would be lost forever in the warm embrace of a maid.

So it had been with him once, long ago.

He remembered it still, and almost wished he could release all the days he had lived since then and return to that one moment of awe when he first opened his eyes in unknowing bliss. It was a foolish thought, he knew, for no matter how deeply a man would drink of that cup, there was no forgetting. Once a thing was known, it was known forever. There was no going back to the time of his youth. While he could spin the wheel and change every outward circumstance, he would not forget what he had done. And that was the sadness of it all—that was why a man would lay himself down one day and wait for death. Yes, he knew it could all be overthrown, and he might find himself here again, sitting in this very same tower, with visions of seven new initiates fresh in his mind. Then again, he might not. He would just have to wait and see.

Now there were other things to muse on, not the least of which was the coming of the stranger. Who was this man? The Kadi was meddling, as he was always first to set his hand upon the business of the castle. He was keeping the man under close watch, waiting for his awakening.

Thought of the Kadi gave him a moment of unease. He had quarreled with that man too long. In truth, the image he had of himself as the master of the wheel was not entirely true. There was another set as his equal in the clan—the Kadi. In spite of all the Sami knew, there was still the Kadi to darken each hour of the day with his ceaseless questions and his sanctimonious judgment. No doubt he would have much to say about this stranger.

The Sami sighed. Let him have his hour, he thought. For every man in the castle pledged to the Kadi’s bidding, there was another that would answer to the Sami’s command. If it came to it, and the two elders could not agree, what then?

If the protocols were rigidly followed the stranger would be sleeping now, guarded in the lower chambers near the well. Was this another messenger, as the Kadi insisted? It was said that his clothing and effects were very odd, and that was more than enough to rouse the Sami’s interest. He stood up, resolved on something, and glad to be moving again, on his feet, and done with his doleful muse.

Action.

A man might do as he pleases. A man might do anything at all. He would go to the chamber of the burning and see what he might find. Perhaps there would be some mark, some sign that would open his mind on the matter. He would learn nothing, and know nothing, sitting here in the tower. A man had to act. Only then would the world become real.

8

Paul was alive. His fall had been broken by a vast subterranean pool of water, alight with a hazy phosphorescence. It was actually a kind of whirlpool, and the swirling motion of the waters swept him dangerously near the rocky shards of the cavern wall before they spilled down a low fall and ran away in a swift moving underground stream. Paul was carried with them, struggling to keep his head above water, his arms and legs flailing about with a reflex born of panic.

He could not swim.

He remembered the day that he had first been thrown into water that was well over his head. He was on a sliding board at the Matillija Hot Springs Pool in the hills near Ojai, California. He was twelve years old then, and the family was enjoying the hot Saturday afternoon with an outing to the pool. Paul climbed up to the top of the sliding board, and slid too fast on the way down. He intended to guide himself to the shallower water near the pool’s edge, but instead he landed smack in the middle, in deep water. His slender legs poked down to find nothing beneath them, and he was suddenly terrified. Somehow, in a flurry of thrashing arms, he made it to the rim of the pool—even as he managed to reach the edge of a shelf of stone now on the margins of the stream.

He pulled himself out of the water, shivering with fright and the trauma of his fall. He could barely move. It was as if the fear and adrenaline had overloaded his system, and his mind needed to shut down before he could function again. He tried to stand up, but his legs gave way beneath him and he fell on a sandy shelf, dizzy and nauseous.

He did not know how long he lay there that way. When he opened his eyes he was completely disoriented. He had been dreaming, strangely aroused. It was a wild erotic dream and it almost seemed that he could still feel the hands of a beautiful young woman as they smoothed and caressed his naked body. As his senses coalesced, he suddenly realized that he was lying in a dimly lit room! The light of a flickering oil lamp was wavering on the walls and ceiling, and there was someone at his side—someone touching him, soft hands spiraling over his bare chest.

He thought of Jen, the young lab tech that had become his partner after the mission. He had been waking up next to her for the last several months, and it was only natural for his mind to reach for the familiar. Was she having another nightmare, he thought. The troubling dreams about that night on the project had plagued her ever since. She would awaken, confused and disoriented, not knowing where she was; the fading echoes of memory still shaking her with fear. “Did you hear?” she would cry out in the dark. “It was on the news just now!”

She was remembering things from the old, unaltered time line in her dreams. The new world they were in—the one in which Ra’id Husan al Din had never lived, was still besmirched with the lingering underpainting of the old. It would take some time for her to remember that things had changed; that things were different now. Paul would hold her in the dark, whispering that everything was going to be alright. She must have slipped out of the Nexus during the mission somehow, he thought. Her memories are all mixed up. Sometimes she remembers the old world, and sometimes it’s all just a dream.

A dream…

Soft hands… The warm smooth touch… A floral scent of jasmine and—

He started awake, eyes opening wide with surprise. A young woman was sitting at his side, her arms extended as she smeared a sweet oil over his body. But it wasn’t Jen. Paul caught the scent of olive oil at once, and there was a strange spicy odor in the room, like sandalwood incense mixed with jasmine What in god’s name was going on here?

His gaze was instinctively drawn to the face of the woman. She was very young, eyes dark ovals above her delicate features and smooth, rosy brown cheeks. She wore a sheer, silken gown that covered very little, and it draped open in a languid disarray to expose her slender body, alight with the gleam of oil. A beaded pendant dangled between her naked breasts. Loose, dark curls of black hair framed her face, and she wore a circlet of silver ovals at her forehead, adorned by a bright pink flower. He stared at the woman, somewhat amazed and confused, yet captivated by her youth and beauty. Her eyes brightened in a smile, round almond brown and full of energy.

The woman bowed low, with a slow reverence, and then leaned back, regarding him with a graceful curiosity. Her hand smoothed the residue of olive oil on her bare thigh, and she smiled at him again, warm and inviting.

Paul was completely taken with the situation, his amazement increasing as he eased up to see more of his surroundings. He was in a room of smooth, shaped stone, the amber walls draped with falls of rosy curtains. There was a lacquered wood lattice at one end to serve as a kind of room divider. He spied a small window there, propped open with a polished wood rod, and could dimly discern that there were other rooms beyond. Close by the bed there was a small settee with an inlaid glass top trimmed out with beautifully carved wood. A tall tapered vase sat on the settee, with a slender pouring spout on one side, like the neck of a swan, and the wide oval of a thin handle on the other. A small glass of carved crystal sat next to the vase.

The woman saw him gape in awe at the scene, and smiled, with some amusement, as though she expected the surprise. She reached for the vase with a graceful movement and slowly poured a dark liqueur into the crystal glass. Paul had managed to prop himself up on one elbow now, suddenly flushed with the awareness of his own nudity. His clothes were gone and he wore little more than a thin loincloth, his slim body gleaming with the sheen of scented olive oil.

“Anaya,” the woman’s voice was a melodious whisper as she extended the glass, holding it to his lips. A pungent, spicy aroma effused his senses as he drank, gently encouraged by the smiling woman at his side. The drink had a sharp, alcoholic bite and he nearly coughed when he swallowed. The woman reached out, her hand softly cupping the side of his chin to help him finish. Then she set the glass aside and sidled closer, eyes alight with an almost mischievous fire. The closeness and fragrance of the woman seemed to bring a heat to Paul. He felt flushed and light headed; his vision blurred.

As if sensing the change, the woman extended her arms and gently guided him until he lay prone again, cradled in soft cushions. A warm drowsiness settled on him, but he passed a moment of keen awareness when the woman slipped off the silver gray robe and slid next to him. She lay at his side, pressing close and draping a long, brown leg over his body. A floral fragrance surrounded him. Her arms pulled him into a silky embrace, a hand whispering softly over his chest to his throat and then up to smooth through his hair. She nuzzled at his neck, and he felt a warm, moist kiss there. What in God’s name was happening here?

The light in the room seemed to diminish, and his vision faded. Now there was only scent, and smell, and touch; warmth, and the soft trailing caress of the woman’s hand. He heard something whispered in his ear, but he did not understand the words. The voice at his ear became a soft kiss, laden with affection and the barest hint of a tease. A tingling heat seemed to effuse his body, as he passed into a state of semi-consciousness.

He had to be dreaming, he thought—a dream so real that it was totally convincing; totally absorbing. One moment he had been falling to a certain death, and then the water. Tattered memories intruded on the dream as his mind struggled to create some sense of his situation. But the dream became ever more engrossing, suffusing his body with an ardent heat. As his consciousness faded, a fleeting thought suggested that he may have died after all! He must have fallen on the rocks, but how could this be happening?

It was as if he had landed in Paradise.

9

He awoke to find he was alone, the room dark and masked with purple shadow. Off in the distance he could hear the faint sound of water running over stones. The smell of sweet incense was still on the air, and now it was mingled with another aroma that seemed to summon his senses to clarity—coffee! He moved with languid motion, his limbs still numbed and sluggish. Images of the soft skinned beauty still floated in his mind, bound up with the rising notion of incredulity, but she was nowhere to be seen, and he was inclined to think the whole episode a dream. Yet… the room he was in was the same. Where was he? Could this be a hidden sanctuary in the heart of Wadi Rumm? He knew the place had long been a hideaway for the Bedouin tribes, but this was more than he could have imagined.

There was a sound, and shadowed movement. He heard a sharp scrape and then the darkness was scored with a bright flash. Someone was there, sitting quietly in the shadows. He strained against the darkness, hoping to see the lovely woman he had awoken to earlier. An oil lamp sputtered to life and the warm glow pressed back the shadows to reveal the figure of a robed man seated on a billowy cushion. Paul squinted, trying to focus on the man, but his vision was blurred and indistinct. The figure leaned closer, and Paul saw that he had a thin, hungry face, with delicate bone structure, long hollow cheeks and a scraggly gray beard falling just a few inches from the point of his chin. The eyes were dark and deeply set over a narrow nose. On his head the man wore a headpiece of thatched palm fronds woven to an onion dome point. The eyes seemed to penetrate him with an unblinking gaze. They were full of knowledge; full of silent conclusions, and they stared at him with just the hint of curiosity in their welcome.

“Bismi llaahi r-hrahmaani r-rahiim. As Salam ’alaykom ” The words whispered out in Arabic, and then, to Paul’s surprise, in English.

“In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful. Peace be with you.” The man’s voice was quiet, yet firm. He waited as Paul struggled to sit upright.

Paul cleared his throat to speak, yet his mouth was very dry. The man extended a small porcelain cup, eyes bright with invitation. Paul looked at it with some suspicion at first, but the aroma of pungent coffee pulled at him. He reached out and took the cup, raising it to his lips with a shaky hand. The nutty earthiness of the brew seemed to enliven him, and he drank, grateful for the taste of dark, roasted coffee after missing it for—how long had he been here this way?

“Arabica,” the man said softly. “I see you find it enjoyable. Please, indulge yourself. It is polite to drink three times before we speak.”

Paul let the rich coffee swill a bit in his dry mouth, tasting the hint of cardamom and ginger root in the cup. His mind was shouting questions, but for the moment he was more than happy to simply smell and drink the delectable coffee—a brew worthy of Peet’s, he thought. The cup was small and it did not take him long to drink it down. As he finished the stranger extended a thin arm holding a golden pot with a long spout shaped like a raven’s beak. He finished the third cup in little time.

“Al-hamdillaah,” the man breathed. “Praise be to Allah. You have taken a sufficiency of our hospitality, I hope. For a Bedu this is a duty and great pleasure. Samirah has attended to your bodily needs, as is our custom. I trust she was pleasing to you. Now you have slept and awakened, and soon we will fill the yawning chasm of your stomach with a feast that would satisfy the Sultan himself. But first we will speak, if you are able.”

The man proffered a smile, and Paul could not help seeing more in those eyes than his words seemed to offer. The visitor was watching him very closely, studying him with a mixture of both dignified respect and wary caution. Paul chanced to speak, his voice cracking a bit as he cleared his throat.

“Where am I?”

The visitor smiled, as though the question was little more than a ruse and not to be taken seriously. “You either know very well where you are, or you take me for more of a fool than I appear if you are sincere. Come now. Let us begin more graciously, as equals. For you have come in through the Well Of Souls, and you are changed now. You are here. Is it not a place you intended to be?” Again, the smile that masked more than it revealed, a thin veil over layers of hidden emotion.

Paul was confused. “The Well Of Souls,” he said, pulling the odd piece of fruit from the man’s basket. “You mean the sink I fell into…” He rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead in a moment of distress as he recalled snatches of that headlong, rushing fall. “I thought I was dying.”

“Yes,” the man maintained his knowing smile. “It is often so when you jump. In a way you have died, yes? The harmony has changed, as you have changed. Now you are here. Your soul has been reborn, and if your body follows reluctantly, it is but a small price to pay. Tell me, were you bold enough to open your eyes when you fell? Did you see it? I think you were brave, my friend. Otherwise you would not have needed three days, and all the considerable skills of Samirah to persuade you to return to the world of men. But you are safe now. You are solid. The vibration has resolved itself. You must tell me why you have come.” The question was tacked on quickly, with forced levity dressed out in a thin grin above pearly teeth. Yet the more the man said, the more confused Paul became.

The man waited a brief moment, and the bemused expression on Paul’s face swung him to a new tack. “Forgive me.” The dark eyes shifted and the smile faded. “I have not introduced myself. I am Jabr Ali S’ad, the Gatekeeper here. And you?”

“Dorland,” said Paul more on instinct than anything else. “Paul Dorland”

“Ah, is it a noble name—an ancient name? Pa’ul Do-Rahlan! It sounds fearsome. Would that I had such a name, but the Bedu speak of things in very simple terms. It is the desert in us. We see things with a clarity and simplicity that you Westerners may not fully appreciate. My name is an ancient one and, for that reason, it is common. But it is also a lucky name as well. And you? What is signified in your name? Is the house of Do-Rahlan a venerable one?”

“Venerable?”

“I thought as much. Why else would you be chosen.”

The man paused, smiling again, yet his eyes were wells of deliberation. Paul thought he caught just the barest hint of fear in them, and he was very perplexed. His first question had been lost in the man’s forced civility and feigned joviality. He asked again: “What do you call this place?”

Now the man laughed. “Very direct! I like that. You wish me to open myself to you? Why not. We are one and the same, yes? But the guest should be the first to speak. You are already in my debt, you know. The river was not being kind to you, and it was only fortunate that I was at hand in meditation and prayer when you fell through. As Allah willed it. So then, you begin.” The man rested his elbows on his knees, leaning in to close the distance between them. “Have no fear, we are completely alone. I have sent the serving girls away while we speak, but I can call them back for you later.” There was that fleeting smile again, and then the man’s eyes settled into a quiet stare—waiting, penetrating the stillness with hushed anticipation. “You begin,” he whispered, “and I will follow after.” He had a look on his face that was one of a polite final offer, and the silence seemed to add fire to the eyes, building their resolve as he waited for Paul to speak.

After an uncomfortable break, Paul began to try and piece things together, more for his own sake than for that of his questioner. Yes, that was it! He had the distinct feeling now that the man was questioning him, not out of any sense of hospitality, or even to make polite small talk. It was an interrogation. The realization put the man’s strained humor into a new context for Paul, and those eyes, determined yet patient, seemed to brand him with a warning. Yet he spoke, spilling out his tale in a disjointed manner as he pieced the recollections together again in his mind.

“We were out in the desert,” he said. “We were looking for something—the Ammonite, yes, that was it.” The man’s eyes brightened a bit at the word, yet he waited, saying nothing as Paul continued. “We came to Wadi Rumm… unintentionally I think… Yes, just by chance, I suppose. It was very hot and we were looking for something there. Nordhausen!” Paul suddenly remembered Robert, and wondered what he must be doing now.

“Norod-Hassen?” The man repeated the name with his own heavily Arabic accent. “You were with another?”

“Yes.” Paul went on quickly, and haphazardly, not catching the incongruity at first. “It was all his plan, you see—the Ammonite, the Arabesque, Wadi Rumm…”

With each word the listener nodded hungrily, taking the offerings like a man receiving food after a long fast. He was clearly quite pleased to hear what his guest had to say. As Paul pieced together more details, however, he began to wonder why the man would be so interested in any of this. As far has he could discern, he had fallen into a deep, underground sink hole, and was fortunate that it was a gathering point for the waters of a subterranean stream.

“Thank god for the river,” he breathed. “You said it was unkind to me, but were it not for that water I would be lost.”

“Allah be praised,” said Jabr with a reverent bow of his head. His dark eyes finally betrayed a glimmer of real sentiment, and Paul had the feeling that this man wished him well. Yet why the reserve of caution? What was he afraid of?

“And your mission? Yes, I know you are not wishing to speak of these things.” Jabr reached out and touched Paul’s hand as he spoke, a gesture of understanding and acceptance. “Mithaq, the sacred oath, is beholden upon us all. Yet I yearn to hear the tale and know the bravery of your heart, my friend. For the sake of honor, if nothing else. Will you not unburden yourself? Clearly, your journey must end now, yes? Those that come here have but a short time. Why hold close what you might just as easily share with the other Walkers when we gather around the evening fire. We wish you no ill—surely you must understand that, unless our hospitality has somehow failed to please you. Tell me then, truly, and without fear: what do you hope to accomplish? What is your mission? What tiding do you carry? You bore no scroll. Was it lost in the fall?”

Paul just stared at the man, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “Mission? Well I suppose our mission was spoiled the moment we came to Wadi Rumm. Nordhausen should have known better than to try and pull off something like this. And I was a damn fool to go along with it. It was that silly Ammonite!”

“Norod-Hassen? He was Kadi, then? It was he who was responsible for the working of Kuni–Qadar and the setting of time and place?”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” said Paul. He began to have the distinct impression that they were talking at cross-purposes here.

“Forgive me. My heart beats fast to hear you speak, and the mind reaches for words that do not come.” Jabr gestured to his heart and head as he explained himself. “I speak the Saxon tongue, yet badly I fear. There are three ages of that tongue, and I was taken to a far place, long ago, to learn the words of the third age. Why, I do not know, for it is not a language spoken in this country, and few have ever heard it. We listened to you while you dreamed the sleep of forgetting. You spoke out in a strange tongue, and I was called, for it was said the words resembled those of the Saxon lords. Imagine my surprise to hear you speak in the tongue I had studied, using words of the third age! All thing have a purpose, it seems, and my long years of study were not wasted. So I was honored to make this greeting, and share these words with you. Still, my mind often returns home to rest in the clarity of my own native tongue. The words of Islam are very powerful, my friend. You should study with us now that you are here. I would be honored to teach you. Yet, for now, I will do my best to walk the Saxon way with you. Let me think…” He stroked his beard, clearly enthused to have struck some meaningful rapport with his guest, and eager to have this exchange bear some fruit.

“Ah yes,” he returned to his thought. “The working of Kuni-Qadar. It is our way of finding the heart of things—how is it you say this? It is fate, destiny, the vision of the wise who see what must be accomplished, and set the path for those who must walk. I was a Walker once. I have seen the seventh gate and passed through to seek the pathway whispered by my Kadi.” He seemed quite proud to share this. “You understand?”

Paul scratched his head, trying to sort through the man’s words and make sense of them. The odd incongruities in their conversation slowly began to gather like a rift of clouds on the horizon, a quiet distress in the background of his thinking. What was he saying? What was all this talk of fate and walkers and pathways? Clearly this was no simple Bedouin hiding away in the sanctuary of Wadi Rumm. And what did he mean earlier with all that business about the Saxon tongue?

“I’m… I’m afraid this is all a bit confusing for me. You say I have been here for three days?”

“As I count them, yes, that is so. On the first day you dreamed, and we bathed you in sweet water and graced your body with scented oil. You were a very deep sleeper, my friend. Yet on the second day you spoke in your dream, and we believed you sought the wisdom of your Shaykh—your sleep guide, who had come to call you home. Still, you wandered, and we became concerned. The vibration of the fall can be very profound in this place, and I speak as one who knows these things with his own heart.” He nodded gravely, eyes wide as he spoke.

“On the third day we decided to send you Samirah, and relied on the skill of her hands and the softness of her flesh to call you back again. Allah be praised, the long, quiet hours with her were enough to convince you, and you awoke seven hours ago—if only for a brief time. It was enough to share the elixir we have used to settle ourselves. Do you not do this as well? It seems to have worked a great benefit upon you. You rested in the arms of Samirah, and in the peace of Allah, until you made your final awakening moments ago. I have been watching you as Mukasir—the one who greets the unbeliever and welcomes him to seek another path. Forgive me if I make the assumption that you are not a follower of Islam.”

“Islam? Well… No, I don’t suppose I am, but—“

“Then it is my hope that you will place your trust in me, and that we may be friends. For you are here now, and time is very short. You do understand that, yes?”

Paul would get half way up the garden path with the man, and then loose his way as he neared the gate. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “Perhaps it was the fall, as you suggest. Three days? What could Nordhausen be thinking? Poor man. If he found his way to the cleft in the rock and saw the deep sink there—why, he probably thinks I fell to my death.” That thought sent him on another tangent. “Did you hear anyone call out from above?”

“Did we hear? I’m afraid that none may approach the Well. It is not for those who are settled. It would bring the madness, yes? We wait, and the river brings us messengers from time to time. We thought you were such a man, until we saw you. No Westerner has ever come to us this way.” He smiled with that, a genuine smile this time, bereft of the pretense that had colored his remarks earlier. It was as if he was sharing a private joke with Paul, but one that made no impression on him.

“In fact,” Jabr explained, “we expected you—at least we expected someone to brave the stream at the setting of the last moon. You were a bit untimely, and perhaps that is why you were so distressed by the fall.”

“You expected me? You mean to say you were waiting for someone here?”

“It was written,” said Jabr. “As much as anything can be written, I suppose. My Kadi told me to be very vigilant on this night at the setting of the moon. I took my prayers on the uppermost battlement, and then came down to the deep places here where we wait. Allah be praised—you were sent to us as it was foretold. Yet, we do not think you are the man we expected. We have much to talk about, my friend. We have so much more to share with one another.”

Paul passed his hand over his eyes, as if trying to rub away the confusion and bewilderment. Jabr smiled, and touched his knee with a gesture of displacement.

“Forgive me,” he said with genuine concern. “You are still gathering yourself. I know what this feels like. I will let you rest a moment, and then Samirah will return with nourishment. Tonight you will dine with her, and she will pamper you so that you can truly believe that all is well and you are whole again. Tomorrow, we will meet after morning prayer and speak once more. My Kadi will wish to see you, but have no fear. He is a wise and generous man. He will be the judge of things, and all will be well.”

Jabr gave Paul a warm nod and rose, stretching his legs a bit. “Enjoy the evening, Pa’ul Do-Rhalan. You have been very gracious to speak with me. Peace be upon you.”

He bowed low, and Paul returned his compliment, almost on instinct. “And on you,” he said haltingly, as he watched Jabr recede into the shadows. There was a quiet unlatching of a door at the back of the room, and he was gone.

Paul settled into his bedding, unaware of another set of eyes upon him as he rested. The Sami was watching from a hidden spy hole, intent upon the newcomer. The Kadi will wish to meet with you, he thought, but I will see him first. Yes, he may be wise and generous, but he is also foolish, and easily deluded. Thankfully, another is set upon the watch this night, the Sami of the Seventh Gate.

Part IV

The Assassins

“Paradise lies in the shadow of swords”

– Ismaili Saying

10

The Kadi bowed low, completing his morning prayer and releasing that tenuous yet vital hold on the thin spiritual line that reached out across the globe to holy Mecca. The qibla, an invisible line of direction that connected him to the very center of Islam, was a sacred meridian of the faithful, as sure and reliable as the lines that navigators used to navigate the oceans on their journeys. He took hold of that line five times each day, and this time he paused to visualize the great black-draped shine of the Ka’ba in his mind, and remember the holy black stone within that his lips had touched on during the last pilgrimage of the Hadj. The stone, it was said, fell from the heavens, a gift from Allah.

Now he sat with the sweet memories dancing in his mind, the chanting masses swirling about the squat shape of the shrine that had been built by the hand of Abraham himself. It was Jibra’el, the Angel of heaven, who had given instruction on its making. How fortunate that he had been able to fulfill his holy duty to visit that place as a young man. He was blessed by Allah, and grateful that he had been able to make the journey before the infirmities of age and time took hold of him. His experience of that moment remained a central pillar in his own life, and helped him to remain one of the rightly guided, true to the teachings of Islam.

The morning chill fingered the hem of his gown and he pulled it close, his mind drawn from the dream of the faithful to the matter that was now at hand. The Kadi was uncertain in his heart when he turned his thoughts to the man he would soon encounter. He was the third Walker that had fallen through the Well of Souls to reach this place, all predicted by the scrolls the Kadi had received from Egypt, all expected. Yet surely this was not the man intended. By all accounts and appearances, he was an unbeliever! How was it that an infidel should appear in their midst, and not the messenger he had been led to expect?

It was clear to him now that the Order was behind this. Somehow, by some means, they had uncovered yet another of the cherished hidden sanctuaries his people had long guarded. Perhaps the Sami was right to argue with him. That thought shook the Kadi more than the cold morning wind of the desert. If what the Sami said was true then the gateway in Wadi Rumm, the Valley of the Moon, had been breached! The Well of Souls had been defiled, and now an infidel was in their midst, or so it seemed. Was he an agent of the Order sent to this very place to work some mischief as the Sami argued? Where had he come from? Why was he here?

He lowered his head with the shame of his circumstance. Yet, Allah had placed this burden upon him, and he could not set it aside without just resolution. Could this be my great trial, he wondered as he stroked the long grey-white beard that fell upon his breast? He was not yet old, but he grew his beard long as the sign of his office—Kadi, the judge. It was his to preside over discernment, and make decree. A Walker was not to be dealt with lightly. He had conferred with the Sami long, throughout the night, and with some distress. The Sami was driven by his fear and hatred of the infidels. It was his to receive the initiates, to prepare the warriors of the faithful—the Fedayeen. His was the charge of the sharpened sword and the vial of poison. Therefore it was not surprising that death was on his lips from the very first when they met to consider the fate of this man.

“You say he is a Walker?’ the Sami’s face was still mirrored in the Kadi’s recollection, the ice of his eyes flaring like blue fire. “But he does not first walk in the manner of the rightly guided!”

“Yes, he is an infidel,” the Kadi had returned, “By his own admission. Jabr Ali S’ad is very skillful. He has loosened the man’s tongue. Still, we are not the only ones who walk the unseen paths.”

“Then he is of the Order, I tell you. All the more reason to slay the man now, before he rests here in harmony. Why is he pampered? Why is he sent fine linen, and the hospitality of our table? No doubt he is an enemy, perhaps even a Templar; I warn you here and now! He should be chained in cold iron, and collared with the Lightstone. You know this. Why must I argue?”

“A Templar? I do not think so. He certainly did not shun the attention that was lavished upon him by the maids. No Templar will treat with women. Besides, his coming was written!” The Kadi remembered how he had extended the rolled scroll so the light from the lamp would illuminate the thinly traced script for the eyes of the Sami. “This was late received from Egypt. You have not seen it, and so how can you know the torment of my heart in this?”

The Sami eyed the parchment with disdain. “Written? How can the coming of a heathen be written? Do you inscribe such when you throw the scraps from your table to the dogs beyond the castle gate? How, then, would this be written in the tomb of the ancients? I tell you he is not the messenger you were told to expect. He bore no scroll, and his effects were strange to behold. He should be tortured until he speaks his charge. Perhaps he killed the one you waited for, and came here in his place. Ask him, and if he remains silent then his life should be forfeit.”

“That is not for me to judge,” the Kadi reminded his adversary. “Mine is for discernment here and now. Only the Sheikh may order the death of a Walker. You may read the scroll yourself, if you wish. You are initiated. You are rightly guided. Let your eyes read and see that I speak the truth in this. His coming was written. He arrived on the very day we were told to look for him. Do you still grasp the hilt of your dagger as the only greeting we can then make with this man? Perhaps it was necessary for him to assume this guise as a measure of protection. Do you not train the Fedayeen to walk among our enemies, eating as they do, and assuming their manner and speech? So do they become invisible in the enemy’s own tent, and our work is accomplished.”

The Sami folded his arms, unwilling to touch the scroll, let alone read it; resolved in his anger and resentment that the work of his servants, the Fedayeen, should not be his to fully command. “Then why would he hide his purpose now that he has awakened?”

“I do not know, and unless I have word from Egypt or the Sheikh comes, I must not judge harshly.”

“Egypt!” The Sami spat out the word, clearly displeased. “It is always the coming of the scroll that you heed and obey, yet your eyes are blinded to what is clearly before you. This man is a wolf! The infidels are a blight upon our sacred cities. They infest the rich valleys of Palestine like locusts and vermin, and you wait dutifully and receive the scrawl of unseen hands in Egypt. And another wolf is at large again, Arnot is on the prowl. Have you not heard?” The Sami took relish and strength from the uncertainty that arose in the Kadi’s eyes when he spoke of Arnot, the Wolf of Kerak.

“Yes,” he pressed on, “he has escaped the justice ordained for him, and somehow returned to Jerusalem unharmed! Twice now we have tried to kill the man, yet he escapes the knife as though charmed. Perhaps he, too, is a Walker—sent here by the Order to plague us.”

“You tempt fate,” the Kadi warned. “You may not have been so bold if the Sheikh had been here.”

“Oh? You think the Sheikh would not approve? You do not know all or decide every measure in the struggle against our enemies. It is said that only the hand that wields the sword may hold the scepter. Sometimes strong measures are required, not the soft hand. And I tell you that this stranger in the chamber of greeting is another wolf, here in our own fold. He should be tortured, or slain, but you will not accede. You send the maids to him instead.”

“Yes, I do not accede. The Sheikh is not here to rule on the matter and we swore that nothing of consequence should be done unless we are both of equal mind. Act without sanction, and the weave of events will come undone. The harmony will fail, and we will have only the song of bereavement for solace. Will you answer those who mourn when that happens?”

The Sami looked away, annoyed and headstrong to the last. “You are not the only one who receives instruction here.”

The Kadi remembered how he met the Sami’s gaze just then, and how they struggled with one another, each seeking to impose his will on the other. What did he mean by that? Was he, too, receiving guidance from without—from Egypt, from the wandering Sheikh, from Alamut?

“No matter,” he said at last, unwilling to try and charm that snake just now. The matter before him was burden enough. He had to assure himself that the Sami would not act rashly. “Your intentions and motives I have already discerned. You have been told not to interfere!” He had pointed a hard finger at the Sami when he spoke, and even now he regretted his manners, in spite of the anger he still felt heating the back of his neck. “And now you advise me to kill a man I have been told to greet with warmth and welcome. He is a Walker. His coming was written.”

“He is an enemy, I tell you—or he is in the pay of the infidels” The Sami was adamant. “You allow him to eat from our table like an honored guest. What might he be planning, even now, while we quibble here?”

“He is watched.”

“Watched? By Whom? The harlot’s maid?”

“I have appointed Mukasir in this matter, as I have said. He is watched by one who speaks the Saxon tongue—Jabr Ali S’ad.”

“Yes, I have heard that he called out in his fever—with words of the heathen tongue upon his lips. He condemns himself with his own speech!”

“You judge too quickly. Could it be that you are blinded by your own hatred and fear?”

“Speak for yourself and leave the verdict of my heart in peace.”

“I have done so, yet you persist in straying from the appointed path. I am Amir al Hakeem: Kadi General of Massiaf!” The Kadi was not pleased that he had to remind the Sami of that fact yet again. He had been forced to speak his name and title more than once in the last year. The Sami remained unwilling to heed the demands made of him, and it was very troublesome. Yet, in spite of his office, the Kadi knew in his heart that they were equals. Only one other could pass binding judgment on either man—the nameless one, the Sheikh.

“As you wish,” he said with reluctance. “The Sheikh will decide what we can not agree upon here. I have pigeons at the ready, and they will take wing for the Sea of Ravens and Alamut.” He waited on the Sami now, testing his resolve.

“I have sent as well to Alamut.” The Sami folded his arms. In truth, neither wished to tempt the judgment of the Sheikh, for it might be harsh, and unexpectedly cruel for them both.

As if realizing that their argument would lead them nowhere, the two men lapsed into silence while the Kadi poured spiced tea into a porcelain cup and passed it to the dour figure at his side. The Sami looked at the cup, then reached out to receive it. “I will drink with you again on this.” He had spoken the words with some reluctance. The Kadi watched how he raised the cup to his lips and drained it in one quick swallow, and seemingly with little satisfaction. While three cups were customary, he took only one and stood up abruptly.

“Yes,” he whispered, “you are Kadi General of Castle Massiaf, and I am the Sami here. So I will drink your tea on this, but one cup only. And you should remember the day you sat naked in my presence and drank another cup—do you recall it?” The Sami was referring to the initiation rite that had first brought the Kadi into the clan, many years ago. It was an all too obvious insult, and the Sami made it plain that he considered himself the elder, and therefore the wiser in all things, in spite of the title that had been conferred on the Kadi. “Do what you wish with this man, then. But remember that I will be watching from the shadows, even as I was watching you that day when you sat with me and drank your first cup. And remember also what was spoken to you on that morning—was it so long ago that you have forgotten?” He looked at the scroll when he spoke. “Nothing is written,” he whispered. “And everything is permitted.”

The Kadi heaved a disconsolate sigh, as if to shrug off the burden the meeting with the Sami had placed upon his shoulders. Now he must speak with the stranger, and the time of judgment was at hand. His able servant of the watch, Jabr Ali Sa’d, had reported that the visitor was well, and ready to pass the discernment of his eye. Jabr was Mukasir, the breaker, charged to greet the unbeliever and begin the long process that would break his attachment to heathen ways. He had made a warm greeting with the man, and opened his voice. Yet there was still so much left to discern and time was short.

He stood up now, and his servants, sensing his movement from the adjoining room, rushed at once to his side to see to his needs. He told them to prepare the conference room, and set out fine pillows, food and drink. “And send to Jabr Ali S’ad,” he said. “Tell him we will see our guest in an hour’s time.”

11

Paul sat in the quiet warmth of his bed chamber, surrounded by silken pillows and soft linen. Until moments ago, the sensuous maid, Samirah, had been curled at his side, her warm body pressed close to him while he slept. There was certainly something to be said of Arab hospitality, he thought, yet he wondered at the treatment that was lavished upon him. This did not seem like the austere and oppressive manner he had been told to expect on his trip to Jordan.

He knew that Westerners, particularly Americans, were not liked in the Middle East these days. It was dangerous to travel there after the long simmering unrest that grew from the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Yet, here he was, smothered with scented oil, dressed in fine Arabic robes, plied with sweet wines, food, wonderful coffee and, to his great surprise and delight, visited by this quiet beauty each night! It was the fifth day since he had fallen into the sinkhole, and the long hours of pampered rest had restored him.

God only knows what happened to Nordhausen, he mused, but if he knew about this hidden warren in the desert he would probably have jumped in himself. Where was he?

Paul threaded through the vague recollections of his coming to this place—the fall, the water, the struggle to save himself in the wild underground stream. He came up against a blank, and his memories became tattered and disjointed, until they coalesced again in the sensation of soft warm hands on his body, and the smell of incense and spiced coffee.

His host, Jabr Ali S’ad, had been cautious at first, but grew more open and genuinely warm as they spoke together. In his conversations with Jabr, Paul had come to the conclusion that he was no longer in a subterranean vault beneath Wadi Rumm. Yes, he could still hear the constant flowing of water, but Jabr’s references to rooms and battlements and walls and gates led him to believe that he had been rescued from the stream and then taken off, unconscious, to some nearby outpost. Could he be in Akaba? Wherever he was, he had not seen daylight once in all the time he was awake. Apparently he was still being kept in a hidden room, on the lower, underground level of some greater complex. Sounds came to him in the night—strange ghostly horn calls, the whispered passing of feet on smooth stone, sonorous chants that echoed in the halls above and an occasional hard grate of metal on rock, resounding sharply in the distance.

It occurred to him that he may have been taken hostage by some rogue group that used Wadi Rumm as a base of operations. Perhaps the underground stream he fell into had carried him some ways to the shore of their hidden outpost. It was all he could determine for the moment. Still, there were other things that seemed oddly out of place here. If he was hostage, why was he being treated like a prince? His expectation would be more of blindfolds and harsh treatment; rough interrogation and abuse. Yet, in spite of the fact that he did feel that Jabr was quietly trying to extract information from him, he was coddled and comforted by his captors, if they could be called such. It did not make sense.

Jabr told him he was chosen to greet him because he spoke the Saxon tongue. He obviously meant English, but Paul found that his host often used archaic expressions, and made references to things that were wholly bewildering to Paul. He spoke in metaphor, and took a manner that assumed Paul was privy to every nuance and image he used—as if his language was secretly understood by them both. He called the sink hole the ‘Well of Souls,’ and referred to Paul as a fellow ‘Walker.’ Could he mean that he was a tourist, or perhaps a pilgrim? The old pilgrim’s road did traverse the region of Wadi Rumm, just one stage on the long journey to Mecca in days of old.

That thought gathered prominence in his mind. He had the distinct feeling that these people were living out some fantasy from the tales of the Arabian Knights. Jabr was amiable, and chatted with him over each meal before leaving him in the care of the maid he called Samirah. Yet every time Paul had tried to question his host about his status and whereabouts, there was only a polite smile, and artful nod of the head. “These things in time,” Jabr told him. “All things in time. Tomorrow you will meet with the Kadi. He does not speak your tongue, and so I will be honored to accompany you as translator, if you will permit me.”

This was the morning set for the meeting. Samirah had caressed him to wakefulness, and then brought him fresh baked bread and minty spiced tea. Paul knew that Jabr would soon be at his side again, smiling, watching, quietly probing at him in their conversation, as he had for the last two days now. Paul still puzzled at the riddle of the man’s speech, and wondered how he would fare when trying to communicate with this Kadi, as Jabr called him. It was difficult enough sorting through Jabr’s odd statements. Trying to span the cultural chasm and language barrier with the Kadi might prove a frustrating and difficult experience.

