Touchstone (Meridian Series) (6 page)

“We take very good care of
everything we receive, sir,” the Curator said a bit defensively. “I can assure
you that these stones are in the very same condition they were received in—if
not better.” He folded his arms, a bit perturbed by this strangely dressed
visitor.

“Of course,” said Nordhausen,
remembering to watch what he said just now. Still, his mind was racing
feverishly ahead. If something as significant at this was altered,
what else
was different? Oh lord, what would he find when he got back?

Nordhausen took a deep breath.

Mr. Wilberforce was politely
waiting for him to say something.

“Thank you, sir,” he said with a
deflated tone. “It is not how I imagined it to be. It is useless for my studies.
Please excuse me, I am very tired.”

Without waiting for reply, or
even escort, Nordhausen wheeled about, and walked rapidly out of the cellar,
out of the museum, and dully made his way back to his hotel.

What else was different?

The thought gouged him with
every step he took. He raked through each moment of his time jaunt, wondering
where the fatal blow had been struck. Was it the flagrant contact with Prime
Movers he had the night before? He kept replaying the scene in his mind, trying
to root out what he could have done to cause this catastrophe—for a catastrophe
it was. The Rosetta Stone—a touchstone that had been the key to unraveling the
mysteries of Ancient Egypt, was now nothing more than a useless slab of black
basalt. How, how, how could this be?

Paul’s voice returned to him,
“somewhere, lost on a single wayward thread of time, a moment exists that is
mated to every great event on the continuum, a whisper of inconsequential
absurdity that is forever paired to the great moments of history…” He called
them Pushpoints, thought Nordhausen, and I’ve gone and pushed one—that much is
certain.

The thought of Paul seemed to
give him a moment of  solace. He had to get back! He had to get to Paul and
tell him about this. If there was anyone else in the world that could help him
figure this out, it would be Paul. After all, he was the one who dreamt all
this time business up in the first place.

He hurried along, as if the
quickening of his footsteps would somehow hasten his return to his own time
again. But he suddenly realized he was still stuck here. The retraction
sequence would not kick in for hours—at least in this time. Barely twenty
minutes had passed back in the 
Berkeley
labs. He had timed his jump to finish before Paul came on duty
tonight to relieve him of his shift, but at least he would be the only other
team member at the facility when Nordhausen completed his return… If there
still was a facility, a Paul Dorland, a world he could yet make any sense of.

Maeve’s warnings were a cruel
crown of thorns for him now. He resolved to lock himself away in his hotel
room, where he waited miserably for the Arch to pluck him back to whatever
horror might await him in
San Francisco
, in the twenty first century.

5

The retraction sequence
kicked in like clockwork and snatched the professor away in a
haze of icy fog. This time he made a point of keeping his eyes tightly closed,
so he could think things through with a clear head when he returned. He was
already wondering how he would explain all this to the other project team
members. Kelly’s Golems were sure to key in on the altered
Meridian
. He had little doubt that cell
phones were ringing and people were hurtling toward the lab facility to check
on the alert. In a way, that might help him, he thought. The Arch was set to
activate itself in the event of an alert. If anyone showed up and found the
turbines running the alert would provide a nice cover story. He could say he
was the first on the scene and…

       No… That just would not do. He knew that Kelly would certainly
be able to home in on the exact moment the equipment was activated. He’d retrieve
the exact coordinates, just like he uncovered the trip to Reading Station when
Nordhausen went after
Lawrence
’s lost manuscript. Besides, these were his friends, and he had
given his word and… What should he do?

       To his great surprise, there was no one waiting for him at
the Arch when he returned. Excellent! The access corridor was empty when the
great locks separated. He rushed up the ramp to the elevator, and was bouncing
on his toes impatiently while it glided up 50 meters of rock. The tunnel
leading out of the hill to the lab was vacant. When he reached the heavy
automatic doors leading into the lab, he pressed his face to the small glass
window and peeked through. No one was there.

       He punched the button on the wall that opened the doors,
and they parted. The lab was empty, though the consoles were lit up and a
bright red emergency light was flashing on the alert panel. He quickly glanced
at the clock hanging on the wall. He had been gone about 30 minutes… unless it
was 12 hours and 30 minutes… or 25 years and 30 minutes… no, there was no use
getting lost in that! He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

       Be here now. Be here now.

       First things first. He had to get out of these silly
clothes and see what he could find out from the RAM bank report. He hurried to
his office, and doffed his Victorian outfit, his mind churning. Even as he
reflexively stuffed the clothing away in a laundry sack, he had the uncomfortable
feeling that he was already working his cover-up. Then the urgency of his
discovery seized him again. What was going on? Was the world the same one he
had left, or was it radically changed now? Kelly’s RAM bank should be noting
the differences and spitting out references by now. He hurried back to the lab,
almost afraid to see reams of computer paper littering the floor from an
overworked printer.

       To his great relief however, there was no data waiting for
him in the report tray when he settled into a chair by the desk.  He tapped his
finger on the desk, wondering what to do. Then it occurred to him that he
should initiate a search, starting with the very date he had targeted and
running in keywords that he was certain of… The Rosetta Stone!

       In the
London
he had just left, the Rosetta Stone was no more than an anonymous slab of
basalt, but he had seen the stone several times in his Meridian of Origin, in
London
, in the
British
Museum
. Was it still there?

