Meridian

16

Paul was wishing he was somewhere else. The leather thongs that bound his wrists were tight and painful, and the stern regard of the Turkish Colonel was beginning to unnerve him. At least he had put away the knife, though Paul did not hold out much hope for himself in this situation. The man had obviously concluded he was a spy, and he knew that a lengthy interrogation was probably in order for him now.

The Colonel took a long drag on his cigarette, studying Paul closely. “Not English, you say? You are certainly not an Arab. What mischief are you up to in the night? What are you doing here?”

Paul looked at him, unwilling to speak, but he could see that it would only be a matter of time if he resisted this man’s questions—and very painful time at that. He resolved to answer him, hoping to thread his way through the interrogation without saying anything too damaging. Perhaps he could plead that he was a non-combatant and invoke the Geneva convention as a shield. Then he realized that the convention had not even been adopted until well after this war. He would be at the mercy of this man, no matter what he decided.

“I am an American,” he began cautiously, “a writer.”

The Colonel eyed him with suspicion. “You are wearing a British uniform.”

“It was necessary,” said Paul. “The British insisted.”

“They insisted? How very much like them.” The Colonel stood up, leaning close to Paul and studying his face and hands. “You are not a soldier,” he concluded. “That much is clear. Yet it does not take a soldier to be a spy. Why are you here?” The tone of his voice made it evident to Paul that he was not convinced. “Are you trying to make the world safe for democracy, as your President Wilson has said? There are no Americans in this region. Speak!”

“No, I am not a soldier—only a writer. My government does not know I am here.”

“Oh? And what do you think you will see here? There is nothing here but the desert, unless, of course, you are interested in our trains. The battle is a hundred miles from this place. I think you are a spy.”

“I am not a spy, I write books, that’s all. You can see that I am unarmed.”

The Colonel regarded him in silence, his cigarette building a long ash as it burned. He took another drag, his eyes narrowing above the red glow of the cigarette tip in the darkness of the room.

Paul hoped the man could see that he was not a soldier. Can’t he tell by my accent that I’m not English? He probably thinks I was sent here by the British, though, and he’ll want to get at the reason soon enough.

“You know I can have you shot without a second thought for concealing that British uniform beneath these robes. Who do you think you are fooling?”

Paul did not answer.

“Yes, you are fooling no one. The British are fools, just as you are to come here. Perhaps you are one of the men the British have sent to incite these Arabs, yes? You were wandering near the rail lines, and the Arabs have been a nuisance. I think you were planning some mischief here, American. Yes—you are an American. I can make mischief as well.” The warning in his eyes was apparent.

His cigarette burned down to a nub and he let it fall to the floor, grinding the ash under his boot. “Perhaps,” he said, “I should give you something to write about. How did you come here?” The question was hard, whip like, and laden with the implication of a threat.

Paul had to think fast. He needed a credible story, and his mind scoured through memories of the history to come up with something plausible. “I wanted to write,” he said haltingly. “Yes, I had to come in through a British controlled port, but my luggage was mishandled and I was given British kit in compensation.”

“What port?” The question was sudden and sharp.

“Cairo… And I came across Suez to try and reach the front.”

“Oh? Where is the front?”

Paul searched his recollection, desperate for a credible answer. He could quote chapter and verse when it came to events in the Second World War, but he had not given much study to the first. He equivocated. “With Allenby,” he said, buying time.

“Allenby, yes I suppose there is a front here now, thanks to him. He had a surprise for us at Beersheba last week. He stole around our flank with his horse soldiers. He wants Jerusalem, but we will not give it to him so easily. Still, this does not explain your presence here.”

“As I said,” Paul continued. “I came in through British lines, but I do not answer to them. I am here on my own. I write books, that is all—history books. I merely wished to see the war for myself. They would not give me permission to come here to the desert, but I snuck away, concealed in these Arab robes.”

“You think me a fool? You come wandering through the night in the middle of a rain storm to study for your books? I do not believe you. I think you are watching the movements of our trains, and that you would tell everything you see here to the British if you could. Yes?”

“I ran into trouble with the locals,” Paul groped for some way out of the situation. “I had to flee for my life. I knew there was a railroad to the west and so I started walking, hoping to find my way.”

