Meridian

19

When the Colonel’s fingers tightened on Paul’s throat he had visions of Lawrence in Deraa, and a night of scalding torture at the hands of this man. Wasn’t that what he intended? He was going to take me to the Bey, perhaps the very same man Lawrence would meet next year when the Arab campaign came this far north again after Jerusalem fell. He gasped for his breath, desperately thinking what he should do. If I resist, he thought, the Colonel will undoubtedly ratchet up his administrations until the words are torn from me in agony. But if I were to tell him what he wants—to tell him the truth, he would not believe me.

It was a strange moment of humor, flashing through his mind in the flickering of a few seconds as he imagined the Colonel’s reaction when he burst out that he was come from the far future to look for a man named Masaui. Why? He did not know, though it was certainly a matter of life or death. If Masaui lived, then he must die—if he died, then he must live. He could not say any of that, for it would not ease his pain in the slightest to tell this man the truth. The only course, then, was to lie. But he had to lie convincingly, or the man was likely to keep digging, to keep choking, until the breath of life would be lost to them all.

What can I say that would be believable and yet not reveal anything that might cause havoc in the time line? His mind reached for any strand that might support him in the history, even as his hands tightened on the leather straps that bound him. He decided to chance something, his eyes signaling his submission more than anything else, as he could not speak with the Colonel’s hand tight on his throat.

“You wish to speak?” The Colonel’s had moved from his throat to grasp at his chin. “You wish to tell me why you are here now, and what mischief you plan?” He released Paul with a hard jolt, clearly disgusted. “A Turkish soldier would have endured much more. You Americans are weak.”

Paul choked, trying to clear his throat. “You would have your way in the end,” he croaked, his voice barely a whisper.

“That is so,” said the Colonel. He could see that Paul could barely speak, and poured a small measure of water into a cup, raising it to Paul’s lips to allow him a drink.

“Thank you,” Paul managed to get the words out.

“No, do not thank me. I am not gracious. Believe me, you will get far worse than that if you spin out lies. Now tell me: why are you here?”

Paul met the man’s eyes briefly, and ventured out onto the thin ice between them. “The bridge,” he said haltingly. Nordhausen had told him something about a bridge. Where was it? Yarmuk! Perhaps he could cover his retreat with a small cloak of truth after all. “They were going for the bridge at Yarmuk.”

“Yarmuk? The gorge near Tell el Shehab?”

“Yes,” Paul whispered. “It controls the rail line out of Deraa back of Turkish lines in front of Jerusalem. They were trying to choke your supply lines. I was to find the rail line and create a diversion here, so that Lawrence could pass west unhindered.”

“Ah… Lawrence! Yes, we have heard of him. He has been causing a great deal of trouble. So now the Americans think to get in on the act, do they?” He gave Paul a cruel look, his eyes searching him to ferret out any hint of deception. Paul only hoped that the information he revealed was not given too early. If Kelly had the shift coordinates right this time, the attempt must be underway now, or else it has already failed, he thought. In any case, the Colonel will have to send a telegraph to give warning of this, or at least try and get confirmation. Lawrence and his men cut the telegraph wires when they reached the rail line after fleeing from the bridge. The message would never get through, but the Colonel would try to send it just the same. It could buy him an interval of peace so he could gather his wits and figure a way out of this dilemma.

“There is something about you I do not like…” The Colonel let the words hang for a time, threatening. “You are no soldier, and you are no spy, yet you do the work of a spy just the same. You wear Arab robes badly, and British kit beneath—and yet you are neither. You are an American, you say, but I think there is something odd about you. Very odd….”

Paul averted his eyes, fearing to say more. The Colonel strode back and forth in front of him, then paused, leaning on the table as he stared at him. He picked up his coffee cup and took another long sip, savoring it as he came to some silent conclusion in his mind.