       He swiveled over to his computer, called up the search
engine, and nervously typed in:
ROSETTA STONE.
He paused an instant and hit
Enter. There were approximately 137,000 hits. He exhaled, noticing that he was
holding his breath, and began to review the data.

Nathaniel
MULLIKEN /
Rosetta
STONE
Nathaniel MULLIKEN /
Rosetta
STONE
. Husband: Nathaniel MULLIKEN.
Born: at: Married: at: Died: at: Father: John MULLIKEN. Mother: Mary POOR.
Spouses:
Rosetta
STONE
.

Rosetta
Stone
- Melvin
Stone
...
 69121 individuals, 24883 families from file 20020823.ged (
23 AUG 2002
)
Rosetta
Stone
(ABT
1799 - ____)
Rosetta
Stone
(
13 JUN 1811
- ____) Manasseh
Stone
(CHR 23
...
 

Bun
Busters Series 07 - Starring
Rosetta
Stone
, Rodney Moore, Tammi
...
 Bun Busters Series 07. Company: VCR PRODUCTIONS. Length: 82 mins.

       This was not good. All he was getting
was genealogical data and junk references. He needed to refine his search a
bit, and decided to focus on one of the scholars who had done the key work in
deciphering the stone. He typed in:
FRANCOIS CHAMPOLLION
and immediately received about 1500 hits. The man existed!

       He opened the first page, an
encyclopedia article:

Champollion
was a French Egyptologist, who is acknowledged as the father of modern
Egyptology. He achieved many things during his short career that laid the
foundations for Egyptian archaeology.

       He
was born in 1790….

       Yes, yes, thought Nordhausen. Get to
the point. The man deciphered the hieroglyphics!

 …
While he was at the Lyceum, he presented a paper in which he argued that the
language of the Copts in contemporary
Egypt
was, in essence, the same as that used by the Egyptians of antiquity.

       His
education continued at the College de France, where he specialized in languages
of the Orient. He knew bits and pieces of many languages, and was fluent in
several others. A partial listing of the languages he was familiar with is
astounding: Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean, Chinese, Coptic, Ethiopic,
Sanskrit, Pahlevi, and Persian.

       But nothing whatsoever about the
hieroglyphics! Nordhausen swallowed hard. Of course… It made perfect sense now.
He had seen it with his own eyes. The stone was broken, and the entire body of
knowledge surrounding the ancient Egyptian writing was broken with it.  He
scanned the rest of the article, hoping to find some hint or clue that would
lead him to believe that things were all right, but there was nothing; nothing
about his greatest achievement: the reading of the stone.

       Then it occurred to him that this was
not the only source of information about the Egyptian writing. He scoured his memory,
trying to recall other instances of artifacts that had been inscribed with
multiple languages. “Bubastis!” he said aloud, remembering a relatively new
find there just a few years back. He immediately keyed in a new search and came
up with an article in short order dated
April 19
^th
, 2004
.

‘
Potsdam
- A team of German and Egyptian archaeologists working in the Nile Delta has
unearthed "quite a remarkable" stele dating back 2,200 years to
Ptolemaic Egypt which bears an identical inscription in three written
languages. The grey granite stone, 99cm high and 84cm wide, was found
"purely by accident" at the German excavation site of the ruined city
of Bubastis, a once important religious and political center 90km north-east of
modern-day Cairo.’
⁽¹⁾

       Yes, he remembered taking more than a
passing interest in this find, as it was just like the Rosetta Stone, a
possible key to translating the hieroglyphics. His hopes sank as he read on:

       ‘The
inscription consists of 67 lines of Greek text and 24 lines of Demotic along
with traces of Hieroglyphs that were so degraded they could barely be read.

       “It’s
unfortunate,” said chief
Egyptologist
Dr
, Christian Tieze.
“If the Heiroglyphs had been better represented on this stone, we may have had
an opportunity to decipher them.”

       Archeologists
remain baffled to this day by the ancient Egyptian writing, which has
confounded cryptologists and historians alike.’

       Nordhausen began to panic. Something had happened, and he
had no idea of the consequences at this point. He began to search, desperately:
HEIROGLYPHICS…
TRANSLATION… INTERPRETATION… DYNASTIC
EGYPT
… BOOK OF THE DEAD
… he typed in the names of
Pharaohs, archeological sites, museums with noted collections…But it was all a
fruitless effort.

       Nowhere was there any indication that there was any
translation of Hieroglyphics. Except…
In his head!
He thought hard for a
moment, conjuring up the image of the cartouche he had seen on the statue of Horus.
He could clearly see the carved figures in his mind, and he remembered how the
little girl had traced her finger on the stone…”Ra-me-ses.” He knew how to read
them! They all made perfect sense in his head. He had taken a class in graduate
school thirty years before, and had been able to transliterate without
reference help of any kind. While a student, he had actually kept a journal
using hieroglyphics instead of Roman letters! It had been a fun project, and
helped him to learn, but that was thirty years ago.

       He heard the door behind him open, and he hurried to close
the screen he was watching, his guilt reflex overcoming his better judgment. He
spun around to see Paul Dorland regarding him with a curious look on his face.

       “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you! Did you
get the alert call?” Paul gave him a frustrated look.

       “What? Why yes, of course. It was my shift. I was just down
looking over the Arch to see if it was all in order...   got here as soon as I
could… been right here…working,” Nordhausen lied, feeling terrible about it at
once.