“Where? To Amman? To Damascus? You are very far from both for a man with only his two legs to take him about. Did you think you could beg passage on one of our trains—dressed like that?”

The Colonel moved suddenly, striking Paul hard on the cheek with the back of his hand. Paul winced with the blow, wondering if it would not have been better to just keep silent.

“That is for lying to me,” the Colonel said in a low voice. “The rest you will get in a moment or two. But first, I must assure myself that the tracks are clear ahead and that no other writers and reporters are lurking in the night.”

He gave Paul a derisive glance and strode to the doorway, pulling it open and shouting orders at the guards outside his coach in Turkish. The men ran to respond, their boots crunching on the gravel bed of the rail line, receding into the distance as they went.

“Now,” said the Colonel, turning back to Paul. “We are quite alone.”

Paul did not like the sound of that, and was afraid that the man was going to strike him again—or worse. Perhaps he wanted to get rid of any witnesses, or perhaps he merely wished to savor the rest of his interrogation with some aberrant sense of privacy. Thankfully, the Colonel sat down at his desk, eying the coffee bag and taking it up to sample the aroma again.

“Very good,” he said hefting the bag in his hand. “I have been missing my coffee for three nights now, so I will light an oil stove and try your beans before we continue. Perhaps,” he finished with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, “it will lighten my mood.” The smile the Colonel flashed at him gave Paul little comfort.

He was some time, lighting a small oil stove and pouring water from a canteen into a dented tin pot. He took a moment to inspect Paul’s mess kit more closely, coming to silent conclusions about what he saw there, but saying nothing. Paul wondered how it was that the man spoke English. He chanced a question, knowing that he invited another sharp rebuke, but hoping to strike some accord with the man if he could.

“You speak English very well,” he flattered. “Were you educated in the West?”

The Colonel looked at him as though he had been interrupted by a discordant noise. But his eyes softened a bit and he answered. “Educated? I have been educated in many places. One must know his enemy if he is to fight him. Are you surprised I speak your language? Most British are when I first address them. Oh, the fun is in listening first, of course; listening to their idle chatter when they think me nothing more than an ignorant Muslim. The arrogance of the British is well known. They believe the rest of the world is here for their pleasure, and they have set themselves to meddling in the affairs of men in every quarter of the globe. They will learn. We will teach them.”

The Colonel seemed to delight in lecturing Paul now, who was clearly a captive audience. “I suppose it was inevitable that we would end up fighting the British one day. I think the Young Turks have found war with England more to their liking. With the Russians things did not go so well. That was Enver Pasha’s fault. He was worried about the Armenians again, and the Caucasus. The British were building two ships for the Sultan’s Navy, but Mr. Churchill thought better of giving them to us when they were finished. I think he knew we must fight one day as well. It is a pity that Enver Pasha did not know it. The Germans were only too eager to give us ships, and he used them to shell the Russian base at Odessa so he could have his little war with the Russians. He thought he would become a general, you see, though he had never even commanded as much as a regiment before. When the Russians declared war on us he had a fatwa read to declare a holy war in reprisal. Then he thought to lead our Holy Army of Islam into the Caucasus against the Russians. That did not go so well for us, but the Russians believed they were in danger nonetheless. They begged your English friends to help them, and the British came to attack the Dardanelles. Now we have war on every border.”

“You wear the Gallipoli Star,” said Paul eyeing the badge on the Colonel’s shirt. He realized that is was only called that in the West, and corrected himself. “The Iron Crescent is a sign of bravery, yes?”

The colonel gave him a sour look, but there was a hint of pride in his eyes. “You know it?” He thumbed the gilded star on his chest. “I fought with Mustapha Kemal at Sulva Bay. We taught the British their first lesson there. They had to learn again at the siege of Kut in Mesopotamia. That was a hard lesson. Do you know that they offered us two million pounds sterling for Townsend’s head? The English think they can buy what force of arms fails to deliver them in plunder. The have no honor in war. We should have run them out of Egypt long ago. If not for a few cackling chickens we might have done so! Yes, I was also with Djemal when he took 25,000 men across the Sinai on camels and tried to slip across the Suez. A few chickens gave us away in the dark that night. One of the squads had taken them along, against orders, because they grew tired of olives and biscuits. As we approached the canal the chickens got loose and alerted the British. So much for that adventure.” He sighed, grinding his coffee hard as he spoke, his voice laden with a note of discontent. “Now I am here, riding trains back and forth from Damascus to Amman and listening to Allenby’s guns. He may have stolen a march on us at Beersheba last week, but we will make him pay for the ground. Let him have Gaza, what is there?”