“I will see about this,” he said in a menacing tone. “It will be simple enough to determine the truth of this.” He was up and moving to the back of the small coach, reaching for a cord that dangled from the ceiling. A hard jerk set a bell clanging, and Paul realized that he must be summoning his guards again. The sound of boots crunching on the gravel of the rail bed came in hasty response.

The Colonel walked slowly to the door, his eyes on Paul, dark and hostile. The guards arrived and the Colonel spoke to them in the hard guttural of Turkish. Then he stepped through the entrance and was gone.

Paul was alone in the coach now, though he knew the Colonel must have posted the guards outside. The door was slightly ajar, and he could hear the men speaking in low voices, though he could not see them. He tried his bonds again, frustrated by the thick leather straps. He pulled hard, knowing it was probably futile, but was suddenly surprised that the strap gave way! The stitching on the loop of leather where the buckle was attached had come undone, and the strap slid open, releasing its tight grip on his hands. One of the guards outside must have heard him move, and the door squeaked open.

Paul froze, keeping his arms extended overhead and closing his eyes. He squinted and saw the silhouette of a man at the entrance against the early light of a gray morning. The man seemed to chortle to himself, then turned and went back down the steps, convinced that Paul was strung up for the Colonel’s pleasure and represented no threat. Undoubtedly, they had witnessed many such scenes before.

Paul’s arms ached, and he moved them ever so slowly, careful not to let the buckle clink on the metal bar. He extricated himself, realizing that it was dangerous to move at all. Still, he had to do something. He could not simply wait here until the Colonel returned with more questions. He swallowed hard, his throat still sore where the man had choked him before he was wise enough to speak. The early dawn was casting its dull, sallow light through a window at the far end of the coach. He considered trying to make for it, hoping his boots would not happen upon some loose floorboard and give his movement away.

At that moment there was a high pitched squeal from the front of the train. A subtle vibration told Paul that the engine was churning up again, making ready to resume the journey. There was a sound of footsteps on the outer landing, and Paul reached for the overhead bar again, extending his arms as before. To his surprise and relief the door was pulled shut, and he heard the sound of a bolt securing it from the outside. The train jolted, then began to move. For a time, at least, he was going to be locked away in the Colonel’s coach. The guards undoubtedly remained outside, riding on the outer porch.

He knew the Colonel would return in time. He probably went forward see about getting a telegraph sent. The train started to move again, and he was stranded somewhere along the line, probably angry at the engineer. Paul knew that he didn’t have much time. If the Colonel boarded another car, he might have a brief interval of peace, but if he was still outside on the rail bed it would be a simple matter to wait until his coach came up from behind so he could jump on board.

What day was it? That was the one burning question still in Paul’s mind. He had to locate himself on the continuum and determine what he might do. With no other recourse, he searched about, thinking he might find something to indicate the date. A convenient calendar was too much to hope for, but he soon spied a battered leather brief on the floor beside the desk where the Colonel had been sitting. Recollections of Maeve’s admonition to Nordhausen came to him again. She had warned him not to touch anything in Shakespeare’s office at the Globe, worried that he would do something to contaminate the time line. Paul had little choice, he knew. What harm could he do by inspecting the brief?

He moved cautiously, grateful that the sound of the train would now cover his movements. A moment later he had the brief open and was squinting at a sheaf of papers inside. It appeared to be a long list of names, perhaps a passenger manifest or troop roster, but he could see no information to indicate what day it might be. He shuffled through the papers, noting a series of ink check marks next to a few of the names. The Colonel had been going over the list, and picking out certain individuals—all Arabic. He was just about to give up his quest when his eye fell on a name that shook him with its importance: Masaui! He looked closely and saw that the ink pen had started to scratch a mark there, but had failed. Masaui was on this train. He was here, and the Colonel was just about to mark off his name when the guards interrupted him.

