Nexus Point

Epilogue – The Time War

Nordhausen was the last of the project team members to arrive for the meeting in his study that night. He told the others to go right ahead and let themselves in, using the key he left under his mat. He had been delayed at U.C. Berkeley, purportedly doing some research there that he claimed had some bearing on the debriefing. As he hastened up the steps to the study door he was still thinking about it all, the dig, the Ammonite, Paul’s strange disappearance, and his own narrow escape from Wadi Rumm.

After Rasil returned to him, the two men did not have long to wait until the Nexus failed. Rasil was the first to know of it, but Robert recalled the shivering sensation of déjà vu that had come upon him. The ride was over, and they had both survived. Apparently the Meridian had not been altered—at least not to any appreciable degree that he could discern there and then. What had happened to the world beyond the silent red walls of Wadi Rumm was anybody’s guess.

Rasil’s men were both safe, returning to the cave and setting explosives in the well. Rasil gave the order to detonate them with real reluctance. When the smoke billowed out into the russet evening he stared at Nordhausen with a look of recrimination in his eyes. The sharp report of the explosion echoed through the canyon, resounding from the tall pillars of wind sculpted stone.

“So goes the Well,” he had whispered. “No more will it deliver the souls of the faithful to our agents in Massiaf. I wonder how Sinan will fare without the scrolls to guide him now?”

“What’s that?” Nordhausen pretended he had not heard the man, still uncertain of his own fate now that the interval of safety within the Nexus Point had elapsed. Rasil was so focused on his own inner reverie that he did not realize the professor was so close at hand. He had given him a chilling look, his eyes replete with emotion that resolved to a feeling of intense hostility, carefully controlled, a smoldering anger that he kept in check.

Nordhausen was so taken by the man’s expression that he thought he was done for. “I suppose you mean to kill me now,” he remembered saying. “Finishing up all the dirty business of the hour, are we?”

Rasil had simply smiled, fitting his pith helmet in place and watching as his men retrieved their little train of camels. “No, my friend,” he said. “That is not permitted. Even though I am convinced you know more about this affair than you let on, it is not seemly for a Walker to strike down another as you suggest. We do not act rashly. And, after all…” He started away toward the squawking camels where his men mounted a few yards off, turning to speak over his shoulder as he went. “I am no assassin.”

They had left him there to simmer with it all, alone in the vast silent canyon; miles from any help. The helicopter showed up three hours later, stirring the silt and salmon grit of the canyon floor as it alighted. It had been sent on hire, said the pilot. The emergency call had come in just a few hours ago from the United States, saying that a researcher had gone missing in Wadi Rumm, and giving exact GPS coordinates of the site he had been preparing for shipment. He had Kelly to thank for that, and Paul, though he did not know it at the time. The professor remembered his joy at being rescued, but the long flight home was fraught with misgiving.

Kelly and Paul decided to let him stew. It was just a little slap on the behind for his headstrong ways, and he knew he had it coming. Days later he was back in Berkeley, elated to find that Paul was alive and well, and amazed at the tale he had told. Tonight they would meet for the final debriefing, and there was something he wanted to check in the library before he showed up.

When he opened the door the others were all seated at the conference table, half way through a cup of dark, rich coffee. “Major Dickason’s blend?” he asked.

“Arabica Mocca Sanai,” Paul chimed. “I developed a taste for it with my friends in Massiaf. My, you’ve been busy, Robert. I had no idea you were so industrious.” He thumbed at the far wall of the study where an immense, looming shape was mounted on a sturdy oaken frame riveted to the wall. It was the Ammonite, glistening under a sheen of protective lacquer that accented every calcified line of detail in its near perfect state of preservation.

“Splendid, isn’t it? I got men on the job the instant I was back. You didn’t think I was going to leave it baking in the hot desert sand, did you?”

“We had a hard time trying to decide whether to leave you there,” said Maeve.

