Touchstone

25

Kelly was the first to speak, gesturing to the lab complex as he did so. “The Golems are not operating,” he said flatly. “We have no way of identifying a variation in the history without them.”

“Yes,” said LeGrand, “but you do have the original RAM bank still operating, and it has an imprint of the history as known to this point on the Meridian. That research will be essential… if our plan is to succeed.”

“Research?” Maeve leaned heavily on the table. “You mean to say you want us to find this thing, this touchstone, by using the data stored in our RAM bank as a guide? That could take years!”

LeGrand smiled wanly. “Possibly—just as the research on the Pushpoint that reversed Palma could have taken years as well. But we gave you a nudge in the right direction, didn’t we? I have come to aid your quest again. I can put you on the target, if you’ll hear me out. The rest will be up to you.”

Maeve pursed her lips, obviously struggling with the whole notion of using the Arch again to support this man’s plans. “How do we know you’re telling us the truth? How do we know you’re not just manipulating us into furthering your war plan?

“I was wondering if that would come up,” said LeGrand. “Fair question. As of this moment, you have only my word. If you’d care to test my assertions concerning the world outside the influence of this Nexus, be my guest. I would not advise it, however. Paradox is quite unforgiving.”

Paul intervened, seeing that the present line of argument would lead them nowhere. “You have information for us? You have a plan?”

“We hope as much.” Then LeGrand turned to Nordhausen. “We are really in your debt, professor. The moment we realized our adversaries were using a decidedly low tech solution, we immediately knew where it had to be hidden—give or take a few hundred years.”

Nordhausen squinted, thinking hard. “In the past,” he said. “It would have to placed as far back on the Meridian as possible.”

“Of course!” LeGrand smiled. “And what would you say is the oldest locus on the Meridian that would offer us promise?”

“There are hundreds of ancient sites that might qualify,” said Nordhausen, “but considering the Assassins were using hieroglyphics, let’s confine our search to Egypt.”

“Correct again!” LeGrand clapped his hands, obviously relieved to have the discussion moving in his direction, but still giving Maeve a cautious glance now and again.

“Well,” Robert scratched the back of his neck. “We could have a look at the Step Pyramids—they’re the oldest Pyramids known… About 2700 B.C.”

“We’ll have to do better than that,” said LeGrand. “Besides. The pyramids are too obvious. They stand out like a sore thumb in history, begging to be excavated. This touchstone, if indeed one exists, would have to be kept secret—hidden from the prying eyes of a thousand generations.”

“Then we would have to move to the Pre-Dynastic times. The oldest-known temple in Egypt is at Tell Ibrahim Awad in the eastern Nile Delta—at least as far as we know now. It was the dedicated to the God Thoth, who appeared in the benevolent figure of a baboon.” His eyes flashed as another thought occurred to him. “Thoth was also the Egyptian god of writing!”

“Interesting,” said LeGrand. “How old?”

“About 3400 B.C.—Before its discovery, the oldest-known temple was at Hierakonpolis, which dated to 3200 B.C.”

“A good candidate. We looked at it. There was nothing there.”

“See here,” Nordhausen gave him a frustrated look. “Why make this a game of twenty questions? If you have information on the location of the stone, then speak up, man!”

“I was told to sound you out and discover your thinking on this matter before divulging our best guess. But, as time is pressing, I will tell you that we believe the touchstone lies at the base of the Sphinx.”

“At Giza?” Nordhausen gave him an incredulous look. “That was thought to be built by Khafre, around 2600 B.C. There’s a stela erected between the legs of the beast that bears his name.”

“It was placed there by Tuthmosis IV in 1400 B.C., long after the monument was built. We believe the Sphinx is far older than Khafre’s pyramid at Giza, and that he had nothing whatsoever to do with its making. Oh, you will find similar rumors in your RAM bank data if you look. The work of Dr. Robert Schoch, John West, and the noted archeologist Michael Poe all assert the Sphinx may date well into the Paleolithic.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Nordhausen. “None of that research has been proven. It’s mere speculation. Besides, the use of hieroglyphics was developed in the Old Kingdom, much later. Even if there were a hidden chamber beneath the Sphinx, as many have suggested, why would they hide their touchstone there? You said yourself that the pyramids were too obvious a target. The Sphinx is even more prominent, more compelling.”