He considered his situation, struggling to remember the long discussion he had with Maeve about the three trains. The first train was irrelevant, they had concluded. The second train, the one Lawrence blew up in his time line, was the key. That was the doom they were struggling to overturn. If that train passed unhindered they hoped it would be enough to alter the fate of Masaui. The first train took them by surprise, he remembered. It came from the north in the early morning and they did not see it in the rain and mist. The second train came at mid-day—from the south! The Colonel said this train was heading for Damascus. Yes, he had threatened to drop him off for a session with the Bey when they reached Deraa, not far north of Kilometer 172 where Lawrence was planning his raid.

He knew at once that he was on the second train, and Masaui was here with him, perhaps a passenger or even a Turkish soldier. Lord, thought Paul, he might be one of the guards right outside this door for all I know. He thought the better of that, for if Masaui was here, and his doom was death in Lawrence’s attack, then he must be farther forward on the train. The rear coaches were always the safest because the raiders primary intent was to destroy the valuable engines.

As he considered the situation a great doubt began to settle on him. The names on the list he had found cast a shadow on his thinking. What if they were to be selected out for some reason, and possibly assigned elsewhere; even put off the train? There were depot stations every twenty kilometers along the rail line. It appeared that Masaui had been intended for inclusion in the group, but his name was not clearly marked. What if this selection ended up saving these men from whatever fate this train was to suffer in the hours ahead? It would be a simple matter to mark the name. Could the simple stroke of an ink pen be a lever strong enough to move distant events in the future? He realized he could never be sure. He was muddling about, uncertain of what to do. Nordhausen was right: they could have researched this mission for months before having any chance at understanding the immensely complex relationships that drove the continuum forward.

How could he possibly intervene on Masaui’s behalf? What was he to do, burst out and shout the man’s name in the hopes he would turn his head with sudden recognition? Even if he did find him, what could he say that the man would understand? What could he do? Suppose he succeeded, and then found that Masaui needed to die here today instead? This simple black and white was suddenly marred by muddying shades of gray, confusing him even more.

No, if he was to do anything at all it must be something to spare this train. He had to rely on the single important clue in the note they found—Kilometer 172. He discarded his worry that the selection on the roster might be something that would spare Masaui. The clue from the coat pocket of the future was very pointed. If Masaui was here, then he was fated to arrive at Kilometer 172. But what should he do? Should he warn the Turks that Arabs were lying in wait for them at Minifir? If he did that he risked exposing Lawrence to unacceptable danger. His mind wrestled with the problem. He was on the second train; heading north. This must be the dawn of November 10^th, he thought.

He tried to remember things that Nordhausen had told him about the history. By now Lawrence and his men would be waiting at Minifir, and the last of the gelatine charges would be laid under a low arch over a defile at the base of that hill. It was probably six or seven in the morning now, and this train was somewhere north of Amman, heading for a fateful rendezvous at mid-day. He had about six hours then, another cruel six hour interval where he could act to do something to spare this train. If he could manage it somehow, and survive, the final fail-safe retraction scheme should pull him out.

Where was Nordhausen? What was he doing? Was he here on this temporal reference point, or still trapped in the late Cretaceous? Something told him that Nordhausen had shifted forward in time as well. He’s probably doing the same thing I am, thought Paul, just trying to figure out where he is and decide what to do about it. One of us, he knew, has to succeed.

20

“What’s wrong, Maeve?” Kelly was up from his chair, moving quickly to Maeve’s side where she stood near the desk. Her hand was shaking and she seemed distraught, as though struck by some traumatic realization. As Kelly reached her, she settled into a chair by the desk, pale and drawn. When she looked at him her eyes concealed something, yet he saw fear there, and concern.

“I’ll… I’ll be alright,” she said softly. “I guess this has all been a bit much for me. I’ve been up since eight AM yesterday, and trying to run on coffee. I get a bit shaky when I haven’t eaten, that’s all.”

“You sure?” He was not quite convinced.

“Really, I’ll be fine. I just needed to get off my feet for a few moments.”

Kelly waved his hands about slowly, as if to test the air around her. “You aren’t planning to go and vanish on me now, are you?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said.

