Touchstone (Meridian Series) (29 page)

He
presented Paul the drawing. “There,” he said, “Except all the Demotic and Greek
in the image was covered with ancient hieroglyphics!” The two men hunched over
the drawing, as if the answer to the dilemma might be found in the picture.

       “You’re
certain it looked like this?”

       “Absolutely!
Maeve will vouch for that.”

       “How
could this be?” Paul was still trying to see a clear line of reasoning to
explain the change. “They would have to go back to the time the stone was
originally made and then convince the makers to alter it by leaving out the
Demotic and Greek script. Do you realize how difficult that intervention would
be?”

       “Yes,”
said Nordhausen. “It was an established convention to display these
proclamations in all three languages. The discovery of similar stones at Bubastis
confirmed that in 2004. Perhaps they replaced the stone with another,” he
suggested. “They knew exactly where to find it. Suppose they simply went back
on some lonesome night and dug the original stone up.”

       “You
say it was twice the size of the original? That would mean they had to bring in
an artifact weighing fifteen hundred kilos! I don’t think so. And what would
they do with the original? You can’t transport an object of that size easily in
the physical world, let alone through Time.”

       ”Why
not? I went back and retrieved
Lawrence
’s manuscript of the
Seven Pillars
.”
Robert caught himself too late. Paul looked at him, a dumbfounded expression on
his face.

       Maeve
was suddenly making a remarkable recovery from the stupor of her Time shift.
“You did
what?”
She was up
off her chair, parasol still in hand,
and advancing on the professor with bad intent. “When did this happen?”

       Nordhausen
looked from Paul to Maeve as she advanced, edging behind Paul’s chair to seek
protection. “Alright… alright now. If you must know everything, I did it on
that mission last July. You know, when I went to visit Reading Station. I
wasn’t just sightseeing as I told you.”

       “Damn
you, Robert!” Maeve took a quick swipe at him with her parasol, scoring a
glancing blow on his shoulder. He ducked behind Paul, flustered and
embarrassed.

       “It
was the
lost
manuscript,” Nordhausen  pleaded, “not the original. It was
stolen on the train ride
Lawrence
took—“

       “I
knew
that was what you were up to,” Maeve’s eyes narrowed, and she
swiped at Robert again, the parasol rapping hard on the back of Paul’s chair as
he dodged.

       “Hey,
take it easy,” Paul protested, but Maeve was angling for a better chance at
getting the professor on the head.

       “Kelly!”
Robert yelled. “Do something! Stop that crazy woman before she runs me through
with that thing.”

       Kelly
had a big grin on his face, and he simply folded his arms and smiled, leaning
back in his chair as he struggled to suppress his laughter.

       “I’ll
show you who’s crazy,” Maeve lunged forward with the parasol, plugging the
professor right in the belly with a hard jab. He yelped in protest, but then
simply held up his hands in surrender.

       “Alright,
I give in. I did it, and I’ll never live down the shame. I was just a selfish
man, hoping to rescue something from trash heap of history, and it all came
down around me, to no good.”

       Maeve
was ready to give him one last jab, but she relented, plunking the parasol down
on the floor with a hard thump and leaning on it heavily. There was a moment of
strained silence, then Kelly burst out laughing.

       “We
knew you were after something,” he said. “Maeve did the follow-up research and
narrowed things down. The only event that was even remotely significant was the
loss of the manuscript. So, you actually found the darn thing, did you? And you
mean to say you still have it?”

       “Yes,
yes, I confess. It’s stored in a vault in my study. I know—the consequences
could be devastating. Suppose it was meant to be discovered by someone
else—years from now—when we are all gone. I’ve had that in my belly ever
since.”

       “And
you’ll get a lot more in your belly if you so much as think of another stunt
like that again,” Maeve vented. “Next time I
will
run you through with
this—or worse!”

       Nordhausen
passed a brief moment of terror, imagining the full brunt of Maeve’s anger
unleashed upon him for his misadventures, though he knew he would deserve every
agonizing second. He had been headstrong, and foolish, and he deceived his
dearest friends at the same time. The whole weight of time seemed to fall on
him now and he slumped against the console behind Paul’s chair, deflated and
clearly upset with himself.

       Maeve
saw the expression on his face, but a gleam of mischief came to her eye as she
looked at him.

       “Do
you know he tried to shoot Napoleon just now,” she said to Paul.

       “What?”
Paul looked at Robert, aghast.

       “Now,
see here, Maeve. I did no such thing!” The professor was trying to defend
himself, his eye still fixed on the parasol.

       “Oh,
yes,” said Maeve, having her fun now. “Just after we manifested—before you
moved us back on target. He waltzed right over, picked up a rifle, and he was
aiming the damn thing out the window at Napoleon.”

       “I
was not!”

       “I
barely got to him in time.” Now Maeve smiled, unable to keep up the front of
her anger, and satisfied that she had made her point with the professor.

       Paul
looked from one to the other, and Kelly was still laughing, holding his stomach
as he rocked back in his swivel chair.

       “Alright,”
Nordhausen protested as he realized Maeve was playing out the moment for all it
was worth. “Enough of this. You can think up some horror for me later, and I
promise you I will submit to any punishment you decide to mete out. But the
stone!
We’ve got to figure this out! How could they pull off a switch like that? Could
they have carved it elsewhere, at the target time, and then floated it to the
site on the river?” The professor was trying to conceive the operation himself
as he went along, filling in the gray with wild assumptions.