“Good arguments,” said LeGrand. “Our research people made them as well. But a lot happens between your time and ours. We have a great deal more information to bring to the quest. Let me be brief and say that we believe there is a hidden chamber beneath the Sphinx—or at least the place where it once rested.”

That last remark took the professor off his kilter. “What’s that? Are you saying the Sphinx was destroyed in the years ahead?”

“Yes, it was destroyed, but not in the years to come.”

Now Robert was beside himself. “That’s ridiculous. Certainly it was damaged. Why, the French soldiers used it to calibrate their artillery fires during their expedition to Egypt. It’s a pity I didn’t get a chance to see them try that little stunt. I would have knocked them senseless! Speak plainly—was the monument destroyed or not?”

“It was destroyed thousands of years ago, when the Nile floods were so severe one year that they changed the course of the river itself.”

“Don’t be daft, man. The Sphinx exists in our time! What are you talking about?”

“Well, it should be obvious that I’m not talking about the Sphinx at Giza.”

Maeve had been listening silently, inwardly amused as the two men jousted over the history. Now she spoke up, determined to move the discussion to some conclusion.

“They come in pairs, Robert. Have you ever seen the image of a Sphinx carved without another in tandem?”

Nordhausen turned to her, more to see if she was serious by checking the expression on her face than anything else. He could quickly see that her remark was not made in jest.

“Exactly!” LeGrand was quick to reinforce this new track. “They come in pairs. Well said. To put it plainly—we found the mate to the Sphinx you know today. It was located on the eastern bank of the Nile, directly opposite the existing monument. Together they served as the guardians of the lower Nile—a kind of gateway, if you will. It was destroyed when the Nile flooded and changed its course. The remains of the monument were carried off by the locals after that, to use in other construction projects. Nothing remains at the site—at least where we believe the second Sphinx once rested. In fact, the city of Cairo has completely covered the area.”

“Amazing,” said Nordhausen. “And you have confirmation on all this?”

“We are relatively certain of the location, in spatial terms. And we know, for a fact, that both monuments did indeed have a hidden chamber beneath them. You’ve heard the pronouncement of Edgar Cayce. He claimed there was a hidden chamber beneath the western Sphinx, the one at Giza, that was hermetically sealed. He said it contained hidden knowledge of the history of the world, dating from a remote golden age the Egyptians called Zep Tepi. A remarkable man, mister Cayce. He was correct, of course—only he got the location wrong. The history chamber was hidden beneath the eastern Sphinx—which is long since gone. Now… does that sound like a clever place to hide a record of events—carved in stone—so a man might take a rubbing on papyrus, and carry it about in a completely unbreakable code? No modern man has ever set eyes on this second Sphinx. It is lost, a distant rumor whispered across the ages, yet it is as close, in practical terms, as the cellar of some unknowing peasant in the suburbs of Cairo.”

The silence in the room was a testament to the impact of LeGrand’s revelation. The professor could hardly believe it, yet he was torn between his natural skepticism and the desire to immediately plumb the depths of this new research. He was the first to voice the obvious conclusion, and the reason for LeGrand’s desperate visit.

“Then you mean for us to go there? You have the location?”

“You have numbers?” Kelly spoke next.

“We can give you the exact spatial location, and a good read on the temporal locus as well.” LeGrand smiled, convinced that his job of persuasion had been successful.

“A good read?” Kelly wasn’t happy. “It can take an Arion system days to crunch temporal coordinates. The farther back you go, the more processing time you need. We’ll be lucky to keep the Arch spinning for another two hours!”

“We took care of that for you. It was a bit of a task. The trick was not the calculations, but how to get them to you. I am deeply honored to present you this, Mr. Ramer.”

LeGrand reached into his cape pouch and produced something, a small shiny disk that Paul immediately recognized.

“I believe you called these things DVDs, am I correct?” LeGrand extended the jewel case to Kelly, handing him the disk.

“Where did you get that?” Paul seemed incredulous now.

“You know very well where we got it,” said LeGrand. “You and the professor were quite upset about it.”

“You mean you ran a mission to retrieve DVD media from our time?” Kelly voiced the obvious conclusion.