Nordhausen placed his hand over his heart and proffered a humble bow. “Mea culpa,” he smiled. “Well, I suppose we should get started, and I hope this finally settles the argument over whether we should shut the whole thing down or not.” He looked askance at Paul. “You aren’t taping this session, are you? I don’t want any unexpected visitors to show up for coffee in the heat of our discussion here and send us gallivanting off to the cretaceous.”

“No tape, no cameras,” said Paul. “In fact, no one was told of our meeting here today. It’s not in any log or appointment book, and we should be discretely safe in the covering mists of time. No future historian will know this conversation ever occurred.”

“Unless they run a spook job on this place tonight,” said Kelly, prompting a laugh from Maeve.

“I’ll never forget the look on your face, Paul,” she began. “There I was, half naked and draped in a bed sheet, just trying to keep a hold on myself when I suddenly saw you gawking at me across the room!”

“Quite an amazing specter,” said Paul, “or so it seemed at first. I finally put the clues together, however: the lights, the cold mist, and you, my dear. I think I recognized you on some level, strange as the moment was.”

“Which leads us to my point,” said Kelly. “I think we may have discovered the truth behind all these reputed sightings of ghosts and spirits through history. If your hunch is true, Paul, if there is a Time War being waged, then the two opposing sides might be running recon missions into any number of milieus. That means we might get a glimmering of what they are interested in, of what they are up to, simply by researching ghost stories.”

“Good point,” said Maeve. “Most of what we call history is really lost in shadow. Just as we hope there will never be a record of this meeting, 99.9% of everything that has ever happened still remains unknown to us. If we decide to get involved in this, then it’s very likely I’ll be donning my little white sheet again and again, and frightening the wits out of people in the process.”

“So you’re calling it a Time War now,” said Nordhausen. “I thought the very same thing.”

“It certainly seems like that,” said Paul. “These people thought I was a member of some nefarious group they called ‘the Order.’ I think this Sami figure I told you about was positively set on killing me. It was clear that someone was using the sink at Wadi Rumm to send operatives back to the time of the Crusades.”

“Right to that little band of Assassins at Massiaf,” said Maeve. “What a nifty place to recruit from.”

“Quite,” said Nordhausen. “In fact this Rasil fellow was muttering something under his breath at the end about Sinan—the Old Man of the Mountain, as the Crusaders knew him. Rasil called himself the Messenger, and I don’t think he was just being artful in that. He was supposed to be taking messages through the Well to Massiaf—probably the odd scroll I came upon in his satchel.”

“You figure he was doing this on a regular basis?” said Kelly. “That makes sense. He was taking Sinan instructions or something.”

“Well it certainly would explain a lot of the folk lore that surrounds that man,” said Maeve. “Legend has it that he had a strange clairvoyance, and seemed to know what was happening—or what was going to happen in the events of his day. He would receive letters from important figures and simply dictate his response to them without even opening the message. The odd thing was that his responses answered the content of the original message, line by line, if the stories hold water.”

“I think you’re on to something there, Maeve,” said Paul. “Let’s assume Sinan was an agent, permanently posted in that time milieu—a very critical period in the conflict between the West and the Muslim world. I had the distinct impression that a few of the other people I met were privy to the whole time travel thing: certainly the Kadi, and I would guess that the Sami would be in on it all as well. Now that I think of it, Jabr must have known something too. He spoke modern English! He called it the Saxon tongue, but even the Middle English of Chaucer’s day would be virtually unrecognizable to our ears in this time—and that was more than a century before Chaucer. If fact, he called me a Walker, and said he was one as well. Maybe he meant Time Walker.”

“You think they all came from another time?” said Kelly. “From the future?"

“Sinan perhaps, but not Jabr, unless he was very devious. Yes, he spoke modern English, but he claimed he was taken to a far place to learn it. And he seemed clueless about things that any person from the future would take for granted. I asked him if I could make a telephone call and he was completely in the dark. In fact, he didn’t even recognize the King of Diamonds for what it actually was. No, I rather think he was recruited from that milieu."