Jabr was very punctual. Samirah withdrew, trailing the sweet scent of perfume and roses, and Jabr made his entrance a moment later. He shuffled to Paul’s side, bowing cordially with his greeting.

“The Peace of Allah be upon you.” He waited, somewhat hopefully, and Paul recalled how Jabr had labored to teach him the etiquette of the formal Arabic greeting the night before.

“And with you, peace.”

“Morning of goodness, morning of light,” Jabr rejoined.

“God grant you long life.”

“Our family, our gardens, be yours.” Jabr’s dark eyes brightened, his thin brown cheeks stretching in a broad smile. “Very good!” Then he added: “You are not offended to speak of Allah in this manner?”

“Offended?”

“I know you are not of the rightly guided—not an adherent of Islam.”

“You mean you know that I am an infidel.”

There was a blush of embarrassment on Jabr’s face. “I do not call the unbelievers such. It is only my hope to touch the heart of one who has not known the bliss of Islam, and make greeting, in the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. In this light, no man is an infidel, and all are subject to the will of Allah. You were born to another way, that is all. Yet you do not seem hard of heart. Your mind is open, yes? Are you willing to learn our ways, and hear the wisdom we might share with you without harsh judgment?”

“Certainly,” said Paul. “You have been a gracious host, Jabr, and I am much in your debt.”

“Then even in spite of our long enmity, you wish to find accord with us? This is not trickery or deceit?”

“Trickery? I’m not sure what you mean. To be honest, Jabr, I’m a bit lost with all of this, but very grateful for the care and courtesy you have shown me. Perhaps our meeting with this Kadi will clear everything up for us both. In any case, I don’t know what you mean with this business about our long enmity—we have only just met.”

Jabr smiled. “If only the men of the West would think as you do in this, then perhaps we could live in peace instead of vying with the sword.”

“Do we go to the Kadi now?”

“If you are willing,” said Jabr.

Paul rose, stretching his long legs as he did so and gesturing to the shadowed, wooden lattice where he knew there must be a door. Jabr cautioned him briefly before he led the way.

“We will be escorted, you understand.” He seemed to be apologizing, and Paul soon saw that he was referring to two burly guards standing in the shadows just beyond the low arch that opened to a long corridor. They were bare chested, with loose fitting, billowy trousers and white turbans on their heads. Each man held a drawn sword, which caused Paul some hesitation. Perhaps the hospitality will take a darker turn now, he thought.

Jabr seemed to sense his discomfort as he eyed the guards, and took his arm, gently guiding him on. “Have no fear,” he assured him. “Forgive me, but this is merely a precaution. The Kadi is a very important man.”

“I understand,” said Paul. But he did not understand men with swords drawn at the ready just outside his door. Kalashnikov assault rifles he expected… but swords? Who was this Kadi—some Osama Bin Ladin in charge of this group? He certainly had a flair for the dramatic. Paul watched, with a half smile, while one guard took the van and the other waited to follow behind them.

They passed the long corridor of gray stone and came to a steep, winding stair that seemed to go on forever. Paul counted five separate landings, each one continuing up to yet another flight of rough-hewn stairs of stone. He was a bit winded when they finally turned right at the top of a landing and approached a wide oaken door beneath an arch of artfully carved stone bricks. Each brick was inlaid with Arabic script, and Jabr gestured warmly as they approached the door.

“The council chamber of the Kadi General,” he said, his voice hushed with reverence. “Remember the words of greeting I taught you?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“In Arabic?”

“I will do my best.”

“Good then. I will be at your side at all times. There will be three cushions set before the chair of the Kadi. Take the centermost one and be comfortable. I will sit on your right. When the Kadi speaks I will translate in your ear. You may simply utter your response in the Saxon tongue, and I will be your voice.”

The leading guard knocked once upon the door, clanging a thick, wrought iron oval. It was answered by more men, dressed in the same fashion as their escorts, only with a threaded line of gold along the sides of their trousers. Jabr bowed, and gestured for Paul to enter. As he did so he took in the high, vaulted ceiling, supported by two rows of thick pillars with ornate capitals. The stonework was well crafted, and the pillars flanked a long hall with richly colored carpets. The far end of the room opened on lofty colonnades and arched windows above a flight of wide steps. There, on a dais lit by torches, beneath a wonderfully carved Arabic arch, sat a man in simple white robes. He wore a jeweled turban upon his head, and his eyes seemed weary and strained above his cinder beard. As Paul advanced, he soon made out the man’s features—tawny skin, aged yet not withered; a prominent nose above thick purplish lips. The man regarded him with a steady gaze, and Paul seemed to catch a hint of surprise in his eyes as he watched the visitors take their places on the silken cushions.

Jabr looked at him, nodding. Paul soon realized that he was being prompted to greet the Kadi, and he flushed, a bit embarrassed that he had been gawking at the architecture and forgetting his manners. He bowed low and rose, speaking the words Jabr taught him in Arabic.

The Kadi responded warmly, obviously pleased, and Paul completed the brief litany before seating himself again. There was a moment of quiet regard and the Kadi seemed to be deliberating something in his own mind. Then he spoke again, and Jabr translated quietly in Paul’s right ear.

“I trust you are comforted here and it is my hope that your health and life are well protected.”

“I had a harrowing fall,” said Paul, “but your hospitality has restored me to good health. Please accept my thanks and gratitude.”

“It is graciously given, as the welcome of Castle Massiaf. We were told to expect you on the night of the full moon, and we hope your journey was not arduous.”

Castle Massiaf—that was the first inkling Paul had of his whereabouts, but the name did not mean anything to him. He hesitated wondering what the man meant with that last remark. “Forgive me, but how could you anticipate my coming?”

The Kadi waited briefly. “It was written. Sent to us by the messenger before you, but we did not expect that you would be Saxon.” The look on Paul’s face spoke across the language barrier without any need for translation. The Kadi seemed suddenly infected by Paul’s bewildered expression. “Are you not the Walker in the Valley of the Moon—that we call Wadi Rumm?”

“Wadi Rumm? Yes, I was in that place, seeking shelter from the sun and fresh water. Yet I came there by chance. My fall was not intended—“

“Not intended?” The Kadi seemed perplexed by this revelation. “Yet you came by the Well of Souls. You came in on the river, just as we were forewarned.” Jabr was translating quickly, and Paul looked from him to his questioner on the dais.

“I’m very sorry,” he said, “but my fall was an accident. I can only be thankful that your people were close at hand to render assistance.”

The Kadi seemed more and more perturbed with each word Paul spoke. He ran his hand over his thick beard, considering.

“Then you did not jump willingly? How strange.” The man leaned in to study Paul’s face more clearly. “Do you mean to say that the Dawa was not revealed to you? You were not prepared? You are here simply because Allah wills it?” He cocked his head to one side. “Or do you say these things to avoid discernment here?”

Paul’s confusion redoubled. More riddles and metaphors. “What is meant by Dawa?” he asked.

“By that we mean the divine intent of your journey—the summons that calls you to become a pilgrim. You are a Gray Walker on the eternal Hajj, and all who walk that road are called and prepared. That is your Dawa: your mission. Could it be you have forgotten? Was your fall a grievous one—or are you simply unwilling to speak freely?”

“Well,” he began, “I’m still not entirely sure what you mean by all that. You may call my coming the will of Allah, but I assure you, he did not take the time to confer with me before I took that headlong fall.”

The Kadi allowed himself a thin smile. “Do you play with words here?”

Paul was as confused as ever. “Let me be plain, sir. We were trying to reach a ship in the Red Sea, as Jabr here has undoubtedly told you by now.”

“He has spoken of a celestial flight. You say there was a great vessel in the Red Sea to the east—the Arabesque, as it was called.”

“I never saw it. Our flight was… interrupted, and we landed in Wadi Rumm. It was necessary for us to find shelter, and fresh water. We began to search the caves there and I was alone when I slipped and fell into the sink. I suppose my only mission was to find my way home. We meant to try and reach Akaba, you see. Is that where I am now?”

It was clear, as Jabr translated, that the Kadi did not expect to hear such a revelation. In fact, he had the aspect of a man who was unwilling to believe what he was being told. His heavy lips pursed with disapproval, and his eyes narrowed. Paul saw how he clenched his fist in the palm of his other hand, as though distraught, or greatly troubled. Then he fixed Paul with an avid stare and spoke tersely, with stone in his voice. Jabr hesitated, and whispered a hasty translation.

“Are you a Templar? You must answer truly now.”

The man’s manner carried a presentiment of warning. Paul could sense how the tension in the question had infected Jabr as well. His translator swallowed, his throat dry, and Paul could not help glancing at his dark eyes. The fear had returned to them, traced with just the barest hint of suspicion.

He wracked his brain, knowing that his answer was somehow very important to these men. A Templar? What on earth did they mean? His hesitation prompted the Kadi to push harder on the door he was opening, and before Paul could answer the man spoke again.

“Are you Hospitaller then? What order do you serve?”

“What order? I don’t understand what you are asking me. I serve no order.” Then the words broke through to a point of understanding in his mind. Templar… Hospitaller… Those were the names of the fighting orders of Christian knights in Medieval times. There were modern equivalents, but they were nothing more than church socials and fraternal lodges, like the Knights of Columbus. Some were still shrouded in mystery, and rumored to be secret societies of the Church. Perhaps these men placed credence in those stories, and thought him to be some kind of agent.

“Look,” said Paul. “It is clear that I am a Westerner—an American, in fact. I have told you how I came here, or at least all that I can recall, yet you people have been talking in these riddles and I can’t seem to get a straight word out of anyone. Now, answer me this: am I a prisoner here? Do you mean to hold me hostage? If so get on with it then and bring out your video camera or whatever else you intend. I’ll be more than happy to become a star in your little show.” He folded his arms, angry and frustrated, yet also a bit unsettled that he had allowed his emotions to get the better of him. Who were these people? The question rankled him, and he had decided to have it out with them here and now—in spite of the gratitude he felt for their rescue and the kindness of their hospitality.

Jabr looked at him, a bit wide eyed, and then slowly translated what he had been saying. The Kadi kept looking from Jabr to Paul, clearly annoyed, yet determined. His brows drooped and returned a flash of the same anger Paul had postured, resolving more to a stern indignation. He spoke again, his voice clear and loud.

“Then you claim to serve no order? You are not a sergeant, or even a squire? Do you speak truly?”

They were going to hold to this drivel about knights and squires, and Paul shrugged. “No,” he said disconsolately. “I am not a knight, or a sergeant or a squire or anything else. I was simply here on an archeological dig to recover a fossil. Now, if you must know, the find was very valuable, and yes, we were removing it without papers. I can’t imagine that is very much of a crime, and we can offer any compensation that may be asked—along with the return of the Ammonite, if that matters. Now I want to be put in contact with the American embassy in Amman. Is that clear?”

While Paul had hoped his directness would bring this matter to a quick conclusion, Jabr looked more and more bemused as he went on. He began speaking to the Kadi, but Paul realized that he was not making a simple translation. The two men were speaking to one another now, clearly animated, as though trying to reach some mutual conclusion on what to do next. The Kadi waved his arms, giving Jabr a clear instruction until he turned to Paul and spoke, his voice low and controlled.

“The Kadi does not understand—we do not understand the things you speak of. Yet, he must reach discernment here. This is very important Do-Rahlan. You must speak truly, and open yourself. Otherwise the judgment here could be harsh.”

There was a cold scrape of metal and the echo of hard footsteps. All eyes turned to see a man striding from the shadow of an alcove behind the dais. He was dressed in white robes, hooded, with a sable sash tying off his garments at the waist. Paul saw that his hand rested on the hilt of a sheathed weapon, and wondered if this was a captain of this little troop of Arabian guards. All the men in the room seemed to defer to him as he emerged, the guards stooping to a kneeling position as they caught sight of the man. Even Jabr averted his eyes and lowered his head. Only the Kadi sat straight, chin high, an indignant fire in his eyes as he watched the extraordinary figure approach. Paul sensed the edge of tension between the two men, and realized that the audience had taken a strange turn, spiraling into some unpredictable level of danger that he now sensed quite clearly in the room. The guards were not merely deferring with respect, they were afraid. Jabr bowed low and Paul saw that his hand was shaking as he did so.

The man’s tread slowed, and softened on the thick carpeting as he drew near. Paul was drawn to him, catching the glint of his eyes from beneath the hood of his garment. He cut an ominous and threatening figure, and seemed very intent upon Paul. Then the Kadi spoke, as though to draw the attention of the man, pulling at the interloper, who turned from Paul to heed him.

The two men exchanged words, and the tone seemed quite unfriendly. Then the Kadi pointed at Jabr, and called his name. The translator quavered a bit, bowing first and then whispering in Paul’s ear. “I am instructed to interpret for you now, and I advise you to be cautious in all you say here. The third pillow has arrived, and the time of your judgment is now at hand.”

Paul glanced at the empty cushion to his left. Good cop, bad cop, he thought. This must be the real interrogator, or perhaps the ringleader of this little group. They’re terrified of the man—except for the Kadi. Those two stand on equal footing, and there’s some enmity between them, that much is clear.

“This is Sami Abdul-Basir of Massiaf, Servant of the All Seeing. He will question you now, and the Kadi will listen. You must speak truly, and may Allah guide you in all you say.”

The Sami pointed at Paul and spoke, his voice quiet and almost melodious, his eyes catching and magnifying the wavering light of torches, though his face remained shrouded in shadow.

“The Sami has heard all that was spoken before,” said Jabr. “He asks you now to chant your oath, and reveal the Order you serve.”

Paul looked from the Sami to Jabr, and then made up his mind. “Tell him I serve no order, and I take no oath.”

“Ana Laa Afham. The Sami does not understand how this can be so, for all Walkers are sworn. He asks if this is taqiyya—forgive me,” Jabr explained. “He does not believe you. He suggests that you deny your true faith and position out of fear, or to conceal your real motives.”

“You mean he thinks I’m a liar.” Paul did not mince words. “Well, he can think whatever he wishes, but I hold to no order, as he suggests. This is nonsense!”

“Then how is it you have come to this place at the appointed time. The Kadi has said your coming was written. You were expected. Explain this.”

“I have no idea what the Kadi means,” said Paul, holding his ground in spite of the hostile tone in the Sami’s voice. “My arrival here was an accident, nothing more.”

“Then you had no Dawa? You were not prepared?”

“They have tried to explain that to me, but I don’t understand. I am not in the employ of any government, if that is what you mean. I wasn’t briefed or cajoled or bribed. I simply fell! I had an accident! Look, I am a free citizen, if that is not something you people have difficulty comprehending. I go where I please and, right now, the only thing on my mind is getting home. I demand to make a phone call to the embassy of the United States in Amman.”

The Sami spoke sharply in reply, though Jabr softened the words in translation. “Who is this emissary you wish to call upon? Is he your contact here? Is he a Templar?”

“Embassy,” Paul’s frustration was apparent. “Look here, either you are the gracious people you first appeared to be, or you are a band of Islamic radicals—I don’t know which. Quite frankly, I don’t care. Just make up your mind here and get on with this. Either grant me my rights under international law, or, if you refuse—”

The Sami shouted.

“Be silent, Do-Rahlan!” Jabr seemed terrified.

The white robed figure had drawn his weapon, and he strode boldly up to Paul, a long dagger gleaming in his hand as he came. But, as he drew near, his hand seemed to freeze, and Paul caught the sibilant intake of the man’s breath, as though he was physically shocked. He stopped short, and Paul could see his hand tremble ever so slightly where he held out the knife. He obviously meant to threaten, if not to do Paul serious harm, yet something had taken hold of him, like an unseen hand restraining him. He stepped away, as a man might back away from a ghost. His left hand moved to grasp his right where he held the dagger, stilling the tremor.

What was going on here?

The Sami was clearly shaken by his approach to Paul, and began engaging the Kadi in a heated exchange. Paul looked at Jabr, and saw that his eyes were pressed tightly closed, his head low. Something was clearly amiss, but Paul could not guess what it was. He only knew that his fate was somehow teetering in the balance, and wished he could think of what to say or do. Finally, the Kadi stood up, his eyes set with bright determination; his arm pointing sternly at the Sami’s drawn dagger. The Sami said something more, his voice low and threatening. Then he turned and strode away as he had come, disappearing into the shadows behind the dais. No one moved until he was gone.

Paul was watching the Kadi very closely now, and he could see that the man was shaken, as though the confrontation with the Sami had been a trial that drained his strength and energy. His fingers pinched at the bridge of his nose, and then, as though suddenly aware of Paul’s regard, he glanced up, his hand returning to stroke his beard. He spoke to Jabr again, who whispered quietly in Paul’s ear.

“We must go now,” he said. “The Kadi must consider what was said here this morning. Come now—rise and bow. We will leave as we have come.”

12

The Sami waited in the Eyrie of Sinan, the highest point in Castle Massiaf, towering up over the crenellated battlements of the main wall, a stark spike of stone penetrating the night. A forbidden keep, the retreat of the nameless Sheikh himself when he quartered there, it was a dank and cheerless place. Few would chance even to speak of its bleak walls, and none would dare to climb the gray stair leading to the high arched gate that made for its single entrance. Only the Sami, master of the arts of the Assassins and the keeper of the keys to that tower, would dare to cross the threshold. The keystone of the arch was scored with the Arabic inscription that would stand as both a warning and guiding rule for the secret cult he presided over, a truth the Sami knew well—that Time is boundless.

Yet his patience was not so generous. An enemy was at work here: Arnat, the Wolf that had preyed upon his brethren and even dared to launch raids upon the holy soil of Arabia, was again at large. The Sami had it in his mind to send a chosen clutch of his lethal Fedayeen to deal with the man. He had been planning the matter for many months now, sending out spies to gather information on the man’s whereabouts. Now, the coming of this strange messenger filled him with doubt. It may be that he would need his loyal fighters here at Massiaf until he could determine how to deal with this intruder. He sighed, still unwavering in his mind. I will follow the track of the Wolf soon enough, he thought, but first the matter of this stranger, and the intransigence of the Kadi.

Tonight the restless airs blew from the east, carrying with them the scent of the desert, warm dry winds over the flint and shale of sunburned rock. He squinted out over the iron transom of a tall lancet window there, smelling the air and watching the gathering of night. It was a fast wind tonight, he thought, and the messengers will come before the moon is down for certain.

As if in answer he heard the haunting call of the birds drifting over the rugged highlands, and caught the dark fleck of the messenger pigeons wheeling against the mottled face of a waning moon. Perhaps tonight he would have his answer, he thought. It had been five days since the stranger arrived at Massiaf—five days of uncertainty that rankled in his gut as he recalled the face and manner of the man. He was still shaken by the apprehension that had fallen upon him when he approached the stranger, dagger in hand, in the Kadi’s council chamber. It was as if he perceived a faint glow emanating from the man, an aura that surrounded him with some dark magic that was undoubtedly the work of the Order. He remembered how he shirked back, lest he be defiled by the man’s unholy touch. Who was this? Why was he sent?

It was clear that he was an enemy, and if there was one thing the Sami had a firm hold on, it was the treatment of enemies. He knew what he wished to accomplish in this matter, but the Kadi would not hear him. It was evident that this man could not be the one prescribed by the prophets of Egypt, yet the Kadi was blind, and weak of spirit. If this stranger, an infidel, had come to them from the Well of Souls, then the enemies of Islam were on the move once more, prowling the hills and vales like restless wolves, intent on devouring the faithful or bending them to heathen creeds.

If they have found the well in the Valley of the Moon, he ruminated, then they must have sent this man through as a spy –or possibly even an assassin, a business the Sami knew only too well. Who was he targeted to? What was his mission? The man would not speak. He was holding to the discipline of his oath and offered insulting lies instead. And to make matters worse, the Kadi would not accede. Why did he harbor the intruder in gilded chambers, with sweetened airs and trays of the finest food and drink?

The Kadi had grown soft and uncertain with age. He was not the man needed here when war would soon beset this land. Cast no seed upon the rocks, he mused. The Kadi had become as dull of mind as the cold stone bricks of the castle itself. He doted upon the scrolls of the prophets and had no will of his own. It was time for a strong hand, for stern measures, and mercy to the enemies of Islam was unseemly in the face of jihad. The Sami knew what he must do. So it was that he selected the pride of his courier birds, a messenger to the distant fastness of Alamut, far to the East. If the Kadi would not hear the wisdom of his arguments, then the Sheikh in Alamut must rule instead.

Tonight he hoped to have his answer, and his eyes brightened to see the dark wings of the birds wheel and swoop above the horned tower, until one came to rest at last on the stony ledge of the window, calling out a welcome, like the trilling voice of the wind that carried it.

Gingerly, the Sami extended his arm, his hand holding out a sweetened date in reward. The sleek bird cocked its head to one side and hopped through the embrasure of the tower lancet. Its gray feathers gleamed in the torchlight as it entered, and the Sami cooed in greeting, a smile pulling the sallow lines of his bearded face. He spied the silver circlet on the bird’s right leg. Tonight he would have his answer from Alamut.

Eagerly he removed the message ring and carried it to a high table beneath the guttering torch that lit this solitary room. His breath quickened as he unlatched the ringlet and pried out the thin strip of cut cloth that would contain his message. He unrolled it slowly, his eyes hoping to find the stain of blood that would sanction him to take matters into his own hands here. The cloth was clear and unblemished. He stared at it, unwilling to believe his eyes. He turned it over and over, as if the message he sought was merely hidden from him by a trick of the light.

The cloth was unstained.

Bitterly, he grasped the tiny strip in his clenched fist, angry and frustrated. Perhaps this was not the final order, he chanced. Perhaps this message was meant for another. The Kadi will have birds aloft as well. This bird may have been meant for him.

He went to the window, expecting to see more dark winged messengers wheeling about the tower. He called out, his voice shrill and demanding, but no bird came. The flock had passed on to the west, as they did each night. Only this one gave pause here.

He turned from the window and struck the high table with his balled fist, startling the courier in a flutter of beating wings. The Sheikh had spoken. The cloth was pure and unstained. Perhaps his silence speaks louder than any command he might give. He chooses not to speak on the matter. It could only mean that he wishes to come to this man himself, so that the stranger might pass the discernment of a more careful eye.

Then a thought occurred to the Sami that gave him pause. Exactly! This is exactly what he should have expected; what the Kadi might presume as well. Why else would he threaten the intervention of the Sheikh to stay my hand in this matter? The Kadi knew that the Sheikh would bend his curiosity around this man, and draw nigh to place him beneath his eye. If this man was sent here as an agent of the Order, how better to draw his victim close!

The Sami paced the dusty stone floor of the Eyrie, his voice muttering his thoughts aloud as they gathered shape in his mind. The stranger was an enemy. He has defiled the Well of Souls, sent here by the Order to work some mischief. Now Sinan comes riding home, and right into the web this man must be weaving. It could not be allowed!

With each step he took his restless spirit infected the messenger that had brought him these tidings. The bird’s wings fluttered and beat the still airs of the room. Then it leapt to the lancet window and was gone, soaring up from the high tower to seek the dry winds and the night.

The Sami’s mind seemed to soar with it, spiraling into the darkness overhead. Thoughts came to him on the wind, plans, strategies, strong measures that seemed more imperative to him now than ever. He knew what he must do, but the Kadi would not heed him. The Kadi would not see the danger. He would sweeten this stranger with apricots and dates and honeyed mead. He would soften him with the touch of the chambermaids and hope to loosen his tongue with the likes of Jabr Ali S’ad. He did not perceive the danger. The man has already found the Well, what more might he learn? This stranger was yet another wolf in the fold, but the Kadi thought only to milk him like a goat.

Plans came to him; dark ideas gathered shape and form in his mind. He knew what he must do. For the stranger, he would now take measures into his own hands. He could not expose the Sheikh to this man’s ire and evil eye! He would use the chambermaid for she could bring his wrath to the stranger’s very bedchamber. That would be his simplest task. But the Kadi presented yet another problem. He sought to shame and berate. He was weak, and soft, wavering in his thought. He was no longer rightly guided. For the Kadi’s death, he would have to first prepare the way and sway the minds and hearts of the initiates. There were still too many men in the castle who would bend their knee at the Kadi’s hem. They would need strong argument—persuasion.

He was decided.

He looked at the swatch of cloth in his clenched palm, and then set it lightly upon the high table. Without a moment’s hesitation he drew out the dagger from his sash and pricked the tip of his thumb. He waited until the blood welled there, and deftly used the point of his dagger to dab two small drops on the unstained cloth. He smiled, for this was now the very message he expected! What else could he do but obey?

Yet others would not be so easily persuaded. There was a room at the base of the high tower that would serve his need well. He had dug there a deep pit, just wide enough for a man to stand upright so that his head would protrude from the cavity in the hard stone floor. Now he knew what he should do.

First the woman!

Without another thought he rushed to the arched doorway of the keep and opened the bolt with a dry scrape. Two guards would be waiting for him at the base of the winding stair. They were two of his most loyal servants, sworn to fealty, even unto death, his faithful Fedayeen. He rushed down the stair, his robes rustling over the smooth steps as he went.

“Bring me the harlot!” he ordered. “You will find her in the chamber of greeting. The one called Samirah. Then go to the initiates where they sleep and seek a man yea high. His head will just reach your shoulder. Go quickly! Time flees, and danger has come upon us all.”

Part V

Tempting Fate

“The Fates lead the willing—and drag the unwilling.”

Ad Lucilium CVII – Seneca

13

Nordhausen was more shocked than hurt by the blow. The leader of the Arab band still fixed him with a darkly threatening stare, his eyes searching, as though trying to decide what to do with him now that he had trespassed upon this secret lair in Wadi Rumm. What was so important about this place? There were a hundred caves like this scoring the striated flanks of the canyon walls. What was so special about this one? Perhaps these men had secreted away a cache of weapons. Before the professor could react the man strode forward and snatched up the flashlight.

“Move,” he said curtly. “Inside!”

Now what, thought Nordhausen? Does he mean to get us neatly out of sight so he can do us in? Given the circumstances, however, it seemed wise to comply. He needed to ascertain Paul’s whereabouts and status. The unaccountable silence in the cave was disturbing, and he wondered what could have happened to his friend. No doubt the Arabs were wondering the same. The first guard had returned with a shrug, so it was clear that Paul had not been found. Perhaps he had sized up the situation and was hiding in some darkened nook of the cave, waiting for an opportunity to do something.

They worked their way back into the throat of the cave, with the leader close behind the professor and the two guards hugging the walls. “If you value your life, and that of your friend,” he said “then you will convince him to show himself—and quickly!” His voice seemed very edgy, almost rattled. Why should he be so upset about this, Nordhausen wondered?

He called out for Paul again, but to no avail. Either he was stubbornly hiding, or something had happened to him. Could he have wandered off into another series of caverns? Nordhausen turned to his captor with a look on his face that was half apologetic and half bemused.

“He was just through that cleft,” he pointed. “We heard water and I went back for my canteen.”

The revelation did little to ease the tension. The Arab seemed even more disconcerted when he saw where the professor was pointing. He shouted orders to the two guards, and they came up to Nordhausen, seizing him roughly while the leader edged his way to the cleft Paul had found. The man spoke to the gap in the rock now, his voice slipping through in a hollow echo, carefully controlled, yet laden with emotion.

“Look here,” he said. “We have your friend. If you wish him well you will show yourself.”

The echo rebounded to silence.

The faint sound of water washing over stone was all they could hear, a distant, forlorn resonance in the shadowy cave, bereft of the promise of relief that Nordhausen had first heard in it. The leader set the flashlight down and approached the cleft cautiously. He slipped through and it seemed an interminable lapse before he returned, muttering angry words in Arabic as he came.

“You followed the water?” The man came up to Nordhausen, eyes wide, his face a livid mask of shadow in the subdued light of the cave. “You are certain this was the way you came?”

“Yes, he was just there,” said the professor. “Look, what is so important about all this?”

“You fool!” the man went to strike Robert again, but he held his hand at bay, his lips pressed tight, anger flaring in his eyes. “You saw the water?” He asked the question with an unaccountable urgency.

“Yes, but it didn’t look drinkable, so we probed a bit deeper into the passage and—“

“Not drinkable? What do you mean?” Again, the urgency, as if the man was pulling an answer from the professor that he already knew, but did not wish to hear.

“Why, it had this odd greenish glow about it, and a touch of—“ A sudden thought occurred to Nordhausen. The radiation! Paul had been going on and on about that Oklo reaction the French had discovered in Africa, but now Nordhausen began to suspect something else. Suppose these men were members of some terrorist cell. What if they were secreting away a nuke in this cave? That could account for the low level readings that activated Paul’s dosimeter. But that strange glow in the water, and the eerie milky phosphorescence in the stream just didn’t make sense.

“You say it was green,” the Arab leader seized on the remark and pulled hard. “With such a glow that you could make your way in the dark, yes?”

“Well… yes.”

The man spoke harshly to the guards, and they quickly produced a length of twine and roughly bound Nordhausen’s hands behind his back. When they had finished they ran off, each taking a separate passage as though intent on searching the whole network of caves to be certain Paul was not hiding.

Nordhausen’s assumption piled up in his head and began to finally generate some real anxiety for him. If these were terrorists, then the situation took a very dark turn. “Look,” he tried to reason with the leader now. “We mean no harm here, and we haven’t seen a thing. There’s bad water here. So what’s the harm in that? Hopefully your men will find my friend and we’ll be happily on our way to Akaba and leave you all in peace.”

“Hopefully…” The man took off his pith helmet and revealed a dark stringy mane of hair. “But if your friend went in there, there’s no telling where he will end up. The moon is not yet full!” He gestured to the opening of the cave. “It will not be up for hours yet. The timing was all wrong! Don’t you see?” The man spent his anger letting it dissipate into a sullen resignation, as if some die had been cast and there was nothing to be done. Yet Nordhausen could still not discern what he meant.

“Who are you?” The leader asked the question with newfound suspicion. “How did you find this place? Tell me, before I have my men slit your throat for what you have done here today.”

The second death threat was not lost on Nordhausen. He cleared his throat and swallowed hard, realizing that by arguing he might be tempting fate with this man. But what else was there to say but the truth? “I’ve told you,” he said. “We were trying to remove a fossil from a dig. Now I’ll grant you that we were working the dig without proper permits and all, but that’s hardly a mortal offense. We stumbled in here to escape the heat, and for no other reason, I assure you. As for your green water, I know nothing about it, and I don’t care to know anything about it. We were supposed to be on a ship in the Red Sea by now. That damned helo pilot lost his nerve and dropped our cargo, and us along with it, here in the middle of nowhere. Now, that’s it! That’s all there is to say about it. Then you come along with your ill manners, accusations and death threats. And here I sit.”

The man’s eyes narrowed, and then a glimmer of a smile lit them, his lips sneering out, with little warmth. “In the middle of nowhere,” he repeated the phrase, but he did not mock. His expression transitioned, setting deeper with the same resignation the professor had heard in his voice earlier. “Well it seems you are not the only one marooned here now. I was supposed to go through, at moonrise, but the well is dissipated.”

“The well?” Nordhausen tried to ground himself in the exchange. “You mean to say this was a water cache you were worried about? Surely you would not have missed a liter or two. Besides, we haven’t even had a moment to drink. You were upon us before I could even fetch my canteen.”

The man looked at him, hand on his bearded chin now, considering. The guards returned, somewhat breathless, and shaking their heads in the negative. Words were exchanged in Arabic, and Nordhausen got the gist that Paul had not been found. The leader was decided. He glanced at the professor with a vacant look in his eyes. “It is done,” he said. “Your friend is not here, and if you are certain he was in that chamber then he has jumped through—or perhaps he merely fell through—but in either case the result is the same.”

“What in blazes are you talking about? Are you saying he fell into some chasm there? Have your men found… found his body?” There was real pain on Nordhausen’s face now, and he lashed himself inwardly for dragging Paul into all of this.

“My men found nothing,” said the leader. “Nothing at all. And the water you saw glowing in the dark no longer glows. The well is dissipated. If your friend went through then we are all in a Nexus Point now. Who knows how long it will last, or how deep it will reach.”

Nordhausen just gaped at him, not understanding what the man was saying at first, until he spoke those last few words and they jarred him with unexpected recognition.

“Nexus Point?”

The man shrugged, and smiled, his anger finally resolved. “You don’t have any idea what I am talking about, do you? Well, how do you Americans say it: we are all in the same boat now, yes? May Allah guide us safely home.”

It took Nordhausen a moment to absorb the full implication of what he was hearing. Nexus Point. It was part of Paul’s time theory. Could the man‘s use of the term have been mere coincidence? Now it was Nordhausen’s turn sink a line and tug out the answer to a question he dreaded to ask.

“What do you mean by that,” he ventured. “Nexus Point.”

The man gave him a derisive look. “You would not understand,” he said, and he seemed to speak more to himself than to Nordhausen. “What’s done is done. It will be at least another month now before the well can be used again. By that time the situation may have come to some resolution. As for your friend, that remains to be seen. At the very least it will introduce a variation, here… somewhere… Who can say? The well has been very stable, but the timing was off by at least four hours. The temporal locus may shift.” The man nodded his head, considering, almost oblivious of Nordhausen now. “There is no way to achieve any clarity here. I will just have to wait.” He looked up at Nordhausen as he finished. “ You have no idea what I am talking about, do you?”

Nordhausen gasped inwardly as the man finished. He had picked out two other terms that Paul often used when he talked about time. In fact, the other man’s words only made sense in that very context—time. Yet his anxiety only increased as his confusion abated. How could this man be spouting terms right out of Paul’s lexicon on time theory? His throat was dry and he swallowed to clear his voice. There was one surefire way to synchronize his thinking with this stranger. He looked him straight in the eye and spoke.

“Nexus Point… Variation… Clarity… Temporal Locus…” He plucked out the words and handed them back to his captor, watching him closely as he finished with one final addition of his own: “Pushpoint.” The man’s eyes widened with surprise. He had been staring past Nordhausen, deep in thought as he gazed back along the winding throat of the cave to the gloaming amber of Wadi Rumm. Now he fixed the professor with a hard, stare, his eyes alight with emotion.

“So,” he breathed. “Then you are not what you seem after all! You are a member of the Order! How quaint. I should have guessed as much. This story you concocted was too wild and preposterous to be believed. What was it you buried in the Wadi, eh? Did you bring in equipment?”

“Now, just a moment,” said Nordhausen. “You used those words yourself. Where did you hear them? What exactly did you mean?”

“Don’t be coy with me. It does not become you.”

Nordhausen glanced at the two guards, who were watching the conversation indifferently from the back of the cave hollow.

“Oh, do not concern yourself with them,” said the stranger. “My men do not speak English, and, even if they did, they would not understand what we were talking about. My, my, what a fool I have been to ramble on like this. You are very clever, professor—if that is how you prefer to be thought of. Tell me: how did you discover we were operating here?”

Nordhausen’s mind was racing with every phrase the man uttered. A moment ago it seemed that they had reached some common ground, but now the man was veering off onto another tangent, leaving confusion in his wake. The stranger waited for him to answer, but he could only burst out with a question of his own.

“Who in God’s name are you?”

The stranger smiled, this time with a little warmth, as though he had come to some new assessment of the professor and perceived him as an equal now—not simply someone to be bullied about for his trespass here.

“In God’s name? Yes, in Allah’s name I will tell you. I am Abdul Hakam, Servant of the Arbitrator. That is a given name, but also very telling. Others call me Rasil, the Messenger. And you? What is your given name?”

“Robert,” said the professor. “Robert Nordhausen.”

“Ah!” The man smiled broadly now. “Then you are named after a real warrior—one we call Badi al Zaman: the Marvel of Time. Many tales are told of Boulos and the Badi al Zaman. In fact, he lives this very moment. You even bear a resemblance. Tell me, when did you arrive? The penumbra has kept us all at bay for so long that it is surprising anyone is able to get back past the event now. What a day that was! We call that one the Day Of Retribution, but you found a way to nullify our advantage. Yes, I was in the Deep Nexus when everything changed, and I remember how it all was before things solidified again. It was a good time for us then, but now all is overthrown.” His eyes clouded over with a vacant darkness, resolving to a carefully controlled squint of anger.

“What age are you?” The question was curt and sudden, demanding in the voice of the captor again.

Nordhausen did not quite know what to make of it, or why his age would be relevant. “My age? Well, I was born in the 1960s,” he began.

“Ah, then you are of the seventh age—I am of the ninth—so you would not know of what I speak. I will tell you then, for we are safe in a Nexus now, and no harm can be done. The Moslem world once stretched to a third of the surface of the earth. The muezzin’s call to prayer reverberated from a hundred thousand minarets, all over the world. When the hajj came, the multitudes thronged to Mecca in numbers that would stagger the imagination. Do you have any idea what it was like? The sea of pilgrims became an ocean of believers clothed in the simplicity of the iraam. They would stretch for miles and miles on the roads leading into the city. There were so many that the holy days had to be extended to accommodate them. They smothered the plains about Mount Arafat, flowing in to the sacred Mosque of Haram and circling the Ka’ba in an endless murmuring stream of prayer that had no end. We were nearly three billion strong then! Now…” The darkness returned to his eyes, then flared with the light of determination. “Things are different now, and I suppose you know as much about that as any man, yes? That was truly a masterstroke, my friend! You will have to tell me how you accomplished it! Strange that the Order recruits from this time—but agents are kept in every era now, by both sides. The struggle continues, so do not rest easy. We have a saying: ‘nothing is written,’ and we hope to see the pilgrims clot the roads to Mecca again one day—rest assured.”

Rasil’s eyes glowed as he spoke, a challenge in his words and a smile animating the dark stubble of his beard. “But forgive me.” He gestured to his guards, indicating that they should release the professor’s bonds. “There is no need for this now, and I understand your outrage at the treatment you received. Forgive my poor manners. I did not know! You are very clever, my friend. So, how did you learn of this place?”