“That would have been easy,” LeGrand explained. “But it would have taken time and, as simple as it sounds, it would have been risky. So, we encrypted the data in the video stream of this disk when we found it—the one we already had.” His eyes flashed at Kelly now, with a knowing glance. “We timed everything to sync well with the computers of your age. Now all you have to do is play this DVD through your system control module, and the entire operation will be perfectly coordinated as the video plays itself out. It was really quite devious. The R & D people are to be complimented.”

“I don’t understand,” said Kelly.

“You will,” LeGrand said softly. “At least I hope you will.” His eyes softened as he spoke.

Paul looked up, a conclusion plan on his face. “It’s the DVD we placed in your memorial site, Kelly. That’s why the grave site was tampered with. The Assassins were on to your plan as well, and they were trying to get at the DVD to prevent its discovery. Am I right?”

“Close,” said LeGrand with a smile. “It may be that the Assassins have a clue to what we are about to attempt, but they had nothing to do with the incident at Mr. Ramer’s memorial. We did that. Our agent in place for this milieu was instructed to secure it at all costs. We had to be sure we got to the DVD first, you see. It caused a bit of a ripple in the Meridian, and yes, the danger to your friend was very real, but you and the professor fixed that by publishing the backup you had hidden here in the lab. We kept the original, and we encoded it with our mission parameters… And there you have it.” He pointed to the disk in Kelly’s hand.

26

They all looked at the DVD. Paul remembered the moment when he first discovered it, while archiving data from the Palma mission. Watching Kelly working in the lab as he struggled to get the travelers back on target after the disastrous keystroke error that sent them to the late Cretaceous had brought a tear to his eye. He knew then that it would be the only fitting tribute he could offer at Kelly’s memorial.

“How far back is it,” he said. His eyes fixed on the disk. The prospect of another mission was daunting, but he knew they would have to try. Robert and Maeve had only just returned from Rosetta. He was the only other experienced traveler here with a quantum matrix signature on file in the system database. Kelly had never shifted using this equipment.

“A bit beyond the excursion to Rosetta,” said LeGrand. But not nearly as far back as your runabout after the KT event. Quite remarkable, if I may say.”

“How far,” Paul asked again, and his tone said get to the point without any uncertainty.

LeGrand heard the impatience, the urgency in Paul’s voice, and was suddenly very serious. “We make it 10,500 B.C…. or thereabouts.”

Maeve had an uncomfortable expression on her face. “Good then,” she said. “Are you ready, Monsieur?”

“What… Me?” LeGrand gave her a bemused smile. “Oh, I’d love to go,” he explained, “but it’s really quite impossible. I can’t pull a double shift, I’m afraid. Nothing has been programmed, and time is already waiting for me back home.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to some unseen future. “She won’t allow me to switch trains here. It’s out of the question.”

“Just as I suspected,” said Maeve unhappily. “So you want one of us to go in your place. You want the burden of all we might accomplish, and the blood, on our hands.”

“Really, Madame, must you be so gloomy?”

Nordhausen spoke up, tossing a new idea into the argument. “Why don’t you just raid the location of the site in your time? If you know where it is, just get together an assault team and storm the place.”

LeGrand stroked his chin. “You don’t understand,” he said. “We’re no longer in control of our time. They are! Besides, even if we could destroy the site in our time it would do us no good. The damage to the Meridian has already been done by then. No… The moment is now… the question is now. The other side has just moved a Pushpoint, something very old, and lost and utterly insignificant, save for its effect on the discovery of the Rosetta stone. We haven’t the time to find out where or how they accomplished that, so we came up with this counterstrategy as a last hope. You only get one chance, you know. It’s a bit like Judo. Your adversary makes an attack, and you must respond, then and there, and find the leverage to use his own energy against him. Soon the transformation will be complete, Paradox will have run its course, and we would be living in a nightmare world again—believe me, I know of what I speak.”