"Isn’t that tampering? Wouldn’t that cause all sorts of complications in the Meridian?”

Paul thought for a moment. “You forget that the future researchers had a great deal of knowledge about their recruits. They may have been very selective. They may have brought him forward in time somehow, and then sent him back with his new training. Time plays a zero sum game. She apparently tolerates the movement of people from one milieu to another—even major figures like ourselves, if I may be so bold—as long as she can balance her books in the end.”

“Weird,” said Kelly. “So these guys had this natural power source in that water borne bacteria. What was it you called it?”

“An Oklo reaction. They’ve only found one that I know of, but this incident leads me to think that there may be others. The power source can persist for millions of years, as long as the bacteria colony is sustained. What a perfect way to mount operations at points on the continuum before there would be an adequate power source. Apparently they were able to use the Well Of Souls, as they called it, at least once a month.”

“Not any more,” Nordhausen put in.

“Don’t be so certain,” said Paul. “It was destroyed on this Meridian—at a given point in time. How long has it been there, though? It’s conceivable that someone could go back to the same spot—say last year—and use the Well to go through again. There’s no way we could prevent it, as we’re stuck on this side of Rasil’s demolition, constantly being pulled forward away from that event in time.”

“Right,” said Nordhausen. “Then Rasil was just spouting me a load of rubbish with his sadness over the destruction of the Well. He said he was from the ninth age and that I was from the seventh, so he obviously came back to use the Well at this point on the continuum. What’s to stop him from doing what you suggest? Ah, perhaps we could go through ourselves, and see what they’re up to!” Nordhausen rubbed his hands together, excited by the prospect. Maeve was going to say something, but Paul beat her to the punch.

“I wouldn’t advise that,” he said. “We couldn’t visit the site last year, or in any year in which we lived, for that matter. Time won’t allow that. One version of professor Nordhausen running about is quite enough, I think. No, we’d have to go back well before our births, and who knows when they set up that site? It could take any number of spook jobs, as Kelly calls them, to nail that down. Besides—we have the Arch right here in Berkeley.”

“That brings me to the whole point of my research,” said Robert. “Remember my call, Kelly?”

“Who could forget it. You sounded positively frantic.”

“Yes, well I was rummaging about in Rasil’s satchel, and I found this scroll—all in Egyptian hieroglyphics. They were very old. In fact, I was just trying to isolate the fragments in the data files over at U.C. Berkeley.”

“What did you find?” Maeve was immediately curious, and she wanted to keep a tight rein on the professor after all he had been up to in the last few months.

“It’s what I didn’t find,” said Nordhausen. “They’ve got every last line of discovered hieroglyphic text on file now, and I know enough about the script to replicate what I saw in that scroll. Using characters dating from the Old Kingdom, I was able to draw out most of what I remembered. I scanned the images and ran comparison query’s in the database, but there were no hits on those phrases.”

“It could mean that this Rasil had something from another Milieu.” Maeve was racing on in her thinking. “If he was a time traveler, then this could have simply been a waystation for him.”

“Right,” said Paul. “You saw how Kelly was able to use his Golems to isolate my arrival time in June of 1187—that was damn genius.”

“If I don’t say so myself,” Kelly smiled. “That’s what you pay me for, boss. I run the numbers.”

“Yes, but my point is that if we could get wind of a breaching point on the continuum, then so could anyone else in the future, if they had comparable technology. Maybe Rasil dropped into our time first to throw his adversaries off the track.”

“A bit of cloak and dagger,” said Maeve.

“Well, I certainly saw plenty of both during my visit to the Castle of the Assassins.”

“Then you suppose they might be using the hieroglyphics as a kind of code?” said Nordhausen. “That would explain why the passages don’t exist in any discovered writings. But I had the distinct impression that the characters I saw were a rubbing—as if they had been pressed onto the scroll from an original stone carving. It was very odd.”