Paul was surprised that the Colonel spoke so freely. The story about the abortive attempt to cross the Suez was as significant to him as it was amusing to the Colonel. Chickens! Everyone thinks the great events of history turn on the decisions of generals and statesmen, but it was just as likely that the real hinge of fate here was a loose clasp on a chicken coop. He saw the errant little thread of causality dangling from the story, an insignificant moment of disobedience by a hungry squad of soldiers that may have given the whole operation away. It was just such a moment that he was seeking now; perhaps on this very train. He desperately wanted to know what day it was, and gain some sense of his location. He watched the Colonel working at his coffee, and wondered if he dared say anything more. The Colonel was slowly grinding the coffee beans in the bottom of a metal cup. Paul knew it was dangerous, but he chanced another remark.

“I have heard the thunder in the desert, but it is not the rain.” The sound returned to them in the distance, a dull rolling rumble at the edge of their awareness.

The Colonel gave him a dark glance. “Yes, that would be your British friends,” he said with a twist of derision in his voice. “Artillery. That is the one thing the British do well, I’m afraid. They do make good artillery. But we, too, have guns; and we know how to use them.”

His water was ready at the boil and he reached for the tin pot, pouring the steaming liquid into his cup. The aroma of coffee redoubled as the ground beans bloomed and a light brown foam welled at the lip of the cup. The Colonel leaned down to smell the dark, rich coffee, clearly pleased. “This is very fresh,” he said. “Where did you get it? I have not had coffee like this for many months.”

Paul hesitated, and then decided to simply tell the truth. “I brought it with me from America.”

“America? They do not grow coffee in America.”

“From San Francisco—where I live.” He hoped he might convince the man that he was not a British spy, so he rambled on. “It is imported there. I think the blend is Arabica, with beans from Sumatra as well.” He was beginning to think that a good cup of Major Dickason’s blend would work its wonders on the man and soften his mood.

“That is one thing the Arabs do well,” said the Colonel. “They make good coffee, though they put too much spice in it. I do not take it that way.” He stirred his cup slowly, looking at Paul with a little curiosity now, the hardness in his voice moderated somewhat. “And the Arabs also like to blow up my trains,” he added. “Did you know that, American? Perhaps you have been helping them.”

Paul was afraid the interrogation was going to begin again, but he thought it dangerous to remain silent at the remark. “I would not know how to go about it,” he said, with all honesty.

The Colonel smiled at the remark. “I wonder,” he said quietly. “The Bey may wonder as well when I bring you to Deraa. If you live so long.” He tacked that last bit on as he sipped at the coffee, a satisfied look on his face.

“You are going to Derra?” Paul could not get himself into any more trouble, so he ventured on. He wondered if he could ascertain what day it was. “I was hoping to reach there by week’s end.”

The Colonel looked as though he would laugh, but his mood shifted suddenly. “You are a bit too curious for one in your situation. You wish to go to Deraa? Why? Is there something there you wish to see?”

“The city,” said Paul. “The people.”

“The defensive works, perhaps; the gun emplacements? Notes for your history books, I suppose. You may think yourself a non-combatant, but I do not think the Bey will be so gracious in his assessment. Yes, I think I will save you for him. He fancies your kind: soft men; men of letters and words. We will stop in Deraa along the way and I will introduce you. He will enjoy your conversation. I do not!”