“Well, there’s bound to be something to eat around here. Where’s Jen?”

“You sent her down stairs to see about the power.”

“Yes…” Kelly’s attention drifted and his gaze was pulled to the main console again. He looked at the clock. “Shouldn’t be long now. I hope that power is stable. The city is going to hate us tomorrow, but I’m going to leave the outside taps in place until we complete the retraction sequence. Can you hang on for a few minutes? Then we can all celebrate and go out and get a big breakfast somewhere.”

“Right…” She gave him a halfhearted smile as he slipped away with a backward glance in return. When she was certain he was safely preoccupied with his work on the operations boards her gaze wandered to the desk drawer where they had hidden Nordhausen’s copy of the Seven Pillars away. She was possessed with an almost irresistible urge to open the drawer. The answer to a question she had been silently asking herself all evening was right there, unless it was still too early. They should wait until four AM. That would be eleven minutes before the first waves were scheduled to hit on the coast near Cape Hatteras. The tsunami sequence would ripple down the Eastern Seaboard after that, and the time line would be so irrevocably damaged that it would become unchangeable.

The sense of anxiety that she felt was almost paralyzing. The second hands were ticking away, but the time seemed to slip by with agonizing slowness. She knew that Paul and Robert could be living out hours or days in the past, perhaps struggling for their very lives. All she had to do was wait another fifteen or twenty minutes, but it seemed an impossible burden. She started to reach for the drawer handle, then stopped herself, exerting all her willpower to suspend the motion of her hand. I can’t, she urged herself inwardly. I’ve just got to wait it out.

She looked at Kelly, almost longingly now, tears starting at the corners of her eyes. By great effort, she composed herself, brushing the tears away as she watched him. Then she noticed that tense, silent alertness that always indicated he was calculating something in his head. He was leaning in, peering at one of the monitors, and the look on his face began to change.

“Hello…” He muttered to himself, but she was immediately aware that something was amiss. She forced herself to her feet, glancing at the desk drawer one last time as she made her way softly to his side.

“Something up?” Her voice carried the question with as little insistence as possible, almost afraid to learn that anything else could be wrong with this mission.

“Integrity…” Kelly was slowly adjusting a dial, somewhat disgruntled, as though he was trying to tune in bad TV reception. “The integrity is a bit loose on one of the patterns.”

Maeve forced herself to watch for a moment before she asked him to explain that. Under normal circumstances she would have pulled it out of him immediately, but not now, not with the clock ticking away in her mind and heart; not with the fear she hid inside like an infant swaddled in uncertainty.

“This isn’t good…” Kelly was speaking more to himself now than Maeve, but she let it pass, in spite of the sense of alarm that continued to well within her. He was toggling switches, and shifting sideways to look at the information on another flat-panel monitor, his elbow leaning heavily on the desk, chin in hand.

“Shit,” he said. “This thing is getting strange on me now.”

She bit her lip, waiting. He looked around and saw the obvious emotion on her face and apologized. “Sorry, Maeve. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging like that. Look, could you yell down and see if you can get Jen up here? Ask her if the turbines are OK. I’m going to need some volts here in a second.”

She wanted to stay and find out what was wrong, but she knew it would only distract him. Her fears would inspire one question after another, and the answers would never be enough to dispel that awful sense of doubt she felt now. She nodded to him and started off, knowing that he would need all his attention and powers of concentration now.

Kelly returned to his monitors with his own doubts as well. The integrity on one of the patterns had begun to loosen up. It was starting to look like a pre-retraction scatter, yet the chamber wasn’t timed to pull them out until eleven after four. He had re-adjusted the time himself before he moved them forward on the original target coordinates. That maneuver had used the primary pattern signatures, but it worked. Now this second, and final, pattern signature was showing signs of definite integrity loss. Was it a real phenomenon, or simply a hardware failure? He was flipping one diagnostic switch after another, and everything was still in the green on systems and memory. Yet something was clearly wrong. As the seconds passed he realized that they were going to lose their integrity on the alternate time line if he didn’t do something about it. A retraction sequence was building up on its own!