“It’s all very odd,” said Paul. He rested his chin in hand and they lapsed into silence. The obvious question was percolating in all their minds. Kelly was the first to pour a cup.

“Assuming all this is correct: that we have some kind of conflict underway; probably being waged by people in the future using our own damn technology—”

“And assuming someone found out what we did about Palma,” Robert carried on, adding a touch of cream in the cup.

“Then what are we going to do about it all?” Maeve stirred things to their obvious conclusion. They all looked at Paul. “Your turn, maestro,” she quipped. “You dreamt all this up, remember?”

Paul smiled. “You know, you looked real good as a guardian angel,” he teased.

“I saw her first!” Kelly put his arm around her and Maeve gave him a knowing wink, leaning in to his embrace.

“Well,” Paul began, his voice taking a more serious tone. “We’ve got Kelly on board, and with ideas like his Golems and that dual RAM bank setup we’ve got a handle on the history as we know it, and a tripwire to warn us if it starts to change.”

“Did it change?” Nordhausen looked from one to the other. “I haven’t had a chance to see if Paul mucked up the Crusades or not.”

“No,” said Maeve. “Apparently he was very well behaved. Oh, we had variance readings popping up all through the Meridian while we were in the Nexus. I had a chance to read a few before I volunteered to become a ghost. There was certainly something up. One file was very strange. It seems there was at least one enterprising historian out there who had the history another way: Reginald was assassinated and the battle of Hattin was never fought. I was distracted by your phone call, Robert, and when I looked at my screen again the file was gone. One thing led to another, and we got swept up in the plan to rescue Paul. Then, as soon as we ran the retraction, the lines all returned to green.”

“Yes, that was quite odd,” said Kelly. “The data banks began to synchronize when the Nexus started to dissipate. My Golems settled down and everything seemed normal. We poked around in the pivotal events of that year. The battle known as the Horns of Hattin was fought in early July, and the Christian army was slaughtered. With the castles emptied of their garrisons, it was a simple matter for Saladin’s victorious troops to overrun the entire region. They took it all: Palestine, Tripoli, the Kingdom of Jerusalem.”

“That’s how I remember the history,” said Robert. “So you mean Paul’s trip didn’t change a thing?”

“Perhaps,” said Maeve. “It could be that an operation was underway to try and effect a change by taking out the Lever that led to the battle—Reginald, the Wolf of Kerak.”

“Yes!” Nordhausen remembered his research. “The hieroglyphics in that scroll I was telling you about: they spoke of a wolf! Here, let me read you my notes.” He fumbled about for a moment, producing a folded leaf from his shirt pocket. “I have the translation right here. The Wolf shall go forward and prey upon the bounty of the lord… Yet if he be slain for his misdeed, then all will be overthrown.”

“Well, Reginald certainly preyed upon the bounty of the Lord,” said Maeve. “His raid on Saladin’s caravan broke the truce and ignited this whole conflict. You’re certain that was on Rasil’s scroll?”

“Absolutely. And there was talk of the Gate of the West—that’s the Horns of Hattin, right? There was also mention of an old man returning, a temple priest of time, as the characters read.”

They looked at one another and Paul summed up their thinking. “Rasil was carrying instructions. There’s no doubt about it from this information. They were trying to make sure that Reginald lived. Must have been hard for them to spare the brute but, by doing so, they got the Horns of Hattin.” He had a vacant look in his eye, as though struggling to recall some far off memory. The glowing eyes of the wolf he had encountered outside the archive had returned to him, and its low growl haunted the frontiers of his thinking.

“Then who was trying to kill him?” Kelly asked the obvious question.

“My guess would be this group they called ‘the Order.’ They kept asking me if I was a member of the Order—if I was a Templar and such.”