Now Nordhausen was truly flustered. The stranger, Rasil as he called himself, was talking like one of the lab techs at the Arch complex in Berkeley! He used yet another of Paul’s favorite terms: Penumbra. Who was this man? He tossed about possibilities in the twinkling of a moment’s thought: was he a government agent trailing the two of them on their trip to Jordan? He discarded that card at once, for it had been mere happenstance that the helicopter landed here—unless the damn pilot was in cahoots all along—but no, he had forced the pilot to land at gunpoint. This meeting was entirely random, yet this man was talking like he had been in on the time project from the very first.

Then the notion that he had been avoiding finally tackled him and he fell flat on his belly with the realization.

This man is a time traveler. He’s another one of Mr. Graves band of meddling miracle workers from the future! It was the only thing that made any sense. How else could the man know these terms and speak them in such a clearly related context? And he thinks… by God, he thinks I’m a time traveler as well, or at least some agent in that enterprise. That’s why he’s changed his manner and gone all civil and polite of a sudden. A moment ago he was threatening to cut my throat, and now he’s grinning at me like a Cheshire cat.

A time traveler! Paul argued it himself: the clearest evidence that time travel was possible would be visitations from the future. Nordhausen knew only too well that anything was possible now that the Arch had torn its first fateful breach in the continuum. The notion that this new technology would survive into future generations, and be used, was not a difficult leap. But what would this man be doing here in the middle of Wadi Rumm? A sudden answer came to him, all in that same fleeting instant. Paul…

“Something’s happened to my friend, hasn’t it? You knew we would be here,” he was groping in his thinking now, “and you were trying to intervene somehow, just like you did with Kelly, yes?” The notion that Paul had suffered some accident in the cave preyed upon him with a vengeance as he finished. “But you were too late.”

“Too late? You mean too late to stop you? No, my friend, I was right on target. I came through from… Let us just say that I was timely enough with my arrival. But you have not answered my question. How did you discover this place? When did you arrive, and, since we are both safe here in a Nexus, what were you about?”

Nordhausen was still struggling with the idea that some dire accident had befallen Paul, when an inner sense put the subtle clues in the man’s words together and handed him the solution.

This man thinks I was sent here; on some kind of mission. He’s asking me about arrival times, and I damn well know he doesn’t mean my flight to Amman.  Nordhausen covered his mouth with his hand for a moment, as though unwilling to let his mind blurt out any of his confusion and bewilderment. One thought still clawed at him: Paul.

“Damn, I wish I had never dragged him into this now. What’s happened to him? Do you know?”

“Ah, you are worried about your friend. I understand. Then he did not intend to jump here? Do you mean to say that he was merely sent to observe? I see!” Rasil nodded his head with inner confirmation. “That is why you arrived early. You meant to establish yourselves here as observers—perhaps you set up a monitor in the Wadi to try and analyze the vectors. But you did not expect us at this hour and our meeting was mere coincidence. Am I correct? Then your friend became restless and wandered into the cave for a closer look. Too close, perhaps. If you are telling me the truth, and he did not intend to jump, then it is almost certain that he has fallen.”

Nordhausen clasped his forehead, straining to get his mind around all of this. The man’s words would lead him through a thorny path, and then land him right smack in the middle of his greatest fear. Paul must have slipped over some unseen ledge in the heart of the stony cavern.

“Fallen?” He repeated the word, his worry and self-recrimination wrapped about it like a wet blanket.

“That is not good,” said Rasil. “He was not prepared, and this will certainly be hard on him, if he gets through safely at all. And it will introduce a variation, at the very least; possibly even a more significant transformation if he is not very careful at the other end. We will just have to wait and see. I will be interested to hear your thoughts on this.”

There was much more in Rasil’s words than Nordhausen caught at first. It was almost as if… “What do you mean: if he gets through?” he blurted out. “You’re not making sense! You mean to say that you know where he may have fallen? Why, we’ve got to get in there! We can dig up the truss from our cargo and use the tethering line if we need to. You’ve got two strong men here.“

“We cannot go through that way,” said Rasil. “As I said, the well has dissipated. The reaction takes time to build up. It will be another month before the energy is sufficient—but I doubt if we will be using this gate again, now that you have discovered us. Your friend has gone through in my place, and things may be very difficult for him: dementia, nausea, not to mention the physical danger of the fall itself. But, if he is fortunate and Allah wills it, then he will land safely on the other side. What happens to him there is not for us to know. We are in a Nexus Point, my friend. This business has tempted fate, and now we must simply wait.”

14

Maeve sat at the lab console, her elbow leaning heavily on the armrest of her chair, chin in hand. Her deep hazel eyes scanned the long rows of display panels, replete with dials, switches, readout monitors and colorful LEDs. It was hard to believe that they could control destiny from this very room. With the right calculations, and enough research into the loom and weave of past events, they could stroll through the Arch and emerge in any time and place of their choosing. The notion still staggered her with its implications. How they managed to keep the whole thing a secret thus far was beyond her. The moment the government found out about this they would swoop down and seize the entire operation: facilities, people, data, everything.

She realized that moment would make an end of the world as she knew it—as she thought it to be all of her life. They had only just begun to meddle with eternity. The first breach of faith had been the harrowing mission to the Hejaz to reverse the Palma catastrophe. The equipment held together long enough for Paul and Robert to pull it off and make it safely home. She spent weeks debriefing the two travelers to try and ascertain just exactly what they did to alter the Meridian. After months of speculation and additional research, they still did not know. The Outcome was clear and unequivocal: Palma never happened, and Paradox had been averted by the narrowest margin—largely through the efforts of unseen counterparts in the future.

She tried to imagine them, wondering what year they had come back from and what the time travel project must be like there now after their success. Were they reveling in their time, jubilant with the new life they had created by preventing those towering wave sets from smashing the Eastern Seaboard? Every time she tried to join in that celebration the fear emerged in its place. Kelly nearly died, and there were hundreds of thousands of lives that were saved—probably millions. The future travelers had been desperate to reverse Palma and save those lives. What horror played itself out in that alternate thread of time—the thread in which her life first began?

Only a handful of people, those that were safe in the Deep Nexus during the mission, would ever know what that older world was like. She was one of the knowing few, along with Kelly, Robert, Paul and the technicians that had been with them at the Arch complex that night. It seemed that there was a definite sphere of influence around the Arch that had remained stable and protected when the transformation came about. Every thing had changed, even the lab equipment and furniture had been subtly altered. She looked at the desktop at this workstation and saw that the nick in the corner where she always set her teacup down, was no longer there. Things changed in a Nexus, said Paul, but not living beings—not living memories. The temporal consciousness and cell-based memories of those protected in a Nexus Point were the one thing that remained unaltered. And when we die, she thought, then no one will know what happened here.

The fear returned to her with that thought, pulsing up again from the pit of her stomach and setting off that anxiety ridden adrenaline reaction. Every day she had lived out since the mission ended had been a battle with that fear. She kept opening cupboards and peeking into the corners of her home, as if she was afraid she would find something missing, changed, altered, and gone forever. Yet everything seemed the same. The world she was living in now was virtually identical to the one she had been born into. That made sense, she reasoned, because the real changes would be caused by all those hundreds of thousands of lives that were not extinguished last May. They were all alive now, going about jobs, consuming food and energy, procreating, writing stories, discovering the daily business of their lives. With each and every act, even something as simple as the stirring of a spoon in a cup of tea, the Meridian was changing course and veering off in a direction it was never meant to reach. Now that she was being swept along in that gathering torrent of change, she would never recover the timeline of the world she had been born to. Everything would seem quite normal, quite the same here, just a few short months after Palma was prevented.

The changes were remarkably minor in these first days—and she looked with increasing diligence as the time ticked by. There were a few books that had been moved to different shelves in her library. The arrangement of items in a desk drawer was subtly altered. Yes, she had an uncanny visual memory for things in her own private world. Any odd little ripple from the stone they had dropped in the still waters of time would be noticed by her careful eye. One of her vases had a crack in the rim, and then there was this missing nick in the desktop here at her workstation. A little extra wear and tear in one place, a little mending in another—almost as if time was making sure to balance her books. This would be easy labor for her, she thought. Years from now, however, when one of the lives salvaged from the catastrophe of Palma did something truly significant, then Mother Time would have her real work cut out for her.

Yes, the differences would just be beginning now, but there, in that far-flung future she could only imagine, things would be drastically different—entirely new. Even as she had been scouring the corners of her world to root out the slightest hint of alteration, they would be overwhelmed to look out on the world they had brought about when the Nexus finally dissipated on their end of the operation. I’ll bet they’ve been spending the last few months just taking it all in, she thought.

How would it be? They could go to the nearest library and find hundreds of thousands of books—all entirely new—resting quietly on the dusty shelves! How could they possibly take that all in and own it as a world they could live in again? She realized that the elite few who found themselves in a Nexus Point of change would become lost, gypsy souls in a world of their own making, but one where they could never truly be at peace.

That thought replayed her reverie on Shakespeare, and all the arguments she made to Nordhausen when they had considered what to do with the project. “Don’t you realize how fragile this all is,” she remembered telling him. “Do you want to reach for Othello and find it gone, different, changed?”

“Ah,” he had countered, “But what if I find something new! Wouldn’t that be just as significant! What if I were to find another play!”

Maeve remembered how she had left the meeting that night and hastened over to the UC Berkeley library. She ran up to the literature section and went storming down the aisles with the anger of her argument still fresh in her eyes. The poor grad student who happened to be in the English Lit section saw her coming and seemed to skirt aside as if a freight train had been bearing down on him. Maeve tramped up to the stacks and snatched every last volume of Shakespeare’s work while the lad just gaped at her with a slack jawed expression on his face. She was going to check—every play, every line, every word.

Six hours later she had satisfied herself that everything was in order. Nordhausen wasn’t going to find another play. They were all there, all thirty-seven of them, and though she didn’t have quite the time required to read each one, she had gone to the heart and soul of them all, and found Shakespeare living happily in the verse. Nothing was missing; nothing seemed out of place; nothing jarred or lacked the luster, artistry and passion of his expression. Shakespeare was safe. His words had been written long before T.E. Lawrence ever had the chance to read them. The change made in the Meridian had occurred in 1917. Everything before that time was unaltered.

The argument with Nordhausen flared up from time to time. They went round and round, but Maeve persisted. The time project was too dangerous a thing to leave intact. The Arch should be shut down—dismantled—and the research locked away or destroyed. Even as she pressed her arguments home, however, she knew how futile they would be in the end. Mr. Graves’ knock on Nordhausen’s study door that stormy night in May had already made a mockery of them all—and Robert let her know that fact had not escaped him one evening over coffee.

“You know we can’t keep this covered up for long, Maeve,” he said. “Otherwise how could Graves drop by that night, eh?” Just like atomic power before it, they could not purge the knowledge of time travel now that it had been found to be a practical reality. The cat was out of the bag.

Nordhausen relented, however, and they put everything on hold for a time. Until now. Here she was in the lab again, at this ungodly hour, and Kelly, bless him, was busily working out some data runs in the next room. Here she was, hot on the trail of her favorite nemesis—with every good suspicion and a growing body of evidence suggesting that Nordhausen had opened the continuum a second time! This time she would do a good deal more than argue with him when she finally brought him to heel for this little transgression. She looked around, noting what she might use in the environment to crack over the man’s thick skull. Not my teacup, she muttered to herself, and then concluded that a nice firm knuckle rap on the noggin would have to do—for a start.

Kelly was back, his face still buried in a sheaf of data files as he came shuffling into the room. Maeve brightened to see him, the one good thing that had come of this whole business for her. “Well maestro,” she greeted him, “what have you found?”

Kelly looked up briefly and angled into a chair next to her workstation. His medium brown hair was pulled back and tied off in a short tail beneath the baseball cap he often wore when he was working like this. She had smiled to see how he had donned the cap the moment he stepped into the lab, his mind shifting into a new realm, a world of algorithms and formulae that she still found befuddling.

“Well,” he said, “our friend Robert was definitely up to something. I think I’ve recovered the temporal locus now. A lot of the data blocks were pretty corrupted, but I ran a street sweeper over the disk and found quite a bit left in the magnetic resonance signatures—quite a bit.”

15

Maeve smiled, deciding that she was going to let Kelly use all the jargon he wanted this time. Her affection for him stilled the reflexive urge to lecture him about the necessity of speaking layman’s English once in a while, but that license still did not prevent her from nudging him with her next question. “Where?” She made it nice and simple, and hoped he would not launch into a long explanation about how he came to his answer. She was pleasantly surprised.

“1919,” he said bluntly. “November. I couldn’t resolve the day, but the spatial data should give us plenty to work with. It seems he was in London.”

“London?”

“Yes, right smack in the heart of the city, in fact. I’ve got the breaching point narrowed down to within a quarter mile or so. Odd thing is this: the retraction data shows that he wandered pretty far a field while he was there. The system pulled him out just a few hours after the breach, and he was nearly sixty kilometers west of the breaching point when the retraction scheme kicked in.”

“Where?” The question seemed to work wonders the first time.

“My guess was that he was somewhere near Reading. I’ll know for certain in about a half an hour.”

Maeve thought for the briefest moment and came to a quick conclusion. “Then he took the train out of London,” she said. “That’s the only way he could have traveled that distance if you have the retraction time nailed down.”

“Hammered it myself,” said Kelly with a smile. “So what do you figure he was up to?”

“God only knows,” Maeve sighed letting her exasperation vent a bit.

“Well, we’d have to run date queries in the history database for hours to isolate something significant.”

“For all the good it might do us,” Maeve quipped. “Who knows what he did while he was there, Kelly. Sure we could run up the history files, but who’s to say they would mean anything. I mean, if he changed things… Lord, that man tempts fate with utter impunity!” She fixed him with that look she would use to drive home a point, and he took her meaning at once.

“Right. If he caused a variation then the history would seem completely innocuous—unless one of us recognized something wrong, something out of place. But that couldn’t happen because we weren’t part of the operation. We weren’t in the Nexus—safe in the null zone of the void.”

“And that’s exactly why this business is so damn dangerous. What if he tries this again? How would we know if things are the way they’re supposed to be? It’s maddening! You know, I spent six hours in a library one night just to satisfy myself that Shakespeare was sleeping peacefully between the covers of all his books. Now what—do I have to go over there and read all thirty-seven plays again?”

Kelly scratched his forehead. “Now Maeve,” he began. “Let’s not jump to conclusions here until we have more information. You’re right,” he placated her, “this is bullshit. He just can’t go off on a train ride through the English countryside and then cover the whole thing up like this. It’s not right.”

“It’s Nordhausen.” The finality in Maeve’s voice carried a wealth of emotion. “It’s the reason why we have to shut this down. Don’t you see, Kelly? We’re adrift now, without any compass or even a sure star to steer by. We have no reference point to tether us to any sense of reality. Things could be changing and we’d never even know it!”

“I agree with you completely,” he assured her. “In fact, I was thinking a lot about that after Paul first brought up this business about the stability factors in a void created by a Nexus Point.”

“Stability factors?”

“You remember the meeting we had about two weeks before the mission? Paul was talking about the Nexus, and how it forms this protective bubble around the Arch. He thinks there’s a physical void associated with the Arch itself, and not merely a temporal void that protects the actual travelers.”

“You’re losing me,” Maeve complained.

“Hang on a second. We didn’t go through the Arch, right?”

“Right.”

“So how is it we still remember Palma and all the rest? We weren’t in the temporal void, but we were inside the physical null zone around the Arch. Paul wasn’t sure just how far its influence would extend, but it looks like we’re getting a good measure on that now—say a hundred yards or so. That’s why we can still remember what happened that night. The lab here is about five floors above the Arch, right? That’s well within that radius. Now, take Tom, for example.”

“Tom? What’s he got to do with all this?”

“Hear me out for a second. Tom was down in the generator room throughout the whole mission, right? Now those steps are on the other side of the complex, and there’s a corridor heading east for about thirty yards before you get to the generator room.”

“And your point is?” Maeve tried to curtail her impatience and Kelly pressed on to finish his thought.

“That puts the generator room well beyond the hundred yard radius. Don’t you see? I spent some time with Tom after the mission. He doesn’t remember anything at all!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I asked him, half jokingly, what he thought of the news over the Memorial Day weekend and he didn’t get the joke.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“He didn’t know, Maeve. He had no inkling that the entire east coast was about to be inundated with a three hundred foot tsunami. He wasn’t in the Nexus!”

Maeve bit her lower lip, considering. “We knew there was something odd about Tom’s experience. He seemed completely unaffected, but we weren’t sure why. And that cute lab tech Paul was flirting with had a lot of unaccountable blank spots in her memory as well.”

“You mean Jen? Yes, that confirms my theory—or Paul’s theory. The intercom was out that night because of the storm. Must have been a freak lightening strike or something. In any case, Jen was shuttling back and forth between the lab here and the generator room all through the mission. She was physically moving in and out of the null spot surrounding the Arch. Paul told me she was feeling strange all night. She had this sense that something truly significant was happening, and then the heart of it would slip away from her. One minute she was worried sick about the news of the Palma event, and then the next she moment she had completely forgotten about it. She wrote it all off to the stress of the moment, but it’s pretty telling evidence for the notion that the physical null zone has a limited radius. That’s why nobody else on earth knows what really happened that night except the four of us.”

“But Jen remembers Palma. Paul told me he had to do a lot of explaining to settle her down after the retraction.”

“Yes, Jen too, I suppose,” said Kelly. “She has partial memory of the event. She knows what happened because she was right here in the lab when we pulled Nordhausen out, but it all seems like a dream to her. She gets these odd déjà vu experiences now. Have you talked to Paul about it? The poor girl wakes up screaming, drenched in sweat. Paul has to sit with her for hours to help her sort everything through. I think the key moment was when the transformation actually took place at the mission end of the operation. Jen must have been up here in the lab when that happened. That put her in the Nexus with us—right in the eye of the storm. But right after I ran the final retraction scheme on Paul, I sent Jen down to tell Tom to cut the power. She moved outside that hundred yard radius again, very soon after the retraction.”

“What do you think happened?”

“Well, I’m not quite sure, but I think it takes a little while for the Nexus to collapse after the time breach is closed. That’s when Paradox is active, trying to clean up all the little loose ends and broken threads that it can before the new Milieu solidifies and the Meridian takes a definite course.”

“Don’t remind me,” said Maeve, a warning in her eyes. She didn’t want to think about that awful moment when she first realized that Kelly’s life would be forfeit if the mission succeeded.

“Just this once.” Kelly needed to get this out, and he ventured on. “I was fading, Maeve. God, it was an odd feeling—like when you start to pass out but your senses still keep working. I could see, and hear, and feel the cold surround me… I just had to get that note written, because I think I knew that someone was punching my ticket right then.”

“Kelly…” Maeve’s eyes were glassy and he could see that she was struggling to keep her feelings in check.

“Sorry, Maeve.” He put his hand on her knee, a gentle reassurance that he was still there, alive and well. “Don’t worry. We’ve got some good long years ahead of us yet.”

“A hundred years,” she whispered.

“A hundred years,” he repeated with a smile. “If you’ll have me.” He took off his baseball cap and ran his hand through his hair. “Well the point of all this is that I had this idea.”

“Not another one of those ideas,” Maeve teased with a smile. “How much time did you burn on our Arion system account with this one?“

“A lot,” Kelly confessed. “I guess I’ll be making my own little deposit in the project account to cover the debt. But I had this idea and so I worked up a program.”

“A program?”

“Yes, and I’ve had it running round the clock on a machine in the next room. On a lot of machines, in fact.”

“Twenty-four hours a day? What’s it doing, crunching some numbers for you?”

“Kind of… Remember when you said we had lost our reference point? Well I felt the same way for a good long while after I came back. I mean, you should have seen the operation these guys had.”

“You’re talking about our friends in the future—about Graves and all?”

“Right. They had some slick operation there. I wanted to get a look at their consoles but they wouldn’t let me set one foot out of my receiving chamber—that was what they called it. But I could see some of the equipment when they came and went through the door.”

“We agreed not to talk about that anymore, Kelly.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s just that I had some time on my hands there, in a manner of speaking, and I was wondering how they knew if they were going to be successful on the mission. Sure, the changes would be obvious, but where would the record of all the previous time be stored? What was their reference point? How could they navigate without a compass, as you said a moment ago? So, after I got back I started working the problem and—“

“I’m afraid to hear this,” Maeve protested. “You aren’t going to tell me that you used the Arch now, are you?”

“The Arch? No. I’m not that reckless. You’re right about Nordhausen. We’ve got to have some stern words with Robert the moment he gets back from his little fossil hunt in Jordan. No, I wrote this program, see, and I keep the damn thing running all the time. In fact, it’s all over the net: my little Golems.”

“You mean that screensaver you put out last month?”

“Yup. Circulation is up over a hundred thousand installs now, and growing. It was just a nifty little agent that I called my Golem. People love the damn thing!”

“Yeah, I have it running on my box at home too, but aside from the cute graphics and the pretty kaleidoscopic patterns I don’t see how it relates to what we’re talking about.”

“What’s in a name, my dear. A Golem, as you may know, comes from the Jewish tradition. It was a man made of clay, magically brought to life to perform menial tasks. It’s like a pre-industrial revolution concept of a robot.. Did you ever read Brin’s Kiln People? He had a world where people could make duplicates of themselves to run errands. Well, the idea has applications in the computer world as well. In Unix such software services are called daemons, artfully enough, and on an old Microsoft platform they were less romantically called ‘services.’ I kind of think the handle fits the task.”

“But what does it do?”

“Don’t you ever use the search feature? You type in keywords and then just walk away and cook dinner, or turn in for the night. Then my Golem screensaver comes up when the system idles and performs all your searches on the Internet. The next time you sit down at your box, the friendly little Golem is there with a nice little report.”

“OK, I’ll try the search feature—but what has this got to do with the time project?”

Kelly realized that he was rapidly spending Maeve’s reserve of patience. He came to the point. “That’s not all my Golem does,” he said a bit ominously. “I also slipped in a little routine that runs non-stop and performs a self checking error correction loop. It looks at the entire body of the static source code and compares it to the code in RAM to report any variation—almost like a virus scanner.”

“Now you’ve completely lost me.”

“Well, a virus scanner watches all the files you send, receive or copy, and looks for subtle patterns and variations. If it spots suspicious activity, it alerts the user and either quarantines the contaminated file or deletes it. In this case I have the program call home and complain if it spots any variation. I had this idea, see.”

“Oh you had an idea alright, but I still haven’t the slightest notion of what it’s about yet.”

“Remember Paul’s theory?” Kelly tacked back to the question of Time again, trying to bring Maeve along. “He said that living memory would not be affected by the changes in the continuum if a person was protected in a Nexus—even though physical things were subject to change. Take that copy of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, for example. It was right here in the lab desk drawer throughout the whole mission—well inside this null zone sphere I’ve been talking about. Yet it changed. That was how we were going to learn if Robert and Paul were successful or not, remember? I was supposed to read that passage in the book and compare it to my own living memory—my unaltered living memory of the book. Why, you were doing the very same thing with Shakespeare! You were scouring the plays for any sign or word that did not seem to fit. Since the program is a constantly running process, it’s like living memory when active. You see?”

Maeve was starting to get a grasp on what he was saying, though the technical details still escaped her. “You mean your computer program is like our memory as long as it keeps running. You think it will remain unaltered by changes in the continuum?”

“Something like that. As long as it doesn’t shut down and re-boot from the source code. The trick was to make sure it would always be running. That’s when I got the idea to tack it on to the code for my screensaver. Now it’s on over a hundred thousand boxes all over the globe, and the sun never sets on my little Golem program. He’s always active and running somewhere, and if any variation is noticed, he’ll phone home.”

“Phone home?”

“The program will send a data packet here to the main server I set up for it last month.”

“And what does that tell you?”

“It’s not what it tells me, it’s what it does.”

Maeve gave him a look that said she would tolerate no more nonsense. He knew he had to sum things up for her fast. There was nothing to be done now but to blurt it all out.

“I set it up so that if a significant variation is detected anywhere on the globe, the server will contact me on my cell phone and put the Arch generator on cold standby.”

“The Arch generator? Do you have any idea what it costs us to run that kind of power here?”

“Yes, but don’t worry, nothing has happened in the last 30 days and our electric bill will be well within the norm.”

“But why, Kelly? Why would you want the Arch on standby like that? What good would it do for your program?”

“Maeve…” Kelly tried to fashion one of his own stern glances now, with moderate success. “If the program reports changes then something is afoot, as Nordhausen would say. I’m betting my Golem will alert us to variations in the continuum.”

“Variations? How could there be changes to the continuum. OK, I’ll admit that Nordhausen pulled the wool over our eyes and got away with a little train ride through the English countryside, or so it seems now from your data file there. He won’t get away with anything like that again, by god. Now that I think of it, an alert system like that would be a nice fail safe for us. Just you let me catch that rogue in the act the next time he tries to pull off an unauthorized time breach. Can you set that thing to call my cell phone?”

Kelly laughed. “If you insist,” he said, “And I think you probably will. That’s the general idea, though. If it works, and I’m still not sure that it will, then we could be alerted to changes in the continuum. We could have a chance at maintaining a safe reference point here.”

“Here?”

“Right,” said Kelly with a satisfied smile. He put his baseball cap back on and waved expansively at the lab around them. “Right here—right smack dab in the heart of the Nexus. We spin up the Arch and the field will start to coalesce. A null spot will form, and we can be here in the center, safe and protected from any change in the Meridian. Then we’ll know, Maeve,” he concluded. “We’ll know. We’ll be the reference point, if you follow me.”

She did.

“Clever boy,” she whispered. “I knew I had you around for some good reason.”

Kelly smiled, relieved that he had been able to get through the technical issues to the heart of the matter. “The phone rings,” he summed up. “I get in the Subaru and haul ass over here to the Arch complex. Maybe you have a good idea there, Maeve. I think all four of us should be able to respond to the alert. That way we improve our chances of getting someone into the safety of the Nexus Point before the Meridian solidifies on some new course.”

“Well if we can just get Nordhausen on board and shut this whole thing down we won’t need a wakeup call from your cute little Golem program.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about any of us changing the continuum again, but you forget Mr. Graves and company.”

Now Maeve finally settled on the heart of Kelly’s plan. She gave him a long look, her eyes reflecting the conclusion that was obvious to her now, but one she had resisted in her thinking all along. “You think they’re still using the Arch technology to change things?”

“You know what a temptation that kind of power is, Maeve. Hell, look what Nordhausen pulled here! Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to bet that if something starts to slip; if things start to change on us here, I damn well want to know about it when it’s happening so I have the chance to do something about it—just like that night last May. We were all set to go watch a Shakespeare play, then things changed. We were just lucky we had the Arch on standby that night with Jen and Tom on duty here. The point is this: we had six hours to do something, and I want that chance again if anything goes terribly wrong.”

Maeve gave him a long, forlorn look. Outcomes and Consequences, that was what he was talking about now. He wanted to keep a firm grasp on the life he was living now; wanted solid ground under foot—some sense of certainty in the face of this awful new technology they had spawned. He understood the same yawning doubt that sat in her chest now. He had to.

“Good for you, Kelly. I think it’s a great idea.” She leaned over and embraced him, a long warm hug that conveyed her relief and approval at the same time. It’s not just me, she thought. He feels the same way I do about all of this. “I can imagine your cell phone gives you a bit of a start every time it rings now, doesn’t it? People are calling you on that damn thing all the time.”

“You mean this?” Kelly reached in his pocket and pulled out his slim light green Nokia cell phone. “Oh, I don’t use this account for the alert calls.”

There was a muted sound and he felt Maeve tense up in his arms as she looked about the room to see what it was. Kelly’s eyes widened with surprise. “I use the red phone in my briefcase…”

Maeve had located the noise and the look on her face spoke volumes. Kelly edged away from her and the sound continued. He stood up and started across the room to his briefcase.

It was singing out its third ring now and, one by one, the system monitors began sputtering to life, consoles lighting up and computers beeping as they began to boot their operating software routines. Far below them, deep in the bowels of the Berkeley Hills, the massive titanium wheels of the main power generator began to slowly spin with a low thrum.

The Arch was growling to life.

Part VI

Dark Designs

“We are at the stake,

And bay’d about with many enemies;

And some that smile have in their

Hearts, I fear,

Millions of mischiefs.”

Julius Caesar, IV.i. – William Shakespeare

16

The Sami was pleased with all he had done this night. Soon, he knew, the plan would unfold, and the matter between him and the Kadi would be decided once and for all. It was already wakening while he waited in the Tower of Sinan, his thin hands tracing a path over the strange figures that were drawn on the scroll. Messages, he thought. Messages from Egypt. How the Kadi doted over them, afraid to speak any thought or render any judgment without consulting the scrolls. What were they that he should revere them so? They were no more substantial than the parchment they were traced upon—something to be crumbled in his hand, or put to the flame.  He teased the fire of a candle with the edge of the scroll, watching as the fiber burned and charred at the edge, sending a thin trail of smoke up into the still air.

Words… Why should they matter so? The thought that any real thing could ever be written was folly to him. A man could make his way in the world by knowing, and by action. What was behind the heavy wooden door to this very chamber? He could only know by looking. And so tonight he would look. He would open his eyes and see what the mettle of the Kadi truly was.

In the dark hour, just before the setting of the moon, his guards came to the chamber of maids. The women were lounging in a hot steam bath, the smoke from the smoldering coals scenting the air and adding to the misty haze of the room. The Sami smiled to imagine their fear and surprise when his men set upon them. They were sent to find the harlot, Samirah, and drag her away to the tower. When the hour came he listened for the shrill cries echoing from the vaulted chambers of the castle. It was done, and he went to the tower where the woman was held, to work his persuasion upon her, and set his will in motion.

The light from a single torch painted the bare walls in hues of ruddy orange and sable. The guards turned with a milky fear in their eyes, then fell to their knees as they recognized the Sami when he entered, their heads bowed in supplication.

“Withdraw,” he told them, and his command was obeyed at once. The dry, scraping echo of the bolt on the door soon faded to silence, chased by the fleeing footsteps of the retreating guards. The harlot, Samirah, stared at him shaking with fear and the chill of the cold wall at her back.

He could see, behind the fear, the glimmer of recognition in her eyes. He saw how her breath came fast, for she had no doubt heard the tales describing the fate of those who were taken from the harem. They were bound in cold chains, tortured, the skin flailed from their bodies, and then cast about with black sorcery to be made witches and concubines of demons. The Sami laughed inwardly to think how he had long cultivated such rumors, feeding them as one might lay fresh wood on a fire. Once the fear had taken hold it would burn on its own, and he could see that the flame was well kindled in the eyes of the woman when he came to her. The Sami remembered how she struggled to turn her head away when he approached, but his eyes caught and fixed her gaze, as though she was already benumbed by some unspoken charm.

Yet, he did nothing. It was enough for him to simply hold the woman’s eyes with his own, until the unblinking strength of his will surrounded her like an icy fog. He could feel her fear, and knew that the longer he waited the more she would dwell upon the inner dread that consumed her with each passing moment. He would do nothing. Her own fear would be enough to suit his purpose.

When the moment came he recognized it at once. Her eyes grew glassy with tears and she gave a last sigh of resignation, broken to the terror that she conjured from within. At last he spoke to her, though his voice was soft and measured, his words carefully chosen.

"There are those who would sooner die than defile themselves by consorting with our enemies. It seems that you are not so pure as your face and form might show.”

Again the silence and the waiting, where each second became a dark space that Samirah filled with a thousand demons of her own making. Her breath came fast, yet she remained frozen, paralyzed by the unbending regard of the Sami. His eyes were like blue fire, scoring her, shaming her, promising just punishment.

“Hear me,” he said at last. “You will do a thing now that may yet redeem your soul from the blackness I perceive. You will gain atonement for your sin."

The glimmer of hope in her eyes was a hunger now, and he knew he could mold her as he wished. He took a deep breath, his hand upon his bearded chin, as though considering, and with each gesture, each subtle stroke of his finger, the woman became his willing servant.

"Atonement," he repeated, binding her with the very rope he extended to the pit of her fear. "Tonight you will go to the stranger, as you have these five nights past. This time you will take what I shall give to you, a small vial, a cleansing potion, and you will mix it with the evening drink. Do you hear?”

She held her breath, desperate to still the trembling of her body. “Do you understand?” The Sami repeated, and Samirah struggled to speak, but her voice was lost, a frightened breath that was barely a whisper. The Sami’s eyes held her, pressing into her, breaking her. The moment seemed interminable. He did not need her answer to know that all would be as he had spoken it. Still, a brief reminder of things that might be seemed appropriate to him as he turned to leave her.

“Hang now in these chains,” he told her. “Let your arms grow numb and your legs weaken in their iron grip. Know them well. Feel the coarse, cold rock upon your naked back. Hear the scrabble of rats in the straw upon the floor. This will be your abode if you should fail me. You will hang here for an age and more, and the guards will be sent to pleasure themselves and complete your shame.”

He pried open the bolt of the door, and slid through the portal on soundless feet. The business of the night was only just begun.

An hour later seven men stood in a damp chamber at the base of the high tower of Massiaf. It was the first time they had ever set foot in this hidden chamber of the castle, and dread began to possess them from the moment they heard the summons to meet there with the Sami. Now their eyes gaped at the scene before them, as if unwilling to believe what they were seeing. Their bodies shivered, the evening chill simply magnifying the cold terror that gripped them from within. By God, by holy God, the voice from beyond was speaking to them!

A silver platter sat on the stark inlaid floor stones. It was awash with freshly spilled blood, and there, square in the middle of the platter, was the disembodied head of a young initiate! They knew the man, a late recruit in the Sami’s den of Assassins. He had only just finished his first rite of initiation, drinking the cup of Paradise. While most would still languish in dreams after such an experience, his sleep had been final. Now his severed head sat in a pool of blood, the face bruised with livid welts, the flesh of his cheeks and forehead pale and sallow.

And the head spoke!

The eyes rolled in a dreamy trance and the mouth lolled open, slack and swollen. The head spoke to them! It warned of a great danger that had come upon them, a man sent by the enemies of Islam through a sacred passage reserved only for the highest initiates, only for the most pure. Yet he had defiled it with his presence, and cast a spell upon all who touched him. The head spoke!

It berated them for allowing such transgression, shaming them for their lack of vigilance. It cursed the name of one they were sworn to obey, and held him in blasphemy. The Kadi General, it told them, was weak and beset with an evil eye. He had fallen under the spell of the unbelievers. His judgment was skewed and he was delirious with his own self-importance. Then, last of all, the head spoke the will of Allah in this matter. The Kadi must die.

The seven men listened in horror, as the severed head gasped out a gruesome, gurgling scream. Then the eyes dimmed and fluttered closed. The purple tongue lolled out and was silent at last. The head returned to the dead, its message spoken, its decree branded into the hearts of all who listened. Their eyes were glassy with tears as they watched the ghastly scene conclude. Then a voice spoke from the high stone chair.

“So,” it whispered. “You have heard.” The Sami stood up, clutching the milky green amulet at his breast and extending a long arm, hand pointing at the seven men to drive home the charge that had been ordained for them. “You have seen and heard the will of Allah, with your own eyes and ears. Do not deceive yourselves, for such magic is very powerful, and can only be worked in times of great need. You are here, and now you know what you must do.”

The Sami spoke, and the men listened as he told them that they had been chosen to defend the faith and cleanse the castle. “The stranger must die,” he told them. “Have no fear. That is a task I will reserve for another. You need never see him, or risk his evil eye. I will accomplish it with my own devices. But yours is the greater task. For the evil eye has walked among us and poisoned the hearts of many. You have heard that even the Kadi General is among those led astray. He too must die, and you will bring holy retribution upon our enemies by the working of this deed. So, hear now, and obey. Go to the armory and take up weapons as you choose. Say nothing to anyone! Wash, in the manner taught to you, and pray before you set this task before you. Go to the Kadi and bear this scroll.”

He reached into the folds of his long white gown and drew out a rolled parchment scroll, tied off with a slender leather lace. “Say that it was late received from Egypt, and he will be eager for it, I assure you. Then you know what you must do when you draw near to him. Leave no one in the room alive to bear witness. Return here when the deed is done. Bar the door, and heed no voice but my own.”

The seven men stooped in a deep, respectful bow, then rose and left the room in silence, their faces as pale and drawn as the severed head on the platter before them. The Sami allowed himself a smile as he remembered his ploy, remembered how he rushed to the great oaken door and threw home the bolt. He stooped to regard the severed head where it lay upon the platter, fearless, a devious grin twisting his features. A moment later he leaned down to grasp the edge of the platter, pulling hard. It separated into two haves, each with a semicircle cut in the center so that a small hole, just the width of a man’s neck, would be created when the halves were joined. There was a narrow pit dug in the floor and, in it, the body of the young initiate slumped lifelessly to one side.

The body moved, but the Sami had no fear. He knew that another man, one of his chosen guards, was also secreted in the bottom of the pit where he had been holding fast to the bare legs of the initiate, a sleek dagger held tight against the mans loins, lest he fail in the duty the Sami had demanded of him.

The Sami sat on his haunches while his favored guard squeezed out of the hole. “Well done,” he whispered. “He played the moment wonderfully. Your knife stroke was perfect, and he died well. Now, finish the job and cut off his head in earnest. There is a burlap sack beside my chair. Place the head inside and take it out to the inner courtyard tonight. Mount it there upon a sturdy spike. It will stand as evidence that what these seven have seen here tonight was true. For they will speak. No man could harbor the vision we played out for them in his heart for long. When they are accused in the matter of the Kadi, they will speak. The Kadi will die tonight, along with the intruder and all who have been sullied by his coming. It is only fortunate for me that I stayed my hand when I moved to kill the man in council chambers. I did not touch him, and so I was not defiled.” He drew his robes tight about him.

