Touchstone (Meridian Series) (12 page)

She slipped them into her
shoulder bag. “So, tell me what you found at the graveyard.”

Paul spoke reluctantly, “The
grave had been dug up, and the work looked relatively recent.”

“Dug up? By whom?” Maeve was
shocked.

“We have no idea, but the odds
are that it was an operative from the future. They dug down, smashed the lid on
the box, removed the stuff we put in, and buried it again. It was obvious when
we got there, they made no effort to hide it.”

“Who would do this? And why?”
Maeve was bewildered.

“As to why, no doubt to
eliminate Kelly. As to whom? I suppose we can discuss that.”

“The time travelers who saved
Kelly—”

“—wouldn’t have any reason to
want to eliminate him. If that were so, then why would they save him in the
first place?”

“So that means…”

“Robert believes there are other
people moving through time, and if you looked at those reports you would have
seen that the alarm keyed on a breach at
three past four
, this afternoon.”

That set the two of them to
silence for a moment. They heard the shower door slam, and listened to Robert
moving about in the bathroom. Shortly, he emerged, also in clean, dry clothes,
and seemingly re-energized.

“Dare I ask what you two have
been talking about?”

Paul and Maeve gazed back at him
wearily.

“Paul tells me that you think
other people are moving through time.”

Robert looked at Paul. “You told
her?”

“Not everything.”

Maeve was instantly alert.
“What?”

Robert looked pleadingly at his
friend. “You tell her.”

Paul pointed to the professor’s
notebooks.

“Open that notebook, Maeve—no,
not the Golem files, the older notebook to the left.”

Questioningly, she complied. The
rows of precise, intricate hieroglyphics marched across the pages. “What is
this?”

“What does it look like to you?”
Paul asked.

“It looks like Egyptian writing.”
She looked up blankly. “Who wrote this?”

Paul looked at the professor.
“Robert did. We didn’t know if it would still manifest in this
Meridian
, but it seems we learn
something new about the theory every time it is tested. Apparently the lifeline
of a Prime is held inviolate if he is safe in a Nexus during Transformation. I
was worried about Paradox, but Robert is safe and sound—at least for the
moment.”

Maeve took in the jargon,
understanding, yet clearly still annoyed. “Robert wrote this? Why on earth…” If
she had been confused before, she was now totally at a loss.

Nordhausen stood in silence. Maeve
continued to turn, page after page after page, uncomprehending.

“Robert says he can read those.”

At that she looked up sharply.
“What’s going on here?”

“Robert went through the Arch,”
Paul continued quickly.

“What?”

“Robert went through the Arch,
and when he came back, he told me something had changed. Oh, he was afraid all
this was his fault, and I let him stew for awhile, but the Golems are on to the
real
culprits, and it has something to do with that writing.” Paul
pointed at the professor’s notebooks.

“Okay, stop right there.”
Lindford commanded. “This is too much at once.” She paused, closed her eyes,
and took a deep breath.

“Okay, one more time. Robert
went through the Arch?” She flashed him a dark look, and Nordhausen swallowed
hard. “You’re talking about his trip to recover
Lawrence
’s manuscript at
Reading
station, yes?”

“No. I’m talking about his trip
to see
H.M.S Pinafore
in
London
—1880.”

Dorland was through helping. He
had let the cat out of Schroedinger’s box and he decided to leave the rest to
the professor.  Nordhausen said, “Yes… I… Well, I went through the Arch, and
when I came back something was different, and if I hadn’t gone we wouldn’t even
know about it, so I did a good thing after all, and now we have to figure out
what to do about it.” He ran out of steam, giving her a deflated look.

Maeve left him hanging for a few
beats.

“Notwithstanding the fact that I
only agreed to let you two start up the project again on your express promise
that you would
never
send a person through it again without my
approval,” she began, “you nevertheless secretly, and in violation of your
promise to me, sent Robert through the Arch? Robert, of all people? And he did
something to change history?”

“Now wait a second,” Dorland
protested. “I didn’t send Robert through, this was all his own secret little
plan.”

“I’m afraid that’s correct,
Maeve. It was just me,” Nordhausen seconded. “Paul knew nothing about it until
I told him this afternoon. He got to me just as I was returning.”

“Well suppose you just tell
me
now!” She was reddening with anger, secretly believing that the whole of
Kelly’s dilemma was to be laid at Nordhausen’s feet.

Robert related his experience in
London
once more. This time he
minimized his encounter with Wilde and Gilbert, and focused on the
British
Museum
. With some contributions from Dorland, the story was worked out
again, and with more details, which Maeve pried out in pointed inquisition.

Finally they were back again
with Maeve and Paul paging through Robert’s hieroglyphic diaries. Maeve had
vented her anger at them, but the more she came to realize that Robert’s
unauthorized time jaunt had been a lucky windfall for them all, the more she composed
herself.

Paul summed it up. “So if Robert
hadn’t followed up his lead on Rasil’s scroll and the hieroglyphics, then we
would have never stumbled on the damaged stone—the Rosetta Stone, as he claims
it was called. Here, have a look at the data we pulled from the on-line RAM
Bank reference. The Golems confirm Robert’s story. The stone was supposed to
look like this.” He pointed to the photo on the readout they had obtained
earlier. “That’s the heart of it.”

“The Rosetta Stone!” Robert
exulted.