“How odd,” said Nordhausen. “Rasil assumed I was one of these operatives as well. That’s why he was so tight lipped about your destination at the other end of the well. The Templars were supposed to have been stamped out long ago, but who knows—perhaps there’s a remnant active, some secret group run from the Vatican cellar. Well, whatever they were planning to do, it failed.”

“But what’s to stop them from trying again?” Kelly led the discussion to an obvious, though troublesome question.

“Right,” said Nordhausen. “They failed this time, but suppose they just go back to some other point in Reginald’s life and do something—or to a point before he was born to eliminate him from the time line altogether.”

“That may not be as easy as you think,” said Paul. “He’s certainly a major lever on events, if not a Prime Mover of his own. Eliminating him would have repercussions that would be impossible to predict. No, I think it would have to be something more subtle, like simply finding a way to delay him on the road. That would leave the bulk of his Meridian intact, but it still might accomplish something to alter a key event.”

“Right,” Maeve put in. “Maybe Paul’s arrival did something to counteract the transformation they had planned—a distraction, an unaccountable variable in the mix. We may never know, but I’ll say this: if we don’t shut this thing down, and I don’t see how we can with this war going on, then we weigh in on the side of Mother Time.”

“What do you mean?” asked Paul.

“We know how things are now,” Maeve explained. “It’s the world we believe to be our own—at least I do. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I need something to hold onto each day, something I can use to make sense of the world. There’s enough uncertainty out there as it is. If we get involved, it must be to preserve the past as we know it now—to put a stop to this Time War by foiling their efforts, if we can.”

“Just like Paul did,” said Kelly.

“Right, only we do it with more sense and direction. We keep watch, and we plan, and we get it all right. Understand?” Maeve’s point was well taken.

There was a moment of silence where they all seemed to sign on to her proposition. “It’s the only moral thing we can do,” said Paul. “You’re right. The Arch is power—more power than all the armies that ever walked the earth. We could blow the whole thing up, but something tells me the people in generations hence will go right on with their war. The moment we developed the Arch we made time travel possible. It was destined to succeed—perhaps even a Grand Imperative. Who knows how long this war has been going on? Something tells me it started with the effort to reverse Palma—with Graves’ mission. Now both sides are running operatives into key Nexus Points of the past to try and bend the history their way. My fall into the Well was just another Pushpoint: one of those stumbling moments in time that led us to discover all this. Keeping the Arch alive is the only way we can know what’s going on, or do anything about it when something begins to slide into the abyss. If we use it, we use it with the intention of preserving things—just like Maeve says.”

“Who’s to say our Meridian is the way things are supposed to be?” asked Nordhausen.

“We are,” said Maeve. “We started it. The Time project originated on our Meridian. We’re all Prime movers, right? Then we make this the Prime Meridian. The world we know now will be our reference point on everything we do, and the Arch will be our own Royal Observatory—a place where we can monitor what’s happening and take corrective action.”

They were all in agreement, and Paul placed his hand upon the table, his vote slapped onto the hard wood. Kelly was the first to cover his hand, then Maeve placed her palm on his. She looked at Nordhausen, a challenge in her hazel eyes. He nodded agreement and reached out, cupping her hand with his own. The four hands formed the hub of a wheel, a Nexus of consent and resolve. They had a mission in life now, a pledge and a purpose, for as long as they lived.

Nordhausen was already thinking ahead. “Then we all get a cell phone,” he suggested. “Perhaps one of us should be on station at the Arch at all times.”

“We’ve got a lot to think about,” said Paul. “Security will be our first concern, I’m afraid.”

“Security? You still worried that the government will step in?” Kelly was thinking about how he might start setting up data mirrors and redundant services. Even something as simple as an earthquake could put their single Arch facility out of commission.

“It’s not the government I’m worried about,” said Paul. “It’s the likes of Rasil, and this Sami fellow I ran into—or even Sinan, for that matter. We have to be careful; very cautious. No more keys under that mat, Robert.”