He sipped at his cup again. “But your coffee is good,” he finished with wry humor. “I think you are an American. But do not forget: the United States has joined the war now, and so you are just as much an enemy as the English. Yes! I have the reports here in my briefcase. The Germans have killed the first American soldiers in Europe only a few days ago. They will kill many more when the Russians go home to their revolution. Perhaps the generals have sent your likes into the area to cause trouble for us here, just as the British do with these Arabs. I’m afraid that is exactly what the Bey will think, my friend. And that is what I think as well. You are a spy.” He took a deep draught from his coffee cup and stood up, very suddenly. “Now,” he said with a dark grin, “you will tell me something of why you have really come to the desert, and why you wish to see our cities and towns.” He took hold of Paul’s chin, his grip hard and cold. “I cannot give you to the Bey without knowing these things. He will discover it all for himself, of course, but you will tell me first—and you will tell me now.”

The Colonel’s hand moved to Paul’s throat, and he swallowed hard as he felt the fingers tighten on his wind pipe. So much for Major Dickason’s blend, he thought. I should have brought Guatemala.

17

Kelly was studying the monitors, noting the final diagnostic numbers coming in on the time shift and feeling quite pleased with himself. His theory had worked! If a loop command was sent through the system during the tachyon infusion multiple signatures could be captured for storage in the pattern buffers. Theoretically, there could be as many signatures as the memory capacity allowed, and for each one he knew he could now time the particle density and decay sequences to initiate a jump to a new point on the continuum. It was a novel idea that no one had ever anticipated, a child of his own speculation that had been given a rough birthing in the emergency that had just transpired.

“I’ll call it a Ramer Loop,” he said to himself, almost forgetting that Maeve was still there, hovering over his shoulder and trying to make sense of the readouts.

“Are they on target?”

“Sure,” said Kelly, an air of jubilancy relieving the stress of the last fifteen minutes. “I got them both in tight on the coordinates. At least that’s what the system reads. Looks like one arrived a day ahead of the other, however.”

“Will they be on the right spatial coordinates?”

“I hope so.”

Maeve didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean you hope so? Can’t you tell?”

“Well, it depends if they’ve moved or not when they were on their original breaching point. This was just a temporal shift. I left the spatial variables as they were. The shift just moved them forward in time, that’s all. The only spatial variance would be the proximity algorithm—you know, so they won’t materialize inside a boulder or under water. That could separate them a bit. The quantum gravity matrix handles that. But if they wandered off at the original site, they’re likely to be off by that much on this shift. I wouldn’t worry about it. How far could they go?”

“But what about the time differential,” Maeve was still fishing, driven by her natural instinct to leave no stone unturned. She wanted things right, ever so right, and the untidy nature of this first breach of the continuum was unnerving. “They’ve only been gone a few minutes here, but in the alternate time they could have lived out years.”

“Theoretically.”

“Yes, theoretically—it’s all about the theory at this point, but we’re making it practical now. We’ve got to be careful, and we have to get it right. Isn’t there a way you can see about their spatial shift?”

Kelly thought for a minute. “Well, there should be a signal trace I could run down. Then I could do a comparison study on the spatial coordinates relative to the trace—”

“Run it down.” Maeve waved a hand at the consoles, gesturing randomly at the intimidating wall of machinery as she prodded Kelly to action.

“Now? I was going to work on the particle chamber and make sure it’s set right for the final retraction. If I don’t balance the element sampling right it could be critical.”

“You mean we might not get them back?”

“Look, we’ll get them back, OK?” Kelly gave her a frustrated look. “I just think I’d better fine tune the chamber to be sure. It will only take about ten minutes. Then I’ll run that comparison study for you, though by that time it won’t matter much. They are where they are, Maeve, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can only move them one more time, and that’s to bring them back here.”

Maeve sighed, but she understood what he was saying, nodding agreement. Kelly stood up and put his arm around her. “Hey, I know this has been hard on you—on all of us. Imagine what they must be going through. We’re doing everything we possibly can for them, and we’ll get them both home just fine. You’ll see.”

Maeve smiled, wanting to be persuaded, but still driven by the need to know, to have a sense of some certainty about it all. “I think I need some of that coffee Jen made,” she said.

“I’ll get you a cup.”

She saw him searching about to locate the pot and decided his time would be better spent elsewhere. “Don’t bother. Get started on that tune-up job you were talking about. I’ll get the coffee myself. We haven’t much time.”

“Right,” said Kelly, and he diverted to the chamber console.