“You have done well,” he said “but if your heart darkens at anything we must do this night to purify these chambers, remember only the words that were spoken to you long ago: that everything is permitted… Everything.”

He let the words hang in the air, knowing they would brand his man, and remind him of the rite of obedience he swore. “There is a wolf among us now, and we must be like wolves ourselves if we are to save the moment. This subterfuge was necessary to assure obedience, but for you I say this: tonight a bird came to me where I waited in the Eyrie of Sinan. Yes, it is forbidden to all, but not to me. See here where I keep the keys fastened at my belt? I waited there for news from Alamut, and a messenger came to my window. It bore this!”

The Sami produced a swatch of silken cloth, holding it out for the other man to see. “Two drops of blood! Do you see them? This is the lifeblood of Sinan himself. I sent word to him of dark doings here five days ago. I begged him to advise me, and asked what must be done in the matter of the Kadi’s meddling with this stranger. Do you see the blood? Two drops! It is his mark that two must die. It is the only way.” His eyes bored into the man, searching him for any sign of weakness or infirmity.

“Finish! Sever the head and set it upon a stake as I instruct you. Rumors will run wild, and when the others see the head so displayed, there will be no question of the truth.”

The guard bowed and turned to the body in the pit. It was not his to reason matters of magic. Discernment was for another. His was the strong arm, and the deft cut of the knife. He hefted his dagger in his hand, bowed low, and bent to the work that remained undone.

17

Paul was in his sleeping chamber, the evening meal filling him with a drowsy heaviness. He had dined with Jabr again, and the two had discussed the morning session with the Kadi.

“How strange when the Sami approached you,” said Jabr. “In truth, I believe he meant to slash you with his dagger!”

“I thought the same,” said Paul. “Who is that man? Why was everyone so afraid of him?”

“They are wise in that,” said Jabr. “The Sami is the Master of Assassins. It is he who initiates the faithful. Every man in this hold must pass the scrutiny of his eye, and it is not a pleasant experience to endure that man’s gaze. It is said he has an evil eye, and all men fear him. All the more reason for surprise when he stayed his hand in the council chamber.”

“And the Kadi,” Paul had asked. “He seemed to wrestle with the other in his mind. I did not know what the two were saying, but it was clear that they were not in agreement.”

“It is often so,” said Jabr. “The Kadi is judge. His is the eye of discernment. The Sami holds to subterfuge, and the work of a dagger. But come, we darken our meal with such talk, and my time is short. Let us eat. The platter is rich and full tonight, the Kadi’s gift for all you endured this morning at council. Look: this here we call Bukhari. It is rice and lamb, with onion and carrot. Try it! And here we have Falafel: chickpeas ground with spices and fried in scented oil. To cool the palate we have Fattoush, a salad of cucumber and tomato, sweetened with mint. It is very good! There are many other delicacies here, Kufta, Labehnah, and Ma’amul. The last is a confection made from dates. The other things you must test with your own tongue. Perhaps you can guess what they are. After we finish, there will be time enough for kahwa—that you have called coffee.”

So they ate, and talked, but Paul noticed how Jabr deftly avoided any question asked about the castle and what these men were doing here. Near the end of the meal Paul made a point to press Jabr for a chance to make a telephone call.

“See here, Jabr” he ventured. “You have been very gracious, and I am deeply indebted to you for your courtesy and hospitality. But I have friends that are probably wondering where I am now, and worried that something has happened to me. And I’m worried about my partner—the one who came to Wadi Rumm with me. Could I possibly make a phone call?”

Jabr scratched his beard, smiling until Paul made his request at the end. “What is it you wish to make?” He seemed puzzled.

“A phone call. There must be a telephone here somewhere, yes? I won’t speak long, and I promise to compensate you for any charges, and of course, for all you have done for me here.”

“Charges? I hear the words, but the meaning escapes me. What is the purpose of this thing you wish to make?”

Paul just looked at him, a bit flustered and somewhat frustrated. They often met such roadblocks in their talk. Was Jabr being deliberately coy with him, feigning ignorance of the language as a way of politely refusing the request. Paul decided to press him.

“Then are you saying am being held here against my will, incommunicado?”

“En-comunicado?” Jabr frowned, considering the word. “Ah,” he said. “I have heard the Christians speak of this. It is the dire warning given by your Pope in Rome, a fatal sanction or punishment for grievous sins.”

“You’re talking about excommunication,” Paul corrected him.

“Yes! Exactly that,” Jabr smiled. Then his mood darkened. “Do you fear that you will be cast out of your church because you have treated with us here? Fear not. If your Pope in Rome passes fell judgment upon you, then you may join with us! Yes! The mercy of Allah is wide. He will welcome you to the bosom of Islam, if you seek his will in all things.”

Then Jabr launched himself on a lengthy explanation of mercy and compassion, the two virtues at the very heart of his faith as a Muslim. Paul could see that he artfully dodged his question, and sighed heavily, listening to the treatise on the Koran as politely as he could. It was beginning to dawn on him that he was certainly being held a captive here. His jailers could not be more pleasant, but the whole scenario suddenly had the stench of ‘hostage’ about it.

He recalled that there was a long tradition of hospitality in the Arab culture—even amongst enemies. If a man ate from the table of an Arab, or tasted of his salt, then he could not be harmed, and would even be treated with great deference and respect, as one would treat an honored guest. The custom had deep roots, dating back even to the time of the Crusades when the knights of Christendom were set in open warfare against the Arabs in the Middle East.

At the outbreak of the Arab revolt in the desert that made T. E. Lawrence so famous, Feisal was visited by the Pasha of the Turks. Here the Arabs had their oppressor at their mercy, but Feisal would not besmirch the hospitality and honor of his house. The Pasha was accorded a sumptuous dinner and allowed to leave unharmed. There was something to be said for character like that, he thought. A pity that the virtue was lost in modern day terrorist cells. The treatment of captives had not been kind over the last twenty years. But what did they intend to do with him? Did they think to bargain for ransom? No, these groups were financed well enough without that. Besides, who would pay?

In the end, Paul was frustrated and gave up his effort to make the call. Jabr finished his coffee and slipped quietly away with a promise to come again in the morning. Now Paul lay upon the soft silk-covered cushions, dozing in a dreamy sleep. Some time later he awakened to the familiar scent of jasmine, and caught the rustle of someone padding quietly through the door in the lacquered wood lattice at the back of the room. It was Samirah.

The woman glided to his side, eyes averted and the hint of a blush upon her cheeks. The dark curls of her hair were gleaming with oil, and a single white flower adorned her head. As always, her gown fell loosely from her shoulders, and she was nearly naked beneath it, her breasts softly shadowed in the dim light of a lantern, her legs painted by the wavering of the flame. A garland of silver circlets hung about her neck, catching the light as she settled on a cushion next to Paul. She was bearing a small tray with a simple spouted brass pot and a porcelain class. Another of her potions, thought Paul, remembering the night he first awakened here with Samirah at his side.

He glanced at the pot, his thoughts leaping ahead with anticipation. No doubt it contained some mild narcotic. These people have been plying him with small doses of some delightful liqueur each night. The taste was bitter sweet, and its effect was very pleasant, a shroud of enveloping warmth followed by keen sensitivity that left him feeling exhilarated. Then Samirah would sidle close to him, loosening his robes. She would wet her hands with oil and explore his lean body in ways designed to compliment the drug quite nicely. The long night was deeply satisfying for him. Samirah would shed her gown and stretch out next to him, her smooth body pressed tightly against his while they slept.

For all his misgiving about being held a hostage, he could think of much worse treatment. Yet he felt a twinge of guilt when he thought of Jen, the grad student he had been living with this last month. He had been helping the poor woman sort through her confusion over the consequences of the mission. Now, here he was consorting with this Arab beauty in the night, in Syria, of all places, which is where he surmised this place to be.

Samirah never spoke, at least not with words that he could understand. Yet the language of her body was clear and obvious across all cultural barriers. She meant to give him pleasure, undoubtedly at the behest of the leaders of this group, and she played her role with a skill that left Paul exhausted when she was through, wanting only sleep and the last warm embrace of her body next to his. Perhaps they meant to kill me with kindness, he thought. It was said that you could catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but he had little doubt that the other leader, the one they called the Sami, might prefer harder methods. What did these people want from him? Why were they holding him here? When would he get a chance to contact his friends at home?

He watched while Samirah quietly set the little tray she had been holding down beside a pillowed cushion. She reached for the small brass pot, and Paul saw that her hand was shaking slightly as she poured a thick liqueur into the porcelain cup. It had a scent akin to kahlua, yet with something added—probably hashish, Paul guessed. Samirah poured, her hand unsteady, almost quavering, and Paul wondered if she was chilled. The lower rooms where he was quartered became very cold at night, and the sun had long since set.

He leaned up on one elbow to take the cup but, as he did so, he sensed something wrong with the woman at his side. The light from the oil lamp revealed a trace of wetness on her cheek, and Paul saw the glistening trail of a tear there. She was crying!

As if aware of his attention, Samirah turned her head to one side, but Paul could see that she was only pretending to tend to the pot of liqueur, averting her face from him.

“Samirah?” he said. “What’s wrong?” He knew she would not understand his question, but his tone of voice carried the meaning clear enough.

She turned to him. Eyes bright with tears, and a squall of pain darkening her softly contoured features. She seemed to be struggling with some emotion, her lower lip quivering as she fought for control. Then, in a sudden motion that surprised Paul she reached out with her slim brown arm and batted the porcelain cup away, spilling the sweet, dark liqueur on the flagstone floor. Before Paul could react to that, she lunged at him, her arms embracing him as she wept.

For the hundredth time in this strange encounter, Paul found himself inwardly wondering what was going on. It was clear that Samirah was deeply moved by something. Her arms tightened around him, pulling him close, and her lips sought the nook of his neck where she kissed him softly, tenderly, with an affection that seemed driven by the turmoil within her. It was as if she was trying to say goodbye, he thought. His heart leapt at a sudden sound. There was a dry scrape as the wooden door creaked open and he heard the whisk of metal being drawn from a leather scabbard. Someone else was entering the room, a shadow advancing on them with weapon in hand.

18

The shadow vaulted across the room, prompting Paul to tense up with sudden anxiety. He instinctively rolled to his side to shelter Samirah, who lay upon him, in harm’s way. A fearful revelation pulsed in his brain and made him realize that this was the end of the long hospitality he had enjoyed here. He extended his arm, to ward the intruder off but, to his great surprise and relief, he saw the face of Jabr Ali S’ad illuminated in the ruddy glow of the lantern.

Jabr rasped something in Arabic, and Paul felt Samirah’s soft body tense up. She moved at once, gathering herself and drawing her robes tight about her slim body. “Come, Do-Rahlan!” Jabr’s whisper carried the weight of great urgency. “You cannot stay here this night. We must move quickly!”

He spoke to Samirah again, somewhat harshly. Paul saw how he eyed the stain of the spilled liqueur. How could he berate the woman for that? Yet, Samirah was clearly shamed. Her head lowered, face streaked with tears. Paul had the distinct impression that he was missing something in the equation, but he sensed the danger and rising tension in the room. He started to move, reflexively, pulling his loose robes tight and tying them off with a woven sash. As he stood up he turned to see Samirah, hastening away through the opening in the wood lattice. Jabr’s dark eyes followed her, but with little warmth.

“What’s happening?” he asked, his eyes instinctively searching the darkness for signs of hidden danger.

“The Sami’s men are moving tonight. A severed head was planted in the courtyard moments ago. It is a sign of evil. There is no time to explain, but we must go—and with great haste. Follow me, Do-Rahlan. It will be dark, and you will not know the way. Here, hold fast to the sash of my robe, and stay close. Move as quietly as you can. Come!”

Jabr led the way to the far end of the room and through a low stone arch there. It was the same passage that they had taken the previous morning on the way up to the Kadi’s council chambers, and the same two dour guards were waiting silently in the shadows as they passed the gate. This time they bent right to another landing where the stairs fell in a steep descent. As before, one of the guards took the van, drawn sword in hand. Jabr and Paul followed after, and then the last guard trailed in their wake.

The winding stone stair seemed interminable. Along the way he was dogged by the feeling of urgency that seemed to infect Jabr and the two guards. Then an odd thing happened. About half way down, by Paul’s reckoning, he heard the shuffling of other footsteps behind them. He strained to see, but the lighting was very poor here, and he could not make out what the commotion was before the sour faced guard came up from behind to nudge him on. Jabr had noticed his hesitation, and pleaded with him to hurry on, clearly worried. Paul’s legs ached by the time they halted at the bottom. It was a small Donjon, sturdily built with heavy mortared bricks and a low arch formed from wedges of coarsely hewn stone. The atmosphere of the place had a musty, muggy feeling, and he could see the gleaming trails of water seeping through cracks in the walls, and greenish moss on the stonework.

“Hold on,” he said. “Where are you taking me?”

Jabr gave him a wide-eyed glance, his finger covering his mouth to indicate silence. “We must be very cautious now,” he whispered. “We must move you to a new location, a hidden chamber. I will explain later.”

That’s done it, Paul thought. There was some unresolved argument between the Sami and the Kadi, and now he was being moved. He began to realize, with a sinking feeling, that he was probably a hostage after all. The two sides were just quarreling over his fate. Perhaps the argument was over whether he should be kept alive as a propaganda tool, or killed outright, like many Westerners had been slain at the hands of Muslim radicals in recent years. The only hope he held was the notion that this group seemed to want him alive.

He hurried on, through the low arch and down a long circuitous underground route that eventually ended in a black iron gate. Jabr produced a key, and the gate grated open. “I regret that our accommodations will not be so comfortable now,” he said, gesturing for Paul to pass through.

The gate opened to a small portal chamber with a similar gate on the far wall. The outermost opening was supported by massive basalt lintels, dark with age and wear. Once inside Paul was surprised at Jabr’s next statement. “I must ask you to undress,” he said hurriedly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Please, there is very little time. You must change clothing.” One of the guards tramped in with an armful of dull brown burlap.

“As you wish,” said Paul, feeling very uncomfortable about this situation. “What about the clothes I was wearing when I arrived?” He suddenly realized that he had his wallet, money, keys and other personal effects with him that had gone missing.”

“I’m very sorry,” Jabr said quickly. “They were all destroyed by fire. It is customary when anyone comes through the well. Please, we must hurry.”

Paul didn’t like the sound of that. Now there would be no easy way he could identify himself to the authorities if he ever obtained his freedom. He wondered if they meant to kill him here and now. Were they merely reclaiming the finery he had been dressed in so they could dispose of his body in these rags? He took up the garment, unhappy to see how it was soiled and muddied, as though only recently cast off by a traveler on the road. Was this to be his burial gown? Resigned, he undid the woven sash at his waist, and moments later he was tying off the new robe, if it could be called such, with a simple twine rope.

“The hood,” said Jabr. “Please cover your head.”

Paul reached back to pull the drooping hood up onto his head, realizing that he must look like a cloistered monk in these heavy brown robes.

Jabr squinted at him. “That will do. Be careful not to show your face. We must move quickly now.”

It comforted Paul to see that both the guards, and Jabr himself were changing into similar garb. It was now evident that they meant to secret him away from the castle, and they seemed in a great hurry.

“Alas,” Jabr forced a smile. “Samirah was nearly turned by the Sami. I think she meant to poison you tonight, or at least she was pressed to that deed by some great fear. I am sorry to have burst in upon you in such an unseemly manner, but if you had taken the cup from her hand I think your sleep would have been very dark. Sadly, you will not enjoy her company tonight. Before you count your losses, consider that your life may be gained by this move. Things did not go well with the Sami. The severed head is an ill omen. His men are afoot in the castle and there may be bloodshed soon. The Kadi has ordered me to secure your life, but the next few hours will be critical. Another will lie in your place, dressed in your robes, and carry out the ruse that you are still in your quarters as before. I do not envy him. Come, we must make haste!”

The guards pushed open the outer gate and they passed through to emerge at the stony edge of a steep precipice. As his eyes adjusted Paul soon saw a narrow path winding down into a cloven gully, lit by a low setting moon, and partially obscured by the hills. The whole setting was overshadowed by the brooding prominence of a great castle that had been built on a high limestone hill. The walls leapt up from this point, as if they had grown from the sheer cliffs about them. The tawny stones were scored with the weathering of wind and occasional rain, yet they seemed impregnable—a massive fortress of brick and rock spiking up into a gray-black sky.

Paul realized that their long descent had taken them below the level of his original quarters. Apparently the castle builders had exploited many natural crevices and hollows to delve out a series of underground passageways and vaults beneath the rugged limestone elevation.

“Follow quickly,” said Jabr. “Keep to the shadows. The way may be open for a time, yet we must be very careful. I do not think that the Sami could to spy us out in this light, even from the Eyrie of Sinan, but he will certainly have watchers on the outer towers. This way is seldom used, and not easily seen from above. We must reach the chamber of hiding before the Sami realizes you are gone.”

So much for drifting to this place on the underground river, thought Paul. He was on a high range of coastal mountains, and the terrain about them looked nothing like Wadi Rumm. How could he have reached this promontory height from an underground cavern? Think now, he told himself, you must have been driven here while unconscious. He was very confused, but pressed by the immediacy of the danger.

There was now little doubt in his mind that the Sami had argued for his death in the council that morning. He probably meant to stab him or cut his throat, but something stopped the man when he approached. Perhaps he could not risk such an obvious act of defiance in the presence of the Kadi. Paul thought of Samirah and the decoy that would take his place in the room where he had been quartered. He wondered what would happen to the girl if Jabr’s suspicions about her complicity in the plot proved true. The subtle clues began to mount up in his mind, and he understood why she seemed so upset. The porcelain cup had been filled with a lethal agent. She had been ordered to poison him! Yet, though her fear compelled her to obey, and pour the dark liqueur for him as before, something else happened there. She dashed the cup away, protecting him on an impulse. He must tell Jabr that Samirah should not be harmed.

The way led them down into a steep ravine, overgrown with scrub and thorn. The thick outer garments were coarse and itchy, but they made good sense to Paul now. He was grateful for the protection they afforded as the small party slipped through the gorge, descending all the way. They walked for nearly half an hour before they came upon two horses tied to a withered tree stump. One was a gray-flecked mare, and the other a sturdy caramel plow horse with heavy fetlocks and muddied hooves. Jabr approached them silently, and Paul saw that he had produced a small handful of brown sugar, which he used to quiet the horses while the two guards took up their reins and prepared to mount.

“We will ride two men to each horse,” said Jabr. “I will go forward with Hamza, and you will follow with Aziz. They are good men both. Have no fear.” He watched while Paul cast a sidelong glance at the plow horse. “Do you ride well?”

“To be honest,” Paul confessed, “I’ve never been on a horse in my life.”

This brought a moment of real surprise to Jabr’s eyes. He stared at Paul, as if trying to see through him, see into him to some understanding of who he was and why he had come. “You are no Templar,” he concluded. “That much is certain. And I doubt if you are a sergeant or even a squire if you have never set your cheeks upon the back of a horse. The Sami was wrong. Come now, Aziz will assist you.”

Yes, thought Paul. I’m no Templar—but who in blazes are you? Where in God’s name am I—or must I call upon Allah now to find that out? He knew that much of the world still lived in backward, almost medieval conditions, but this was too much. How could a band of Arab radicals be occupying the ruins of an old castle with complete impunity? All those sites were considered antiquities now and carefully managed by local governments. Yet these men ran about with turbans and swords as if they were acting out some private little fantasy here. It was all too strange. Nothing made sense!

Paul needed the help of both guards to get up on the back of the plow horse. Once he was safely mounted, the guard, Aziz, leapt deftly aboard, seating himself behind Paul and urging the beast on.

Paul squinted through the hood of his robe at the landscape around him. He was struck by the barren emptiness of it all. The hills were sparsely vegetated, falling off to a tumbled lowland below. He could see no sign of the village Jabr had mentioned. It was very odd. There were no lights, no glow of cities in the distant darkness of the night. Wherever this castle was, it must surely be remote. He looked over his shoulder at the stark outline of the castle in the distance and suddenly knew what was wrong.

Part VII

Heisenberg’s Wave

“I stand as one upon a rock,

Environ’d with a wilderness of sea,

Who marks the waxing tide grow

Wave by wave.”

Titus, in Titus Andronicus, act 3, sc. 1, l. 93-7. – William Shakespeare

19

Kelly stared at the glowing console panels, watching system after system coming on line, a look of amazement and pleasure on his face.

“It worked!” he exclaimed. “Heisenberg was right.”

“Heisenberg? What’s going on?” said Maeve. “Are you telling me that—“

“It changed.” The surprise in Kelly’s voice was edged with a hint of delight. “The program source code changed somewhere. The Golems are spotting variations, and the system called home, just like it was supposed to.”

Maeve was not happy. She had been battling the notion of unaccountable change for weeks, and this was the last thing she needed. “Maybe someone’s tampered with it,” she suggested. “Hackers are always pulling stuff like that.”

“He’d have to be a genius,” said Kelly, “with an open account on an Arion system, and a lot of time. I encrypted the source code with a 512 megabyte key. Yes, I know it’s illegal, but who’s telling. Now, it would take an Arion system about two years to power through that, let alone the fact that I set the key to mutate on a precisely planned route—I call it my guided key evolution. It would take a hundred years to break that—if it could be done at all.”

Maeve was just staring at him trying to absorb what he was saying. He was standing square in the middle of the room, his baseball cap tilted slightly to one side, hands on hips, and eyes scanning the consoles one by one as they came to life. She realized that he was using one part of his head to monitor the boot sequence while another part was explaining his code technique. He reached down to peck a keystroke on one of the systems, as if nudging something that seemed slightly out of place.

“Ah,” he said. “Someone turned this monitor off.” He poked the flat panel display power toggle with a look of satisfaction. All was in order. “So,” he continued. “Let’s just say that this key is unbreakable—for all practical purposes.”

“Unbreakable? Then—“

“At least not breakable with the systems available today. You either know the key or you don’t access the code. That rules out hackers—period. So when my Golem calls home, something is afoot. Something has changed. Let’s see if I can isolate the Heisenberg wave. I set this whole thing up to give us location. You’ll see.”

Kelly was all business now. He had his briefcase open and he was pulling out file folders and a small hand calculator. He marched over to a terminal and settled in, eyes scanning the screen while he waited for the boot sequence to stabilize. He was getting green readings on one board after another, ticking them off mentally in his head as the systems checked in. His little army of number crunching computers was alive and well, and he stretched his arms with a grin, cracking his knuckles.

“This is going to be interesting,” he said.

Maeve felt the flutter of anxiety ratchet up a level in her chest. Kelly had a knack for understatement. “OK,” she breathed. “Let me see if I have this straight. You’re telling me that your program spotted a change—but that it couldn’t possibly be tampering.”

“Correct.”

“And this means someone’s playing with time?”

“That’s my best guess. When I send out the program, it’s pristine. They install it, run it, and the code follows a precisely defined pathway, and constantly checks itself to be sure that nothing is amiss. Well something’s wrong. The only way that could possibly happen is if an element from the source code has been altered. Oh, its likely to be a little thing, like a change in a variable signifier, or something like that. Any serious change would crash the program entirely, and…” He keyed something on the system, squinting at the screen to read the result. “Just as I thought: no crash alerts. So the code changed. Looks like a very small mutation, but anything counts for this test.”

“Well what if someone’s hard drive died and the code was damaged or something?”

“I’d have checksum flags on that, and the basic integrity of the program is still good. See?” He pointed at a monitor, but Maeve could make no sense of the data he was indicating.

“Now I’m going to find out where the problem is, and possibly how it happened. It could be that our friends from the future are running a mission!”

Maeve didn’t like that idea. The notion that unborn people in a distant age were altering this very moment with the technology of the Arch was deeply disturbing, and a bit confounding. It meant that, in spite of all her arguments, the project would not be shut down. The technology would survive and proliferate, and spawn a thousand nightmares that would prey upon her from this day forward.

“And this Heisenberg wave?”

“Ah, yes.” Kelly reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out one of his favorite candies. “Necco Wafer?” He offered, but Maeve simply folded her arms, waiting. “The Heisenberg wave.” Kelly began to explain his theory again. “Ever throw a stone in a pool of water? Well of course you have. So you know what those little ripples look like after it goes ker-plunk. Well, I got this idea: if someone opened the continuum, the effects would ripple out from the breaching point, just like those little waves. It’s just quantum stuff. Paul and I were talking about it. In fact, he encouraged me to run up this program.”

“Ah,” Maeve seized on that. “A conspiracy!”

“Just a collaboration. I ran the theory by him and he said the quantum uncertainty principle had to manifest somehow. So I thought of the ripples in that pond and came up with—“

“A Heisenberg wave. How clever.”

“This is the cool part,” Kelly hurried on. “I have a good data map on the location of all the boxes running my Golem. All I have to do now is send out this query and have each box on-line report its code status. Then I’ll know exactly which boxes have a mutant running, and exactly where they are with the GPS sync that’s been built into all CPUs for the last five years.”

The Global Positioning System was another nifty little feature that had enjoyed wide proliferation. Ever since the US Air Force started turning dumb iron bombs into precisely targeted killers, GPS technology began to pop up in a wide array of appliances. It was a standard feature on all cars since the 2006 models, and now even computers could use the internet to tell the world exactly where they were. They sold the idea as a way of enabling new zip code like domain structures and IP addresses for the burgeoning Internet. It was a nifty anti-hacking scheme spawned by the Department of Homeland Defense. They wanted to know where every cell phone, vehicle, boat, plane and computer was, and once the technology was in place, their wish was made a reality.

“I just made the GPS feature a system requirement for my Golem.” Kelly was pulling up data as he spoke, eyes bright with the glow from the monitors. “Now I can plot where the corrupted systems are, and map the damage graphically… Like this!” He poked his finger on a key and leaned back, fingers locked at the back of his head and elbows splayed out like twin antennae. The screen began to display a map of the world, and tiny colored dots were winking on, slowly coloring the map with the data plots.

“The green dots are normal systems… the red dots are corrupted. I’ll have a possible breaching location soon.”

“You mean they’re coming here—to our time?”

“Well, not necessarily,“ Kelly equivocated. “When we ran the mission to 1917, things changed here as well. The change migrates through time but, like Einstein said, its really space-time. The temporal coordinates determine when the Heisenberg wave starts, and the spatial coordinates determine where it starts. The change ripples out from the location of the Nexus—like a wave, only it moves through the fourth dimension as well as the other three.”

“A Heisenberg wave…” Maeve grasped the simile and held on to it. She imagined some critical change in the Meridian. From that single point, a place Paul called a Nexus Point, a ripple of quantum uncertainty would expand out in all directions, altering everything in its path.

“Effects from alterations in the Meridian have a brief local life before they migrate out,” said Kelly. “It happens slowly at first, relatively speaking of course. This is the work of the first few nanoseconds.” He pointed at his data plots. “After that the wave accelerates rapidly until it reaches an infinite speed and changes everything; everywhere. But look here!” He rotated the flat panel monitor to give Maeve a better view. “Here’s the footprint of the devil, Maeve. It started somewhere in this location…”

Kelly pressed a finger to his LED screen and noted the swirl of interference caused there by the pressure. “Wouldn’t you know it,” he said. “Right smack dab in the Middle East. Looks like Syria… Somewhere north of Damascus near the Lebanese border. That’s where the system seems to indicate a Nexus forming, and there’s a shadow of something else further south—a bit east of Akaba. Very odd. It’s almost as if the two points arose simultaneously.” He keyed some GPS coordinates and told the system to display the name of the nearest town for the point in Syria. “There,” he said with finality. “How do you pronounce this… Mas-yaf?”

Maeve leaned in. “No,” she corrected him. “Sound the letter Y like a long I, and make it three syllables instead: Ma-sigh-af. It’s a famous castle ruin north of Tripoli.”

“Well, that appears to be our Nexus Point. And look—the change is proliferating throughout my whole Golem network. I’ll bet they’re spotting variations.”

“You mean to say the whole time line has just been altered again?”

“Altered? Who can say. But it certainly appears to be vulnerable, and we may be the only two people alive that know it—at least in this Milieu. I thought about that. The only thing that irked me about the prospect of using the Arch was this: how would we know what’s gone wrong? It was easy to monitor changes to my program like this, but getting back to your issue with Shakespeare—it looks like you would have to read all the plays again tonight to see if something changed. Not to mention everything else we’d have to check, history, politics, scientific discoveries. It’s maddening! We would need some kind of master library to serve as a reference point—a kind of touchstone to measure the whole world against. So I got to thinking…”

Maeve slumped into a chair at his side, leaning heavily on the armrest with her elbow, chin in hand. She was resisting the impulse to get up and run to the emergency equipment locker for an axe. She had a forlorn look on her face. “Oh, God,” she breathed. “I wish we had never done this—any of it.”

Kelly gave her a sympathetic look. To him this was an exciting adventure into cyberspace and the arcane realms of mathematics he so enjoyed. He could see that Maeve was truly distressed, however, and he offered one small consolation.

“Dust in the wind, Maeve. We want permanence, we reach for it, hope for it. Lord, isn’t that what heaven’s all about? But it doesn’t work that way—at least not in this realm. Nothing stays put for long. It’s all process; all change. We’re just surfing the wave now, that’s all. I don’t see what else could be done. I know how you must feel. It’s going to be lonely here—in the heart of it all. We’re sitting at infinity’s bedside now, and she’s quietly dreaming. At least we’ve got each other, if that’s any consolation. And I’ve got another little surprise up my sleeve as well.”

She looked at him with a smile. “I think I hear my poet in there somewhere,” she said, feeling just a little safer to see Kelly at the keyboard, a little warmer knowing he was here—at least for now. “I guess that’s what it all really boils down to,” she said. “This moment and the guy with the funny baseball cap sitting next to you.”

“Hey!” Kelly offered a mock protest. “Bonds signed this cap the year he retired. It’s going to be an heirloom.”

“Heirloom? You making any plans I don’t know about?”

“Don’t worry,” he grinned. “I’ll run everything by Outcomes and Consequences before I buy the ring.”

Maeve fought off the urge to snatch away his baseball cap, Barry Bonds and all, and muss up his hair. “I think your chances for approval may be fairly good!” She gave him a conspiratorial grin. “That is if I still have any pull with the committee.”

The rising vibration of the generator feeding power to the Arch pulled Kelly back to the urgency of the moment. “Now for my other surprise,” he said. “I think you may like this one.”

He scooted his chair two terminals to the left and toggled some switches. “Time for a pattern signature,” his eyes gleamed with excitement.

“Pattern signature? On who? If you think we’re going down to that Arch—”

“Not us,” Kelly reassured her. ”But everything else will do.”

Maeve was back to the fishing trip routine with him, trying to figure out what he was up to. “OK, maestro, what is it this time?”

“Just one more thing I put into the Golem. Let me send out the query sequence first and I’ll explain.”

He was keying commands, very quickly, and Maeve found herself recalling the exponential keystroke error he had made on the first mission. “Take your time,” she breathed. “We apparently have plenty to spare if we’re under the influence of the Arch Nexus like you suggest.”

“Don’t worry,” Kelly breathed. “There. It’ll take about an hour, even with that bank of fifty high speed DSL modems I installed last month.”

“So that was why our hardware budget was high. I thought it was the RAM you ordered for the history module.”

“That too,” said Kelly. “I installed a whole new system here, just for you.”

“For me?”

“Look, Maeve,” he began with that placating tone in his voice that always prompted her to raise an eyebrow of suspicion. “This thing isn’t going to be shut down. I think you know that as well as I do. Don’t get me wrong. Everything you’ve argued up until now makes perfect sense, but the fact that I’m still alive means that the technology survives. It gets used. Oh, I suppose we could shut everything down for our lifetimes but, after we’re gone, then what? The way I figure it, we just have to ride the wave. At least that gives us a chance to keep an eye on things—it gives you a chance, Maeve. Outcomes and Consequences: that’s really what its all about now, right? We need you more than ever. Shakespeare needs you.”

Maeve had a defeated look on her face, but it resolved to a quiet resignation. Her stubborn strength and the energy of her considerable will power would just have to be directed elsewhere now. Kelly was right. “Looks like I’m going to be doing a lot of reading,” she said.

“Well I was thinking about that,” Kelly beamed, safely over the speed bump and accelerating again. “Like I said, this little module is for you.”

“What is it?” Curiosity was beginning to restore her.

“A gift from the Golem,” Kelly grinned. “I just sent a command to all hundred thousand plus screensavers out there on the net. It’ll take a while to migrate through the network, but then, watch out. We’ll have one hell of a data stream pointed our way in about an hour. I hope fifty modems can handle it.

“Do I get to know why this data stream is going to bombard us in an hour, or are you going to make me pull that out of you after coffee?” Maeve was angling toward the French press.

“Ok, I took a pattern signature on the Internet last month and I have some good data stored here on a runtime system with as much RAM as I could possibly get my hands on.”

“Ah ha! You’re as bad as Nordhausen, Kelly. The two of you were nodding yes to the vote for shutdown in committee, and then you were both off pursuing your own private little projects! What do you mean you took a pattern signature on the Internet?”

“Hear me out, I think you’ll approve of this. You thought my Golem alert was a good idea, right? Well this is even better. I just told all my little Golems to use the search feature and visit key portals and data bases on the Internet. They’ll sample the data there—just like a search engine index, and send it all here.” He pointed at the new module he had installed and then indicated a crawlway access on the floor. “That leads to a bay for air conditioning equipment. Heat management has not been much of a problem, so I used the bay for a RAM bank. It’s six feet wide and goes down ten feet—all the memory I could buy. You can never have too much RAM, right?”

“And you’re saying you’ve got all this data from the Internet running down there?”

“Yup—a runtime data bank—always on, and protected in the Arch Nexus. I have an Arion mini crunching error scans, just like the loop I coded into my Golem. Now this bank over here—“ He pointed at another crawl access a few feet to the right.

“There’s more?”

“I told you—all the RAM I could buy. I went to seven different vendors last month. Good prices, too! In any case, my Golems are out there sampling the entire body of published knowledge on the Internet. That’s the real reason I wrote the program. They can’t get everything, of course, but they’ll get enough for us to get a good pattern signature. It’s a bit like political polling, if that makes any sense.”

Maeve was flabbergasted. “You did this… for me?”

“That’s right, babe. That’s the way the world was before this little alert.” He pointed at the first RAM bank. “And my Golems will go out and fetch the whole thing again and put it right there.” He pointed at the second RAM bank now, grinning ear to ear. “All we have to do is compare the two and see what’s changed.”

Maeve’s eyes brightened with the realization of what he was saying. “Bless you, Kelly…” Now they had some reference point, some slim hold on the reality they brought with them to the complex that night. “But how will we compare them?”

“Oh, I’ve got plenty of help here.” Kelly gestured at a row of five computer terminals. “I routed everything into the research modules. And besides,” he winked at her. “I’ve got you.”

“Damn right you have!” She ran up to him and threw her arms about him. The fervor of the embrace sent his baseball cap flying off his head.

“Easy does it,” he said, his eyes still glued to the monitors. “We know that something’s is going on in Syria—now we need to find out when it happened. Since the change always ripples forward in time from the breaching point, all we have to do is figure out when things started changing in the history data.” He smiled broadly and added one more thing: “Pour the coffee. This is going to be interesting.”

20

Nordhausen was stunned. A time traveler. He was sitting in the middle of a cave in Wadi Rumm with a goddamned time traveler! Who was he? What was he doing here? The professor replayed the man’s remarks in his mind. He said something about being a messenger. He had some business here, and we’ve stumbled right into the middle of his operation. He was talking about a reaction—something Paul set off unintentionally.

The Oklo reactor!

Now the professor strained to recall what Paul had told him about the odd green water in the depths of the cave—the water that was glowing softly, quietly radiating as the bacteria concentrated the isotopes and started a low level chain reaction. It suddenly occurred to him that these people could have set up equipment here for an Arch! They could use the energy produced by the Oklo reaction for a natural nuclear power source. Its low radiation level would prevent it from being detected, and it would last for thousands of years!

“You mean to say… Are you telling me you have an Arch here? That my friend went through?”

“And may Allah go with him,” said Rasil. “He jumped too early, or he fell too soon, if that was the case. The timing will not be accurate. He will probably land before the event, and his coming may prove to be quite a stone in the still waters there.”

By God, thought Nordhausen, by holy God! What have I done? I insisted Paul come with me on this little adventure and then…

“Where?” He leaned forward eagerly, eyes searching his Arab companion’s face, eager for the answer. “Where did he go?”

“I cannot reveal that.”

Nordhausen sat up, flustered. “Why not? You just said that we were both safe here in a Nexus Point, right?”

“Yes, we are safe—but the whole world is now at risk again, my friend.” He gestured expansively at the terrain about them. The tall weathered walls of Wadi Rumm towered silently over them, brooding down with just a hint of distain and reproach. The earth sat, with infinite patience, and endured the constant insult of man.

“What does that have to do with it? We are completely alone. You said your guards don’t understand a word we’re saying. Come now. Where has he gone? You must tell me.”

Rasil’s eyes narrowed, and he stroked the dark stubble of his beard. “Do you realize the trouble you have caused here already? I was to jump at the setting of the moon!” He pointed to the heart of the cave, a flash of anger returning to his eyes. “Then you come fluttering out of the sky with the Jordanian Air Force at your heels. I thought you were a tourist at first, until I saw your cargo sled. You tell me, what is it you were carrying? Equipment? Must I have my men dig it up?”

“Dig it up? Damn it man, I told you what it was. It’s a fossil. An Ammonite. If you don’t believe me then go dig it up yourself. You talk about trouble? We were minding our own business until you came along. Now where is my friend?”