He squinted at the readings… No… It was only affecting one of the two patterns. The other was holding its integrity well. His mind struggled with the problem. When they shifted forward in time, there had been a slight variance on the synchronization. They moved, but as the centuries fled in their wake, one of the two patterns began to fall ever so slightly behind. The actual error was very small when the shift concluded, only hours off the target. Now he realized that the synchronization module was having difficulty with the variance as they approached retraction time. It wanted them together, and they had become separated, both temporally and most likely spatially as well. The sync processors were probably working at full bore right now, he thought. In fact, he wagered the sync module might actually be responsible for the integrity loss.

He flipped a switch, checking his hunch, and immediately saw that he was correct. The sync module was keyed to the fail-safe routines in the programming. If something went askew on the sync it was programmed to compensate. Now Kelly knew what was happening. The module lost its handle on them as a pair, he thought. It wants to bring them home one at a time.

Maeve was back, with Jen running at her heels. They were both breathless from coming up the stairs, and Maeve looked really pale, as though the extra effort without food or sleep was wearing her down.

“You can have ninety-five percent,” Jen called. “Tom says that he’ll have another five percent in ten minutes. The turbines are looking good.”

“Thank God for that,” said Kelly, but his attention was immediately pulled to the particle chamber. “This is going to be close.”

Maeve watched him run to the chamber infusion control station, sure that something was very wrong again. She wanted to go to him and drag out the problem so she could help carry the burden, but instead she reached for the back of a chair, bracing herself. Jen saw her hand slip, and gave her a concerned look.

“You OK, Miss Lindford?

“I’ll be fine,” Maeve started to wave her off; then thought again. “Jen, is there anything to eat? I’m just famished.” She settled onto the chair, eyes following Kelly’s every movement.

“Hey, I brought a sandwich with me and only ate half. Wait a second. I’ll get you something to drink as well.”

“Thanks,” Maeve smiled, but her attention was on Kelly again at once. It was as if she was afraid to take her eyes off him. She wanted to shout at him to tell her what was going on, but she restrained herself. He said the integrity was off. Now he’s at the infusion chamber and he’s been worrying about the power. That can only mean a retraction scheme is in the works. But it’s too early! She looked at the clock and saw that it was only 3:50 AM. They had another ten minutes until the retraction processors were supposed to kick in. She dimly remembered something Kelly had done with the pattern buffers. He had been looking for memory in the retraction module, and something was taking up space. He had to delete one of the two retraction schemes in order to make room for his shift data. Now there was only one retraction scheme left.

She couldn’t bear it any longer, forcing herself to get up go to him. “This doesn’t look good,” she said softly.

Kelly looked over his shoulder. “Can’t explain everything now, but stay close. I’m going to need some help here in a second.”

“They’re moving,” she said, a dullness in her voice, as though it had already happened and there was nothing they could do about it now.

“Yes, one of them is starting to slip. The sync had trouble and the fail-safe routines kicked in. The module decided it couldn’t bring them both home at once, so it’s pulling someone out now. I’ve got to reset the infusion density readings fast! Otherwise there won’t be enough gas in the tank to get the other one home. It’s complicated…” He gave her a quick glance, hoping he had said enough to deflect another question. Thankfully, she said nothing.

Jen came up with half a sandwich and a can of soda. “Are we doing the retraction now?” She handed the food to Maeve and Kelly waved her into a chair to his left.

“Get on the retraction module, Jen. I want you to enable on my command. Understand?”

“Sure,” she said, a bit bewildered, but moving more on reflex than anything else.

“Maeve? Can you keep an eye on the integrity readout?”

“I’m on it.” Maeve turned to find the right monitor, and soon they were all hunched forward over their screens, though Maeve kept casting sidelong glances at Kelly as she watched the readings.