“You think we could be targets?” Nordhausen scratched his head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think Rasil recognized me, even though I gave him my name—yours as well. Perhaps we’re not as important as we think… Then again.” He lapsed into thought, struggling to remember. “Yes, Rasil did say something very odd to me when I told him my name—something about my being named after a great warrior he called the Marvel of Time. Why, he even said I bore a resemblance to the man.”

“It may be that he was referring to you, Robert. If we get mixed up in this we’re likely to become well known to our adversaries—historical figures akin to the founding fathers in their eyes, and the stuff of legend and story. You made a call on Rasil’s satellite phone, remember? They’ve probably got a line on exactly who answered. And that means they know we were involved in this incident somehow. We all have to be careful—very careful. We can’t leave any historical record of what we’re about here. Even our research queries have to be very guarded now. We have to shield ourselves with as much haze as possible, and make this Milieu a tough nut to crack.”

“You’re afraid they might—“ Maeve expressed the logical conclusion to Paul’s fear.

“Try to get rid of us?” Paul came out with it. “The thought has crossed my mind, in spite of Rasil’s mercy in sparing Robert. We have to assume that there will be people in the future who would see us as obstacles in their scheme. That makes us targets as well.”

“Lord,” said Nordhausen, “They could just go back in time and murder our grandmothers. It’s the Terminator all over again.” He tried to be glib, but there was real fear in the prospect he had suggested. “For that matter, what’s to stop them from pulling a 9-11 and sending someone back to fly an airliner into the Arch complex here?”

“Time,” said Paul. “She may have something to say about all this as well. We’re Prime Movers, people. We were the ones who first discovered how to travel in time. Even if they could pull something like that off, or rig it so we were never born, then what—how would they come to the knowledge of time travel without our research on the Arch?”

“Someone else might come up with it,” said Nordhausen. “That was common all through history. Elisha Gray was researching the telephone, just like Bell. The two of them rushed to the patent office just hours apart. The first manned flight had several close competitors; hell, even the top secret Manhattan Project had rival groups in both Russia and Germany working to build the bomb.”

“Your suggesting someone else may be working on time travel technology—even as we speak?”

“It’s a possibility. And from their vantage point in the Ninth Age, they would certainly know about it.”

“Well,” Paul sighed. “We were there first. Graves came back to us, right? So I’m betting we are all Prime Movers. In that case, it may not be so easy to tamper with our life histories, as we did to poor Rai’d Husan al Din when we reversed Palma.”

“But wasn’t he a Prime Mover as well?”

“A Free Radical,” Paul corrected. “He worked a Radical Transformation on the Meridian, but his influence was completely destructive. We, on the other hand, appear to be essential elements in the discovery of time travel. We may even be imperative.”

“How do we know that they haven’t already killed us? I mean, in some future event,” he explained. Nordhausen was not yet convinced. He looked at them, somewhat disturbed.

“My only hope is that we are all so significant to Mother Time that we will cast deep shadows—shadows so impenetrable that our presence in the time line will be difficult to tamper with.”

The significance of what Paul was saying spread to the eyes of his compatriots. An air of weighty seriousness settled on the room. “So,” Paul concluded, “we’ve got our Arch, and Kelly’s Golems, and the RAM bank idea gives us a good touchstone on the history. Now we stand the watch.” They all nodded agreement, but Nordhausen was already thinking about Paul’s last statement.

A touchstone, he mused. Yes indeed! He was still turning over the hieroglyphics in his mind, and an idea began to bubble up. There were lots of discoveries that failed to survive to his present day. Many artifacts had become lost, damaged or destroyed. Perhaps he could use the Arch to have a look at them first hand, and find out more about Rasil’s scroll. If it was indeed a rubbing, as he suspected, it seemed to him that some of the history was written in stone. The more he thought about it the better it sounded in his head, though he did not want to bring his idea up in committee just yet. He had an inkling of where he might find a good cache of old stone carvings from Egypt that had been lost to his day. This was going to be great fun, he thought. Great fun indeed!