The Arab set his jaw, as if stifling a rising anger. “We cannot quarrel here,” he said. “You think we are without means, without resources after Palma failed. But, as you have seen, we are more capable than you may realize.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The war was going badly for you. In fact, we believed that the issue was nearly settled at Palma. But it can never be so, yes? It can never really be written while we struggle with one another. One side or the other must prevail. You and I are warriors, meeting here in the stream of life. Yet, now a chasm has opened and your friend has fallen through. It is not for us to quarrel like spoiled children. He is the master of fate now, and we must simply wait.”

The professor was trying to sort through the man’s words, and slowly, by degrees, the meaning was dawning on him. Rasil was clearly angry about what had happened here, yet he was forcing some truce on his emotion. A moment ago he wanted to kill me; now he accepts parley. It was as if he saw himself as my opponent in some way. Yes. He said it himself.

“What war do you speak of, Iraq? Iran? You mean the fighting in Syria last year?”

“Do not be coy,” Rasil berated him. “The American occupation of the Holy Lands in this timeframe will be short lived, I assure you. The Romans tried, and failed, just as the Byzantine Empire failed after them. All of Europe failed with their pathetic Crusaders. The French thought to carve out a kingdom there once. They held it for nearly ninety years, but Salah ad Din took it back. We saw to that by letting a mongrel wolf live out his fate, when we could have killed him at our whim. No matter! Now, in this age, the West comes to our land once more. First the British, then the Americans. It will not last. You will see. We had the solution in hand once, at Palma. We will find another, soon enough.”

The man’s words seemed to brand Nordhausen with sudden realization. He was speaking like they were mortal enemies. It was as if there was an ongoing struggle between two factions for the long-term control of the world. What was it he accused me of earlier? He said I was a member of some order. Now he was talking about Palma. Could he be one of the original conspirators? Could it be that they’ve got their hands on the Arch technology somehow?

“Palma? You mean you were in on that?”

“It was our master stroke!” Rasil’s eyes gleamed. “Yes! I have told you I am from the ninth age. I was a part of the world that Palma made possible. I tasted the fruit of that victory—the grandeur of Islam that spanned the whole of the globe. Oh, you tried to reverse our achievement for many decades, but always failed. The alerts would come in and we would rush to the safety of our Nexus Chambers to wait and stand the watch, looking for transformation. It never came. I tell you that we were beginning to think we had bested you at last. The Shadow was so impenetrable around the island of Palma that it frustrated your every attempt to reach a criticality on the Meridian. You could not get through—nobody could, and nothing that happened after mattered. The key event was at Palma.”

The look of satisfaction on his face suddenly withered and he returned to the posture of guarded watchfulness, eying Nordhausen with suspicion. “At least that is what we believed. Then the alarms came in again—just another feeble blow, we thought, the last death rattle of the Order. Imagine our surprise when we emerged from the shelter of our chambers and found the whole world was lost to us once more. Everything shattered, vanished, gone forever…”

Nordhausen gaped at the man and, to his great surprise, he saw how Rasil’s eyes clouded over with tears. The consequences of the mission to reverse the Palma event had been annihilating. This man knew them—he had been protected in a Nexus Point when it happened. Now everything he had been saying connected in the professor’s mind, and he nearly gasped with the awareness of it all. Time war! This man was talking about a struggle between some nefarious Arab faction and a group he called ‘the Order.’ They were at war, running missions into the past to alter the course of history one way or another. One side prevailed for a time, and Islam spread throughout the globe, the West destroyed by the awful catastrophe of the tsunami sequence generated by the Palma event.

Like a massive rock hurtled into the ocean, the ripples of change surged forth from that all consuming moment and made an end of Western history. Graves said it himself—they were desperate. They couldn’t get through the Shadow. Paul talked about that, and now it finally made sense to the professor. Palma was so decisive, so final in its effect, that the remnant of Western civilization struggling to be reborn risked all on one last operation. And they came to us, he mused, to me. I was a part of their plan all along; with Paul and Kelly and Maeve. We still don’t even know what we did, but it turned this man’s world on end—it changed everything.

He looked at Rasil, saw the tears, the pride as he struggled to control his emotion, the dignity of the man. He knew. He saw it all happen, and saw it all lost. It was as if all Western history had been re-written in a night.

“Do you have any idea what we lost?” Rasil’s voice was a whisper now, and he stilled himself, head lowered with the shame of his tears.

Nordhausen reached out and placed his hand on the man’s knee. “Forgive me,” he said softly. “This is a hard business.”

Rasil nodded, recovering his composure. He placed his hand on Nordhausen’s for a moment, and the two shared a brief understanding. “A hard business,” he repeated. “And it needs hard men. My tears were unseemly. But you see why I cannot reveal the breaching point to you here—you understand now, one hard man to another.” He withdrew his hand and the professor folded his arms. They sat there for a moment in the mouth of the cave, feeling very cold and alone.

“So, what do we do now?” said Nordhausen.

“We wait.”

“How long?”

“Until the resolution, and it will not be long, I fear.”

“And my friend?”

“You may have seen the last of him.” Rasil looked him full in the face now. “A hard business.”

“What? You mean to say that you can’t pull him out—you have no retraction scheme?”

“He was not prepared,” Rasil explained. “You know this as well as I do. I’m afraid he is on his own now. It is not within my power to reach him from here. This is a one way journey, and his time will be short. A man who jumps into the Well of Souls does not return—at least not here.”

Nordhausen was flabbergasted. “One way? But how can that be? Paul told me time would hold the door open for him. He doesn’t belong there!” The professor pointed to the depths of the cave.

”Surely not. It was my place to jump, but that was foiled.”

“Then let me go after him, if you will do nothing to save him.”

“Don’t be foolish. Did you not hear? The Well is dissipated. It takes a full month for the reaction to build. It will not open again until the next full moon—in fact, it must never open again.”

“What are you saying?” Nordhausen was desperate for some way out of the dilemma.

“If the well remains—if we remain—after the transformation, then I will order my men to destroy this place. It must not be allowed to come to the attention of the Order, you understand. I could kill you instead, but that is against our code of honor. A walker must not be harmed. The repercussions are too difficult to fathom. So the well will be destroyed, and that will be the end of it.”

Nordhausen slumped with resignation, a deflated look of pain on his face. “Then I’ve doomed him,” he whispered. “I’ve killed my friend.”

“No,” Rasil corrected him. “It is very likely that he will survive the jump. We have caretakers at the other end. They will do what they can for him, if he survives the fall. Then time will decide his fate at the other end. It is our doom you have sealed, not that of your friend.”

“Our doom?”

“None of this was written,” said Rasil. “It was not supposed to happen, this chance meeting in the desert. We did not expect you, so that is why I believe you when you say your coming here was unplanned. Yet you yourself have said it: your friend does not belong there. He is a Free Radical now. Remember—time is jealous; time is vengeful. It may be that the dogs will have our bones before the dawn.”

21

Thankfully, Jabr’s sanctuary was not far. They moved through the thickness of the night, first winding their way down a twisted gorge, and then climbing again, by a narrow rock-sewn pathway that eventually withered away to nothing. Paul thought it odd that along the route he had not seen any other sign of life—not a road, a house or even so much as a telephone pole. While it made sense that this group would hide away in these remote mountains, the rugged, unfinished nature of the ground seemed strange to him.

“What is this place?” he asked when they finally halted for the night. It was the dark hour before dawn, and the chill lay heavily upon them, in spite of the thick, coarse robes they had donned.

“This is Wadi el Jan. That would be the Valley of Demons in your language. Let us hope the jinn have ceased their restless walking in the night and returned to their haunts, for the new day will be upon us soon. I am sorry to have pressed you to such discomfort this night. You must be very tired. Come, there is a deep cave hidden in the face of yon cliff. It is known to very few—perhaps not even the Sami. We will be safe here for a time, Allah willing.”

They found the entrance, well hidden behind the twisted remains of an old cedar tree, its trunk cloven by lightning and scored by fire, the long limbs barren and charred to black and ashen gray. One of the two guards continued on, leading the horses away as if he were just a weary traveler in the mountains.

“The horses would be too easy to spot from yonder ridge,” Jabr explained. “Poor Hamza still has long hours ahead of him before he takes his rest. Yet, he will be rewarded. Aziz will remain and guard the entrance to our sanctuary. Come, we will prepare a meal. I’m afraid it will not be so sumptuous. We cannot light a fire here just yet, so cold biscuits will have to do. Perhaps it will be safe to brew kahwa when the sun is up.”

Another cave, thought Paul as they slid into a narrow crack in the face of the sheer cliff. He soon found that, once through a constricted tunnel, the interior of the cave opened up to a wide chamber. Jabr disappeared into the shadows for a moment and Paul caught the scrape of flint on stone. A spark flared in the distance and the soft light of an oil lamp suffused the chamber. To his great surprise, he saw that the walls had been shaped and smoothed by artisans, and squared to the semblance of a typical room. There were crude wooden tables, chairs, and recessed shelves hewn into the rocky walls, stacked high with many bound leather volumes and rolled scrolls. He saw doorways leading to other rooms deeper in the heart of the cliff, and caught a glimpse of an ornate arabesque, hung with richly colored tapestries. There were thick carpets in one quarter of the room, dressed out with pillowed bolsters. A few wooden tables were scattered with archaic instruments, quill pens, a pair of calipers and something that appeared to be an astrolabe. Paul saw several sketched documents, which he took to be maps of the stars. They were illustrated by elegant drawings of the heavens, dominated by a large sickle moon.

“A library, of a kind,” said Jabr, seeing how he was drawn to the tables.

Paul was amazed. “These books must be very old,” he said, his finger tracing a path in the ash white dust covering a leather bound book.

“Some,” said Jabr. “Others are very recent, the handiwork of the Kadi’s scribes and mapmakers. This is a secret archive he has set aside from the world. The days are careless, and wisdom is too easily lost in the heat of our quarrels. Such a sanctuary is a place of peace, where Allah may watch kindly over all that is set here for safekeeping.”

Paul could not resist taking up one of the drawings, a great circle with darkened areas painted in the interior to form stark, regular shapes labeled by Arabic writing.

“What is this?” He held the document closer to the lantern, noting the earthy tones in its coloring, ochre, violet and umber.

“Ah, that is a map.” Jabr brought another oil lamp to the table and they spread the document out. “It is the world as we know it now, drawn from accounts of many travelers we have dealings with.”

“A map?” Paul squinted at the document, cocking his head to one side, somewhat perplexed. It was like nothing he had ever seen, and had not the slightest resemblance to the maps he often doted over back home. “I can’t make any sense of it,” he said. “Which way is north?”

“At the bottom, of course,” said Jabr. “Here is the land of the Arabs, and here is Egypt.” He pointed with a slim, brown finger, indicating abstract areas of the map offset by dark shading.

Paul rotated the scroll, turning it 180 degrees about, his eyes widening as Jabr continued his narration, and he labeled the areas mentally, slowly beginning to see familiar shapes in the diagram.

“But now you have it turned the wrong way,” said Jabr. “Mecca, the jewel of the south, is always placed at the top.”

Paul stared at him, as if he was playing out some mischievous prank. “One of your men drew this? Well he certainly could use a geography lesson or two. Where are we?” He slipped the question in nonchalantly, hoping Jabr would not draw that veil of guarded secrecy about their exchange.

“See the sickle there,” he pointed to the Northeast quadrant, the shape Paul took to be Syria. “That is the realm of the Sheikh, where we now hold forth.”

“Is he your leader?”

“That and more!” Jabr’s eyes gleamed in the lamplight. “He is sâhib al-kawn the Master of Creation; Master of Time. He is the Witness, the Watcher, the Dispenser Of Mercy at the beginning and the end.”

Quite the humble soul, thought Paul. Not even Osama bin Ladin was that fond of himself. He was suddenly possessed with a driving urgency to know who these people were, and what they were about here in their mountain hideaways.

“Jabr,” be said firmly, “I am far from home, quite lost, in fact. I have no idea who you are, really, or what you intend to do with me. I suppose I should be grateful to you for all you have done for me, but the truth is, I feel a captive here, a hostage taken against my will. Is that so?”

“Hostage? Oh no, Do-Rahlan. You are an honored guest! You came to us through the Well of Souls, and you have the Kadi’s favor and protection until such time as the Sheikh may decide otherwise, peace be upon him.”

“Ah, then you are waiting for instructions from this other? What then?” He searched Jabr’s face for some sign of a truth kept hidden from him, but he saw only sincerity and empathy in the man’s brown eyes.

“I am not told these things,” said Jabr. “The Kadi received a letter from the Sheikh at the setting of the moon last night. It warned him that the Sami was misguided, and fallen into error. It specified that you were to be taken from the castle, and that the woman assigned to your care was to be closely watched. Allah be praised, I was just in time to prevent her foul deed. It was said that she meant to poison you!”

“Samirah? I think she was innocent,” said Paul. “She came to my side as always, bearing that wonderful drink you have been offering me each evening. Yet I could see that something was disturbing her. She seemed upset; afraid.”

“She knew the darkness of her own heart,” Jabr pointed to his chest for emphasis.

“No, I rather think she was simply terrified of something. She poured the cup, but then, as I was about to drink, she struck it from my hand and embraced me. A moment later you burst into the room.”

Jabr gave him a thoughtful look. “I see,” he said, stroking the thin curled wisp of his beard. “It may be that she heard my approach and sought to secure her innocence at the last minute. Then again, it could be as you suggest: that she was forced to this deed by threat of pain, or worse. In any case, such is not for us to decide. The matter of discernment is for the Kadi—or the Sheikh when he should come.”

Paul gave him a perplexed look. “About this Sheikh,” he began. “You say a letter came with all this written?”

“Yes,” Jabr nodded enthusiastically. “In the hand of the Sheikh himself! He sees many things—even before they happen! Apparently he left Alamut, riding fast horses five days ago—why, the very day of your arrival here. He draws nigh, and may arrive any time now.”

“Riding fast horses? You can’t be serious. I realize you folks may have adopted a low-tech lifestyle to prevent your discovery, but horses?” Images of US special forces operatives riding horses in the highlands of Afghanistan returned to him, lending just the hint of credibility to what Jabr was saying.

“Alamut is far. It would take many weeks for a man on foot. But the fleet riders of our brothers can devour the land and soar like the wind itself.”

“Where is this place you speak of—Alamut?” Paul’s eyes scanned the makeshift map again.

“I am not permitted to say,” said Jabr. “It is a hidden fastness, far to the east.”

“I understand,” said Paul. “But I am very confused. I have told you I was in Wadi Rumm, a place you seemed to know well enough.”

“Yes, yes. It is far to the south, where the finger of the sea points the way to Akaba.”

“Well that would be about here, yes?” He pointed at the map. “Yet you moved me all the way up here?” His finger traced the distance north along the scroll. “How did you manage that? Horses again? It’s a distance of several hundred kilometers!”

“Move you?” Now it was Jabr who wore a bemused expression. “Yes, we pulled you from the water and carried you from the deep pool of the well up to the chamber of greeting. It was not far.”

Paul shrugged. “Come now,” he breathed. “That can’t be so. Or do you simply want to keep me in the dark about my true whereabouts? Are we really in Syria, as you have said, or still in Jordan? I assure you, I have no intention of giving you away to the authorities. I’m just trying to get home, that’s all.”

“No, my friend, we are far from the River Jordan. Look here.” He paused briefly, angling his frame to orient himself to the map. “That way is south, to the holy city of Mecca. To come there you must first traverse the lands of the Emirs of Damascus—or pass through the County of Tripoli instead. We do not walk that road, for the Templars exact payment from travelers there, and the way is dangerous. East lie the Atabegs of Mosul; to the north is the principality of Antioch, and beyond that, Far Edessa, the source of the two rivers that embrace a land that is dear to us—that we call Al Jazira, the island.”

Paul stared at him, slack jawed, a mixture of disbelief and amazement on his face. “You people really like this little game,” he said. “Very well, have it your way master Sinbad. I’m not playing anymore.” He strode away from the table, clearly annoyed and slumped down on the carpeted quarter of the floor, seeking comfort in the bolster lumped against the wall.

Jabr followed him with his eyes, a pained expression on his face. “Do-Rahlan, how have I offended you? Ah! I have left out the land occupied by the Franks and the Christian Lords—that they call the Kingdom of Jerusalem in Palestine. Please understand that it has not always been their realm and, one day, we hope to see them gone and have all those lands returned to us.”

“Yes, yes,” Paul said disdainfully, “the endless war against Zionists and Crusaders you people seem intent on fighting. I suppose you mean to use me as some pawn in that game, right?”

“Then you favor the Christian Lords? You said you were not a Templar, or in their pay. Yet, you are clearly a Westerner, and come from their lands over the sea. Who are the others you speak of in this war? Zion? What is meant by that? It is a word from the Christian holy scripture, yes?”

“Zionists, Israelis, call them what you like. I suppose you people have had your fill of us ‘Westerners’ infesting your land by now. I’m not angry with you, Jabr. But you can see that this whole situation is really unfortunate. I am not your enemy simply because I come from the West. That’s the whole problem! A man is a man. We have to learn to live together at one time or another, don’t we?”

“Very true, Do-Rahlan.” Jabr set down the map and shuffled over to Paul’s side, intent on mending fences with him. “You are not like the men of the West I have known,” he said. “The crusaders are hard, mailed in steel. They are haughty and filled with pride. Yet, their knights are fearsome and without equal in all the world. Even our best horsemen will quail with fear at their thunderous approach. They build great stone castles, impregnable, on all the borders of their land. That they call Krak de Cheval is not but a long day’s march from this very place. It is awesome, vast and unyielding—a fearsome stronghold, to be sure. We hold forth here in our mountains, the followers of Hassan. In truth, we do not favor either side, and have quarreled with both the Sultan and the Christian Lords at times. Yes, we even quarrel amongst ourselves when the Sheikh is not among us—as our presence here attests. You may be thankful that you came to us, Do-Rahlan, and that you were not first taken by the Saracen riders, or even the iron soldiers of the Krak.”

Now Paul was truly disturbed. He took the words in, a look of disbelief resolving to fear and amazement… Crusaders, Castles, Assassins and Sheikhs… Horses, Knights, Saxons, Franks and nary a cell phone to be found… It sounded, for all the world, as if this man was plucked right from a chapter of Medieval History! He had to be joking, or carrying out this colorful extended metaphor in his manner of dealing with the world. Yet the map, the clothing, the odd incongruities that had cropped up in all their hours of conversation. It sounded as if… but it could not be so, he thought. It sounded as if… but no, that was impossible!

“Jabr,” he said quietly. “Tell me truly now, will you? What year is this?” It was a question he never thought to ask before. Why should he?

“The year? Five-eighty-three, Allah be praised.”

“What?” The look of incredulity on Paul’s face prompted Jabr to touch his knee and offer correction.

“Forgive me, you reckon the years differently. We count from the time of Muhammad, peace be upon him. All the West counts from the time of Jesus the Christ, peace be upon him. It seems every prophet has his followers. We turn our maps one way, you turn them another. Let me see,” his dark eyes rolled to the vaulted ceiling. “That would make this the year eleven-eighty-seven, as the Christians reckon.”

Paul just stared at him, saying nothing at all.

Part VIII

The Wolf

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”

The Second Coming – William Butler Yeats

22

Nordhausen sat in the mouth of the cave, staring at the russet colors of sun and shadow painting the canyon walls of Wadi Rumm. He was still trying to fathom the incredible revelation in Rasil’s words. The man had come here with the intention of making a time jump through a hidden Arch that was powered by the natural nuclear chain reaction in the guts of a bacterial colony. What genius! How many of these sites did they have secreted around the globe? Where did they all lead? Rasil seemed to indicate that this well, as he called it, was a one way journey, but he would not say where it led. Poor Paul. Was he lost in some distant past or flung forward into the future? How would he ever know?

I’m responsible, he thought. If I hadn’t dragged him out here… But that led him nowhere. Paul’s fate was the smallest part of the dilemma he now confronted. The prospect of a Time war was terrifying. Who knows how long it had been underway, or how vast was the scope of its influence.

Nordhausen realized that he had already become an unwitting soldier in that war, recruited and pressed into service by the appearance of Mr. Graves. A good name for the man. The Professor wondered how many graves he was responsible for unearthing and how many lives he had reanimated by their little stumbling sojourn to the Jordanian desert in 1917? The inverse of that equation was painfully apparent to him now. It was pressed into the weary features of this man Rasil. He had seen millions of lives extinguished in an instant from the safe, yet tortured vantage point of a Nexus.

Now the two of them sat in another bubble of uncertainty on the shifting eddies of Time. What would be left of the world he now knew when it finally burst? Rasil’s comment about the dogs having their bones before the night ran its course still bothered him. He could not help thinking of how both Graves and Kelly had vanished during that last mission. Was his life, his very reality at stake now?

Rasil sighed heavily. “I must take care of something,” he said. “I won’t be long. The men I have with me here are not initiates. They cannot be permitted to ride out the Nexus to the world now waiting to be born. So I will send them out into the desert, beyond the sphere of influence, and I must do so quickly. Otherwise the madness will take them, and their dreams will never be whole again. They are from this time and place. It is the least I can do for them to reward their service.”

“I understand,” said Nordhausen, though he hadn’t the slightest idea of what the man was talking about. Unless… he remembered Paul and Kelly discussing the Arch bubble one night over dinner. Without grasping all the physics involved, it seemed the operation of the Arch created a calm spot in the eye of time’s storm when an operation was underway, and it was limited in physical range.

“Wait here,” said Rasil. “I need not warn you of the danger should you leave the sanctuary of the Nexus. I will not be far. And do not try to follow your friend. You would only fall to certain death.”

“Indeed,” said Nordhausen, convinced that his hunch had been correct.

Rasil stood up, calling to the men in Arabic as he slipped out of the mouth of the cave. The three men started down the rocky slope, to make their way back through the winding crevasse to the valley. Nordhausen strained to watch them go. Rasil gave him a single backward glance, and then they hastened away into the gloaming of the dusk.

Trusting soul, thought Nordhausen, wishing he had the Glock pistol somewhere at hand. Was it in one of the satchels they brought with them, or did Paul have it? What would I do with the damn thing, he mused, hold this Rasil at gunpoint until he talks? Something told him Rasil would die first. He called himself the messenger. I suppose he’s on some courier mission to another time. But why?

Nordhausen looked around, his eyes widening when they fell upon a hiking pack that his Arab captors had been carrying when they arrived here. “Hello,” he said aloud to himself. “Now I wonder what I might find in there!”

He craned his neck, squinting into the gathering dusk for any sign of Rasil’s return. The land was empty and forlorn, and only the sigh of the wind through the winding fissure of sculpted rock gave any hint of life or movement. He crept toward the hiking pack.

A moment later he had loosened the straps and opened the main pouch. There were obvious things inside: a two liter canteen of water, something that looked like hardtack biscuits, and… he rummaged to grasp at a dark metal tube in the bottom of the pack, something like a map case, he thought.

He had it out and opened the simple twist-on metal lid at one end, pleased to see that there was a rolled document inside. He drew it out, surprised at the soft texture and the unweathered condition of the paper. No, this was made of something else, more like a papyrus scroll. His curiosity was piqued and he slowly rolled it open, amazed to see a series of odd pictograms that he immediately recognized as Egyptian hieroglyphics. The two dimensional graphics were drawn in neat rows down the page and he quickly set his mind on deciphering them.

He had always taken a great interest in Egyptian writing, and had many notebooks of the curious script moldering away in his office from his graduate student days. He had studied the language for years, teaching himself to read and write the script at one time—though it had been many years since he worked with it. He looked about for an obvious starting point in the document. The language had evolved over time, and there were five different phases stretching from Old Egyptian through the Middle and New periods, and then on through the Demotic and Coptic texts. This writing looked very ancient, probably from an early period.

He scanned the scroll, noting the direction the little ideograms were oriented to find an obvious starting point. The convention was such that the pictures always faced toward the beginning of the text. There were larger drawings here and there, and he knew that anything purportedly spoken by a figure or god they represented would also have all its pictograms oriented in the direction that figure was facing. One figure dominated, and he began to read, working his finger along the line of ideograms, which indicated objects and actions, and phonograms standing for phonetic sounds. It was not long before he was able to construct the text in his mind.

“Here follows the word of the Lord of Time…” That was the dominant figure in the script. All the other symbols were oriented the same way. He noted how miniature duplicates of the figure he took to be this Lord appeared here and there throughout the text. He struggled with his memory, trying to distinguish the one letter signs from common single word elements. “At the time of great struggle… travail… eternity at rest in… darkness of the beast.” What was this bit here? He rephrased the line in his mind, recognizing the icon of the beast. “Eternity lies in the shadow of the Wolf…”

Very odd, he thought. So Rasil was a messenger. Could this be his charge? Why would he be carrying an old Egyptian scroll? The style of the writing would make this over 5000 years old, and yet… The papyrus was weathered but not nearly that ancient. It could never have survived in this condition all that time. Perhaps this man was moving from one place to another in time, just as he and Paul had jumped forward from the KT boundary to reach their target coordinates in 1917. Yet what was he bearing this for? Did it have some hidden meaning or was he merely retrieving a little souvenir from one of his missions, even as I slipped away to recover Lawrence’s lost manuscript of The Seven Pillars?

He knew he did not have much time to solve the riddle. Rasil could return at any moment. He scanned the document again, taking up where he left off and trying to gain some sense of what was written. The word for time was depicted by a small circle next to a scarab figure that gave it connotation. The circle was the sun, time making it’s daily passage through the heavens. Later he noted squiggly lines that could also indicate the passage of hours in the day—another way to indicate time when paired with some other symbol. This particular icon had been had been grouped in an unaccountable cartouche, which mated it with the symbol for the lordly figure in the center of the script. He took this to mean “The Lord of Time.” Then there was more about this beast…

“The Wolf shall go forward and prey upon the bounty of the lord… If…” He reached for the meaning. “Yet if he be slain for his misdeed…” For his sin, perhaps, he thought. “Then all will be overthrown.”

Humm. He mulled over the meaning of the words, his eye drawn to two lines that seemed to be given great prominence. An ochre line was drawn, as if to indicate ‘therefore,’ and then the darkly traced pictograms seemed to speak some judgment or instruction.

An Old Man … Returns … Lord’s Army … The Gate of the West

He fleshed out the line in his mind, reading it as: “When the Old Man returns, the Lord’s Army shall come to the Gate of the West.”

The Priest of Hour-Temple goes with 2 eyes to the Lord of Eternity

Again he struggled to read some greater meaning into the pictograms. “The priest of the hour-temple,” he said aloud. “Could that mean the Temple Priest of Time? Yes… The Temple Priest of Time proceeds with two eyes to the Lord of Eternity.” The two eyes were a caution, and injunction to proceed very carefully, only after examining the issue at hand with two eyes, as it were. Yet, even as he reached this conclusion another, more obvious meaning came to him as well. The symbol he interpreted as ‘proceeds’ could also simply mean to go forth. Seeing with two eyes could just as easily mean a face-to-face meeting—seeing someone with your own two eyes. In that case he had: “The Priest of Time shall go forth and see the Lord of Eternity.”

How odd, he thought. How very odd. The strange mention of Time and Eternity gave him a chill, for this was a message borne by Rasil. Where he was going with it, and what it intended, god only knew. Then he remembered his friend. “Perhaps Paul will know soon enough as well,” he said, the bitterness returning.

Then caution prevailed and he carefully rolled the scroll up and returned it to Rasil’s pack as he had found it. As he did so he spied something that sent his pulse quickening—a phone! He seized upon it, his mind racing as he realized it was a satellite phone. He could reach practically any number on earth with this, but who should he call? Was it possible to use the phone while he was here in a Nexus? He decided to try, and passed a fitful moment struggling to recall Kelly’s cell phone number. He dialed, holding his breath while the phone rang and hoping against hope that Kelly would answer. He caught sight of Rasil, returning up the slope to the mouth of the cave. There was not much time.

Kelly answered, and Nordhausen blurted out a message without giving his friend a moment to say a single thing. He knew that Kelly would be smart enough to locate him here by running a GPS trace on the call. He had just enough time to get the phone back in Rasil’s pack and go rummaging through his own for something to cover his ploy.

By the time the Arab returned, he was fussing with a tin of Earl Grey tea retrieved from the meager supplies in his own satchel.

“Ah, you’ve returned,” he said as Rasil approached. “That was quick.”

“I did not go far. The edge of the Nexus is just beyond the end of the fissure,“ he pointed.

“And your men?”

“I sent them out into the desert. They will camp tonight near the place where you have buried your cargo—What was it you called the thing again?”

“An Ammonite,” the professor repeated, finally getting his breathing under control. “They were very prevalent in this region. It was all just an ancient seabed once, you see. I suppose the city of Amman takes its name from them, or perhaps the other way around. ”

“A seabed? It seems that way even now,” said Rasil. “Only the red sands of Wadi Rumm break round the towers of rock and stone.” Rasil noticed what Robert was doing. “What is that you brew—Assassins tea?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just an expression,” Rasil forced a smile.

“I just thought we might be comfortable,” said Nordhausen. “Who knows how long we will be here.” He was fishing, hoping Rasil would slip out with more information about the likely consequences of Paul’s mishap. “I mean, who knows where my friend has gone,” he continued, “or what change he might work on the Meridian without even knowing it? Going through with some end in mind is one thing. Falling through, without the slightest idea that you have traveled in time at all, is quite another. He could do things, say things, that might have real consequences, and never be the wiser.”

“Very true,” said Rasil. “Real consequences.” He smiled, his face mirroring some inner irony he had taken from the phrase. “Are there any other kind?”

23

There was fighting in the gray halls of Massiaf that night, and many men died. When the Kadi learned a headless message had been planted in the inner courtyard, he knew the Sami would soon seek his life. Thankfully, he kept a guard of twenty hardy men at hand, close by his chambers. They were all initiates, and every man among them had passed the fifth gate in the secret training of that place. They would not quail at the sight of the head where it glowered from the haft of a deeply planted spear. They would not shirk from the duty he must urge on them now. “The Sami is misguided,” he told them. “His does not heed the judgment of this house, and chooses to take matters into his own hands. It will be dark business tonight. He will send men here to these chambers—undoubtedly the seven he holds closest. Blood will stain these halls before the dawn.”

The Kadi’s prediction held true, and Assassins came to the chamber of greeting in the night, moving like liquid shadow as they slid along the stony walls. Yet when they crept close to their intended victims, bright knives drawn for the work at hand, they found instead only matted straw dressed in courtly robes and nestled in the sleeping room where Paul had quartered. Even as the points of their blades clinked on the hard flagstones in anger, stabbing again and again, black arrows streaked at them from every side, and cut short their cries of surprise and pain.

The alarm was never raised in the lower levels of the castle. When the Sami swept down the long corridor to the council chambers of the Kadi, he did so without the knowledge that the insurrection he had conjured was already quashed. Two men burst through the heavy oaken door, the hafts of their swords clanging harshly on the metal bindings. The Sami came after them, with five more men following in his wake. He had come to ascend to the council chair, and take upon himself the full mastery of the castle and all its clan. To his surprise he found the Kadi seated squarely on the high seat of authority, a scepter of discernment clutched tightly in his right fist. At his feet were the bodies of the three Assassins sent this night to bring his death, and behind him, flanking the dais to either side, were twenty men at arms, brandishing bright scimitar swords and bows of burnished ash.

The intruders gaped with surprise, and even the Sami gave pause. His men clustered close about him to shield him from harm, but the Kadi spoke a harsh command and seven poisoned arrows cut them down—all except their master, where he stood amid the scattered corpses, his ice blue eyes gleaming with ire and malice.

A long tense silence fell over the room. The armed men about the Kadi seemed to quail a bit in that interval, as though the specter of the Sami, the Silent One they all had come to know and fear, would suddenly transform itself into some monstrous shape, and wreak vengeance upon them for their deeds. But the Kadi spoke first, his voice clear and steady, his eyes bright with determination.

“Shall I continue, or will you relent?”

“Strike me, if you dare!” The Sami’s voice was a dry rasp. “Show these assembled the full measure of your treachery!”

“Treachery?” The Kadi stood up, his face a mask of anger and resentment. “It was you who raised your hand against the brethren—you, who claim the rightly guided way!”

“Look about me,” the Sami gestured with a long robed arm. “Who has slain the brethren? Surely not I. Why do you raise arms against us? We come here at the bidding of the Sheikh himself! Yes, Sinan has sent to me this night, and orders what now passes in the chambers below.”

“That is a lie!” The Kadi drew out a rolled scroll and flung it across the room to the Sami’s feet. “There is the written hand of Sinan. Take it; read it. Show me where it says that the brothers were to act as you have commanded. I have seen the severed head you planted below, and so I took precaution. Yet that was but the crowing of the cock to name the hour of your treachery. Sinan condemned you two days ago. He saw what you intended, and gave instruction. The stranger was secreted away, and has not been harmed. The men you sent to take his life lie as these do here, and they will not see paradise, if you have promised such.”

The Sami seemed to gather himself in, like a billow of smoke spiraling about some unfathomable dark center. He spurned the rolled scroll with his foot. “I do not believe you,” he said in a low voice. “You say this only to win the hour before these men, who you press to murder at your command. If Sinan draws nigh, and speaks his true mind on this, then I shall stand corrected. Yet if this be proved a falsehood…” his voice resounded sharply from the arched dome of the ceiling. “Then it is you who shall answer in the Eyrie of Sinan for this misdeed, not I.”

He stood in his wreathed silence, undaunted, adamant in his opposition to the Kadi’s will. He would not suffer himself to be shamed here before these men, and he showed no fear. If the Kadi wished his death, the arrows would have struck his breast long ago.

“Put down your arms,” he said. “Do you not know me? I am Sami of the Seventh Gate. I have seen the portal of Eternity, and sat at the feet of the Master of Time. I have heard him speak, and reveal unto me the deepest of mysteries. You think to slay me here? Think hard! For I shall return, again and again—in a thousand guises I shall be made anew, and the price I exact for this insult will be dear, I assure you.”

The guards about the Kadi looked at one another with fearful glances, eyes white and wide when the Sami spoke. His voice seemed a lash that coiled about their limbs and cut at their flesh until it burned. His eyes seemed to brand them with the same cold blue fire that scored their hearts when they first sat before him in the rite of initiation. The Sami reminded them all of that day, seeming to know their thoughts as the sweat of fear wet their brows and their hands closed tighter about the hilts of their swords—not to ready a blow in anger, but to fend off the black wrath of the Sami, a force that seemed to radiate out upon them like the heat of a great fire.

“Do not listen to him,” said the Kadi, yet his voice seemed small and weak by comparison. Then he breathed heavily, seating himself in the place of authority once more. “I hold the scepter of discernment,” he said. “And I, too have passed the Seventh Gate and heard all you have spoken of. This is a matter of equals, here, and we do not reach accord with the edge of a blade.”

“Oh? Then why do these men lie slain in your chamber?”

“Do no persist in this,” said the Kadi, a weariness in his voice. The lines of his face were deeply drawn, and his gray beard seemed a shade whiter. “Now, I must send these men away, and we may face one another alone, for the news I have received this night is for your ears only.”

“News? More lies? More pretext for your misdeeds?” The Sami continued to play out his strength. He could see the resolve of the assembled guards beginning to melt, and even the Kadi seemed bent and weary with the effort of his opposition.

“News has come from afar,” said the Kadi. “Fast riders carry the word to every quarter. Great peril is upon us, and now we shall need all our strength to prevail. Even the loss of these men at your feet may be cause for regret, though I can only believe their death forestalls a far greater loss. Go!” He gave the command to his soldiers now. “Remove the fallen and take up your posts outside these chambers. The Sami is not to be harmed. He is a Walker of the Seventh Gate.”

There was just the hint of rebuke in his words, and the Sami watched sullenly while the guards approached him cautiously to remove the dead, their eyes averted with fear. There was no room for remorse in his heart, but anger swelled in his breast, tightly reined.

When the soldiers departed the Kadi spoke. “The Wolf is abroad, as you have warned. News came at the eleventh hour. He has set himself upon the caravans making their way along the pilgrim’s road from Egypt, many days ago. He sits like a spider in the fortress of Kerak, and now he preys on all the faithful who dare to pass his gates. We must confer.”

“Did I not warn you of this? Arnat will not rest until he sets his hand upon the Ka’ba itself; until he defiles everything that is holy!”

“For now he sets his hand upon the Pilgrims. Only this time he has overreached himself. The caravan he plundered moved under the banners of the Sultan himself, and the loss was dear. Even the sister of Salah ad Din was taken, and now she rots in the hold of Kerak.”

The Sami passed a moment of self-righteous vindication, the look plain on his shrouded face as he took this news in. “I would have killed this man by now were it not for your interference,” he accused. “Now the quarrel between us over the coming of this stranger has set my plans awry. The Fedayeen you so callously put to the arrows were all to be set fast upon the track of the Wolf—and now we are without the deftly guided knife when it is most needed.”

“My actions may prove the wiser, in time,” said the Kadi. “If you would have read the scroll you spurned for theatre’s sake, you would know the mind of Sinan on this matter. Yes, the Old Man returns to Massiaf, as you warn. Yet more things are moving in the night than you have heard. Salah ad Din burns with anger over the doings of Arnat. He would have all that was taken returned to him, especially his sister, but the Wolf is adamant. You need not concern yourself with this any longer. Salah ad Din has sworn to kill that man by his own hand. He musters the whole of his army and plans to come to the Gate of the West, close by the Horns of Hattin. Even Taki ad Din has been recalled from Aleppo, and he swells the Saracen host with all the veteran cavalry at his command. It will need the might of all the Christian Lords to oppose such an army. So leave the matter of Arnat to the Sultan.”

“Why do you say this? Still, he might be slain by a single Fedayeen, if only you would cease your opposition.”

“It is the will of Sinan that Arnat will not be touched.”

“What? Why should he stay his hand when we might strike this man down and so gain great favor in the eyes of the Sultan?”

“You may ask that question of Sinan,” said the Kadi. “He comes to look fast, with two eyes, upon the stranger we have in our keeping. Imagine his surprise if he arrived here and found the man dead—found his appointed Kadi General lying on the flagstones of his council chambers in a pool of poisoned blood. Imagine his wrath when he learns of our quarrel. All Christendom may soon take the field of battle against us.”

