John Schettler - Touchstone

Paul nodded and the two of them stepped out into the hall. Nordhausen gave them a glance, a worried expression on his face, but he soon turned his attention to Kelly.

“Robert?” Kelly had opened his eyes again, and he was trying to force a smile.

“I’m here, Kelly. The others stepped out to talk. So… how do you feel?

“Pretty damn mortal.”

The professor was distracted by the beeping of the hospital monitors, which seemed to speed up, then taper off again.

“It’ll be okay, my friend,” Robert consoled. “Paul will know what to do. Just be here now.”

“Where?” said Kelly. “What time is it?”

“What does that matter.” Nordhausen put his hand on Kelly’s brow, feeling an odd coolness there. He certainly wasn’t running a temperature, which ruled out any sudden illness.

“You don’t understand…” Kelly labored to speak again. “This isn’t life for me, Robert. I should be dead now… I’ve thought about that every second I’ve lived since the mission. Every second of every moment. Hell… Maybe I am turning into a wraith…”

“No good with that sort of talk, Kelly. You just hold on now. We’ve got an alert on the Golem line. Your program is running numbers and working up the report right now. We’ll get to the bottom of this. You’ll see. You are going to be fine. Maeve will stay here with you, and Paul and I will go take care of this business. You’ll will be out of here in no time! I promise!”

“Okay… I just feel so strange… wish the damn drugs would help. What are they shooting me up with?” His head lolled up to look at the glucose drip.

“Just fluids and sugars to help stabilize your system.”

“Sugar buzz…” Kelly began to drift. “Got to rest…”

“Sure, sure, just rest. I’ll wait here till Maeve and Paul come in, and we will take good care of you. Just relax, don’t worry about anything. You’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, fine…” He closed his eyes and lapsed into silence.

Nordhausen turned the lights down, and sat in a chair by the bed. He watched his friend’s breathing, his chest hardly moving, his breath the barest whisper on the oxygen feed line near his nose. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes and his face betrayed the deep emotion he was feeling now.

“My fault,” he whispered. “I did this…” The hospital monitors were pulsing calmly as Kelly seemed to be falling into a deeper sleep.

The door opened again and Maeve stepped in first. Paul remained outside, gesturing at Robert to come. Robert gave Kelly one last look and stood up, offering the bedside chair to Maeve.

A moment later the two men were standing in the busy hospital corridor, speaking to one another in low whispers.

“So, what’s the plan?” Robert was eager to do something to change the situation.

“Well this is all very theoretical, and I haven’t done any real time mapping yet, but Maeve and I think we have to go check the DVD in the grave—you know, the memorial site where we buried our mementos for Kelly.”

The professor glanced at the open door to Kelly’s room, as though afraid that Maeve would overhear them. “Does she know?” His voice was a whisper in Paul’s ear.

“Not everything. She thinks the alert is the cause of the incident. I didn’t mention your… well, you know.”

“Right,” the professor agreed, glancing over his shoulder. “Not the time for it. But what do we do now?”

“We’ve got to get back to the Arch. I’m pretty sure the Nexus from your mission has dissipated by now, but we still have the shelter of the Arch Nexus as long as we can keep it running? We’ll check the Golem report and then get on over to the memorial site to see what’s up.”

The implications of that finally came home to the professor. “You think someone may have tampered with the DVD?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Okay, let’s go. But what would that mean, Paul?”

“I’ll explain in the car. Let’s say goodbye to Kelly and Maeve and get moving.”

They returned to Paul’s car, a white Honda Civic that he had been fond of for many years. As soon as they were underway Nordhausen returned to the subject of their errand.

“Why do you want to go to the gravesite?”

“We think the DVD might not be safe there. As you know, we counted on the time travelers of the future, who saved Kelly from a paradoxical disintegration. We counted on their finding the DVD we buried in the grave so they could know when and where to snatch Kelly, just before he vanished, and it worked. When the Nexus Point dissipated, they sent him back.”

Safe and sound, it had appeared, until this event.

Nordhausen asked, “So what do you want to do?”

Dorland thought a moment. “Maeve thinks that’s not a safe place. She wants me to get the DVD, and put it in a safe deposit box or something, where we can be more assured of its security. We’ll set up a foundation to maintain it or something. And I don’t think that’s such a bad idea.”

“Security? But who would want to dig up a grave site? Are you thinking some gardener got his work order wrong and went trowling through Kelly’s memorial ground?”

“Maybe,” he stretched out the word, to emphasize how remote he thought the possibility, “someone might get there before Mr. Graves’ friends find it in the future. That would immediately expose Kelly to paradox again.”

“Someone? Who are you talking about?”

“Remember that satellite phone call you made from Wadi Rumm?”

“Yes. What’s that got to do with this?”

“Whose phone was it?” Paul gave him a knowing wink.

“You mean to say that you think Rasil… that the Assassins…”

“We don’t know, but as I said before, that call would have been easy enough to trace. No matter how much we try to cover up our activities here, it could have been an obvious pointer to this point in the continuum. They know we have an Arch complex operational here, and they damn well know we must have had something to do with the Palma thing.”

“But you said we were all Prime Movers—that they couldn’t touch us without risking the entire future progression of the Time technology. Look at me. I walked right out of the Nexus and I’m still fit as a fiddle.”

“That might be true—at least I hoped as much. I think we may have a Time Conundrum on our hands. Time isn’t certain what to do with this situation, and so she left you in one piece while she’s sorting things through. But look at Kelly. Prime mover or not, he’s in jeopardy right now. Your integrity may be compromised as well. But who really knows?”

Nordhausen took a deep breath. “OK… suppose someone is trying to tamper with that DVD. That means they’ve come here—to our time?

“Not necessarily. They may have arrived yesterday, a week ago, last month. Who knows? They may have found the thing in the year 2050, or three years before Graves and his people were slated to find it.”

“What? So how does this explain Kelly’s present condition?”

Dorland was becoming less and less sure. “Well,” he said, feeling his way as he went, “Paradox is retroactive. At least that’s what I’m starting to think now. If they get their hands on the DVD in the year 2050, like I suggested, then Time has to do some quick editing. None of the events lived by Kelly in this Meridian would have been possible.”

“Editing? That’s appalling! How could time rewind itself and undo all those events. Kelly’s been safe and sound for months now. Think of all the little pushpins he’s been responsible for in all that time.”

“True,” said Dorland, overlooking his friend’s persistent error with the terminology. “I admit I’m reaching. But Maeve is convinced this is a Temporal Variation, and we’ve got to check on that DVD. In fact, we should do this now, before we go to the lab. Kelly’s life is in danger here.”