       “Again,”
said Paul, “what would they do with the original? It weighed 720 Kilos. You
might get away with carrying some small object back on your person, like our
literary thief here, but not an object the size of the Rosetta Stone. No… this
is worse than we think,” he said.

       Nordhausen
waited, hanging on the unspoken conclusion that was evident in Paul’s voice.
“Well?” he was unable to contain himself.

       It
was Maeve who spoke up now, her eyes fixed on Paul this time. “There’s been a
transformation,” she said, matter of factly. “That’s why you pulled us out
early; that’s why you won’t let the Arch spin down, isn’t it, Paul? You’re
keeping the Nexus Point open for us here, because you know things have changed.
Has anyone been outside this room since we returned? Does anyone have the
slightest notion of what the world looks like out there?” There was an urgency
in her voice, and an edge of fear.

       Kelly
wasn’t laughing any longer, and the four team members stood in silence,
listening to the distant thrum of the generator turbines. Paul spoke next, his
voice laden with the weight of Maeve’s deduction.

       “I’m
afraid she’s correct,” he said. “The alteration to the stone is too pronounced,
too radical. If what you are saying is true, and it bore no inscription in
Demotic or Greek, then our adversaries have managed to pull off a major coup
while we were dallying about with this Rosetta business. God only knows what
they’ve done.”

       “What
do you mean?” Robert looked at him, slipping out from behind the chair.

       “What
I mean is this: you say you think the Assassins were using the glyphs as a
code, correct? Then this whole affair has been aimed at preserving the secrecy
of that language. Now, I don’t know how they accomplished it, but they’ve
managed to permanently do away with the Touchstone that led to the decipherment
of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. That means their code is secure, and all the
messages they’ve been sending back and forth through time will remain a secret.
Who knows what advantage that has given them in the Time war—perhaps it was
enough to swing things in their favor again.”

       “Yes!”
Nordhausen put in loudly. “Khalid said something about a transformation—do you
remember it Maeve? He said there was a miracle. They worked it, day and night,
and the best they could achieve was a hundred years of enmity. But now
something has changed! Khalid said it was all made new again!”

       “Khalid?”

       “Someone
we met at Rosetta. In fact, we met two agents in place. One man, a fellow named
LeGrand, was clearly an operative of the Order. I was a bit obtuse on that
point, but Maeve saw right through him. Then we were approached by a second
man, an Arab. Later, at the dig site, the two men spoke, and it was clear that
they knew one another—as adversaries.”

       He
gave Paul the details of their mission, and angled back to those final moments
before the retraction pulled them out. “Can you imagine,” he began, “the man
actually apologized. He asked forgiveness and said he would pray for us. I
wonder what he meant by that?”

       Maeve
looked at Kelly, who was rocking back and forth in his chair, a steady squeak
punctuating each move.

       “What
about the Golems, Kelly? I thought they were supposed to warn us of any
variation in the Meridians.”

       “Good
point,” said Kelly, getting up quickly. He went over to the history module,
leaning in to inspect the console. “We haven’t heard a peep from the Golems.”
He settled into a chair and began entering commands.

       “Is
there a radio handy?” Nordhausen asked.

       “Radio?
Yes we have a shortwave built into the history console there.” Kelly pointed
and Paul spun his chair around, fixing his eyes on the communications module.

       He
reached out, his hand hovering over the dial as if it might burn him. Then he
switched on the radio and they all hushed to listen. The speaker played a
steady wash of static, which seemed to surprise Kelly at once.

       “I
had that set to KPFA talk radio—94.1 FM. Has someone moved the dial?”

       Paul
looked at the digital readout. The numbers were still set to 94.1. He checked
to be certain the radio was receiving the FM band. Then he pressed the search
feature and watched the numbers scroll. Static rippled through the speaker,
until the signal strength located something and locked on. A man was singing in
another language. The first thing that came to Paul’s mind was that he had
stumbled across a Spanish broadcast channel, then the realization of what he
was hearing struck him, and the color faded from his cheeks.

       One by one the same awareness came to each of them
as they listened. They were hearing the chant of the
muezzin
as he sung
the call to prayer from the minaret of some distant, unseen mosque. His voice
rose and fell, filling the silence of the room with a haunting chorus that
deepened to a feeling of impending calamity. The lingering echo of the singer’s
voice seemed to taunt them now, rising and falling through the intermittent
static of the radio. Then the signal faded, unable to penetrate the magnetic
aura of the Arch that surrounded them, and was gone.

Part VIII

Chaos

“Chaos umpire sits.

And by his decision more embroils the fray.”

—
Milton:
Paradise Lost II,
907-909

22

Paul
looked
at Kelly, who was
hunched in thought as he tapped away at the history module controls. It was
clear that something was wrong there.

       “That’s
odd,” said Nordhausen. “Could we be receiving a signal from the
Middle East
on the FM Band? Are you sure you don’t have the thing set to a
shortwave channel? I often get foreign broadcasts when I browse the wires in my
study. In fact, I listen to the BBC every night.”

       “No,
this is an FM signal. I’m certain of it,” said Paul.

       “How
very odd,” said the professor. “Atmospheric conditions must be ideal for an FM
signal to go that far.”

       Paul
said nothing. He was suddenly very interested in Kelly at the history module.
“What’s up with the Golems?” He leaned in to inspect the computer console.