The Sami was stunned by these revelations, though he did his best to remain composed. He had thought the stranger to be an agent of the Order all along. “Perhaps we could have unraveled this riddle sooner if you had used a hard hand on the stranger.” He continued to shift the burden of blame from his shoulders.

“Perhaps,” said the Kadi. “I choose other means. Samirah would have melted his resolve in time. See that she is not harmed by any of your men—understood? And you underestimate the skills of the Mukasir. Jabr Ali S’ad was well chosen in this matter. He was taken from us for just such an occasion, and trained in the ways of the stranger’s speech. Clearly others have seen things that you have been blind to. It is not given for us to know all things, but this man replaced the courier we expected from Egypt—that much we do know. Whether he did this by foul means, or by chance as he claims, is yet to be discerned. No matter. Sinan believes he has seen the heart of this, and we must accede to his demands. Neither the stranger, not the Wolf are to be harmed. Give me your word on this and you may go. Refuse the decree of Sinan and I must set you in irons—yes, even you, the Sami of the Seventh Gate.”

The Sami glared at him, his anger diffused around the news that was still circling in his mind. “So be it,” he said at last. “We will wait, like helpless children for the coming of Sinan. I will stay my hand, but I do not forget what happened here this night.”

“Nor I,” said the Kadi. “Nor I.”

The Sami turned about as suddenly as he had entered and strode to the bolted door. He struck hard upon the riveted metal plates, and it was opened to him. Then he vanished through the portal, and none of the guards beyond the door dared look upon him as he went.

24

Paul felt as though he had been dealt a physical blow. The surface of his personality wanted to immediately reject what Jabr had told him as another ploy; another element of this strange charade these people were playing out with him. Yet, something deep down began to murmur in his head that Jabr’s words were true. He began to retrace his experience, piecing together memories from the moment of that awful fall into the chasm at Wadi Rumm. He vaguely remembered the lights spinning about him, as though the walls of the sink were illuminated in vibrant hues of color. The lights, the numbing cold, the unaccountable nausea and strange disorientation he experienced when he awoke, all augured the one conclusion he felt rising in his chest with a surge of anxiety.

“Eleven eighty-seven?” He repeated the date Jabr had given him, hoping for some obvious error in the calculation. “Come now,” he said. “We’re missing nearly a thousand years there, aren’t we?” A thin smile faded as he scanned Jabr’s face. The man looked at him from the deep brown wells of his eyes, wholly sincere and without any semblance of pretense.

“There is argument over the counting of years,” said Jabr, “even among Christians, but that is as close to the reckoning as I can come for you. Eleven eighty-seven; late in the sixth month.”

Now one clue after another began to coalesce in Paul’s mind. The near perfect preservation of the castle he had been in, the dress and manner of everyone he had seen, the horses, weapons, scrolls and maps; the lanterns —all archaic and wholly consistent for the late twelfth century, but not the twenty first! Then the opposite end of his observations voiced itself. The absence of anything even remotely associated with his own modern world was just as convincing. There were no cars, none of the guards carried guns; he had not seen a wire or even the ghost of an electric light. Nothing moved in the night sky but the moon and stars: no jet contrails in the air, and this strange hush upon the land. The world he had come from was always abuzz with the hum of noise, yet here it was so quiet. A stillness and tranquility lay upon the earth that he could only recall experiencing when he was alone in the wilderness of Alaska, many years ago. Why hadn’t he noticed all this before? Perhaps he was just too distracted by all that had happened. Maybe he had noticed the clues, but simply chose to explain them all away with the thought that these men were renegade terrorists. Then he thought of something that would put the issue to one final test. The night sky!

“Jabr,” he asked. “May I go out and look at the stars for a moment?

“Why do you wish to see the stars? It is still dangerous, Do-Rahlan. We could have been spotted leaving the castle, and the Sami’s men may have followed us here. Yes, Aziz is strong and brave, yet he is but one man. I am a thinker; not a fighter.”

“I understand, but I’ll just be a moment. Please, this is very important to me.”

Jabr sighed. “As you wish, but I will come as well.”

They stood up and Jabr led the way back to the narrow access passage and the cleft that formed the opening of the hidden cave. He whispered to Aziz as they approached, saying something in Arabic. The guard answered with an expression Paul took to mean that ‘the coast was clear.’

Once outside Paul breathed deeply, taking in the sweet cool air and adding it to the growing mound of evidence in his mind. Not the slightest hint of pollution, he thought. The air is so completely fresh here. Then he looked up, his eyes scanning the horizon and the vault of stars above for familiar constellations. He spied the formation he was looking for, but something was missing.

“My God,” he said aloud. “It’s not there!”

Jabr heard him invoke the name of Allah, in his own way, and squinted to see what he was looking at. Paul had followed its construction over the long decade or more that it took to build—until it was so large that it gleamed like a new star in the heavens each night. He knew he should be able to see it now, in this quiet hour before the dawn, but it was not there. The International Space Station was gone.

He passed a moment of uncertainty, wondering if the station could simply be somewhere else in its orbit. But he had seen it each morning for the last three weeks, from his Hotel in Amman. It was as regular as clockwork, and it should be there—right now. A feeling of enormous consequence fell upon him and he was finally forced to admit that the world he was standing in now was not the one he had come to Wadi Rumm in. He was in another time; another place even!

How could this be? Was it some strange after effect left over from their first mission? Could it be that he had not completely rejoined the present, and that time was jealously clutching at his heels, dragging him back into the past where he had dared to violate her? Was he slipping, his substance and reality unable to maintain itself in the present he had known? They were just neophytes, tampering with primal forces that they were only barely beginning to understand. What had he done? What was happening to him? Or was this all some drug induced dream he had sipped from the porcelain cup Samirah had brought him each night?

“Not there?” Jabr kept searching the sky. “You mean the moon? It has long since set, Do-Rahlan.”

Paul looked at him, a blank expression on his face. Then he seized on Jabr’s own explanation and handed it back to him. “Yes,” he said haltingly. “The moon is down. I had lost track of the time in the cave, I suppose.”

There was a dry hiss, and Aziz edged around the screening shrubbery, a warning in his eyes. He pointed off down the long slope of the ridge, his arm extending to the shadowed valley below. Jabr exchanged words with him and turned to Paul.

“Riders,” he whispered. “We must go back inside.”

Paul suddenly felt a low vibration in the distance, a quiet rumble growing with each passing moment. He had never heard anything like it—except in the movies. Then he caught sight of something below, a glimmer of light in the distance that became more pronounced with each passing moment. “Look there,” he pointed, seeing a long winding ribbon of glowing light below, a river of torchlight snaking its way into the valley. The sound grew louder and louder, and Aziz crouched low.

Jabr took Paul’s arm, somewhat protectively, but his own curiosity had gotten the better of his caution, and he too stared at the ever-broadening stream of liquid torchlight flowing over the purple veiled landforms below.

“Taki ad Din,” he whispered. “He comes from the north where he has vied with Joscelin in Edessa and Aleppo. He comes heeding the call of his master, Salah ad Din. And with him come the pride of our horsemen, twenty thousand strong, veteran Faris cavalry. Listen to the fierce beat of their hooves upon the ground! I’m afraid the Sultan’s wrath will soon fall upon all these lands, Do-Rahlan. Taki ad Din is a stern master, cold and furious in battle. War is coming to greet the quiet dawn. War and the thunder of change.”

Paul gaped at the spectacle below. If there had been any last shred of doubt in his mind about the circumstances of his fate, it was quickly crushed under the thrumming beat of those riders. On and on they came, filling the valley below. Aziz and Jabr had lost their fear and crept down a ways to the lee of a stark outcropping of rock, elated at the sight of the vast horde below. Now Paul could hear the chink and rattle of metal and the muted twist of leather saddles. He started toward the others, but his foot stumbled on a shadowy rock and he fell, tumbling down the hillside for some twenty feet.

His fall was broken by a stand of heavy shrubbery, and he righted himself, hoping the riders below had not taken notice. He rubbed his left arm, where a stone had bruised him as he slid down the slope, but otherwise he was safe and unharmed. As he struggled up, he suddenly heard a low growl behind him that raised his hackles with a severe chill. He turned, the fear of the unknown winning out over the primal instinct to flee the feral sound, but now his eyes confirmed and magnified his fright with the leering visage of a lupine creature—a gray wolf, large and fierce, with burning red eyes. It was crouching low, as though ready to leap upon Paul at any moment, the matted fur of its muscular shoulders and broad neck raised with hostility, its dark lips stretched to reveal the white gleam of sharp teeth. Paul staggered back, feeling the bloom of the animal’s scent and an unaccountable chill. Its breath seemed heavy with frost, and the low, threatening growl lowered, as though the animal was poised in the moment of instinctual doubt, ready to leap and tear, or to bolt away to safety. Their eyes met in that suspended moment of fear, and Paul felt a queasy feeling shake his frame. It was almost as if…

The wolf slavered, its growl becoming a vicious snarl. Then, just as it seemed ready to strike, Aziz came barreling down the slope, bright sword in hand. Paul turned and saw that Jabr had fitted a dark shafted arrow to a bow and was drawing a bead on the creature. He did not know why, but something in him could not bear the death of a single living thing because of his own foolish stumbles into the mists of time. He cried out, raising a hand to ward Jabr off, even as Aziz reached him. The wolf gave back, surprised by this new disturbance, and then leapt away with a powerful spring of his lean hind legs. Paul fell backward, steadying himself on the side of the slope. Aziz reached him, and stepped beyond, his sword held before him, he looked at Paul, and the fear in his eyes was palpable. He moved his hand about before him, and Paul saw how it quavered. His breath was a cold misty fog.

“Do-Rahlan!” Jabr’s whisper from above was laden with urgency. Then he spoke to Aziz, and the brawny man seemed to take hold of himself and moved. He helped Paul up and the two of them ascended the steep slope, using the thick shrubbery for hand holds along the way.

“We must hide ourselves in the cave,” whispered Jabr. “I do not think the riders below could see or hear us this far up, but there may be scouts on the flanks of their march. Come. Are you harmed?”

“I’m fine,” said Paul, though he was still quite shaken by his experience.

They sipped back through the entrance to the cave and the relative warmth of the hidden library calmed his jangled nerves. Paul slumped down on the carpeted floor, his breath still fast with fright and the exertion of the climb. Jabr spoke with Aziz briefly, and then came to Paul’s side.

“That was very close,” he said. “Why did you stay my hand? I could have felled the creature where it stood. My aim is very true.”

“I’m sorry,” Paul explained. “I wanted to see the riders, and I lost my footing on the slope. I must have fallen upon the creature while it hunted, and I did not think it right to kill for my mistake.”

“It was my fault,” said Jabr. “I should have been wiser. I trust you were not harmed? You are certain? Come, remove those soiled robes and I will see to your wounds. We have fresh gowns here, fine cotton. I will risk a fire in the furnace niche and boil water. There are oils and balms in the next chamber. Then we will drink tea and eat.”

“Coffee,” said Paul, still fighting off an inner chill.

“Yes, kahwa,” said Jabr. “Dark, rich kahwa for the dawn.”

Part IX

King of Diamonds

“There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

He that is thy friend indeed,

He will help thee in thy need.”

Proverbs 18:24

Address to a Nightingale – Richard Barnfield

25

Kelly watched the progress bar on the monitor, a pleased expression on his face. “Looks like my children have all come home for a visit,” he said. “The Golems have been filling the RAM bank for the last hour now. We’ll have a good read on things in a moment. In fact, you may want to start setting up some queries on the research system. I’m sending a good mirror of the primary data over to that terminal now.”

“What’s that?”

“The GUI will display a chronological time line for you over there.” He pointed at Research Terminal 3. “I’ve been comparing data blocks as they come in from the Golems—checking all key dates and events. If the information on this fetch seems consistent with the data I stored earlier, then I’ll have the system color that segment of the chronology green. When there’s variance, discrepancy or outright conflict in the data, the system will shade the bars in different colors: yellow for minor stuff through orange to red. If you see black, then we either have a data void on that period, or a major conflict. This way we can actually look at the time line and see where things start to go fuzzy on us. I’m going to keep my Golems very busy, so we’ll be getting a constant stream of new information from the net as it exists in real time—to use a phrase.”

Maeve was delighted. “Kelly, you’re a genius! Is it only history and political events, or can I query things like religion, literature, art, music and the sciences?”

“It’s the whole damn Internet—or at least the essence of what’s out there as we speak. Ask anything you like.”

“Sounds like this colorized chronology is a good place to start.” Maeve settled into the swivel chair, adjusting the armrests and stretching before she stared at the keyboard. “But how does it work?”

“Just hit the F1 for a general display and enter your dates. Use the TAB key to start a specific query on any given year or year grouping. A menu will come up and you can search for key events in any of the disciplines you mentioned a moment ago.”

“History first,” she rubbed her palms together, her mind beginning to feel its way through the situation, assessing what she needed to do. “I’ll have a look at the last two thousand years or so. Do I enter negative numbers for dates before the Birth of Christ?” A nod from Kelly confirmed that and she thought for a moment. “Let’s see… we had better check in on the Prime Movers first. I’ll go from –1 BC to the present. That will cover Christ, Muhammad, Luther’s Boys and most of the key history that would effect us here.”

“You’ll miss the Buddha,” Kelly noted.

“I’ll get back to him later. For now I want to see if anyone’s fooling around with Western Civ. I’d hate to see the look on old Professor Porter’s face if he has to re-write all his course notes at the University. Those dates will give me a good chunk of Rome, the Byzantines, Barbarian invasions, the rise of the Islamic Caliphates, the Medieval period and everything after.” She had the numbers in and was pleased to see the screen display as it began to trace out a green color bar starting with the first year BC and working forward. She sighed with immediate relief. “Looks like Christ was born in Bethlehem, right on schedule.”

“Halleluiah!” Kelly mimicked a typical television preacher, a bit of a Southern twang in his tone of voice.  The chronology made its way slowly forward as the CPUs in the research systems ran comparison checks on the two data banks at the speed of light. The progress still seemed agonizingly slow to Maeve. After about five minutes she had worked her way through the first century AD, her mind ticking off events by recollection. “The Romans look solid,” she said. “Nero, Titus, Hadrian… all looking good.”

The time line continued forward, solid green, to Maeve’s great satisfaction. “Here come the Goths,” she said as the line swept through the second century into the third. “They’ll sack Athens and Sparta any second now.”

“Don’t forget the Persians,” Kelly put in.

“Oh, I won’t. Right now Rome has its hands full with the Lombards, Saxons, Franks, Picts, Scots, Germans and the Huns will show up soon enough. You say all is well as long as I get green here, right?” She pointed at the timeline. “You don’t have any surprises for me, do you, like shades of emerald to lime and so on?”

“Nope. Any variation will go to yellow at once. See that meter in the upper left hand of the screen? It will tick off calendar years, and you can toggle it down to months if you need to take a closer look at something. Any discrepancy will be flagged and put into this box here. Think of it like a penalty box denoting the bad years. You’ll be able to go right to that specific year and initiate a deep pattern search to vector in on the data.”

“God, I just love this Kelly! How did you dream this up?” Maeve was beaming as Alaric the Goth and Attila began to devour the fringes of the Roman Empire. Italy was invaded while she was warming up her coffee and barbarians clotted the Appian Way as she stirred in the cream. Rome fell while she struggled to get the cellophane off a bag of Fig Newtons. By the time she had returned to her seat the Western Roman Empire had come to an end, the Vandals moved in, and the value of real estate dropped considerably in Italy and Sicily. Her line looked perfectly normal, green and solid as the Byzantine Empire began to spar with Persia in the Sixth Century. The Persians soon moved into Syria and overran Egypt as the line moved into the Seventh Century.

“Looks like Muhammad has started things rolling in his neck of the woods,” she said. “The Arabs will be militarizing by now and pushing north into Palestine and the butt of Asia Minor.”

“No problems yet?” Kelly came to look over her shoulder.

“Not if this thing works as advertised,” said Maeve. “Look. While Europe languishes the Islamic Caliphs are spreading their credo like wildfire. The call of the muezzin will be sounding in India to the East and echoing from the cobblestones of Lisbon in the West soon.”

Kelly squinted at the line as it traced through the eighth century. “Looks like Charles Martel stopped them at Tours and Portiers, “he said. “No variations at all, and those were some pretty significant years.” The line was still solid green as it reached 900 on the chronology.

-1BC_ _ _100 _ _ _200 _ _ _ 300 _ _ _ 400 _ _ _ 500 _ _ _ 600 _ _ _ 700 _ _ _ 800 _ _ _ 900

“Expecting trouble?” Maeve gave him a quick glance, wondering what was on his mind.

“Well,” he explained, “given the fact that we set back the greatest blow ever conceived and executed against the West by the Muslim world, I was wondering about other crisis points in that conflict.”

“You mean Palma?”

“Sure,” said Kelly. “Just consider what the world would have been like in the future if we hadn’t stopped those wave sets from smashing the Eastern Seaboard.”

Maeve gave him a nod of agreement. “It’s conceivable that the United States would have been finally eclipsed on the world stage—assuming Europe got off with relatively little damage.”

“Europe would have survived, but with the US literally swept out of its position as the world’s imperial watchdog, the Islamic states may have consolidated in opposition to the European Union.”

“They would have lost their biggest customer,” Maeve put in.

“Hell, California and the entire West Coast would not have been affected by Palma. But they’d have their hands full rebuilding the East for decades to come. I suppose Graves could have told us all about it.”

“Did he?” Maeve raised an eyebrow, realizing that she had violated her own credo in asking Kelly about his brief sojourn with Mr. Graves in the future.

“Nope. He was very tight lipped about the history. In fact, I think they were totally amazed with what happened after the Palma mission. I mean, they were desperate, right? So we have to assume the world was spinning down into something really bad by then. Who knows what was going on. Maybe there was a nuclear war, or some bio-terror plague once these radicals got the bit between their teeth.”

“History is little else than a picture of human crimes and misfortunes, said Voltaire.” Maeve raised a finger, gratified that all the ill deeds and foul play were still in order on her screen.

“I like Henry Ford better,” Kelly offered. “History is bunk. He gets right to the point, and I suppose they must have had quite a shock when we ran our little mission. Imagine what it must have been like for them when everything suddenly changed! They would have had an entire new world to walk into, and hundreds of years of history to re-learn.”

“Were they that far ahead in time?” Maeve took one more step out onto the ice, and then promised herself she would stick with the past.

“They wouldn’t tell me,” Kelly finished. “I suppose you would be the first to understand why, Miss Outcomes and Consequences.”

As they talked the time line rolled on, passing one centennial Meridian after another. History receded in its wake, quietly unchanged and safe under the gloaming dust of memory. Maeve began to feel much better as she watched the screen.

“Can I assume that if the history database is unaltered, then most other key areas will have good integrity? I mean, do I have to run literature queries to check in on folks like Chaucer and all, or should I assume the Canterbury Tales are safely inscribed in Middle English somewhere as long as I get a good green line through the thirteen hundreds?”

“I would say so,” said Kelly, “but I’m sure you’ll want to run checks in the literature database as well when we finish this. The system can do your inventory on Shakespeare for you in about thirty seconds—line by line.”

“Love you, Mister!” Maeve’s eyes gleamed. It was as if a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Now she didn’t have to worry that the whole of the world was kept safe in her head, with endless hours ahead of her as she struggled to remember each poem, each novel, every page of the history she knew so well. Now they could check anything, at any time, from the safe sanctuary of the Nexus while the Arch spun out its quantum mystery below them. She felt wonderfully light, instilled with great energy and vigor as she watched the years tick by. So far there was not a single discrepancy between the two history data sets, and she was very relieved.

“Here comes the Twelfth Century,” she chimed. “At this rate one last cup of coffee should get me to the turn of the second millennium.”

“What fun that was,” said Kelly. “Y2K was a big no show, but the fireworks were great, and the stock market was even better.” He snatched up Maeve’s mug and went off to the kitchenette to see what was left in the coffee pot. When he returned he was surprised to see her leaning in to the screen and biting tentatively at the nail of her right index finger. He looked at the screen. “Something come up?”

“Not sure…” Maeve was quietly watching the Meridian, and she squinted up at the lights. “The fluorescents are a pain on these monitors. Is that yellow, or just a screen glitch?”

Kelly felt a pulse of adrenaline. He knew at once that they had probably encountered their first variation. Sure enough, by the time he reached Maeve’s side and set down the coffee mug, the penalty box was filling up with numbers. He leaned in to spy the first crucial year. “Eleven eighty-seven,” he breathed. “Hang on a second. I’m going to shift some system resources your way and focus CPU power on that spot. Everything was green up until that year, right? Keep an eye on the line and we can switch to monthly data checks. What was going on back then?” He threw Maeve a question, preferring to have her musing on the history instead of worrying over the spots of yellow that were popping into the time line with increasing regularity.

Maeve closed her eyes a moment, running Golems through her own memory to recall the key events of the late Twelfth Century. Byzantine History was her old college major, so she found safe ground there at once. Isaac Angeles II was Emperor in Constantinople and he was already quarreling with the Pope by 1185. Frederick was consolidating his power in Central Europe, and Phillip II Augustus held France in the West. The Crusades were well underway, in fact most of Tripoli and Palestine as far south as Sinai had been in Christian hands for some ninety years. The Crusades! Her pulse quickened as she realized the year 1187 was a pivotal year in that history.

“Can we start a single year query on eleven eighty-seven?” She raised her voice so Kelly could hear her in the next room.

He huffed back, pointing at her keyboard, clearly excited. “Hit your F12 function key. I just put the Arion Mini on this baby and told the Golems to start honing on that time segment for live data feeds. No sense having them fetch stuff on the Romans when we have a clear violation right here. What’s up?”

“The Crusades,” said Maeve, folding her arms. “The Second has been finished for some time, but the Third is about to be born—unless this changes things.”

“What? I thought we went over this during the first mission run up. Nordhausen was adamant that the Crusades were too complex to tamper with. He said: History has it’s imperatives. I’m afraid they simply must occur.” Kelly mocked a bit to make his point, imitating Nordhausen.

“History is bunk,” she gave him back Henry Ford in reprisal. “We’ve all seen to the truth of that.” That look of self-recrimination was building in her eyes again, a yawning, vacant doubt that dispelled her elation and re-stoked the anxiety that had plagued her for months past. “When you get right down to it you can mess with something like the Crusades as easily as anything else, and apparently somebody is giving it the old college try.”

“Any idea what happened in eleven eighty-seven?” Kelly sat down in the chair next to her, unwilling to wait for the data queries to answer his question.

“For starters,” Maeve began, “the whole history of the Middle East and the conflict of the West with the Muslim world was about to be turned on its head—and it all happened over a forty-eight to sixty hour period, a real maelstrom at a place called the Horns of Hattin.”

“Where’s that? Here, I’ll get a map query running.”

“It’s near the Sea of Galilee, above Tiberias—the Gate of the West, as it was sometimes called from the Muslim perspective. The Christians called it the Horns of Hattin, after two prominent hill formations in the area.” She was already keying a specific search request on one screen while Kelly brought up a map.

“Here it is,” he said first. “A big battle was fought there in early July, 1187. Take a look at the map. Looks like old Saladin was about to lock horns with the Crusaders beneath those hills.”

“Here’s an artistic rendition of the battle—from the old database. I can’t get clean data yet from the new stuff.”

The image came up showing a battle raging in a sea of spears and lances. The two prominent hill features were evident in the foreground and background: the Horns of Hattin. Kelly noted the image and then returned to his map. “Looks like the Crusaders were hung out to dry,” he said. “Saladin is coming at them from one side and this other force is enveloping from the north.”

“I’m not sure on the details,” said Maeve, but I think the Christian Army had advanced beyond reach of good water, and Saladin’s army was baring the way to the Sea of Galilee. It was an awful mess in the end. Every castle in the Holy Land had emptied its garrisons to join in this battle, and they were slaughtered by superior Moslem forces. Look up Harold Lamb in the old database. He’s got good accounts of all this.”

It did not take long for Kelly to come up with some reference material. Lamb’s account was very colorful, and he read a passage or two quickly on screen, summarizing for Maeve. “Looks like there was some disagreement about whether they should fight this battle. Saladin had been consolidating the Turks and the Kurds under a truce with the Lords of Christendom up until now. Then some idiot, this guy called Reginald of Kerak, raided the Sultan’s caravan and got Saladin really pissed off.”

“The Wolf of Kerak,” said Maeve. “I remember this now. Guy had just been crowned king in Jerusalem, but he took the crown from his newly wed wife, the sister of Baldwin—or rather she gave it to him. Men didn’t think women could run things like kingdoms back then. Well, Reginald of Kerak was instrumental in supporting that move in Jerusalem. Guy was a spineless little wimp, it seems, and Reginald wasted no time advising him.”

“Right,” said Kelly. “In fact he damn near twisted his arm off the night before the battle. All the other Christian Lords were against the attack, and Guy went along with them. Then, that same night, it seems that this Reginald of Kerak and the head of the Knights Templars came to the King and argued with him for hours.”

“Guy changed his mind,” Maeve put in. “He ordered the attack; the Christians got slaughtered, and Saladin had the whole of Palestine prostrate at his feet.”

“Nobody left to defend all those nifty castles,” said Kelly, arms behind his head as he leaned back heavily in his chair. His baseball cap was tilted off kilter as he spoke. “So who would be trying to tamper with that event?” He wondered aloud, looking at Maeve with a puzzled expression on his face.

“Let’s see if your little Golems can paint us a new picture,” said Maeve. “If an event of this magnitude changes, then the transformation will ripple forward from this point in the continuum and become a real tsunami by the time it reaches us here in the 21st Century. You were wondering what Mr. Graves and company felt like when our mission succeeded for them? We may be about to find out ourselves. We can’t keep the Arch spinning forever, Kelly. God only knows what the world will be like when we turn it off.”

26

The Sami brooded in the Eyrie of Sinan. It was the one place he knew he could linger undisturbed, for no man would dare to walk the gray stair that led to the door, or chance his life on entering. Here he could sulk until his master returned, and then he would undoubtedly be shamed before the Kadi, and severely chastised for all he had done. Yet that was the least of his crimes, he knew. The greatest measure was the cup he had spurned from the hand of Sinan himself! He had been told to do a thing, to kill a man, and just when he was ready to fulfill his charge, he had allowed the moment to slip from his grasp.

As he gazed out the high lancet window his mind returned, burning, to the man who had escaped his wrath, Reginald, Arnat, the Wolf of Kerak. Reginald was the oath breaker, who flouted the truce offered by Salah ad Din and set himself as the mortal enemy of every Muslim soul. It was he who had dared to set foot upon the sacred soil of the Land of Muhammad; it was he who raided the coasts of the Red Sea for months on end, burning the coastal towns of the faithful and raging inland with his host of ravenous knights.

Each time the warriors of Islam were able to challenge him in battle, he had escaped. Now he was harrying the faithful again from his outpost at Kerak: Reginald, Arnat, the Wolf.

Then, at long last, word came from Alamut on the mouth of a single courier in the night. It was written: Reginald must die. The charge was veiled in great secrecy and given to the Sami himself. “Work this thing well,” said the horseman. “It is the will of Sinan himself that this be done. The hour and the day will be revealed to you soon.” The man had given the Sami a ring of amethyst, marked with the carven seal of Sinan.

The hour and the day… The Sami had paced and paced as the time drew ever closer. He had trained the faithful Fedayeen in the manner of the deed, selecting out his chosen best. All was made ready. Fast horses were groomed in the stables, arrangements set and the route of approach was well planned. Then, a day before the death party was to leave the castle, the stranger had come upon them through the Well of Souls. The Kadi said he was expected, a messenger from Egypt bearing scrolls of fate—yet no message was found upon him when they pulled his chilled body from the waters and stripped away the peculiar garments he was clothed in, as was the custom.

The Sami was curious, and he allowed himself a moment’s distraction when the man arrived, for he had been told by Sinan that all who came through the Well were to be watched and closely guarded. So it was that he went to the chamber of greeting that first night, watching secretly from his place behind the lattice as the maids anointed the man’s body with scented oils and dressed him in robes befitting an Amir.

He remembered the strange light that seemed to surround the man, an unearthly foreboding sheen that shifted like a glowing mist. His eyes whitened at the sight, and he immediately knew that this man was not the messenger the Kadi had been told to expect. Who was he then? Surely not one of the faithful, for he called out in a strange tongue while he slept, possessed by the consuming fever of the elixir of returning that was poured upon his lips by the maids in the chamber.

It was not the words of the faithful that he spoke. Surely this man must be an enemy! The Sami sent at once to Alamut, describing his fear and seeking permission to kill the man while he slept. But it would be many days before the messenger birds could return. If he lingered, he would miss his charge against the Wolf. If he acted without sanction there would surely be consequences—unless the Kadi agreed. Then he might justify his deeds to Sinan. He was decided. He would have words with the Kadi concerning this man. He remembered how he had argued with him, warning him of the danger in their midst. Then he spoke of the Wolf, the devil at large on the land again, and a dangerous threat to them all.

“The man holds forth once more at Kerak—astride the holy pilgrim’s road that leads to Mecca. No doubt he will soon cast his malice and ire upon the innocent who walk that road. His hatred of the faithful is boundless.”

“We are at peace with the Christians,” the Kadi reminded him. “Salah ad Din has made the peace himself! Raymond of Galilee has given his word: A three year truce.” The Kadi held up three fingers to emphasize his point.

“Yes, I have heard as much,” said the Sami. “Three years of waiting while Salah ad Din bends the ears of the Atabegs of his homeland and treats with the Sultan of the East. All the while the sacred duty of jihad is forgotten. Thankfully, the sand in that clock runs out now, and the truce will soon be at end. Who knows what mischief Raymond has been plotting at Tiberias? You think it was fairness and justice of heart that moved him to plead for this truce? We placed a dagger by his pillow while he slept, and the message was obviously received. He was frightened, and shown to be the coward he truly is.”

“You have already heard the ruling of my heart on that matter,” the Kadi remembered the anger in his words when he spoke. “You were told not to interfere with the Christian Lords, and yet you persist! You think it a small thing to ply your craft—yet it is not a small thing. You think to advance our cause, yet now you have seen what results when you act on impulse, and without guidance. If what you say is true, then perhaps this truce would not have been offered were it not for your meddling. So your own headstrong ways fold back upon themselves. Remember, it was you who dared to send men to the tent of Salah ad Din himself, and that nearly brought ruin upon us all when he marched his host to the very doorstep of this castle. No one has dared to invade the sanctuary of these mountains for a generation, yet you tempt the hand of a Great Mover, and bend his wrath upon us.”

“It was fitting justice for what he did to the brotherhood in Egypt. You, of all this host, should have seen the wisdom in my actions. Did he not lay waste to the lodge of the Ismaili brethren in Cairo? Did he not crucify their leaders and nail their broken bodies upon the gates of the city? Such insult and atrocity cannot be overlooked—not even by one you deem to be great, which has yet to be proven.”

“You see only with the eye of the moment!” The Kadi shook a finger at the Sami now, his anger rising. “Have you learned nothing?”

“We are here, are we not? Massiaf still stands. Salah ad Din has gone away to unite the tribes. We frightened him away as well. We have proven that not even a Sultan may trifle with us lightly. It was my strong hand that decided the issue that day. If we had followed your counsel we would all be beggars in the streets now.” The Sami smiled, clearly pleased with his boast. After the assassination plot failed, Salah ad Din had come to the high mountains to lay siege to the stronghold of the Assassins in Syria, Massiaf. But the strength of that castle lay not in its walls, but in the devious hearts and ways of the men within.

“I counseled the Fedayeen that day,” said the Sami, “and told them what to do. A dagger was thrust into the earth beside the sleeping pillow of Salah ad Din himself! The Sultan was so angry that he redoubled the guard around his tent. He even gave orders that flour should be spread beyond the edge of his camp so that the passing of any man would be clearly seen. Yet we came, and we left our footprints in the flour just to spite him. It was said that the guards outside his tent were white with fear when they found the mark of the Fedayeen upon the ground the next day—in spite of every effort they could not guarantee the security of their master. And we left a message that he has taken to heart: that his life is ours to grant or take, and we will hold him to account for any injustice pressed upon us here.”

The Sami took a moment’s comfort from that recollection. It reminded him what could be accomplished by a few determined men of skill, his chosen Fedayeen. They had been well trained and prepared to carry out yet another mission, only this time it was not to give warning and frighten, it was to bring death to a mortal enemy of Islam—Reginald, Arnat, the Wolf of Kerak.

Then a madness seemed to fall upon the Sami, and he was possessed by a compelling curiosity. This stranger had come in through the Well of Souls and all his plans for the Wolf had slipped from his grasp.

Why had he allowed himself to be so distracted by this infidel? He had been set to leave on the very day after the man’s arrival, a troop of Fedayeen traveling in his wake like shadows following after darkness in the night. He knew the time and the place where he would find the Wolf, a lonely stretch of road near an inn on the way to Tiberias. He knew Arnat would come to that place, swaggering with boastful pride, yet and bawdy drunk with the swill of his mead.

The Sami could see the moment of truth in his mind’s eye as he gazed at the blazoning dawn. Five of the faithful Fedayeen would fall upon his enemy there, all dressed in the manner of Christian commoners, their bodies smeared with the offal and mire of their hovels so that even their smell might not betray them. The long thin knives would whisk out in the dark, the blades shaped and honed to slip through the laced iron of the finest chain mail and strike the vile flesh beneath—each blade tipped with poison to hasten the death of their victim. He saw it all, for it was written, if anything could be inscribed and sure. While nothing was certain, the chance presented itself for a great success. Yet it was not to be.

Instead he had dallied a day, then two days, while he bent his mind to the stranger in the chamber of greeting. By the third day only the fastest horses would have carried his band of Assassins to the appointed place in time. Why did he tarry? Why did he not strike at the man and simply be gone? When the Kadi finally summoned the stranger to council chambers for discernment, the moment was lost to him, and the Wolf would prowl unfettered yet again. He had failed in his charge, and it galled him.

Undoubtedly Arnat was seeking parley with the strong knights of Christendom even now. The Sami knew what the Wolf would argue at council. Bloody war and havoc were his creed. He would galvanize the host of the infidels with his black ire and whip them to a frenzy.

Salah ad Din was aging, and sick. He was not the proud warrior of old and could not ride the great stallions of Arabia or carry the heavy armor and shield as he might in his youth. Salah ad Din sought to gain by truce and the feeble prattle of words what he might have taken by force of arms years ago. Salah ad Din was weak. He overstayed his place in the Sultan’s tent. The Christian host was a rabid animal, and he would not know what to do.

The Sami paced, his quiet feet shifting to and fro about the tower; the bile of deep regret thick in his throat. It occurred to him that the coming of this stranger was perfectly timed, like a stone unsettling the waters of a still pond, his fall through the Well of Souls was rippling out in every direction, and disturbing the surely guided eddies of the hours and days the Sami had labored over so long. It was as if it was all planned, some dark machination of the Order. In one fell move they defile the Well and scatter his plans to naught. Now Sinan himself was drawing nigh. The Sami could feel his wrath, a palpable heat, coming with the rising sun beyond his window.

As the muezzin began the haunting call to prayer from the minaret below, the Sami knew at last what he must do. Surely Sinan would bring the stranger here, to this very place, the eyrie where no man could come unbidden and live. He would summon also the Kadi, to hear his accusation and testimony of lies. No matter.

If he could not slay the Wolf, there was yet one thing he could accomplish. He would be called to stand in this very chamber as well, to answer for his failed charge and the strife he had worked here in the castle. He would be called, and he would bring with him his sharpest knife, tainted with the vile poison of an asp. One sudden move, one flick of his wrist and the stranger would lie dead. If indeed he was an enemy, as the Sami knew, then he could not be allowed to draw close to Sinan. If banishment or even death was his own fate, the Sami held the stranger’s death dearer. The Sami would have his vengeance. As surely as the sun chased the gray dawn, this man, the infidel, would die.

Sinan was coming, like a quiet wind, stealing into the valley on the heels of the great troop of horsemen led down by Taki ad Din. He moved quickly, yet with stealth, on a swift white steed, and only two guardians at his side. Even as he came home to the mountains of the Assassins, word of his approach seemed to travel before him, as rumor, omen, the presentiment of some great change that was working itself to life. The Sami pressed his hands upon his ears to shut the voices out, yet they spoke still, a faint rumble in the distance that promised war.

All about him the world was pivoting on the hinge. Christian Lords poured out the might of all their castles upon the land. The black stone walls of Marghab spilled forth a host of men at arms, and from the walled city of Tortusa long lines of peasantry marched about clusters of mounted Turcoples. He knew that all the Christian Lords were moving now. Thickets of spearmen came from Tyre, their leather jerkins wet with oil; gallant sailors from the great harbors joined the inland throng, filling the dusty roads with song and revelry. Lean archers came down from Sidon and Acre, and Ascalon sent forth her hardy men at arms, some with sword and heavy shield, others bearing long lances, javelins and pikes.

These were but the rank and file, he knew, for the real strength of Outremer lay in the hard stone walls of their great castles, and the dour knights that stood watch there, prowling the lands on great mailed steeds. The white mantle of the Templars emblazoned with a cross and the dark robes of the Hospitalers brought fear and awe to any who looked upon them. While their numbers were few, the hard iron of their chain mail and their incredible strength and skill in combat made them nearly invincible when they charged in battle. All of Islam had endured the blight of their march for nearly a century now, but the issue would soon be decided.

Against them came Salah ad Din, with all his host. The warriors of Islam answered the call of jihad at last. There were scores of Mamlukes with their brightly colored garb and gleaming scimitars. Bedouin fighters drifted in from the deserts, riding camels and braying horns on the wind. Ghulam cavalry rode with tall Amirs, proud and haughty in the saddle. Swarthy Turks and Kurds thronged from the east, and down from Aleppo came Taki ad Din with a host of twenty thousand Saracen horsemen, veterans of many battles.