“Their touchstone,” said Paul.
He pointed at the Golem files lying scattered all over Nordhausen’s study
table. “He’s on to something, Maeve. The alert we got keyed on
another
breach in the continuum.

The professor’s eyebrows raised,
wrinkling his forehead with surprise. “When? Does the report have any good data
on the time?”

Paul smiled at him, the light of
discovery in his eyes. “You’re going to love this,” he waded in, then jumped.
“The temporal date is 1799 and the spatial locus of the breaching point is in the
Middle East
.”

“The
Middle East
?”

“In
Egypt
… At a place called Rosetta…”

Part IV

Time &
Place

“It’s a bad plan that can’t be
changed”

—
Puplilius Syrus:
Maxims

10

The
Golem alert
subsided at
exactly 2100 hours GMT, and the systems at Lawrence Berkeley Labs returned to a
low standby mode. Paul got the system status call on his cell phone, and he
telephoned the lab to leave a few instructions with the student interns
supervising consoles there. As exhausted as they all were that night, the
project team members each seemed to have something that pulled them along.
Maeve took some time to settle into the meaning of all that had happened, her
mind constantly diverted from the conversation with thoughts of Kelly. She
decided to drive back to
University
Hospital
and check on Kelly one more time before she
turned in. They all agreed to meet at the lab at ten the following morning,
where they would decide what to do about everything that had happened.

       “Read
every word,” she said, pointing at the scattered pages of the Golem report. “If
we have to make an intervention I want temporal and spatial targeting points in
the morning—and a damn good reason for any action we take. Now we don’t have
Kelly, so for heaven’s sake use a computer for the math. Clear?”

       Robert
and Paul poured over the Golem report, for an hour, searching the data for
variance flags and discussing  anything that sounded serious. Amazingly, the
Meridian
was holding good integrity, and they had nothing above a .0013
variance report to bother with.

       “These
numbers are cleaner than the probabilities we ran for the Shakespeare mission,”
said Paul. “It doesn’t seem like your Rosetta Stone was all that important.”

       “I
wouldn’t be so certain,” the professor warned. “Sure, I’ve looked at dates from
1799 to the present and found little to get upset about. Did you read the bit
on Champollion?”

       “I’m
just getting to that.”

       “Don’t
bother. He leads a humdrum life, publishes a few more compilations of his
findings on Egyptian artifacts, and dies three weeks early.”

       Paul
raised an eyebrow. “That’s odd.”

       “Yes.
It seems that even if you make a great discovery it only ends up extending your
expected life span by three weeks. So much for the bounty of fame.”

       “Then
why all the fuss and bother over the hieroglyphics? How do we justify opening
the continuum again with variance data this weak? You heard Maeve when she
left. It’s going to be like pulling teeth at the lab with her tomorrow. She
still thinks our tampering could bring Kelly down again, and that isn’t
something we can dispel with good numbers.”

       “She’ll
just have to get over it,” Robert insisted. Besides, she’ll want us to fix this
because she just can’t bear to have things amiss. It was the only reason she
agreed to allow the project to continue—to keep a watch on the history and
defend the integrity of the
Meridian
we knew.”

       “True,
but suppose you start by convincing me—just in case we meet resistance because
of the Kelly thing. Here, I’ll play devil’s advocate.” Paul folded his arms.
“Why do we need to investigate this Rosetta Stone thing? You’re off the hook,
Robert. We’ve already determined that your trip did nothing to cause the
damage. Why push this?”

       Nordhausen
gave him a long look. He started to say something, then caught himself and reached
for a pen and paper instead. Paul craned his neck to see what he was writing,
but the professor waved him away until he was finished. He slid the paper
across the table to Paul, a smug look on his face. “Remember that?” he
challenged.

       The
page was covered with a few neatly drawn lines of the ancient Egyptian writing.
“Cute,” said Paul.

       “More
than that, my friend. Those are the very same characters on that scroll I found
in Rasil’s backpack.”

       “How
could you remember something like that?”

       “How
could I remember? What street do you live on, Paul?” The professor wore a
miffed expression.

       “Alright,”
Paul conceded. “So you remembered what you saw. I’ll grant you that. But what’s
the big deal?”

       Nordhausen
frowned. He leaned heavily on the table and pointed to each character in turn
as he spoke.
“Here follows the word of the Lord of Time
… That’s this
fellow here,” he said, pointing at a larger character he had drawn.
“At the
time of great struggle… Eternity lies in the shadow of the Wolf… The Wolf shall
go forward and prey upon the bounty of the lord... Yet if he be slain for his
misdeed…
For his sin,” he corrected himself.
“Then all will be
overthrown.
Therefore
—That’s this line here, Paul, and now it reads:
When the Old Man returns, the Lord’s Army shall come to the Gate of the
West. The Temple Priest of Time proceeds with two eyes to the Lord of Eternity
.
That’s the literal translation, but I would paraphrase the bit about the eyes
to mean ‘look’ or perhaps ‘meet.’ Let’s read it this way:
The Priest of Time
shall go forth and meet the Lord of Eternity.”

       “The
two eyes,” Paul nodded, suddenly absorbed in the translation Nordhausen was
making. “You really can read these things.”

       “I’ve
been saying that all along. In fact, I may be the only person on earth in this
milieu who can read them.”