Maeve spotted the coffee and retrieved a mug from a supply cabinet on the far wall. “I wonder where they ended up after the first shift,” she mused.

“What? God only knows,” said Kelly. “I suppose we could do a full diagnostic on the shift—we will do that, but there won’t be time tonight.”

“You said the variance factor was off exponentially.”

“Nasty little error, that one.” Kelly was already tinkering with the particle chamber settings, pleased that the element readings were holding stable and he seemed to have good control. The particle density was building up nicely after the shift, and he glanced at the clock, relieved to see that he had ample time before his final retraction. It was 3:20 AM.”

“What was the range of that error. Any way to do a little quick multiplication and see if you can ballpark it?”

“Oh, I did that earlier.”

Maeve gave him a long look. “Well?”

Kelly was focused on the task in front of him, but he paused, eyes rolling a moment as he considered. “They went for quite a ride, I think. Somewhere in the early Tertiary, or late—”

“How long ago was that?” Maeve did not immediately recognize the term and was waiting for a simple number. “Are you talking in hundreds of years, or thousands?”

Kelly smiled. “More like millions. Maybe sixty-five million years or so—give or take a few hundred thousand.”

Maeve practically choked on her coffee. “Sixty-five million years? God, Kelly. I had no idea they were that far off the target!”

“Like I said, it was either the early Tertiary or late Cretaceous.”

“Then we’re talking dinosaurs here?” Maeve was amazed.

“A real Crichton-Spielberg moment,” said Kelly with a laugh. “I’ll bet they were scared shitless. Hopefully, they were only there for a brief time. I’m sure they probably figured out they were off target. I mean, the place was a seabed just a few thousand years before they showed up.”

“God, what if it still was a seabed.” She assumed the worst.

“Relax, they’d land at the surface. The references are almost foolproof.”

“How would you like to be plopped down in the middle of a primordial sea and forced to swim for the nearest shore in Arabic robes. Lord, Kelly, how can you take this so calmly! Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”

“What, so you could worry about it? Look, I’m sorry. I was keying data fast and I made a mistake. I got them out of there as quickly as I could.”

“Well how do we even know they’re still alive?”

“We don’t know.” Kelly put it as plainly as he could. “We’ve just got to have a little faith, that’s all.”

She was going to say something, but took a sip of coffee instead, imposing an interval of calm on herself. She stared at the control consoles, fighting off the rising sense of frustration and helplessness that had been preying upon her since the call from her mother came in. Something had happened there, she thought. Just as Kelly pressed his looping command I had a strange sense of déjà vu. I could hear my mother’s voice resonating, echoing in my head over and over, and then it just vanished. She glanced at the phone, thinking about the moment. What was it the stranger had said? We’re in a deep void. Whatever we’ve done to the time lines will be determined in the next few minutes and, until then, the universe is holding its breath.

Kelly had returned to his chamber controls, working away as if nothing was wrong at all. He was supposed to be dead. She knew he must be feeling something about all of this, but he was able to set his emotions aside for the moment and focus on the task at hand. Every thing he did now, every calculation, every twist of a dial or flick of a switch, was subtly altering the shape of the world they had all been living in before. Kelly was a Free Variable. He was alive for some reason, and he was right, they had to have a little faith in the things that reason might bring.

She chided herself, watching his example, and realized she had been quite hard on him when it seemed like things were spinning out of control. He was doing the best he could, and it was amazing to her that he could manipulate the hardware and software as he did. Calculating new temporal coordinates in his head on the fly had been an incredible feat, but he pulled it off. The bank of machinery seemed so impersonal and unfeeling to her, like a lot of technology did. As if cars and televisions and computers were not enough, now there were going to be time machines to deal with.

Outcomes and Consequences—that was her charge. Even though she had been as excited as all the other senior team members at the prospect of success, the reality of it all was much more intimidating than she thought it would be. They could travel in time. It all worked! All of Paul’s time theory was a real phenomena now. The glossary of novel terms he dreamt up were all going to form the root of an entire new lexicon of thought and experience for humans. She thought back to the last time a project of this scope had been attempted, the Manhattan project during World War Two. They were going to unleash the power of the atom for the first time. What was it Oppenheimer had said? ‘Now I am become God, the destroyer of all things.’