The look in his eyes revealed real fear now. “Islam will have spread the world over,” he said softly. “The West will be overthrown… everything, democracy, capitalism, the artwork, music, literature—remember what the Taliban did to the Buddhas of Bamiyan? That was just an appetizer. They will tolerate no other religion but Islam… There is no God but God, and Allah is his name, and Mohamed is his prophet—over, final, done. You have no idea what it will be like. It’s not going to be a simple book burning raid here and there. Fahrenheit 451 is nothing compared to the destruction of our culture that will follow if Palma is allowed to re-occur. That’s what they did, you see. They’ve worked it so that Palma happens—just as it was supposed to. Oh, believe me, we’ve done our very best to prevent that. It’s been a real struggle, but we’ve held them at bay. Now the advantage conferred by their hieroglyphic code is just enough to give them the edge.”

“Yes!” said Nordhausen. “It was written on the stone… here, let me remember… ‘Through the ages now he comes to a mystery: one death gives birth, a great wind upon the face of the sea, in a place forever hidden where the lions roar: ‘mine is yesterday, and I know tomorrow.’ A Great wind upon the face of the sea: that must be the tsunami sequence generated by Palma!“

“A place forever hidden where the lions roar,” said Paul. “That has to be a reference to the Sphinx—or both of them.”

“Mine is yesterday, and I know tomorrow.” Nordhausen continued. “An obvious reference to the past, where they’ve hidden a record of all future events. But what does the first part mean?” He looked about, hoping to find the answer with one of the others.

“We believe it refers to Mr. Kelly,” said LeGrand matter of factly.

Kelly looked at him, confused? “Me?”

“I’m afraid so,” said LeGrand. “It was your death that prevented the others from acting to reverse Palma. ‘One death gives birth—to the whole of their dastardly plan, and the destruction of the entire Eastern Seaboard of this continent. That was what we sent Mr. Graves to undo—to prevent that one death—your death.”

He reached up to wipe the sheen of sweat from his brow. “But now they’ve found another lever,” he said. “It changes everything again. This last twist is fatal to our cause—unless we act here and now. We will be reduced to a bare handful of dissidents in our time, hiding out, constantly on the run, hounded into caves and hidden sanctuaries. Storm the site with an assault team? Try showing your white unshaven face in Old Cairo today, in the district known as Maadi, if you get the significance of that name, and see how you fare! Do you honestly think we could get to the place if this transformation takes effect? The Assassins have it completely encircled. The Fedayeen commandos guard it night and day. Their secret police are everywhere—or at least they will be if we don’t act to prevent them. From this moment forward they will begin to use the advantage they have gained. They’ll post a watch on the site, send agents all throughout the continuum to guard it.”

“Then won’t it be guarded now?” said Robert. “I mean, on this mission you have planned to the second Sphinx?”

“Perhaps,” LeGrand admitted, “but we’re targeting them just as they establish the place—a secret chamber beneath the Sphinx where their scribe will carve out the key Nexus Points in the whole of human history. That’s what they were using as a guideline. That’s why we could never figure out how they could still resist us when we destroyed the last of their Arch complexes in our time. They’re damn conniving—cunning beyond our ken. They used these Oklo reactions to build hidden transfer gates—they call them wells. We’ve only found the one thanks to you, at Wadi Rumm, but there have to be others, and we’ve no time to look for them now.”

“And what if we destroy this hidden chamber? That’s what you want us to do, correct?” Paul wanted to get a glimpse of the outcome should they decide to undertake the mission.

“If you can,” said LeGrand. “It’s underground, and we’ve enough information to formulate a possible plan of attack. We found it in their own literature… the hidden stream that carries the walkers to the chamber of Time. The whole place is underground, you see, but it’s very close to the Nile. That area has been a problem in Cairo for generations. The water is leeching through the limestone and migrating under the city. We did research—no time to go into it all, but they’re using a series of locks on the river—the underground stream. All it will take is a little nudge, just as it should. The Pushpoint is one of the levers that opens the locks. We’re certain of it.”

“And these locks existed that long ago?” Paul had an incredulous look on his face.

“Only one,” LeGrand confirmed. “The others were built over the long generation as the river intruded on the location of their site. That’s why we’re sure of the Pushpoint. There’s only one lock at this target date.”

Silence enfolded the room, broken only by the hum of the lab consoles.

“Very well,” said Paul, looking at Maeve. “The others have just returned. I’ll go.”

LeGrand smiled warmly. “Very noble. It is just what we would expect of you,” he said. “But I’m afraid that your preparation might take more time than we have.” He eyed the clock again.