“What’s the integrity?” Kelly was still moving dials, making fine adjustments to the particle chamber density.

“Number two is holding fine, the other is falling toward the yellow.”

“Shit!” Kelly vented some steam and made a last adjustment. “OK, that will have to do. If that integrity falls below eighty percent I want you to yell at me. OK?”

“It’s at eighty-three, but still moving.”

Kelly ran to the logarithmic station and was on a chair at the keyboard in a flash. His fingers moved in a blur as he typed. The focus on his features was intense. Maeve watched the integrity reading fall through eighty-two percent, but said nothing. She wanted him to give his full attention to the task before him.

Kelly finished his entry and gave the send command. Processors moved at the speed of light, but it seemed an eerie stillness had settled over the room. They were all breathless, suspended in the passage of a few brief seconds that stretched out to an eternity. Then Kelly moved. He had his answer and he slid back from the workstation, his chair rolling madly across the tiled floor on its wheels as he scudded over to the main control panel. He checked the power and was relieved to see it was steady at ninety-five percent.

“On my mark… Now Jen! Enable the retraction scheme on pattern one.”

“Pattern one?” Jen was momentarily lost. Her eyes glazed across the controls, looking for a familiar anchor.

“Toggle the number one switch and hit enter!” Kelly shouted at her, and she moved at last.

There was a humming sound as the module came to life. Kelly fed a last second variable into the system and the module picked it up from the logarithmic generator. He was already moving off his chair and running toward the particle chamber controls. “Watch that retraction line, Jen. Are we green?”

“Looks good—Green one hundred.”

“Integrity?”

Maeve shook herself. “Eighty-one point three.”

“OK… the chamber is responding. Density looks good.

“Integrity below eighty!” Maeve gave him a pleading look.

“Damn it!” Kelly ran back to the retraction module. “This is going to be right on the edge.”

Jen could see what he was worried about. The line was moving, scudding forward on the temporal monitor, but fading slightly as it went. The integrity was slipping into the yellow. She suddenly remembered Paul’s last words to her before he left. “What about the focal routines on terminal three?” She gave Kelly a questioning look.

The information took a second to register in Kelly’s thoughts. Terminal three? Yes! That was the code someone had entered into the module. He had to dump one of his retraction schemes to enable the last shift because it was taking up so much room. “What exactly did he say to you, Jen?”

“Well, he said to watch the retraction closely, and if there was a problem I was supposed to—”

“Enable the focal routines on terminal three!” Kelly finished for her and he was already reaching over her for the switch, flipping it on with a terse motion.

“That’s helping!” Maeve called from the other side of the console. “Integrity has jumped three percent… Five percent. It’s over ninety now.” Her voice carried the first note of hope she had felt for some time.

“Good for you, Paul,” Kelly breathed. “Good for you, old buddy.” He eased back, heaving a great sigh of relief. “Well, we may just pull this thing off after all.” He gave them a broad smile.

Jen sighed with relief. “I wonder which one is coming back,” she said. “Will it be Doctor Dorland, or Professor Nordhausen?”

Kelly gave her a smile. “Well,” he said, “we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we.”

21

They were some time, traveling over hard, rocky ground broken by occasional swathes of wet sand. Each footfall was a slow, incremental pain to Nordhausen, and he wished he had his comfortable walking shoes, no matter what Maeve might think about the possibility of contaminating the time line. Their track took them eastward under a low, cloudy sky backlit by the pale light of a fading moon. Along the way his two Arab companions chatted amiably to themselves, casting occasional glances at the professor.

Nordhausen suffered along in silence, distracting himself with the puzzle of what he hoped to accomplish when they reached their destination. Paul said they had figured everything out, but it was a pity he never bothered to share the information. He found himself going over the account of the incident in Lawrence’s Seven Pillars, somewhat amused that he was recalling details of an experience that had not even been lived yet, at least not at this point in the continuum.