In the face of all this commotion and turmoil, the Sami’s own personal fate seemed a small thing to him. The day of reckoning would soon be at hand. He hoped he would live to see it, and continue on in the service of his master. Yet there were some things he could not set aside, and his honor and pride demanded a death in place of the charge he had allowed himself to despoil. The Wolf had escaped him, but the infidel would die in his stead.

27

Kelly wasted little time getting a focused data search set up for Maeve. He would begin on the first offending year, starting in January, and have the system run detailed comparisons of all matching data files from the two banks. Maeve worked on the keyword set, compiling a list of every important subject she could think of. She followed her hunch and focused on the conflict between the West and the Muslim world where the two cultures had been grating against one another for nearly a century in Palestine. Her list culled the obvious keywords to spearhead the data search: Crusades, Palestine, Outremer, Islam. She also threw in all the names of Christian and Muslim Lords from the period, major principalities and cities in the region and a few associated subject areas like castles, trade, relics and shrines.

“What am I leaving out?” she said aloud. “Ah, how about the Assassins? They were probably causing a little trouble in the region.”

“Who were they?” Kelly looked over his shoulder as she finished.

“A nasty little cult that was hiding out in the highlands of northern Syria,” she explained. “They finagled their way into a few decent castles and used them as outposts and training centers for their corps of secret operatives. A bit like Osama bin Ladin and his terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.”

“You mean they were terrorists?”

“In a manner of speaking. They were few in number, but used subterfuge, sleight of hand and threat of assassination to exert influence on both the Christian and Muslim lords in the region. In fact, the word Assassin, as it’s used in the West today, dates from this period. Here, let me show you.” She keyed the word and ordered an origins search to get a number of reference links immediately.

“See here,” she pointed reading aloud:“For 800 years, the sect has been largely shrouded in mystery and still is glimpsed through a mist of rumors, charges and speculations. But it is known that the word assassin, still used to describe a political murderer, was applied to members of the sect…” She selected a second reference and read it aloud.

“The origin of the organization’s name is unclear. Maalouf follows a number of Ismaili sources in affirming that ‘assassin’ is derived from the Arabic assass (foundation), via assassiyun (fundamentalists); they were simply believers in a purer and more basic form of Islam. A more highly-colored derivation, favored by Western writers, points to the Arabic hashshashin (eaters of hashish) to explain both the name of the Assassins and their fanatical devotion to their leader, the Old Man of the Mountain, as their sanguinary tactics were fueled by narcotics.” (1)

“How strange,” said Kelly. “Bin Ladin’s group, Al Qaeda, was also supposed to mean ‘the base’ in Arabic, and I ran across references associating the word for ‘foundation’ as well.

“Birds of a feather,” said Maeve. “I guess these Islamic fundamentalists all tend to think alike.”

“Well,” said Kelly, “we had better get the comparison run going. I’ll have the system flag any data that has a variance rating of .05 or higher—that was my threshold for yellow on the color bar. It will extract any dating information on the reference materials and we’ll do a scan by month beginning with 1187.”

He had the job ready to run a moment later, and Maeve watched while the familiar green line started across her screen, month by month. All was well until late in June when the solid green line suddenly changed to yellow near the end of the month.

“Bingo!” she chimed. “We get our first deviations in June of 1187, just as I thought. The Battle of Hattin was in early July, right on the 4th or so. Seems history has a thing for that week: the Declaration of Independence and the end of the battle of Gettysburg, to name a few choice moments in our own affairs. Let’s see what’s wrong. You better pull up a chair and help me out. I’ve already got over a hundred files that show alteration.”

Kelly settled in next to her, and they began to work down the list. The system was designed to display red text for any word in a file that did not exactly match the corresponding text from the primary data, the signature files that Kelly had stored in the RAM bank last month. They were getting little things at first: changes in grammar, sentence structure and choice of words in the documents, but no real alteration of key facts. A half hour passed like this, and Kelly began to get frustrated.

“This is going to take forever,” he breathed. “Here, I’m going to ask the system for data flagged with greater deviation values. Just for yucks, I’ll query for outright anomalies.” He entered a few commands and squinted at the screen.

“Here we go,” he smiled as he read aloud. “Archeologists unearth strange find in hidden archive. It’s a newspaper article. How’s that for a headline?”

“What was it?” Maeve asked as she paged through a file on her terminal.

“That’s odd,” said Kelly. “Hey it came up under that last keyword you threw in, the Assassins. Listen to this: ‘A team of Harvard based scientists rushed to the site near a ruined medieval castle in Syria today as construction crews working on a restoration project for the Aga Khan Foundation unearthed a hidden vault in a cave near Masyaf. A sealed iron strongbox there contained a number of items, most significantly, a copy of the Holy Koran, believed to be well over a thousand years old. That in itself would make the typical historian’s day, but an odd find, hidden behind a sealed leaf of the volume, had researchers quite perplexed. It was a portion of a laminated playing card from a typical modern deck—the King of Diamonds, to be precise.”

Maeve gave him a frown. “We’ve got to hit the event data harder than that, Kelly. Come on, will you?”

“Well this file had a super high anomaly rating,” said Kelly. “Sure, it sounds ludicrous. It probably migrated down from the construction crews—a typical example of site contamination.” He glanced at a few more lines of the article and saw something that jarred him. “Workers at the site insist the box had remained locked and undisturbed before the researchers arrived. ’We have no idea how a thing like this could be authentic,’ said Professor Sims of the Harvard-MIT institute, ‘unless, of course, the occupants of this library were fond of playing poker or bridge in their spare time.’ The site was the location of the nefarious group known as the Assassins, a cult of fanatical fundamentalists who terrorized both Muslim and Christian interests alike during the twelfth century, AD.” They even have a picture on file—” Kelly cut himself off, leaning forward suddenly to squint at the screen. “It can’t be…”

“You will be if you don’t get down to some serious work, Mister.” Maeve protested again from the next terminal.

Kelly said nothing. He was fishing for something in his wallet, his face furrowed with concern. Maeve turned to see him holding something up to the monitor screen. “Weird!” He exclaimed. “It’s a perfect match! The King of Diamonds—or at least the top half of it.”

Maeve gave him a frown.

“Look,” said Kelly. “It’s the top half of a laminated playing card.“ Kelly was shaking his head, the bill of his baseball cap swinging back and forth, but slowing as he continued to stare at the screen. “We cut the damn thing in half years ago,” he whispered.

“What are you talking about?”

“The card. It was our Red Arrow. I’ve carried this thing around for over two decades and…”

Maeve was looking at him like she was about to reach for something sharp, but he held up a warding hand, begging her forbearance. “Remember your Tolkien, Maeve? Gondor sent the Red Arrow to Rohan as a sign of great need. It was only to be used in the last extreme—a call for all the muster of Rohan to ride to Gondor’s aid.”

“Kelly,” Maeve nearly shouted at him. “The whole world is spinning out of control and you’re wasting valuable time here.”

“You don’t understand,” Kelly defended himself. “Paul and I had this ritual. We took a playing card, the King of Diamonds, and cut the damn thing in half. He kept one half; I kept the other. We made a promise that if we ever received the other half of the card in the mail, it would indicate dire need. It was a token of our friendship, and a summons to render immediate aid—our Red Arrow.”

“Lovely,” said Maeve. “Truly endearing.” She gave him a withering look that said her patience had finally run out.

“Well there’s the top half,” Kelly pointed at his screen. “And I’ve got the bottom half; laminated too… a perfect mate to the card shown in this article!”

“That’s impossible. It’s got to be coincidence.”

The argument was suddenly interrupted by Kelly’s cell phone ringing. He craned his neck toward his briefcase, worried that another alert was coming in from the Golems, but this time it was his green cell phone, jutting from his jacket pocket on the next chair. He reached for it, flipping it open while Maeve folded her arms with a disapproving glare as Kelly listened, his face registering surprise and dismay, then outright shock. He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it with a perplexed look on his face.

“That was Nordhausen,” he said. “He sounded really strange. Here, listen to the playback!”

He handed the phone to Maeve and she pressed the replay message button, raising the receiver to her ear. “Kelly? This is Nordhausen. I’m in trouble. No time to explain. It’s Paul! He’s shifted in time! I’m not sure how, but he’s gone. Look up something called the Gate of the West. Can’t say any more. Rasil is back—” The message cut off abruptly and the two of them locked eyes, the surprise and shock flowing from Kelly to Maeve.

Kelly held out the bottom half of his playing card and, for the first time, Maeve looked at the image on the screen. It was a perfect mate.

Part X

Ghost in the Machine

“He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”

Psalms 91:11

28

Jabr leaned close, his dark eyes searching Paul’s face with a look akin to longing. “Tell me, Do-Rahlan, are you a king; a lord of many lands?”

“What? Why would you ask a thing like that, Jabr?”

They sat in a hidden chamber within the sanctuary of the library, and Jabr had fired coals in a low iron brazier to heat water for coffee and a meager meal. Jabr had rubbed warm oil on a few scratches Paul had suffered in his fall. His left shoulder and back had taken the worst, but it was nothing that would not heal in a few days time.

“Would you wear rich robes in your homeland, and place a golden crown upon your head?” Jabr’s eyes brightened with the light of discovery, his head cocked to one side, bent by curiosity.

“You’re really are serious, aren’t you?”

“And would you wield a great axe in need, the bane of all your enemies? Tell me, is it so? Is that why you were chosen to pass the Well of Souls?”

Paul smiled. “Jabr, I’m afraid that you are as much a mystery to me as I may seem to you most of the time. To answer you truly, no, I am not a great king. I have no lordly robes and there’s never been much of anything on my head but this unruly mop of hair. Why would you ask such things?”

Jabr, hesitated, as if he were trying to decide what to do. Then his expression warmed and he spoke. “Because of the token you carried.” His voice lowered and he turned his head, watching the entrance of the room with suspicion.

“Token? What are you talking about?”

“Forgive me, Do-Rahlan. I have done a thing that may be cause for my death.” He reached in his robes and drew out a small object, his hand unsteady as he handled it, as though he was afraid it would bite. Paul leaned forward to see what he held and a broad grin crossed his face.

“Well I’ll be… Where did you get that? You found that in my pocket, yes?”

“I do not know what possessed me,” said Jabr, his voice laden with contrition. “It is written that all clothing and effects of the Walkers should be gathered and burned in the forge of purity.” Again he cast a sidelong glance at the arched doorway. “I was bearing these things away and this object must have slipped from the bundle. I came upon it in the corridor an hour later, and thought it very strange. Indeed, I should have taken it to the fire at once, but… something gave me pause. I stared at it, as though charmed, and saw it was the image of a lordly king with a golden crown set upon his head. He was dressed in finery of many colors, and his eyes were fixed fast upon a great red diamond where a hand reached to grasp it by his shoulder. Behind the king’s head was an axe with a sturdy red haft.” He handed the object to Paul, his hand shaking visibly now.

Paul took it with a smile. “And you believed it to be some token or talisman, did you? You thought this was my image on the card?”

“It was forbidden to withhold such a thing,” said Jabr, “but it was so alluring that I could not bear to cast it away. Is it magic?”

“Magic? No. It’s just the King of Diamonds—or half of one. My friend Kelly has the other half. We cut it in two and laminated the halves so they would last longer. It was a sign of our bond to one another, and the promise of our friendship.”

“Then this friend of yours was a great sorcerer! I have never seen glass worked to such a thickness. It bends, but does not break!”

“Glass? You mean the plastic lamination?” Paul realized that Jabr would not know what he was talking about and changed his tack. “Yes, he is quite the wizard, my friend,” he said. “I would surely like to see him now, Jabr, because I think I’m in a bit of a fix here. I’m still not exactly sure how I got here, but yet, here I am… and there you are, and Taki ad Din is riding south in the night.” He folded his arms, a vacant expression on his face. “I don’t belong here, Jabr. You understand? I’m out of place, lost, and I don’t know how I’ll get home.”

Jabr’s eyes mirrored the forlorn expression on Paul’s face. “Then you know what lies ahead,” he said softly. “You know the fate that awaits you?”

“Me? My friend, I know the fate that awaits many, all of us, in fact. If I thought about it long enough I could quote you chapter and verse—all the history yet to come, the wars, the famine, the great deeds of kings, and the soaring muse of poets and scholars. I could tell you stories for hours on end, of all that might be—a regular Nostradamus.” Paul sighed heavily. “But my lips must remain forever sealed,” he said sullenly. “I cannot speak a word of the things I have seen; the things I know. My very presence here is an insult in time, an offence, a great transgression…”

He suddenly had a cold thought that his fate was darker than that of a simple man marooned in another time, destined to live out his days there alone. No! He was right in what he said just now. He was not supposed to be here. His fall was an unaccountable accident, a quirk; mere happenstance—and yet here he was! Something in that fall had sent him tumbling into the past.

Now his own theory emerged in a chorus of doubt and fear. He didn’t belong. Time would not bear this insult, and Paradox would have its way with him sooner or later.

“That’s it,” he said aloud. “I’ve been in a Nexus Point all this time! That’s why I’ve been able to sustain myself in this era, but I must have done something to change things somehow. My simple presence here was the knock that has opened some great door, and all the world is swinging on the hinge.”

Jabr’s eyes were wide as he listened, not understanding much of what he heard. But one thing came through the words, and he could sense the distress and emotion of the stranger. He touched Paul on the knee, gently, yet with an inkling of fear. “So you know,” he said quietly. “Those who come through the well often speak in such words. They see things, and hear things beyond our ken. We have thought them to be Angels sent from Jibra’el himself to work divine will upon the land, but they are only men; gifted men to be sure; men of great vision and skill, but doomed to die, as we all must. I am sorry that your time is running out, Do-Rahlan.”

Paul was lost in his own internal reverie, but he heard the emotion in Jabr’s tone as well and focused on the meaning. “Running out?”

“It is the seventh day,” Jabr said solemnly. “All those who come through the Well of Souls have but seven days to walk among us. Then they are called home to the place that was prepared for them.”

“Called home? Yes…” It all made sense to Paul now. The Nexus could only hold them safe and secure in this milieu for a given interval. Then they would be called back, just as he and Nordhausen were extracted from the mission in 1917 that started all this. The sand in the half-life clock ran out, and the retraction scheme was ready and waiting to rescue them from the mystery of their experience in the past. It found the pattern signature taken from them in the Arch and brought them home to the world where they belonged.

“But I am so sorry, Do-Rahlan.” Jabr’s eyes were glassy as he spoke, his voice unsteady. “It was said that you were not prepared. There is no home for you now, and the time is running out. A Walker has but seven days, and when the moon sets tonight, the end will come for you, I fear. My only hope is that peace will be upon you, and the wolves of misfortune will seek your spirit in vain.”

Paul heard the words this time, and his mind raced through the metaphor, transcribing it all with elements of his own time theory as Jabr spoke. He remembered Kelly; remembered that awful moment when they emerged from the Arch, jubilant, and found that their friend was gone, erased, his life snatched away as time engendered Paradox to balance her books. “The wolves of misfortune indeed,” he whispered. Still. One hope returned to him, a slim chance, but one he might gamble on. He looked at the token in his hand, his Red Arrow, and an idea occurred to him.

“Is there a very secret place in this library,” he asked. “A special place, where something might be written that will last a thousand years in peace?” A melancholy tone pervaded his voice, and even as he spoke he realized the bleak prospects for his plan.

“The Archive,” said Jabr. “We have a secret cache of manuscripts, forbidden to all but initiates. Why do you ask, Do-Rahlan?”

“I have a request—a last wish, if you would be so kind to grant me one.”

“Anything,” said Jabr, smiling through tears.

“Take this token and place it in your archive, will you?”

Jabr nodded understanding. “I would be honored, Do-Rahlan. There is a copy of the Koran that has been stored here for two centuries. I am permitted to touch it. I would be honored to bring it now, and to read to you during these last hours. Will you hear the verse?”

“Please,” said Paul with a smile. “I cannot think of a better way to end my days, Jabr. Go and fetch your book, and I will listen as you read.”

Jabr was very pleased. His duty as Mukasir had been fulfilled! It was his to greet the uninitiated, the unenlightened, and offer unto them the pathway opened by the Holy Koran. He hastened away, animated with hope and an energy of great purpose.

A moment later he returned with an old, leather bound volume. Its leaves were smooth papyrus, and the edges of the pages had been painted with gold. He opened the book, with great reverence, bowing low and whispering a silent invocation as he did so.

“I will go slowly,” he said, “for the words are written in Arabic, and I must translate. Hopefully, we will be granted a last interval of time for the verse to touch your heart.”

“As God allows,” said Paul. He settled into the bolster by the wall, closing his eyes and listening as Jabr began.

“In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. All praise is due to unto Him, the Lord of the Worlds, the Beneficent, the Merciful; Master of the Day of Judgment. Thee do we serve and call upon for help in time of need. Keep us on the right path, replete with the favor of Thy will; not the path set down for those who go astray.

“This Book, without any doubt, is a guide to all those who guard against evil. Those who believe in the unseen and keep faithful in prayer, and those who believe in that which has been revealed – It is they who are sure of the hereafter. They are on a right course set down by their Lord and truly, they shall be successful…”

29

Kelly stared at the King of Diamonds on his terminal, still struggling with the notion that it might be the mate to the card he held in his hand. How could this be? Yet the chilling call from Nordhausen about Paul harried him, and his gut told him something had happened.

“Paul has traveled in time?” Maeve was immediately skeptical. “Robert must be off his block. Does he think this technology is on sale at Sears or something? We’ve got millions of dollars with of equipment here, a facility half the length of a city block, an electric bill that’s astronomical—and that’s even with our own on-site power generation.”

“I know it sounds crazy,” Kelly agreed. “Yet add it all up, Maeve. Paul is apparently missing, and something has convinced Nordhausen that he’s shifted in time. What that may be is anyone’s guess. He mentioned someone else in that message—Rasil, and it was clear that he didn’t want the guy to find out about that phone call. Would you agree?”

“I’ll give you that, but where was he calling from?”

“Let’s find out.” Kelly swiveled quickly in his chair and keyed several commands. “The calls are being logged with GPS data riders now—in fact they’ve been tracking cell and satellite phone calls for years because of this terrorist thing. Let’s see… The corporate account here allows us to access the GPS data as a security feature. Here it is. The call originated from these coordinates.” His fingers were a blur on the keyboard and Maeve instinctively bit her lip, remembering that errant keystroke that sent Paul and Robert off to the late Cretaceous. “It’s near the Arabian border with Jordan—Wadi Rumm!”

“That’s not where the dig was.”

“No. It’s well south and west of the place where they found the Ammonite. What was Robert up to here?”

“Probably trying to slip the thing out of the country illegally, if I know him.” Maeve folded her arms, a disapproving frown tugging at her features.

“I’ll have a few Golems take a look at some real-time data base servers on satellite imaging.” Kelly was all business again. “Let’s have them fetch any unusual imagery from the vicinity of these coordinates.”

The Golems did not disappoint. In a matter of minutes they had returned links to NASA and private industry data bases, one of which had some unusual readings on infrared. “Something was generating a lot of heat near the source of this call,” said Kelly. “Getting other readings as well.”

Maeve sighed. “Alright, let’s say something is going on there. God only knows what. Let’s give Robert the benefit of the doubt. God only knows why. Let’s say Paul was with him and something happened to him—perhaps a residual effect of the original time shift.”

“Right,” said Kelly. “We may be seeing some kind of after effect that is commonplace. Maybe he’s slipped out of sync and lapsed somehow. Maybe we didn’t have a good hold on him when we brought him back.”

“Why not call Robert back with the redial feature on your phone?”

“No, he sounded spooked. I’m as tempted as you are, but it was clear to me that he did not want to be discovered making that call. We have to assume he’s in some kind of danger here as well.”

“From this Rasil?”

“Right—an Arabic name, if I’m not mistaken.”

“This is starting to smell,” said Maeve. “What if someone found out about our first mission and the bad guys are up to some mischief here?”

“Terrorists? We re-wrote that whole history. Ra’id Husan al Din was never even born in this Meridian.”

“True,” said Maeve, “but think for a minute. We could have never completed that mission without help from Mr. Graves. He was carrying the vital clues that enabled us to zero in on the incident at Kilometer 172. Remember how desperate he seemed? His little group of scientists and researchers in the future were on their last legs. It was all they could do to get a single man through the shadow cast by Palma so we could use the Arch from here. And Graves waited seven years in this Meridian to make contact with us. That’s patience, planning, and real determined intent. Suppose someone else from that era didn’t like what Graves and his fellows accomplished?”

“You think the Meridian is being tampered with by someone in the future?”

“Obviously! We’ve been sitting here on the only Arch known to be in existence right now, and then your little Golems start going crazy and we get a phone call saying Paul has shifted in time. We just finish locating the probable origin of the variance, at least the temporal locus. The contamination all begins late June of 1187, right before one of the most pivotal moments in the history of the conflict between the Western world and the Muslims. Everything before that time is quietly green on the chronometer.” Maeve was piecing it all together now, just as she would fashion her briefing arguments for the Outcomes Committee.

“The Golems flag a high variance data file,” Kelly continued her train of thought, “and we’ve got an image of a token I know Paul carried with him at all times—right there, near this place called Masyuf.”

“Ma-sigh-af,” Maeve corrected him again.

“Right – exactly where we isolated the beginning of the Heisenberg Wave. He’s there, Maeve. Thick as thieves with the Assassins—the prototype for all our modern day fundamentalist terror cells. I just know it.”

Maeve stared at him, deep in thought. Her mind was ticking off details, drawing silent conclusions, the look in her eyes reflecting her inner states. “I agree,” she said. “Now, what do we do about it? We didn’t send Paul anywhere. We’ve no pattern signature on him for this jump and, correct me if I’m wrong, we need that to bring him back. Right?”

“Generally…” Now it was Kelly who was working the problem in his head. He took off his baseball cap, and scratched the back of his neck. “I was moved without a pattern signature,” he said slowly. “Paul said it was possible if you have an exact location on someone. That’s how Graves and company pulled me out. They saw my location on the DVD footage from Paul’s security camera. We talked about it privately afterwards. Paul seems to think that when someone travels in time their very presence is offensive, as he termed it, in the new Meridian. Time doesn’t want them there. She’s a bit like you, Maeve: a place for everything, and everything in its place.”

“So we get Paradox cleaning up everything that doesn’t fit after the protective interval of the Nexus fails.” The implications of what she was saying hit home to both of them. “Which means Paul could be in trouble—at the brink of complete annihilation, just like you were before Graves’ people pulled you to safety.”

“Right…” Kelly bit his lip. “So we’ve got to try and fetch Paul.” He looked at her, drawing the obvious conclusion to their thinking.

“But how?” Maeve returned the obvious question.

“We’ve got the Arch on standby and I can have coordinates set up for the temporal and spatial location of this hidden archive in thirty minutes.”

“But Kelly, how will we know Paul is there?”

“The Red Arrow,” said Kelly with finality. “It was to be used only in matters of utmost importance. The coming of that damn King of Diamonds is a sign of grave and present danger. He’s there, Maeve. I’ll bet my life on it. He used the token as a sign to indicate his geographic location at the moment of greatest danger.”

“Kelly…” Maeve saw the pain in his eyes but she had to speak her mind. “That book could have been moved a hundred times in the last thousand years. Sure, it was unearthed from its final resting place, but that’s not evidence that Paul was in that archive. He could have dropped the card anywhere before it got stuck it in that book. See what I’m driving at?”

Kelly had a frustrated look on his face, but he put his baseball cap back on and pointed at the screen. “Then we’ll go look,” he said firmly.

“What?”

“We’ll run a spook job and take a peek.”

“Now you’re not making any sense again,” Maeve protested. She hated to play the devil’s advocate with Paul’s life at stake now, but facts were facts, and that part of her who ruled on Outcomes and Consequences could not overlook these things. “Spook job?”

“Sorry,” said Kelly. “That’s just my term for a recon operation. We think we have a good picture of events from the written history that has accumulated over the years, but we don’t. We only see the account of a few key writers and researchers—perhaps only 1% of what actually happened was written about. Sure the big stuff gets a lot of coverage, but we all know that it’s the little stuff that really matters. The humdrum moments of inconsequential time on the Meridian can hide Pushpoints that set all the big events in motion.”

“True,” Maeve relented. “I was going to argue this in the Research Committee, but it seemed to play right up Nordhausen’s alley, so I didn’t push it. To really know if we’re going to open the right spot in a Meridian, we have to run a lot of reconnaissance. That way we could take a look at a situation and see if our research is correct.”

“Exactly!” Kelly had the fire lit in his belly now, and he was already walking over to the coordinate module. “Ninety-percent of our actual Arch time would be short jumps to simply take a peek at something—spook runs.”

“Why do you call them that?”

“Because on a recon operation we just open the Meridian for a few seconds—we don’t do a full breaching sequence. The traveler just appears, like an apparition, if you will, and then vanishes again. But for that brief moment they should be able to see the milieu we’re targeting. Then we bring ‘em right back home. I know it may be a long shot, Maeve but I have to do this—for Paul. I’m going to take a peek inside that damn archive in the year 1187 and see what’s there. If anything, it might give us some clue—or at least confirm if this line is anywhere close to the mark.”

“But you don’t have a spatial locus yet.”

“I will in a second or two. All archeologists use GPS to mark the exact locations of their dig sites. All I have to do is key the researchers name in the Geo-Sync database and I can read all their recent registries.”

He was already throwing switches and Maeve knew that there was nothing she could do to take this away from him. She breathed heavily. “Alright,” she said with equal finality. “You’re the only one who can run all this.” She waved expansively at the banks of glowing computer terminals. “We’ve got a hundred thousand Golems running wild out there, so I’ll go, while you keep watch on everything from here.”

Kelly stopped cold, pivoting to face her. “I didn’t mean to drop this on you, Maeve. Look, I’ll take the risk. I can program things and automate the jump. The retraction sequence can be triggered five seconds after I open the continuum. You just wait—“

“Oh, no, mister.” She deliberately imitated the tone of voice Kelly would always use with Paul in their secret banter. “The three of you have already bounced all over infinity and back while I sat here worrying about it all.” She folded her arms, decided. “It’s my turn.”

30

The wind howled about the high stone walls of the Eyrie Of Sinan, whistling through the lancet windows in greeting. The Master of the Tower had come home. Three riders reached the castle gates at dusk, and a hush had fallen upon Massiaf. The troops of the faithful Fedayeen were assembled in silent ranks in the courtyard beyond the gate, breathless with the sight of Sinan. The Old Man dismounted, throwing back the thick hood of his riding cloak, his dark eyes scanning the brothers, black as basalt, yet lit with an inner fire. He had seen much on his journey from the east. The land was alive with movement and the din of marching men at arms. The hooves of fifty thousand horses troubled the earth, and he knew a turning point had come

The Kadi had given orders that the severed head was to be left untouched where the Sami’s men had planted it in the courtyard, a silent testimony to the misdeeds of his rival. Sinan took notice, but passed quickly on, as though the doings of the castle were well known to him. He was bound for the high tower, driven by some pressing need. There he would meet with the two stewards of the castle, and hear their complaints.

The Kadi came first to him, and departed soon after, his face ashen white, his eyes vacant and confused. He returned to his chambers without a word while the Sami climbed the long gray stair to the tower, head lowered with shame. Sinan sat upon the high chair and watched while the Sami prostrated himself in submission, begging forgiveness for his failure.

“And how have you failed me?” Sinan’s voice was icy cold, yet it seemed to reach for that which it already knew.

“The Wolf,” the Sami whispered. “I have failed in my charge against the Wolf.”

“Oh? What charge do you speak of?” Sinan waited while the Sami groveled in uncertainty.

“I received your ring, Lord, with an order to strike the Wolf at an hour and a day that would be appointed. All was made ready—the Fedayeen prepared. Then this stranger came upon us, and I was possessed with madness.”

Sinan leaned forward, “Rise and face me,” he said harshly, and the Sami drew himself up, still kneeling, as he looked upon his master’s face. “Hear me, Sami of Massiaf: I sent no ring, and laid no charge upon thee. Quite the contrary! It was my judgment that the Wolf, Arnat, must live. Did you not receive the signs late sent to you? The Wolf is an enemy, to be sure, yet he is reckless and overbold. He will stir the Christian camp to rash deeds, and such will play into the hands of Salah ad Din.”

Sinan raised a single hand the long fingers held wide, and reached for a thin shaft of light that skirted the edge of his dais. “See the ring where it sits now upon my hand?” He let the light play upon the ruby red gem there, the gleam of light on gold a condemnation of the Sami’s headstrong ways. “Had you done this thing,” he whispered, eyes alight with distant flame, “then all of Christendom would not now be marching. The great castles would still stand well guarded, unassailable, as they have for decades past. The time appointed for them would never have come, and the heads of all the Templars would remain fast upon their shoulders to bring untold misery to the faithful, for years to come.”

Sinan drew his hand into a fist now, his voice hardening as he continued. “Yet that error has been avoided—perhaps by mere circumstance. The Christian host is doomed!” His voice boomed in the tower; his fist tightening as he spoke. “They will fall like wheat before the scythe. The Wolf lives, and you may count the coming of this stranger a boon. Had you carried out this deed, striking down Arnat before his time, you would have surely done the work of our enemies. Undoubtedly the Order was at play in this matter, and you were deceived. It was they who sent you this command; not I. It may be that the stranger is one of the faithful, in clever guise, and so I have come hither to see with my own eyes the truth of this matter. I say unto you now that not by your hand, but by the hand of Salah ad Din himself, will the Wolf be slain—and all the Templars will kneel before the Sultan’s tent and be pressed to renounce their faith, embracing the truth of Islam. They will all refuse and, one by one, their heads will be severed by the Turks. So I have seen this, and so it will be. It was only mine to assure that no change would be worked upon the threads of time by our enemies.”

He let the Sami kneel before him, head lowered, as the realization of what he was saying wrapped itself about him like a coiled rope. “Yes,” Sinan tugged on the cords now, “even you, Sami of the Seventh Gate, have fallen into confusion and misdeed. This is why I placed the Kadi here as equal!” His voiced rebounded from the hard stone walls of the tower. “It was given to you both to reach agreement where the death of another was concerned. I have seen the severed head in the courtyard below, and I know what passed in the night, and why.”

The Sami quailed, transparent before the all seeing eye of Sinan. All his argument, all his reason, now seemed a small and foolish thing. He had been deceived, manipulated, made a pawn in the game of his enemies, and his blood ran cold with the shame of his failing. He lowered his head, unable to look upon his master.

“The stranger,” said Sinan. “The Kadi tells me that you wished to kill this man. Is that so?”

“Yes, Lord. I feared he was an enemy; sent here to bring harm.”

“Yet the only harm worked within these walls came at your bidding.” Sinan let the Sami endure the brand of his words, a long silence tightening the ropes of recrimination until the Sami was bound in submission. Then Sinan ordered the Sami to stand. “Arise,” he said. “I foresaw your misdeeds and so I hastened to come here and restore the harmony of these walls. Now you will do a thing that I command with my own voice. Hear me! Go to the faithful assembled below. Choose five men and hasten to the vault of the hidden archive—you know of whence I speak. There you will find the stranger. If you are swift and determined, you will serve me well. Even now you harbor a poisoned blade within your robes. Do not use it! Go instead and bring this man here that I might speak with him. Had I come here sooner I might have placed two eyes upon this stranger and seen the full truth of this matter. Now the hour is late. It is the seventh day! You must reach the archive, and return, before the setting of the moon.”

The Sami was shaking with emotion as he rose. His Lord had passed judgment, and dispensed his mercy in the same cup. The Sami drank deep, his fear quenched; his resolve restored. “It will be done,” he said quickly. “Before the hour of the setting moon.”

Maeve stood in the chamber of the Arch, her eyes mesmerized by the scintillating whirl of the lights, her ears ringing with the thrum of the generators, her body tingling with cold fire. She only had a few minutes to prepare herself, her heart racing as she shed her clothing, obedient to her own rules about contaminating the time line. Now she draped herself in the only thing she could find, a single white sheet from the rest quarters above. The tachyon infusion was riveting every atom of her being; taking an imprint that Kelly would use to keep a fast hold upon her in the brief mission ahead.

She was dreadfully afraid, yet she forced herself not to think of what she was doing. The hard yellow line was painted there on the floor before her. Three small steps and she would cross it, leaving this time and place behind, and relinquishing the tight hold she had on her life up until the Arch had come into being. Every instinct in her mind argued against what she was about to do, yet stubbornly, she took the first step, tightening the drapery of the sheet about her slender frame, and covering her head until she seemed a veiled spirit, alight with a thousand hues of eternity.

Voices clamored at her from within. What if something went wrong? What if Kelly made a mistake? What was she doing—leaving it all like this, letting go? This was the most difficult thing she had ever forced herself to face, but she took the second step, her eyes fixed on the status light on the near wall: red for the first step, Amber the second.

The light turned green.

Her heart leapt with fright, but her body moved, as if with a mind of its own, compelled by the fiber of her determination. She would see this through. Just one small step and she would cross over the line, pass the threshold of the moment and disappear into the infinite possibility of time. One small step, and she would vanish from the here and now, joining the dizzying spin and flow of the auroras in the Arch

In the chamber of the Archive Paul sat listening to Jabr as he recited the holy verses of the Koran. He had been reading for some time, pausing at intervals to take water and to add oil to the guttering lamp by which he read. All the while the day passed beyond the portal of the cave, and Paul began to feel a cold lightness of being, a feathery frost settling over him, warmed only by the brown eyes of Jabr Ali Sa’d and the quiet meter of his recitations.

He had reached the eighty-sixth sura, which spoke of nightly visitations and the temporal fiber of a man’s being. Of all the world’s great religions, Paul had never studied Islam. Born a Catholic, he had been drawn to the Eastern traditions after reaching an age when he could think on his own. Now his office and home were littered with Buddhas and trappings of the East, and his mentors were writers like Alan Watts, Krishnamurti and Joseph Campbell. Yet there was something familiar in the rhythm and spirit of the verse that reminded him of those sermons on Sunday, reverently spoken by the church pastor from the pulpit, relating one parable after another to the rows of the faithful.

Islam was a beautiful religion, he thought, and surely he could not hear, in any of this verse, the hatred and awful vengeance that some men, claiming to be Muslims, held against the West. Yet, even as he listened, two great hosts were assembling near the Sea of Galilee, at a place called the Horns of Hattin—the Gate of the West. He ran through the history in his mind.

They had come to that place after decades of hostility and misunderstanding. Each side had made a claim to holy ground in Palestine, and one city in particular had been the great bone of contention between these rival cultures: Jerusalem.

There, in the place where the Muslims built the Dome of the Rock, the Knights of the Temple and the Sepulcher had set up their headquarters in the city. The Muslims claimed the ground and said that Muhammad and his steed ascended to the heavens above, where he visited Allah and then returned. The Christians said it was where Christ, the Savior of all, was laid for a time before he rose in glory and ascended the heavens from the Mount of Olives. The Muslims called the city Al Kuds, and held it third in the hierarchy of all holy places, behind only Mecca and Medina. The Christians claimed the relic of the True Cross was kept safe there in the shrine of the Patriarchs. The city guarded the Garden of Gethsemane and the Rock of Calvary, all sacred sites orbiting about this holy center of great strife and paradox. Each side quoted sura, and chapter and verse, yet while they strove with one another, all thought of holiness and righteousness was made as nothing.

The Christian host came, some thirty thousand strong, from every castle and keep of Outremer. From Syria, and Egypt, Persia and beyond a much greater host of Muslim warriors assembled, the chafe of their countless steeds fretting the air with the urgency of war.

Like two great animals the armies sat facing one another in the heat of early July, the year 1187. The Christian camp was set at Saffuriyah, and it was led by many lords in the finery of their gowns, some strong and clear thinking, some vacillating and misguided. The hapless Guy had lately been made the new king in Jerusalem, taking the crown from the hand of Baldwin’s sister, Sybil. Yet it did not fit him well, for he was weak, and malleable, and undecided in the issue that was now before him. Many lords argued that the Muslim host was too great to assail. Only by waiting here, barring the way to the coast and standing on defense, could the army of Outremer hope to prevail.

One among them would not agree, however: Reginald of Kerak, Arnat, the Wolf. It was he that lit a fire beneath Saladin by daring to set his greedy hands upon the Sultan’s caravan. It was he that broke the long truce between the East and the West, and set a hundred thousand souls marching to this place in anger. When Guy relented and thought to stand at Saffuriyah, Reginald was fretful and beside himself with anger. It was an insult, he said, that heathen soldiers should come to Tiberias and sully the land of Galilee with their blasphemous words an deeds. It was unseemly, he bellowed, that with all the might of Christendom at hand the King should cower, and wait for the hand of his enemy to strike. One man refused the council of all others, Reginald, Arnat, the Wolf of Kerak. Then, to his side came De Riddeford, the dour head of the all the Knights Templar. Together they would go to the King’s tent that night, and argue with him until the sun was nearly up, bending his mind to another, more dangerous course. Poor Guy had not the spine to stand by his earlier decree, and he wavered, reversing himself in the hot morning, and ordering instead that all the Christian host should set forth to attack.

The assembled lords protested, for there would be no water for two long days until they reached the Sea of Galilee where Saladin waited for them. They would be in grave danger under the merciless sun, extreme with thirst and then forced to fight while their need was greatest. Yet, Guy, set upon in the night by the Wolf and his accomplice, would not hear their words. Reginald shouted the dissenting voices down, accusing them of cowardice and sacrilege, and demanding they hold their allegiance to the king and march as he ordered.