“But there’s already a quantum signature for me in our database here.” Paul repeated the logic that had led him to volunteer. “And Robert and Maeve have only just returned. They’ll need time to recover.”

“All true,” said LeGrand, “but first we would have to re-calibrate your signature, and then merge the data with the mission parameters we have programmed on the disk. There would be changes and, as Mister Ramer would be quick to point out, that would take computer time—more than we can spare.”

Kelly looked at him, a realization dawning in his eyes. “Then it’s me you want,” he said matter of factly. “You already have my signature encoded on the DVD, don’t you.”

LeGrand nodded, his breath abated, waiting as he watched the others for any sign of protest. Paul could see that his hand was shaking a bit as he fingered the hem of his gray cloak.

“Let’s get started then,” said Kelly. “You’ll have to resample my signature when I’m exposed to the particle stream, but if I know my methods and procedures like I think I’m going to, you’ll have an algorithm already encoded on the DVD to handle the data merge.”

“Precisely,” said LeGrand, greatly relieved.

Kelly was already edging his swivel chair up to the control console, all business. Maeve had a pleading expression on her face, close to tears, but she said nothing. There was a tense silence in the room. Kelly was opening the jewel case to remove the DVD while he toggled system switches.

“I’ll clear the necessary RAM,” he said. “Paul, would you check on the particle infusion chamber? I’m worried about the quantum fuel situation. Robert, you can be useful if you would get with Mister LeGrand here and figure out what I’m supposed to do. I’ll be half an hour here setting this thing up, and that won’t leave me much time…”

He looked at Maeve, and saw the tear streaking her cheek, his own eyes glassy as he swallowed hard. “And would you come down to the Arch with me, love?” His voice broke as he spoke those last words.

Robert leaned in to Paul. “Will it really be that dangerous?”

Paul just looked at him. Then he took him by the arm, walking him away from the lab console. “It’s like this,” he said softly. “If he’s fails the mission, we’re all exposed to Paradox, and who knows what will happen when the Nexus dissipates here in a few hours.”

“And if he succeeds?”

“In that event it will be Kelly’s fate on the line. The transformation he works will begin over 12,000 years ago, and ripple forward. It’s very likely that events will stand as we see them now, and there will be no attack at Palma by Ra’id Husan al Din. Understand? He’ll be the one exposed to Paradox again, just as he was after that first mission.”

“But we’ll still have the DVD,” said Robert. “And we published the whole thing to the web. If that survives, what’s the problem?”

“The DVD has location data for Kelly to be pulled from the lab on May 28^th, 2010, at precisely 4:10 A.M. It’s September now, and he’ll be somewhere east of the Nile, in the year 10500 B.C.”

Robert’s eyes suddenly registered the dilemma. “Then the Order will just have to intervene again—like they did the last time. Don’t they have his coordinates on that DVD? I’ll speak to LeGrand!”

“Quiet down,” said Paul. He took a deep breath and looked his friend square in the face. “They would have to know exactly where he is—exactly—in both space and time, if they are to intervene again.”

“No problem,” Robert reached for one last rope, even though he could feel himself sinking into the realization of what Paul was driving at. “We’ll pull him back here and they can just scoop him from the Arch when he returns. That’s a location that we can cement in the history from this moment forward. I’ll resolve here and now to publish the exact coordinates, just like we did the DVD. As for the time, they will know that from our own system chronometers when he re-materializes here.”

Paul sighed, a look on his face that said he wished it all could be so. “He can’t re-materialize here,” he said, his eyes watering over. “We haven’t the quantum fuel to get him there and back again. Even the outbound shift is going to be cutting it very thin. Besides, this is a Nexus Point—a conditional Nexus, Robert. It is temporary. Time is waiting for the outcome. If he succeeds, and Palma never happens, then we never had a reason to run this mission. So the Nexus will dissipate rather quickly.“

“But we came back from the Hejaz on the first mission,” Robert protested.