He sniffed the cold night air, smelling rain on the wind. If Lawrence’s account was accurate the weather should worsen as they approached dawn. That must still be several hours off, he reasoned, as there was no sign of light on the horizon. There would already be a train heading south from Damascus through Deraa. It would arrive in the early morning, nearly catching Lawrence and his men by complete surprise as they were planning the placement of their gelatine charges.

The details Lawrence had penned in his account of this incident were the only comfort Nordhausen had. He was going to place the charge under the main arch of a low bridge, well hidden, deep beneath a railroad tie. The bridge, little more than a four meter masonry arch, supported the track as it crossed a shallow culvert at the base of the twin hills called Minifir. They had only sixty yards of wire with them, all that they thought they would need for the attack on the Yarmuk bridge but barely enough for blowing up a train. Their change of plans presented a bit of a problem. The approach to the arch lay across the relatively exposed ground of a runoff channel that wound down from the base of the hill. Lawrence would take some time, hiding the wires in the rocky culvert and extending them up the wide mouth of this channel. Nordhausen remembered that he would single out a small isolated bush as the terminal end of the wire, a convenient place for him to attach his exploder. Even there, some fifty yards from the rail line, he would be painfully exposed to the passing train. It was a dangerous situation.

Now, how am I supposed to get at that damnable wire, he thought? After the first train took them by surprise, Lawrence posted lookouts on high ground to both the north and south so they would not miss another opportunity. He buried his wires and they just waited the whole morning out, huddling under their cloaks to conserve heat against the cold gray drizzle of the rain. Six hours, he thought. If we can get to Minifir by dawn I’ll have that much time to do something about this. The second train, the one coming up from Amman, would be spotted by the south lookouts around noon. It would reach the ambush site about an hour later. Whatever I do, it will have to be accomplished in those six hours.

The irony of the interval did not escape him. They had six hours to figure a way to get him to Minifir on November 10, 1917. Now that he was here he would have another six to save the world. He considered that, realizing that his two Arab guides could present some problem. He heard them speaking of Lawrence, and it was clear to him that they probably believed he was a lost member of Lawrence’s party. That was the difficulty now. Nordhausen knew he could not afford to make contact with the men who lay hidden on the craggy slopes of Minifir. The thought that he might catch a glimpse of the legendary Lawrence of Arabia was an exciting lure to him, but he could hear Maeve’s warning whispers with every step he took. There was no way he could allow himself to come face to face with the man. How would he explain himself?

He thought about that, knowing that he had to have some contingency plan should fate work its awkward magic. Could he tell Lawrence he had been sent from Cairo to see about him? He was sure that his obvious American accent and sketchy knowledge of the people and doings there would be an immediate giveaway. Lawrence would see though him at once. Could he claim to be a lost traveler, perhaps a pilgrim on the road to Mecca? That avenue offered more prospect of believability. He could say he was an American history professor trying to retrace the old pilgrim’s road to Mecca on sabbatical. Most people took the train now, but the old caravan road was still there.

Trains to Mecca! That had been the first intrusion of the modern West into the long history of the Arabic speaking world. The local tribesmen had made a living for generations, charging 40 to 60 pounds sterling to caravan the believers along the pilgrim’s road to Mecca. Then came the Hejaz rail line, and a journey of two months by camel was reduced to a few days by train for a tenth the cost. Angered by the loss of their income, the tribesman mounted futile attacks against the cold, unfeeling iron rails and the trains they carried. But they would be coerced to carry on that fight for other reasons when the First World War broke out.

The rail line through the Hejaz was the extension of Ottoman power into the heart of Arabia. When hostilities erupted the pilgrims were quickly replaced by Turkish soldiers trying to prop up the Sultan’s empire and the Arabs had accepted this yoke for a time. Though Turkey was a secular society, it was at least rooted in the Muslim traditions and culture. Now, however, the Arabs were becoming pawns in the hands of the Western Generals. Germany and England both wanted to use the Arabs for their own ends.