The Arch made that discovery pale by comparison. They had gone to great pains to avoid taking government funding for the project. It had all been achieved with private money and corporate donations, leasing out facilities and equipment wherever possible. The government had exercised routine permitting authority but, as far as they were concerned, this was all a theoretical study project. The few inspectors they had entertained seemed politely ignorant of the physics involved, and heedless of the implication should the project succeed. They never thought it was anything more than a bunch of arcane science wizards playing with ideas. Had they known we were actually going to make a practical attempt…

Visions of men in black suits with earpieces and hand guns flooded into her mind, born of a hundred science fiction movies and X-Files episodes. She shuddered to realize that the cliché images would probably play out just that way now. When the team announced that they had actually made the theory real—actually traveled in time, the government was going to descend on the project like a pack of vultures. Now that their Outcome had been proven to be a practical reality, the resulting Consequences were going to be mind-boggling. She looked ahead, realizing the staggering implications of the technology Kelly was quietly tuning in the corner alcove. They could change things; they could change anything! Now they were not merely made destroyers, but creators as well. It was no metaphor. They had become Gods. They could go back and alter the time line in any way they chose. There was a part of her that never believed it could be possible. Now it was.

A complete government lock-down on the facility would be inevitable, she knew. They would move in and take control at once. The whole thing would be surrounded with the highest possible security, and the military-industrial establishment that Eisenhower had once warned of was going to shift into high gear. Now there would be time wars, where competing interests would battle for control of the future through clever infections of the past. If they wanted someone killed, they would just go back and prune the family tree a bit. If they wanted funding they could just go back and buy lots of a few well chosen stocks and tuck them away in a holding company.

These were just the simplest possible examples that came to her mind. The Arch made anything possible—anything at all. And the strangest thing about it was that no one would ever know about it. The time-line would change, and all would seem as though it was quietly the same. Only a select few, those who held forth in the intervals of void during the missions, like this one, would ever know or recall the way things once were. The whole universe outside the void would rewrite itself but, to those inside, at the hub of the wheel, the memory of the old life would live on, a last faint recollection of the universe as it once was.

This was Paul’s theory—that while everything physical would change in the new time-line, the living recollection of people protected in a Deep Nexus would remain unaltered. The void was both a place and an experience. It had something to do with human consciousness—a living, vibrating energy of the soul that was unfathomable and yet so real. She would remember her mother’s phone call forever, but her mother might never make the call.

She shook herself, the eerie feeling of Paradox creeping into her thinking now like a wolf in the dark. As she looked at the clock, watching the seconds tick away, she wondered if things had not already changed. Her eyes shifted to the desk drawer where they had hidden Nordhausen’s copy of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. According to the theory if the book survived it would be subtly altered. Perhaps it was already different, she thought. Perhaps she had an answer to the most immediate question right there in the desk. Were they alive or dead? Did they succeed or fail? All she had to do was go over and open the drawer.

She drifted over to the desk, setting her coffee mug on the table top with an unsteady hand. A feeling of intense anxiety thrummed in her chest. She was the one who berated Kelly not to open the book until at least four AM. She looked at the clock, watching the minutes slip away. The tension was almost too much for her.

Kelly finished what he was doing and turned to look for her. He seemed startled by what he saw. “What’s wrong, Maeve?”

She saw him moving towards her, as though in slow motion. “Maeve…?”

18

“Mokhaiam,” the man flashed a toothless grin at Nordhausen, gesturing towards a small fire where had dug out a shallow pit in the nook of a low depression. “Shurba,” he said, pointing at a pot on the fire. He indicated for Nordhausen to sit, smiling graciously when he did and offering a small bow.

To the professor’s surprise, his captor, now apparently his host, put two fingers to his lips and made a loud whistle. Nordhausen instinctively craned his neck about, thinking it was some signal that would spell no good for him. Instead he saw another man emerge from the darkness and approach the camp, and it was soon obvious that the two were in league. They began speaking to one another in Arabic, and Nordhausen tried to get some sense of what they were saying by listening to the tone of their voices.

“Well Hassan, we have caught more than a desert hare! Who is he?”