“That was the first mission,” said Paul. “The initial breach of time was a grand event, a first cause, if you will. It was therefore not subject to the full weight of Paradox, and we were able to return because our place in the continuum was not altered. But that was not so for Kelly. If Palma doesn’t happen, then Graves never came back to save him, and Kelly is… gone… Nothing that fails to survive the Paradox sweep after Palma will survive in this Nexus when it dissipates. The Meridian we were in when we first returned from the Palma mission will be restored—only this time they won’t have Kelly tucked away safely in the future for us… And this time, when we stand at that memorial site to remember what he did for us, they’ll be no one to steal up behind us and dance on his own grave.”

27

“So we’re back to this,” said Robert, with a fallen expression. “It’s Kelly again, at the edge of annihilation, and all because of my meddling.”

“Why do you think that way?” Paul tried to console him, but Robert just shook his head.

“I had to have my precious manuscript… had to see Old London to breathe in the milieu of Sherlock Holmes. Now look at it. The moment I stepped into the grand gallery of the British Museum and saw… or rather felt the obvious vacancy there, I knew something was amiss. The Rosetta stone was gone, and I knew in my gut that I had something to do with it. It was me, Paul; my damnable fascination with history, and books, and opera, and all the rest. I sat there in the bar and toasted with Oscar Wilde! I consorted with Primes, as Maeve would have it, and now look at this affair.”

“Don’t be silly, Robert. We’ve already determined that your missions have caused no significant change in the Meridian. You merely happened upon this Time war, that’s all. It was mere synchronicity. The real culprits are the terrorists—on either side—who keep meddling with the history.”

“I suppose,” said Robert, needing some consolation now. “But what makes us any different, Paul? We’re the ones meddling now, and we’re paying a hell of a price for it—we’re giving them Kelly, for God’s sake, or humanity’s sake—and not even that. We’re taking sides here. Anything we do to save the things we love will wreak havoc on another culture. It’s maddening!”

Paul was silent, the gravity of his friend’s words finally reaching him on an emotional level. “Perhaps Maeve was right all along,” he said softly. “Perhaps we should have never started this thing, but it seems that this mission will finish it—one way or another. Yes, we are taking sides, I suppose. But what else can we do? We’re being asked to choose now—between the promises made by two possible futures. We have an eye on one, as it springs from our own culture, our own understanding. We haven’t seen the other, a world ruled by fundamental Islam, but we’ve seen enough of it to hazard a guess as to what that would be like. And we have LeGrand’s word as well. In the end, this is Kelly’s choice. If he wants to do this, then how can we stand in his way? In spite of all of that, there is still some truth to what you say. This has to stop. We cannot allow any future meddling in the Meridian again. After this, I’m shutting the whole thing down.”

Kelly was half an hour getting ready. The sudden realization that he was about to embark on a mission had primed his system with the adrenaline of anxiety. He was burning it off, fidgeting with the system console to be certain all the equipment was in order. He cleared as much RAM as he could find, and keyed in some backup subroutines.

All the while the great weight of what he was about to attempt began to drag on him. A read of the DVD video for embedded data produced the coordinates, in both space and time. He found himself staring at the numbers, disbelieving them. The temporal coordinates were going to take him over ten thousand years into the past! He was going to take one small step in the Arch tunnel and emerge in pre-dynastic Egypt! What would he do there? What would he find?

LeGrand had come to his side, his eyes begging an audience, with a look that was almost reverent. “Mister Kelly,” he whispered. “May I have a word with you on the mission?”

Kelly caught Maeve out of the corner of his eye. She had come back with his costuming, a simple Arabic robe, and she was trying to stay busy in the anteroom, fussing through her accessories, a headpiece, braided sash and sandals, but he could feel her intermittent gaze on him, and knew that she was keenly aware of LeGrand, and very uneasy.

“When you arrive,” LeGrand began, “you will be able to clearly sight the location of the sphinx by looking for the moon. Understand? Just turn toward the light. You’ll be arriving at night, for your own security, and you should be able to see the monument easily enough. There will be a watercourse that flows to the cleft between the lion’s front paws. Make your way to that depression, and approach the monument by following the stream.” He smiled, the weight of his cheeks seeming to strain with the effort, but his grey eyes held real warmth. “Do you swim?”

“Swim? Yes. I do a workout at the YMCA every other month.”

“Splendid. You may have to do a bit of that as you approach the sphinx. The stream will enter the monument—we aren’t sure exactly how, but you’ll figure it out. I have every confidence!”