Paul knew the history, yet he doubted if he would see any of it play out. His time was ebbing away. The chill of eternity was settling around him, and he seemed to be fading, insubstantial, a ghostly figure waiting for the final moment to strike. He heard strange sounds at the edge of Jabr’s recitations—otherworldly sounds, like hounds racing wild over the purple veiled highlands, braying at the slowly setting moon. He shook himself, gathering strength by sheer force of will, and he listened once more to Jabr’s voice—his one tether to the here and now.

“I swear by heaven and the one who comes in the night;” he chanted the Sura of Nightly Visitations. “And how may you learn of the one who comes by night? The star of piercing brightness shines; so remember, there is not a soul that roams this earth without a keeper. Then let man consider of what he is created: He is created of water pouring forth, pure and flowing water…”

How true, thought Paul; how thin and insubstantial was the life of a man, constantly flowing away to some unknown end, merging at last in the ocean of life and time. But there was hope in that verse as well—there is not a soul that roams this earth without a keeper, he repeated the phrase in his mind.

As Jabr spoke Paul shivered with an icy chill. Could this be the moment, he wondered? Then he saw how Jabr shuddered as well, pulling his robes tight about his thin frame and looking over his shoulder. His eyes opened wide at the sight of a strange, frosty mist hovering near the arch of the hidden vault. Paul saw it too, and he struggled up with a start, seeing a human form take shape in the haze!

It was a woman, veiled in white, with tawny hair. The light of her eyes shone upon him briefly, with strange recognition. He gaped at the spectacle, as if an angel had come upon him in his hour of greatest need, a visitor in the night, called to this place by Jabr’s faithful reading of the holy Koran.

The spirit quavered in a mist of a thousand colors, reaching an arm towards him as though she were come to lay claim to his soul. Poor Jabr quailed at the sight, bowing low. Then the icy fire of the mist and light failed, and the vision was gone, fading to blue vapors that fled into the shadows.

Jabr started up, his face beaming with celestial joy. “Jibra’el has sent an angel, Do-Rahlan! An angel has come to guard your soul and call you home!” He clutched the volume of the Koran to his breast and stood. ”I will go bring offering. We will burn sweet incense here, Allah be praised!” All of his hopes had come true. Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, had seen fit to accept this man as a believer.

Paul gaped at the place where the apparition had appeared. The cold residue of fog was strangely familiar to him. Something in his mind tugged at him, whispering some inner knowledge of what he had seen, but he did not heed it. Jabr was up and gone to another chamber of the vault, and Paul waited, a feeling of hope and redemption dawning on him.

Then the distant sound of men’s voices came to him, echoing in the stony recesses of the archive. There was anger in the words, though he could not make out what they said. A clamor of strife and warning resounded from the entrance to the cave. They had been found! Aziz was barring the way, guarding the entrance while he shouted the alarm.

The Sami had come, with five men on fast horses. Even as Aziz drew his sword, faithful to his charge, black arrows whistled from the shadowy slopes and struck him down. The Sami had come, his heart flushed with the thrill of the hunt, and the vengeance he would soon mete out upon the stranger for the shame he had endured. He could not allow the man to stand before Sinan, no matter what his master had pressed upon him. He would say the man cursed him, and fell upon him with death in his eyes. Sinan could not condemn him, for in his heart of hearts he knew as well that every action would simply make a new truth. The Sami would act by the credo he held dearest. Everything was permitted, he thought to himself as he sped on up the hill, and nothing was written. Nothing at all.

A thousand years, and half a world away, Kelly sat breathlessly at his terminal, monitoring the progress of Maeve’s brief jump. He kept a tight rein on her, just a five second window opening at the coordinates he had fed into the machinery of the Arch. He hoped it would be enough for her to see whether his hunch was correct—that Paul was actually there in the place where the token had been unearthed. Even as he closed the breach, bringing Maeve back to the year 2010 in Berkeley, doubt gnawed at him. He heard all Maeve’s arguments alive in his mind, but then, a second later it was her voice in real time that commanded his attention, speaking over the intercom from the Arch corridor below.

“Kelly? It worked. I’m back. Good God! It was amazing, but he’s there. He was right in front of me, gaping at me like he had seen a ghost!” The excitement was driving her on. “Eight feet… maybe ten feet away from me, Kelly; and directly in front.”

“The angel has spoken!” Kelly beamed with elation. “Get dressed, Maeve. I’m adjusting the Arch coordinates now. Make sure you’re out of the chamber!” His hands moved with feverish motion as he began to key commands. Easy, now, he said to himself, forcing calm on his agitated movements. You have to get this right.

He was feeding in the last known pattern signature on Paul from the first mission. It would not be precise, but there would be some data there that would find a match. He wanted the system to open a breach and locate the centermost point of any matches it found—and he would set the search coordinates just where Maeve indicated, ten feet from the GPS position where she had appeared. Once he had this central anchor he could tell the system to expand outward from that point. It was a gamble, but it was his only chance. He was going to scoop up a tiny segment of reality from another time and place, and bring it here to the Arch corridor. He had the retraction set to shift everything spatially as well.

Now he could only hope that Paul’s theory was correct—that time did not want him there, and would do anything possible to send him on his way. The system would be looking for anomalous readings within the sphere of his retraction scheme—anything that didn’t belong in the milieu of 1187.

His coordinates were in, and the Arch was spinning out smoothly at 100% power. He raced to the retraction module and opened the safety on the switch. “I hope you’re right, Paul. For God’s sake—let this work.”

The Sami’s men swept past the fallen body of Aziz as they reached the top of the ridge. They found the hidden cleft in the hillside and burst through, sharp knives drawn at the ready. They were driven on by the Sami, as much by the fear of his following as anything else. The Sami strode into the hidden vault, his hand tight on the hilt of his dagger. Just one flick of his wrist and the blade would run true. Its poison would steal away the life of the heathen in their midst. The wolf in the fold would be slain, and Sinan would see the wisdom of his deed in the end.

The five assassins fanned out, flitting from one chamber to the next like silent shadows. Then there came cries of fright and alarm. The Sami rushed after them, finding at last the hidden vault of the archive. There was a chill upon the air, unearthly cold, and the room shimmered in a wavering mist. The blue fire flared in his eyes as he sought for his enemy, and he thought he saw the shape of a man cowering on the floor, a heavy fog surrounding him. At once he moved, his hand striking out like a coiled snake, his dagger lancing at the formless shape in the shadows. Yet he heard, to his great dismay, the chink of the blade where it struck the hard stone wall, glancing harmlessly away and falling with a dull thud on the thick carpeting of the alcove. He rushed forward, braving the frosty mist when his men quailed at the sight. His arms reached out, striking this way and that in wide arcs as he groped in the violet haze, but all to no end. The stranger was gone.

Epilogue – The Time War

Nordhausen was the last of the project team members to arrive for the meeting in his study that night. He told the others to go right ahead and let themselves in, using the key he left under his mat. He had been delayed at U.C. Berkeley, purportedly doing some research there that he claimed had some bearing on the debriefing. As he hastened up the steps to the study door he was still thinking about it all, the dig, the Ammonite, Paul’s strange disappearance, and his own narrow escape from Wadi Rumm.

After Rasil returned to him, the two men did not have long to wait until the Nexus failed. Rasil was the first to know of it, but Robert recalled the shivering sensation of déjà vu that had come upon him. The ride was over, and they had both survived. Apparently the Meridian had not been altered—at least not to any appreciable degree that he could discern there and then. What had happened to the world beyond the silent red walls of Wadi Rumm was anybody’s guess.

Rasil’s men were both safe, returning to the cave and setting explosives in the well. Rasil gave the order to detonate them with real reluctance. When the smoke billowed out into the russet evening he stared at Nordhausen with a look of recrimination in his eyes. The sharp report of the explosion echoed through the canyon, resounding from the tall pillars of wind sculpted stone.

“So goes the Well,” he had whispered. “No more will it deliver the souls of the faithful to our agents in Massiaf. I wonder how Sinan will fare without the scrolls to guide him now?”

“What’s that?” Nordhausen pretended he had not heard the man, still uncertain of his own fate now that the interval of safety within the Nexus Point had elapsed. Rasil was so focused on his own inner reverie that he did not realize the professor was so close at hand. He had given him a chilling look, his eyes replete with emotion that resolved to a feeling of intense hostility, carefully controlled, a smoldering anger that he kept in check.

Nordhausen was so taken by the man’s expression that he thought he was done for. “I suppose you mean to kill me now,” he remembered saying. “Finishing up all the dirty business of the hour, are we?”

Rasil had simply smiled, fitting his pith helmet in place and watching as his men retrieved their little train of camels. “No, my friend,” he said. “That is not permitted. Even though I am convinced you know more about this affair than you let on, it is not seemly for a Walker to strike down another as you suggest. We do not act rashly. And, after all…” He started away toward the squawking camels where his men mounted a few yards off, turning to speak over his shoulder as he went. “I am no assassin.”

They had left him there to simmer with it all, alone in the vast silent canyon; miles from any help. The helicopter showed up three hours later, stirring the silt and salmon grit of the canyon floor as it alighted. It had been sent on hire, said the pilot. The emergency call had come in just a few hours ago from the United States, saying that a researcher had gone missing in Wadi Rumm, and giving exact GPS coordinates of the site he had been preparing for shipment. He had Kelly to thank for that, and Paul, though he did not know it at the time. The professor remembered his joy at being rescued, but the long flight home was fraught with misgiving.

Kelly and Paul decided to let him stew. It was just a little slap on the behind for his headstrong ways, and he knew he had it coming. Days later he was back in Berkeley, elated to find that Paul was alive and well, and amazed at the tale he had told. Tonight they would meet for the final debriefing, and there was something he wanted to check in the library before he showed up.

When he opened the door the others were all seated at the conference table, half way through a cup of dark, rich coffee. “Major Dickason’s blend?” he asked.

“Arabica Mocca Sanai,” Paul chimed. “I developed a taste for it with my friends in Massiaf. My, you’ve been busy, Robert. I had no idea you were so industrious.” He thumbed at the far wall of the study where an immense, looming shape was mounted on a sturdy oaken frame riveted to the wall. It was the Ammonite, glistening under a sheen of protective lacquer that accented every calcified line of detail in its near perfect state of preservation.

“Splendid, isn’t it? I got men on the job the instant I was back. You didn’t think I was going to leave it baking in the hot desert sand, did you?”

“We had a hard time trying to decide whether to leave you there,” said Maeve.

Nordhausen placed his hand over his heart and proffered a humble bow. “Mea culpa,” he smiled. “Well, I suppose we should get started, and I hope this finally settles the argument over whether we should shut the whole thing down or not.” He looked askance at Paul. “You aren’t taping this session, are you? I don’t want any unexpected visitors to show up for coffee in the heat of our discussion here and send us gallivanting off to the cretaceous.”

“No tape, no cameras,” said Paul. “In fact, no one was told of our meeting here today. It’s not in any log or appointment book, and we should be discretely safe in the covering mists of time. No future historian will know this conversation ever occurred.”

“Unless they run a spook job on this place tonight,” said Kelly, prompting a laugh from Maeve.

“I’ll never forget the look on your face, Paul,” she began. “There I was, half naked and draped in a bed sheet, just trying to keep a hold on myself when I suddenly saw you gawking at me across the room!”

“Quite an amazing specter,” said Paul, “or so it seemed at first. I finally put the clues together, however: the lights, the cold mist, and you, my dear. I think I recognized you on some level, strange as the moment was.”

“Which leads us to my point,” said Kelly. “I think we may have discovered the truth behind all these reputed sightings of ghosts and spirits through history. If your hunch is true, Paul, if there is a Time War being waged, then the two opposing sides might be running recon missions into any number of milieus. That means we might get a glimmering of what they are interested in, of what they are up to, simply by researching ghost stories.”

“Good point,” said Maeve. “Most of what we call history is really lost in shadow. Just as we hope there will never be a record of this meeting, 99.9% of everything that has ever happened still remains unknown to us. If we decide to get involved in this, then it’s very likely I’ll be donning my little white sheet again and again, and frightening the wits out of people in the process.”

“So you’re calling it a Time War now,” said Nordhausen. “I thought the very same thing.”

“It certainly seems like that,” said Paul. “These people thought I was a member of some nefarious group they called ‘the Order.’ I think this Sami figure I told you about was positively set on killing me. It was clear that someone was using the sink at Wadi Rumm to send operatives back to the time of the Crusades.”

“Right to that little band of Assassins at Massiaf,” said Maeve. “What a nifty place to recruit from.”

“Quite,” said Nordhausen. “In fact this Rasil fellow was muttering something under his breath at the end about Sinan—the Old Man of the Mountain, as the Crusaders knew him. Rasil called himself the Messenger, and I don’t think he was just being artful in that. He was supposed to be taking messages through the Well to Massiaf—probably the odd scroll I came upon in his satchel.”

“You figure he was doing this on a regular basis?” said Kelly. “That makes sense. He was taking Sinan instructions or something.”

“Well it certainly would explain a lot of the folk lore that surrounds that man,” said Maeve. “Legend has it that he had a strange clairvoyance, and seemed to know what was happening—or what was going to happen in the events of his day. He would receive letters from important figures and simply dictate his response to them without even opening the message. The odd thing was that his responses answered the content of the original message, line by line, if the stories hold water.”

“I think you’re on to something there, Maeve,” said Paul. “Let’s assume Sinan was an agent, permanently posted in that time milieu—a very critical period in the conflict between the West and the Muslim world. I had the distinct impression that a few of the other people I met were privy to the whole time travel thing: certainly the Kadi, and I would guess that the Sami would be in on it all as well. Now that I think of it, Jabr must have known something too. He spoke modern English! He called it the Saxon tongue, but even the Middle English of Chaucer’s day would be virtually unrecognizable to our ears in this time—and that was more than a century before Chaucer. If fact, he called me a Walker, and said he was one as well. Maybe he meant Time Walker.”

“You think they all came from another time?” said Kelly. “From the future?"

“Sinan perhaps, but not Jabr, unless he was very devious. Yes, he spoke modern English, but he claimed he was taken to a far place to learn it. And he seemed clueless about things that any person from the future would take for granted. I asked him if I could make a telephone call and he was completely in the dark. In fact, he didn’t even recognize the King of Diamonds for what it actually was. No, I rather think he was recruited from that milieu."

"Isn’t that tampering? Wouldn’t that cause all sorts of complications in the Meridian?”

Paul thought for a moment. “You forget that the future researchers had a great deal of knowledge about their recruits. They may have been very selective. They may have brought him forward in time somehow, and then sent him back with his new training. Time plays a zero sum game. She apparently tolerates the movement of people from one milieu to another—even major figures like ourselves, if I may be so bold—as long as she can balance her books in the end.”

“Weird,” said Kelly. “So these guys had this natural power source in that water borne bacteria. What was it you called it?”

“An Oklo reaction. They’ve only found one that I know of, but this incident leads me to think that there may be others. The power source can persist for millions of years, as long as the bacteria colony is sustained. What a perfect way to mount operations at points on the continuum before there would be an adequate power source. Apparently they were able to use the Well Of Souls, as they called it, at least once a month.”

“Not any more,” Nordhausen put in.

“Don’t be so certain,” said Paul. “It was destroyed on this Meridian—at a given point in time. How long has it been there, though? It’s conceivable that someone could go back to the same spot—say last year—and use the Well to go through again. There’s no way we could prevent it, as we’re stuck on this side of Rasil’s demolition, constantly being pulled forward away from that event in time.”

“Right,” said Nordhausen. “Then Rasil was just spouting me a load of rubbish with his sadness over the destruction of the Well. He said he was from the ninth age and that I was from the seventh, so he obviously came back to use the Well at this point on the continuum. What’s to stop him from doing what you suggest? Ah, perhaps we could go through ourselves, and see what they’re up to!” Nordhausen rubbed his hands together, excited by the prospect. Maeve was going to say something, but Paul beat her to the punch.

“I wouldn’t advise that,” he said. “We couldn’t visit the site last year, or in any year in which we lived, for that matter. Time won’t allow that. One version of professor Nordhausen running about is quite enough, I think. No, we’d have to go back well before our births, and who knows when they set up that site? It could take any number of spook jobs, as Kelly calls them, to nail that down. Besides—we have the Arch right here in Berkeley.”

“That brings me to the whole point of my research,” said Robert. “Remember my call, Kelly?”

“Who could forget it. You sounded positively frantic.”

“Yes, well I was rummaging about in Rasil’s satchel, and I found this scroll—all in Egyptian hieroglyphics. They were very old. In fact, I was just trying to isolate the fragments in the data files over at U.C. Berkeley.”

“What did you find?” Maeve was immediately curious, and she wanted to keep a tight rein on the professor after all he had been up to in the last few months.

“It’s what I didn’t find,” said Nordhausen. “They’ve got every last line of discovered hieroglyphic text on file now, and I know enough about the script to replicate what I saw in that scroll. Using characters dating from the Old Kingdom, I was able to draw out most of what I remembered. I scanned the images and ran comparison query’s in the database, but there were no hits on those phrases.”

“It could mean that this Rasil had something from another Milieu.” Maeve was racing on in her thinking. “If he was a time traveler, then this could have simply been a waystation for him.”

“Right,” said Paul. “You saw how Kelly was able to use his Golems to isolate my arrival time in June of 1187—that was damn genius.”

“If I don’t say so myself,” Kelly smiled. “That’s what you pay me for, boss. I run the numbers.”

“Yes, but my point is that if we could get wind of a breaching point on the continuum, then so could anyone else in the future, if they had comparable technology. Maybe Rasil dropped into our time first to throw his adversaries off the track.”

“A bit of cloak and dagger,” said Maeve.

“Well, I certainly saw plenty of both during my visit to the Castle of the Assassins.”

“Then you suppose they might be using the hieroglyphics as a kind of code?” said Nordhausen. “That would explain why the passages don’t exist in any discovered writings. But I had the distinct impression that the characters I saw were a rubbing—as if they had been pressed onto the scroll from an original stone carving. It was very odd.”

“It’s all very odd,” said Paul. He rested his chin in hand and they lapsed into silence. The obvious question was percolating in all their minds. Kelly was the first to pour a cup.

“Assuming all this is correct: that we have some kind of conflict underway; probably being waged by people in the future using our own damn technology—”

“And assuming someone found out what we did about Palma,” Robert carried on, adding a touch of cream in the cup.

“Then what are we going to do about it all?” Maeve stirred things to their obvious conclusion. They all looked at Paul. “Your turn, maestro,” she quipped. “You dreamt all this up, remember?”

Paul smiled. “You know, you looked real good as a guardian angel,” he teased.

“I saw her first!” Kelly put his arm around her and Maeve gave him a knowing wink, leaning in to his embrace.

“Well,” Paul began, his voice taking a more serious tone. “We’ve got Kelly on board, and with ideas like his Golems and that dual RAM bank setup we’ve got a handle on the history as we know it, and a tripwire to warn us if it starts to change.”

“Did it change?” Nordhausen looked from one to the other. “I haven’t had a chance to see if Paul mucked up the Crusades or not.”

“No,” said Maeve. “Apparently he was very well behaved. Oh, we had variance readings popping up all through the Meridian while we were in the Nexus. I had a chance to read a few before I volunteered to become a ghost. There was certainly something up. One file was very strange. It seems there was at least one enterprising historian out there who had the history another way: Reginald was assassinated and the battle of Hattin was never fought. I was distracted by your phone call, Robert, and when I looked at my screen again the file was gone. One thing led to another, and we got swept up in the plan to rescue Paul. Then, as soon as we ran the retraction, the lines all returned to green.”

“Yes, that was quite odd,” said Kelly. “The data banks began to synchronize when the Nexus started to dissipate. My Golems settled down and everything seemed normal. We poked around in the pivotal events of that year. The battle known as the Horns of Hattin was fought in early July, and the Christian army was slaughtered. With the castles emptied of their garrisons, it was a simple matter for Saladin’s victorious troops to overrun the entire region. They took it all: Palestine, Tripoli, the Kingdom of Jerusalem.”

“That’s how I remember the history,” said Robert. “So you mean Paul’s trip didn’t change a thing?”

“Perhaps,” said Maeve. “It could be that an operation was underway to try and effect a change by taking out the Lever that led to the battle—Reginald, the Wolf of Kerak.”

“Yes!” Nordhausen remembered his research. “The hieroglyphics in that scroll I was telling you about: they spoke of a wolf! Here, let me read you my notes.” He fumbled about for a moment, producing a folded leaf from his shirt pocket. “I have the translation right here. The Wolf shall go forward and prey upon the bounty of the lord… Yet if he be slain for his misdeed, then all will be overthrown.”

“Well, Reginald certainly preyed upon the bounty of the Lord,” said Maeve. “His raid on Saladin’s caravan broke the truce and ignited this whole conflict. You’re certain that was on Rasil’s scroll?”

“Absolutely. And there was talk of the Gate of the West—that’s the Horns of Hattin, right? There was also mention of an old man returning, a temple priest of time, as the characters read.”

They looked at one another and Paul summed up their thinking. “Rasil was carrying instructions. There’s no doubt about it from this information. They were trying to make sure that Reginald lived. Must have been hard for them to spare the brute but, by doing so, they got the Horns of Hattin.” He had a vacant look in his eye, as though struggling to recall some far off memory. The glowing eyes of the wolf he had encountered outside the archive had returned to him, and its low growl haunted the frontiers of his thinking.

“Then who was trying to kill him?” Kelly asked the obvious question.

“My guess would be this group they called ‘the Order.’ They kept asking me if I was a member of the Order—if I was a Templar and such.”

“How odd,” said Nordhausen. “Rasil assumed I was one of these operatives as well. That’s why he was so tight lipped about your destination at the other end of the well. The Templars were supposed to have been stamped out long ago, but who knows—perhaps there’s a remnant active, some secret group run from the Vatican cellar. Well, whatever they were planning to do, it failed.”

“But what’s to stop them from trying again?” Kelly led the discussion to an obvious, though troublesome question.

“Right,” said Nordhausen. “They failed this time, but suppose they just go back to some other point in Reginald’s life and do something—or to a point before he was born to eliminate him from the time line altogether.”

“That may not be as easy as you think,” said Paul. “He’s certainly a major lever on events, if not a Prime Mover of his own. Eliminating him would have repercussions that would be impossible to predict. No, I think it would have to be something more subtle, like simply finding a way to delay him on the road. That would leave the bulk of his Meridian intact, but it still might accomplish something to alter a key event.”

“Right,” Maeve put in. “Maybe Paul’s arrival did something to counteract the transformation they had planned—a distraction, an unaccountable variable in the mix. We may never know, but I’ll say this: if we don’t shut this thing down, and I don’t see how we can with this war going on, then we weigh in on the side of Mother Time.”

“What do you mean?” asked Paul.

“We know how things are now,” Maeve explained. “It’s the world we believe to be our own—at least I do. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I need something to hold onto each day, something I can use to make sense of the world. There’s enough uncertainty out there as it is. If we get involved, it must be to preserve the past as we know it now—to put a stop to this Time War by foiling their efforts, if we can.”

“Just like Paul did,” said Kelly.

“Right, only we do it with more sense and direction. We keep watch, and we plan, and we get it all right. Understand?” Maeve’s point was well taken.

There was a moment of silence where they all seemed to sign on to her proposition. “It’s the only moral thing we can do,” said Paul. “You’re right. The Arch is power—more power than all the armies that ever walked the earth. We could blow the whole thing up, but something tells me the people in generations hence will go right on with their war. The moment we developed the Arch we made time travel possible. It was destined to succeed—perhaps even a Grand Imperative. Who knows how long this war has been going on? Something tells me it started with the effort to reverse Palma—with Graves’ mission. Now both sides are running operatives into key Nexus Points of the past to try and bend the history their way. My fall into the Well was just another Pushpoint: one of those stumbling moments in time that led us to discover all this. Keeping the Arch alive is the only way we can know what’s going on, or do anything about it when something begins to slide into the abyss. If we use it, we use it with the intention of preserving things—just like Maeve says.”

“Who’s to say our Meridian is the way things are supposed to be?” asked Nordhausen.

“We are,” said Maeve. “We started it. The Time project originated on our Meridian. We’re all Prime movers, right? Then we make this the Prime Meridian. The world we know now will be our reference point on everything we do, and the Arch will be our own Royal Observatory—a place where we can monitor what’s happening and take corrective action.”

They were all in agreement, and Paul placed his hand upon the table, his vote slapped onto the hard wood. Kelly was the first to cover his hand, then Maeve placed her palm on his. She looked at Nordhausen, a challenge in her hazel eyes. He nodded agreement and reached out, cupping her hand with his own. The four hands formed the hub of a wheel, a Nexus of consent and resolve. They had a mission in life now, a pledge and a purpose, for as long as they lived.

Nordhausen was already thinking ahead. “Then we all get a cell phone,” he suggested. “Perhaps one of us should be on station at the Arch at all times.”

“We’ve got a lot to think about,” said Paul. “Security will be our first concern, I’m afraid.”

“Security? You still worried that the government will step in?” Kelly was thinking about how he might start setting up data mirrors and redundant services. Even something as simple as an earthquake could put their single Arch facility out of commission.

“It’s not the government I’m worried about,” said Paul. “It’s the likes of Rasil, and this Sami fellow I ran into—or even Sinan, for that matter. We have to be careful; very cautious. No more keys under that mat, Robert.”

“You think we could be targets?” Nordhausen scratched his head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think Rasil recognized me, even though I gave him my name—yours as well. Perhaps we’re not as important as we think… Then again.” He lapsed into thought, struggling to remember. “Yes, Rasil did say something very odd to me when I told him my name—something about my being named after a great warrior he called the Marvel of Time. Why, he even said I bore a resemblance to the man.”

“It may be that he was referring to you, Robert. If we get mixed up in this we’re likely to become well known to our adversaries—historical figures akin to the founding fathers in their eyes, and the stuff of legend and story. You made a call on Rasil’s satellite phone, remember? They’ve probably got a line on exactly who answered. And that means they know we were involved in this incident somehow. We all have to be careful—very careful. We can’t leave any historical record of what we’re about here. Even our research queries have to be very guarded now. We have to shield ourselves with as much haze as possible, and make this Milieu a tough nut to crack.”

“You’re afraid they might—“ Maeve expressed the logical conclusion to Paul’s fear.

“Try to get rid of us?” Paul came out with it. “The thought has crossed my mind, in spite of Rasil’s mercy in sparing Robert. We have to assume that there will be people in the future who would see us as obstacles in their scheme. That makes us targets as well.”

“Lord,” said Nordhausen, “They could just go back in time and murder our grandmothers. It’s the Terminator all over again.” He tried to be glib, but there was real fear in the prospect he had suggested. “For that matter, what’s to stop them from pulling a 9-11 and sending someone back to fly an airliner into the Arch complex here?”

“Time,” said Paul. “She may have something to say about all this as well. We’re Prime Movers, people. We were the ones who first discovered how to travel in time. Even if they could pull something like that off, or rig it so we were never born, then what—how would they come to the knowledge of time travel without our research on the Arch?”

“Someone else might come up with it,” said Nordhausen. “That was common all through history. Elisha Gray was researching the telephone, just like Bell. The two of them rushed to the patent office just hours apart. The first manned flight had several close competitors; hell, even the top secret Manhattan Project had rival groups in both Russia and Germany working to build the bomb.”

“Your suggesting someone else may be working on time travel technology—even as we speak?”

“It’s a possibility. And from their vantage point in the Ninth Age, they would certainly know about it.”

“Well,” Paul sighed. “We were there first. Graves came back to us, right? So I’m betting we are all Prime Movers. In that case, it may not be so easy to tamper with our life histories, as we did to poor Rai’d Husan al Din when we reversed Palma.”

“But wasn’t he a Prime Mover as well?”

“A Free Radical,” Paul corrected. “He worked a Radical Transformation on the Meridian, but his influence was completely destructive. We, on the other hand, appear to be essential elements in the discovery of time travel. We may even be imperative.”

“How do we know that they haven’t already killed us? I mean, in some future event,” he explained. Nordhausen was not yet convinced. He looked at them, somewhat disturbed.

“My only hope is that we are all so significant to Mother Time that we will cast deep shadows—shadows so impenetrable that our presence in the time line will be difficult to tamper with.”

The significance of what Paul was saying spread to the eyes of his compatriots. An air of weighty seriousness settled on the room. “So,” Paul concluded, “we’ve got our Arch, and Kelly’s Golems, and the RAM bank idea gives us a good touchstone on the history. Now we stand the watch.” They all nodded agreement, but Nordhausen was already thinking about Paul’s last statement.

A touchstone, he mused. Yes indeed! He was still turning over the hieroglyphics in his mind, and an idea began to bubble up. There were lots of discoveries that failed to survive to his present day. Many artifacts had become lost, damaged or destroyed. Perhaps he could use the Arch to have a look at them first hand, and find out more about Rasil’s scroll. If it was indeed a rubbing, as he suspected, it seemed to him that some of the history was written in stone. The more he thought about it the better it sounded in his head, though he did not want to bring his idea up in committee just yet. He had an inkling of where he might find a good cache of old stone carvings from Egypt that had been lost to his day. This was going to be great fun, he thought. Great fun indeed!

Afterword – History Is Bunk

“We do not know very much of the future

Except that from generation to generation

The same things happen again and again.

Men learn little from others’ experience.

But in the life of one man, never

The same time returns. Sever

The cord, shed the scale. Only

The fool, fixed in his folly, may think

He can turn the wheel on which he turns.”

Thomas Becket in T. S. Elliot’s

Murder in the Cathedral

One of the most challenging things about time travel stories is the fact that they are all about change—about cause and effect, and the outcomes that derive from alterations in the flow of that causality. History, as we know it, is the slow, sedate flow of those events, as written down or dug up by a handful of writers, scholars and archeologists. But history, said Henry Ford, is bunk—it is really only a point of view, and a very limited one at that.

Take the history of the world as seen through the eyes of any given culture, and it will read quite differently. Each culture has its own moral and social systems, its own religious beliefs and creed, and a set of imperatives that drive it forward into the future. Inevitably, these cultures come into contact with one another, and conflict ensues. For us in the West, our history has been, in fact, a succession of these encounters and conflicts, leading at last, (as we like to think) to the supremacy of the modern Western cultures that make up our “First World.”

Yet we should not jump to too many conclusions about the surety of Western values and their eventual domination of the earth. The great cultures and peoples of the world have been grinding against one another for millennia, and the whole of U.S. history, for example, would not even span the length of the T’ang Dynasty, one of ten or more ruling dynasties that rose to supremacy in China over the centuries. While the West holds out its values as “inalienable rights” granted by God to a sea of equal men, it can be said that this claim bears as much weight, in history’s eyes, as that of the Pharos of Egypt, who thought themselves divine.

To be certain, there is gold in the ideas that have come from the West: democracy, freedom of expression, rights of privacy, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They have been echoed in documents and ideas since the time of the Greeks, through the Magna Carta and shouted on the voices of the French and American revolutions. (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!)

I finished the first draft of Nexus Point over the 2003 July 4th weekend here in the United States, listening to the pop and sizzle of fireworks exploding in the night sky. I smiled to think that they were a symbol of rockets and bombs exploding during moments of great crisis in our own brief history, with the hope that our flag, symbol of our union and freedom, would still be there when the show ended.

As I write this our nation has seen two quick wars in recent years, ostensibly fought to deliver those freedoms to an oppressed people—though I have my doubts about that. The invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq can be seen as just the latest chapters in an age old conflict between the “West” and the Muslim world.

It could be that we are seeing the values we hold dearest slowly eroding with the weight of corruptions like commercialism, profit motive, loss of privacy, and the erosion of our civil liberties at home, with a foreign policy that borders on imperialism and forced hegemony abroad—quite the opposite of what our founding fathers intended. History will tell, at least in this Meridian.

Parallels between the time of the Crusades and our era come to mind easily. Meridian, written just after the 9-11 attack, begins with a devastating plot by radical Islamic terrorists, which is eventually foiled, ironically enough, at a moment in the time of the Arab uprising of 1917—the first modern expression of their desire for freedom from Western Colonization by the British and Turks. In Nexus Point, the cult of Assassins Paul stumbles on at Castle Massiaf is based on a real group that infested the highlands of Syria, holding out in fortresses and secret redoubts. They were led by a mysterious figure called the “Old Man of the Mountain” – Sinan.

The characters in the story draw the obvious parallels to modern figures like Osama bin Ladin. Even the English word “Assassin” comes from this group, and one derivative touches on the Arab word for “foundation.” This immediately brought Al Qaeda (the base or the foundation) to mind. In this book the machinations of Sinan and his lieutenants are all documented in the history. Sinan did indeed have a kind of clairvoyance, answering unopened letters in a Johnny Carson Karnak like fashion, and seeming to know the course of events as if he was privy to secret information about the future. Was he?

As for the Sami’s devious little plots, the scene where he inducts initiates and then later uses the trick of the severed head to convince them to do his bidding is all documented in the Ismaili research from this time. (Note: today the Ismailis have nothing whatsoever to do with their forefathers, and the Aga Khan Foundation is renowned for its philanthropic contributions to education and other social causes in the world—just as certain Christian groups like the Templars evolved into contemporary church affiliated social and fraternal organizations.)

Yet, the notion that future time warriors are venturing back into history to set up operations at crucial nodes on the Meridian is a fascinating one. One of the key elements required to prosecute such a war would be a safe and certain record of the history. Otherwise, how would you know if your changes were successful? In Nexus Point, the computer chops and insight of Kelly Ramer create a kind of living memory bank that is always on to store the existing record of history. Then, as soon as his screensaver Golems detect any variation as they troll the amazing body of knowledge on the Internet, they activate the Arch to protect the data in a Nexus Point and alert the research team.

As clever as it is, the system is fraught with potential vulnerabilities. Keeping the RAM bank alive and running is a chore of its own—especially in the earthquake prone Berkeley Hills region. While it is said many times in the book that nothing is written, and history is not chiseled in stone… in one sense a low tech solution to the RAM bank presents itself. The scroll Nordhausen finds in Rasil’s pack is a clue that leads directly to the next book in the series entitled Touchstone.

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 to follow his hunch about Rasil’s scroll and check on some old Egyptian carvings. 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 hieroglyphics.

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. Remembering the phone call Nordhausen makes to Kelly on Rasil’ s phone, he believes that their adversaries are trying to foil the work of the project team by striking at their one weak link—Kelly. Yet Time is a steadfast ally. Kelly is in a strange coma, but sustained by some means in the current Meridian, protected in something Nordhausen calls a Schroedinger’s Box. 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 sequels 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.

(1) Text quoted by Maeve in the narrative on page 292 is a reference from information on the Assassin cults found at: http://www.outremer.co.uk/assassins.html

Thanks also to Richard Gylgayton for his tireless editorial wisdom, and Mark (aka Nordhausen) Prost. Both are always “first readers” for my novels, and friends of the highest order. And to dear Candace, Richard’s wife, a hearty thank you for inspiring the creation of my intrepid Maeve Lindford.

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.

QUANTUM KARMA – The influence of causality on a Time Meridian. Each moment on the Meridian affects the next, and certain Prime Movers accumulate an aura of Quantum Karma around them that also has profound effects on the configuration of future moments in Time.

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.

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The Meridian Series

Novels By John Schettler

Book I

Meridian – A Novel In Time

The adventure begins on the eve of the greatest experiment ever attempted—Time Travel.

As the project team meets for their final mission briefing, the last member, arriving late, brings startling news. Catastrophe threatens and the fate of the Western World hangs in the balance. But a visitor from another time arrives bearing clues that will carry the hope of countless generations yet to be born.

Meridian is an intelligent, compelling, fast paced story that is impossible to put down.

ForeWord Magazine’s

“Book of the Year”

2002 Silver Medal Winner

- Science Fiction -

Book II

Nexus Point

In this compelling sequel to the award winning novel Meridian, the project team members slowly come to the realization that a “Time War” is being waged by unseen adversaries in the future.

The quest for an ancient fossil leads to an amazing discovery hidden in the Jordanian desert. A mysterious group of assassins plot to decide the future course of history, just one battle in a devious campaign that will span the Meridians of time, both future and past

Book III

Touchstone

When Nordhausen follows a hunch and launches a secret time jump mission on his own, he uncovers an operation being run by unknown adversaries from the future. The incident has dramatic repercussions for Kelly Ramer, who’s place in the time line is again threatened by paradox. Kelly’s fate is somehow linked to an ancient Egyptian artifact, once famous the world over, and now a forgotten slab of stone. The result is a harrowing mission to Egypt during the time frame of Napoleon’s 1799 invasion.

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- Spring 2004

Touchstone – Book III in the Meridian Series

Science Fiction

Wild Zone – Book I in the Dharman Series

Science Fiction – With Richard Gylgayton. Fall 2002

Mother Heart – Book II in the Dharman Series

Science Fiction

Taklamakan – The Land Of No Return

A Novel of the Silk Road

Historical Fiction – Fall 2001

Steamboat Slough

A Novel – Spring 2004

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Copyright Notice

All material in this file is protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Nexus Point, Copyright©2004, John Schettler

Being Book II in the Meridian Series Novels by John 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: 0-9713170-9-7

John Schettler – john@writingshop.ws

A publication of:

The Writing Shop Press

www.writingshop.ws

Rev: 04/04

Content

John Schettler
NEXUS POINT
A NOVEL IN TIME

Prologue

Part I The Ammonite

1

2

3

Part II Nothing Is Written

4

5

6

Part III The Well of Souls

7

8

9

Part IV The Assassins

10

11

12

Part V Tempting Fate

13

14

15

Part VI Dark Designs

16

17

18

Part VII Heisenberg’s Wave

19

20

21

Part VIII The Wolf

22

23

24

Part IX King of Diamonds

25

26

27

Part X Ghost in the Machine

28

29

30

Epilogue – The Time War

Afterword – History Is Bunk

Acknowledgements

TIME GLOSSARY From Dorland’s Theory

The Writing Shop Press

The Meridian Series Novels By John Schettler

Novels By John Schettler:

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