“Not Serahin, as we thought. Look at his face. He is an Englishman. Perhaps a friend of El Aurens, yes? He spoke that name to me earlier when I caught him.”

“But what is he doing here?”

“Who can say? Perhaps he means to find Aurens in the desert. He is close by, you know.”

“You have seen him today?”

“I have heard of his doings. He comes from Abu Sawana tonight. He was looking for a bridge near Tell el Shehab, but nothing happened there. One of the Serahin porters dropped his rifle, or so I have heard. Of course he claimed the strap came unfastened, but no matter. It was enough to alert the Turks at the bridge. The Serahin grew restless when the Turkish guards fired and they threw the gelatine explosives into the ravine! They are useless. Aurens should have come to us for men.”

“But Tell el Shehab is nearly two days march from here. Is this true?”

“I have heard it told this way. They gave up their quest for the bridge there and lit up the whole plain as they fled east into the desert. The dogs are still barking at their heels, but Aurens escaped. They reached the rail line at daybreak yesterday, cutting the telegraph wires for spite. They must do something, yes? So now it is said that they wish to blow up a train—perhaps tomorrow!”

“Then this man is with Aurens party? Another Englishman?”

“Perhaps so. He may have fallen behind when Aurens fled east. They left a few lame camels at Abayda before they went for the bridge, and sent many men back to Abu Sawana. Perhaps he is sick, this one. He is certainly lost.”

“Yes, he seems very upset. Did you strike him, brother?”

“On my honor, I did not! You heard him yourself. He must have seen our campfire. But any man who would bellow like a wild camel on a night like this may very well be sick. Perhaps we should feed him.”

“Yes, feed him. You may give him my portion of the soup. I can wait until morning. Let us make him a coffee as well.”

Nordhausen knew nothing of what the men had said, though he heard the name Aurens spoken many times. They can’t believe I’m Lawrence, he thought, somewhat amused with his situation. Lawrence could speak Arabic, and they certainly know that I am ignorant on that count. Now he watched closely as one man set about warming a thin broth in a simple tin cup. The thought that he had been doing that very same thing just a few hours—or fifty million years ago—brought an inward smile to the professor. The other man was rummaging at a threadbare bundle, looking for something. They eyed him with great curiosity, giving him sidelong glances as they worked at the fire. He saw that the second man was trying to make coffee. The aroma of Arabica beans was a sweet solace to him, and he instinctively reached for the bundle of Major Dickason’s blend, patting his robes.

The men gave him a cautious look, but saw they he meant no harm and continued with their chores at the fire. Now what’s happened to the coffee, he wondered? I suppose I left it back in the Cretaceous! The thought twisted in his mind with a cruel sense of incredulity. He could still scarcely believe they had been there! Maeve was not going to like this, he thought. She’ll wag her finger at us and lecture us both for littering the time line. Well, it can’t be helped now.

The toothless man that had found him extended the warm cup and Nordhausen took it with a gracious smile. They both watched him very carefully as he tipped the cup and sipped the broth. It had a pungent taste, with a lot of cardamom spice as well. He slurped it down, and the two Arabs smiled at one another, obviously pleased. When he had finished, the second man, shorter and built more slightly than the first, began to pour a small kettle of hot water into a gourd. The aroma of the coffee was soon all that Nordhausen could think of.

He waited patiently as they served him in a small ceramic cup. When he sipped it he found that it was very strong, and sickly sweet with spice. He was grateful nonetheless, and nodded his approval while the Arabs smiled and took their portion. They sat about the fire for some time, sipping their coffee and listening to the night. The rain had abated, but there was still a low rumble in the distance. Nordhausen wondered if another front was moving in from the west, but the winds were wrong. He realized, at last, that he must be hearing the sound of the guns on the real front, many miles to the west at Gaza. He chanced to speak.

“Allenby,” he pointed west at the sound, and the Arabs gave him a blank look.

One man smiled knowingly. “English,” he said. “Boom, boom, boom.” He mimicked the sound of explosions.

“Yes,” said Nordhausen. “Artillery. English guns, or perhaps Turkish guns.” He smiled at them, but suddenly realized that the sound of the guns could be a clue to the date. He searched his mind, trying to recall the history he had been cramming into his head before they left. The whole point of this raid was that Lawrence was trying to create a distraction and disrupt the Turkish supply route on the rail line heading west from Deraa. The Yarmuk bridge over the gorge near Tell el Shehab was his primary objective, but they were discovered as they were trying to position the gelatine charges and the operation was a failure.

Allenby surprised the Turks at Beersheba on the last day of October, and the front, static for many months, suddenly came unhinged. It took Allenby a week or so to actually turn the flank at Beersheba, but with that place compromised on their left, the Turks gave up their positions anchored on the coast near Gaza and retreated north.

Nordhausen listened to the guns, smiling inwardly at the irony of the situation. The fighting in Gaza had started here in 1917, and it would continue on, in one way or another, for the next hundred years. Allenby would be pushing up the coast now, and closing on Junction Station, a key depot along the line to Jerusalem. He looked for the moon again, remembering that it would be half on the 7^th and waning to dark on the 14^th. It was somewhere between now, a waning crescent. Whatever Kelly did, he was very close to the target date they wanted, assuming they had the right month or year. He might just be listening to the first or second battle for Gaza in the distant west. They had been fought months before in March and April. He strained to see the sky, frustrated by the rifts of dark gray clouds. No, he thought. This is not the spring. It is Autumn. I’m listening to the third battle of Gaza and the advance on Junction Station. I’m sure of it.

He sipped his coffee, and his mind was clarified by the caffeine. A sudden thought came to him and he threw out a word to his Arab hosts. “Minifir,” he said, looking from one to the other.

The men reacted at once, staring at one another and then at Nordhausen with clear recognition.

“Minifir,” the professor said again. “I go there.” He patted his chest, then walked his fingers on the damp ground. “To Minifir. Yes?”

“He must be with Aurens,” the toothless man spoke to his brother. “Allah be praised. That would be the place they will look for a train tomorrow! This one may be lost.”

“He wishes to rejoin Aurens at Minifir.” The slight man returned, and he noted how their strange English guest in the robes of a Sherif reacted, his eyes brightening at the word. “I think we should take him there, Hassan. Perhaps we will be given some reward.” Enthusiasm brought life to his weathered, brown face, and his eyes, always moving this way and that, seemed to reflect the greed in his heart.

“We may even be allowed to join the raiding party!” The toothless man flashed a wide grin. “There will certainly be plunder when they blow up the train.”

“Yes, plunder! And if we take this man to Minifir we will certainly have a part in that. It would only be just, yes?”

“God’s will, my brother. But if we are to go to Minifir we cannot stay here tonight. We must go as soon as possible.”

“I will stow the camp.” The slight man began to hastily snatch up odds and ends about the campfire and stuff them into a burlap sack. “Minifir!” he smiled, and he seemed very pleased.

Nordhausen was still holding his small earthenware cup of coffee limply in one hand as he watched. “Yes,” he said, returning the man’s smile. “Minifir.” Then he realized that the men were gathering up their effects and making ready to break camp. “You mean now?” Nordhausen looked from one man to the other.

“Ana ismee, Hassan,” the toothless man said to him as he stood up. He indicated himself, placing both hands on his chest. Then he pointed at the other man. “Hakeem,” he said. The slight man nodded his head, and the professor followed their example, placing a hand over his heart.

“Nordhausen,” he exclaimed, getting a broad smile in return.

The toothless man named Hassan pointed into the darkness of the desert. “Kidha Minifir!”

They were soon ready to go, and Nordhausen struggled up, immediately feeling the pinch of the boots that were still too tight. He hoped the place was not far. He was very tired, though the soup and coffee had helped to restore him somewhat. His robes and uniform had dried out a bit while he sat by the fire and he gathered them close about him, bracing himself for what might be a long, cold march. Still, he was inwardly elated at the chance that had brought him upon these two men.

Paul is right, he thought. Great events turn on the insignificant, and the odd chance that pricks your finger as you muddle through the haystack of time. Where was Paul, he wondered? Would he have as much luck in the desert tonight? Nordhausen realized that he could lose all contact with him if he wandered off with these two Arabs now. There was nothing else he could do, however, and he set off, his feet aching with each step he took.