Kelly digested that a moment, then asked: “And this lock on the waterway you mentioned—it’s meant to regulate the flow of the watercourse?”

“We believe so. The water flows toward the monument, but when the river is at high flood stage, the lock prevents the interior chambers from being flooded. If you can see that it fails to do that, some time before the dawn, then we believe the mission might have a good chance for success.”

“Before dawn?” Kelly gave him a searching look. “Let me understand this: you say the lock regulates the river at high flood stage. Then the flood comes with the dawn?”

LeGrand hesitated briefly, his face soon set with resolve. “I’m afraid so.”

“How can you know that?”

“We have a way of taking a quick peek at things—don’t ask me to explain it, but Research tells me this is what will happen.”

“And you expect the flood to damage the monument?”

“We hope as much. Our research has determined that the ground beneath the eastern sphinx is somewhat compromised. The river is actually intruding and infiltrating below the monument in deep aquifers. There is a zone of instability there. If the flood waters are allowed to penetrate to the hidden inner chambers of the sphinx, we believe that the pressure may just be enough to… to cause a collapse.” His eyes held Kelly’s now, waiting.

“I see…” Kelly looked down, his finger tapping aimlessly at the side of a keyboard. “And where will I be when this happens?”

“A difficult question,” said LeGrand. “We went round and round with it ourselves. Mr. Graves was a real advocate for you, of course. Many others as well. The problem is this, however: we just don’t know what you might do once you arrive, or what may happen to you. You know how things go. You reach to tie a loose strap on your sandal and lose your footing—that sort of thing. There’s an infinity of variation between the setting of the moon and the rising sun. How could we hope to account for it all?”

“Of course,” said Kelly, the numbers man acceding to the impossibility inherent in the math. There was no way they could write a retraction algorithm that would be able to predict his exact location at the key moment. “Then you’re timing the retraction to the particle decay?”

“It’s the only chance we have,” LeGrand agreed quickly. “I’ve had a word with Mister Dorland, and he seems confident that he can get just the right infusion in the particle chamber.”

“Right,” said Kelly, but his tone was hollow. He knew that Paul would do his best, but the quantum fuel situation was grave now. Even if there was enough left to pull him out, the situation could be chaotic. He’d be underground, with a flood tide careening through the chambers of the sphinx. How would he escape?

LeGrand seemed to sense his thoughts and spoke softly, his voice laden with emotion. “We know we may be asking a great deal of you, Mister Kelly…”

“Yes.” A voice spoke from behind them and they turned to see Maeve. “You put it lightly, but that’s about the size of it, isn’t it? You people couldn’t leave things be. You had to have them your way, and now you’re going to ask a great deal indeed. You’re dumping the whole thing on us—on Kelly.”

“Maeve…” Kelly raised a hand in a placating gesture, but she shook her head, the anger flaring in her eyes, and then melting away as tears spilled out, streaking her cheeks.

“Maeve…” Kelly was up, his arms around her now, pulling her close.

LeGrand swallowed hard, but saw that this was a battle he could not fight and discreetly withdrew without another word.

“You know what this means, Kelly.” Maeve wept as she spoke. “You know…”

“You were listening. You heard what LeGrand said. Yes, I know. But you mustn’t worry, Maeve. I’ll figure something out once I’m there. If I can get in and out before the flood at dawn, then I should be well away from the place before anything happens.”

“Kelly…” She pulled back from him, her eyes meeting his. “You know I’m not talking about that. It’s—”

He put his hand over her lips to silence her. “I know,” he said. “You don’t have to go through it all now, love.”

They looked at one another and Kelly could see that she understood him. He knew that his chance of escaping the sphinx alive was the least of his worries. It was what happened after that mattered. Whether he succeeded or failed, there was still Paradox to answer, and Paradox was jealous. It had been cheated once before, and now it would have its chance to even the score. Yet Kelly was undaunted. All he could think of at the moment was how he might bring some small comfort to Maeve. “Don’t you see?” he began. “I’ve been there before. I’ve faced down the void and danced on my own grave. Something will happen, Maeve. And if it doesn’t… well… what are we, anyway? What are we?”

She looked at him through the pain, wanting to understand him, yet unwilling to let him go.