Germany had ambitions of forcing a great wedge down through the Middle East and Central Asia by igniting a Holy Jihad against the British and French colonies there. It was the Kaiser’s dream to have a pair of strong metal rails all the way from Berlin to the Persian Gulf—steel lines that would cut across the map and sever overland connections between the Mediterranean and the heart of Britain’s colonial empire, India. For her part, Britain struggled to prevent this, and to wield the Arab uprising as a foil against the Ottoman Turks. This was how the game began, a struggle of power and competition—a clash of interests that would take many decades to work itself out. While the German hope of fomenting a Holy War against the British failed, England had a little more luck with Lawrence and the Arab uprising. Why did they fight for Britain, Nordhausen wondered? Lawrence believed they were fighting for their independence, yet this war would ignite a nationalist fervor in the Arabs that would burn, unsatisfied, for another century.

The dominoes of history seemed so clear to him now as he reviewed it all in his thoughts. One thing led to another, a line of causality that would end on the island of Palma nearly a century later. The onerous peace imposed upon Germany in the Treaty of Versailles would prove fertile ground for Hitler’s radical views. World War II would result, with its hideous gas chambers, and it would lead to a fervent desire of the oppressed Jews of Europe to seek a homeland of their own in Israel. That the land of Palestine was already occupied by Arabic peoples did not matter. The Western powers had been slicing up the desert and giving it away for years, what harm would there be in making one more slice? Unfortunately, the birth of Israel would leave the Palestinians without a homeland, and the nationalist desires ignited by Lawrence and others would go unfulfilled.

With sudden clarity Nordhausen realized that he was just another soldier in the battle that had been unfolding for decades. Here he was trying to save the world, but whose world, he wondered? The long battle that had begun here in the deserts of the Trans- Jordan would reach a fever pitch in the early 21st century. It would culminate in a climax of terror that would send the slopes of a long unstable volcanic island thundering into the sea—surely an act of God. He was certain that Ra’id Husan al Din and his Holy Fighters would view it that way. They were listening to a different voice whispering in their minds and hearts as they brandished the gleaming edge of a scimitar against the West. It was the will of Allah.

Nordhausen realized that the sword that was even now being drawn from its scabbard in the Arab rebellion of 1917 would eventually cleave the side of that mountain, and spell the doom of the West. He was here to make sure that never happened; to render that stroke as feeble as the pathetic attacks the Arabs mounted against the rails of steel that scored the holy soil of their deserts. In a way, he was just another Lawrence—sent back into the desert to make sure the West had its way in the end. The layers of clothing he wore were a fitting metaphor of what he was about. He was an American, covered in British kit and then wrapped in the robes of a Sheikh—a wolf in sheep’s clothing, to be sure. Now he was worrying that he might meet the other beasts on the prowl in the night—that he might cross paths with Lawrence himself!

He sighed, inwardly realizing that, if he succeeded and they managed to pull him back to his own time again, he could have the satisfaction of reading about the encounter in Lawrence’s Seven Pillars. That notion released him from his reverie with a note of alarm. The more he thought about it, the more risky his mission seemed. Maeve was correct. He knew he had to do everything in his power to avoid contact with a Prime Mover. He would just have to find a way of ditching his Arab guides once he got Minifir in sight. That might end up being a task all on its own. Suppose they insist I follow them? They’re the ones with the gun.

He drew his robes tighter about him, wincing as he stumbled over a loose shale. His heart ached as well, for he was bothered by sudden misgivings about his mission, and the grim realization that it was the West that would always land the final blow. The technology represented by the Arch was absolute power. It was greater than the doings of any man; greater, perhaps, than the labors of a God. It all seemed a bit unfair to him now. He realized that he was a soldier sent from the distant future to ensure the continuation of a way of life—a wolf set loose in the Holy Lands, intent upon preserving the continuum for the West.

He didn’t like being a wolf, he thought. His feet hurt.