“I’ll tell you what we are,” she whispered. “We’re promises, and hope. We’re a whisper in the night; a yearning. We’re everything we ever dreamed of being, and more. We’re the whole of it on one single breath; a lifetime in one kiss, a hundred years…” She smiled wanly, her heart breaking open as she spoke.

“A hundred years,” he whispered back,” and not a moment now to spare.”

He held her close. The silence in the room was palpable. Paul was hunched over the particle infusion chamber, unable to look at them. LeGrand had retreated to the history module where Robert was sandbagging himself in behind a wall of research files and books. He was tormented, trying to master his emotion with his work, his attention pulled to the scene and then yanked back again to the pages of a thick, leather bound volume. He was searching for something, driven.

Paul was the first to break the silence. He composed himself and turned to face Kelly with as much of a smile as he could muster.

“Time,” he said, and Kelly looked up at him. “Time we got the system up, mister.”

“Right,” said Kelly, easing away from Maeve.

“I’ll see to the consoles,” Paul put in. “You had better get dressed for the part, amigo.” It would give them another few moments together in the anteroom, he knew, and Maeve gave him an appreciative smile as she led the way.

They were not long. The minutes passed quickly and Kelly emerged, his arms extended in a graceful sweep as he displayed his Arabic getup. Everyone smiled as he pranced about the room, a regular Lawrence of Arabia in his own right.

“There were Arabs in Egypt before the Pharaohs came?” Paul laughed as he asked the question.

“Well,” said LeGrand, “there shouldn’t be, but there are—the other side has men in the sphinx. I thought this might give our man here a bit of an advantage, and suggested the garb to Maeve.” He laughed with them, but his gaze was ever pulled to the clock on the wall by the door. Paul saw the worry on his face, and he swallowed hard, shoring up his will for the moments ahead.

“Best get down to the Arch,” he said. “You go too, Maeve. You can see him off at the yellow line.”

There was a long silence. Kelly stood up straight and looked from one to the other. He was thinking of what he might say to them now. He was leaving them all, he knew, and he would never see any one of them again.

“No goodbyes,” said Paul, his voice breaking.

Kelly smiled as his heart flooded with a warming sense of compassion. “Don’t mourn because it’s over,” he said softly. “Rejoice that it happened.” Then he turned suddenly, his robes wafting up on the still airs of the room, and he strode quickly away to the yawning oval door that would take him down to the Arch.

Maeve went after him, her thoughts a torrent of confusion, and yet with some hope. He’s out for us all, she thought, for LeGrand, and Paul, and Robert, and all the rest. He’s on his way for everything we have ever loved, and yet for everything we have railed against as well. He on to it now, all of it—Shakespeare and Stalin both, and he won’t come back. She was certain of that now. He would not come back.

A surge of emotion seized her as they went, hand in hand, down to the Arch. She cursed them all, Einstein, and Heisenberg, and every other name she could bring to mind. She wanted back every moment she had given to the project, the long hours of research, the endless calculations, the mind numbing struggle with outcomes and consequences that she could never really be certain of. There was no certainty. It was all a show, and she cursed it silently beneath her breath before she let her anger go at last and took hold of her love again.

Kelly would go for the West and do what he could to set things right. He was willing to give up his life—but for what? What was it? The poetry; the music he so loved? Strangely, it was the voice of a poet that came to her now, with the only comfort she could fathom in this moment of parting. This was the second time she had faced this certainty… this terrible sense of loss. The first was the moment she reached for the volume of the Seven Pillars, afraid to look and see that the history once written there would be changed. She knew, of course, that its altered course would make an end of Kelly, who’s life depended on the calamity of Palma—on the catastrophe that began the great fall into the gray world that even now loomed around them, just beyond the gossamer thin barrier of the Nexus.

She lost him once, and now she must lose him again. A line of poetry came to her, stubbornly, reflexively, as if to say that saving at least this much would mean something in the end… ‘My life closed twice before its close…’

Yes, she thought, how appropriate. I will endure this again, and then live with what remains. And when death finds me, somewhere ahead, it will seem a small and inconsequential thing to me then, after this. She held the poem close in her mind, and finished it as they reached the bottom of the elevator. It was Emily Dickinson, that shy wisp of a woman with the whole of life in the turning of one simple rhyme: