John Schettler - Touchstone

“Well, Kelly came to the conclusion that we needed a reference point on the history that was stable if we were to have any success guarding the Meridian. Otherwise how would we know if something changed? That’s what this Golem report is all about. But it seems to me that our Arab adversaries, if indeed they are Islamic radicals like the Assassins, are using a low tech approach to this whole process. They’ve got these Oklo reaction chambers rigged up to provide enough power to open the continuum at selected points. They’ve established these one way gates, a natural Arch opening a breach to a selected time. They’ve got little reception committees set up for the Walkers, as they call them, and they’ve got agents and supervisors and God only knows what else! I only saw a few rooms of that castle.”

Nordhausen gave him a grave nod of assent. “And while I was watching H.M.S Pinafore at the opera house someone from their side ran a mission—to wipe out the primary key to their record of the history. They’re using the Egyptian writing as a code, damn it. And if we go back tomorrow we can see about stopping them!”

“To Rosetta?”

“Where else? We have to see if the stone was broken upon discovery. If it’s whole, we have half a chance at fixing this thing. But what if it’s broken when they dig it up? That would mean the damage could have been done at any prior point in the history. We’d never find that needle in the haystack.”

“That would be hard to pull off,” said Paul. “No one knows when the stone was placed there. If they weren’t careful they might do something that would affect the discovery in 1799.”

“Ah,” Nordhausen countered. “But they know where it is—where it was discovered. They could go back a year earlier, dig it up, damage it, and then bury it again. And they know exactly what that stone said—in fact, I know what it said. I still remember it.”

“Tell me.” Paul was suddenly curious.

“Well nothing really mysterious or important. It was really just a sign, a proclamation by Ptolemy V Epiphanes laying out all his good deeds in regards to the temples and priests to buy their reciprocal good will and cement his legacy. The last line even states a possible point of origin for the stone. It read: ‘This decree shall be inscribed on a stela of hard stone in sacred, native and Greek characters and set up in each of the first, second and third rank temples beside the image of the ever-living king.” He gave Paul a satisfied look, pleased with his recollection of the history and taken with the notion that he was the only one alive now that knew this.

“So they had clues enough to look for it deeper in the past as well,” he concluded.

“Possibly, but that’s a much more difficult operation,” said Paul. “You just said that they were going to carve this message in each of three temple sites. They would have to get just the right one—the exact stone that eventually wound up in Rosetta, wouldn’t they? Otherwise they’d have to damage all three to be sure none of them was ever found intact. There’s just too much variation and haze in that direction. I like the idea of damaging it after it was dug up in 1799, or perhaps just a year before as you suggested—something very close to the discovery date. That has much more clarity—much more likelihood of success.”

“Well, there’s one way to find out,” said the professor with a gleam in his eye. “Now all we have to do is convince Kelly and Maeve.”

The next morningthe four team members met at the Lab as planned. This time Paul was the last to arrive, still yawning when he came through the door and found the others milling about the main control consoles, already deep in a discussion over temporal coordinates. Nordhausen was standing with an armful of books, volumes dragged from his well stocked library. He was pushing one on Maeve, trying to gesture with a free hand while she flipped through the pages. Kelly was seated at the console, and Paul gave him a hearty ‘welcome back.’

“We didn’t think we’d have you here,” he said. “This is great! Now I don’t have to run the numbers.“

“There you are, Paul.” Nordhausen was on him at once. “I realize these volumes have been altered slightly by that last time mission, but they’ll give us a good starting point on the history, and we can look up details in Kelly’s RAM bank to verify things.”

Paul glanced at Maeve, obviously checking her reaction to all this.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “He’s been arguing his point for an hour now and—”

“—She’s agreed to approve the mission,” the professor put in excitedly.

“She’s agreed that 1799 is the key target date,” Maeve corrected him quickly.

“Right—well we aren’t throwing darts, Maeve.” The professor pressed on. “It’s the date we need for the mission. Kelly’s already working up the preliminary numbers.”

“Right,” said Kelly, bent over his laptop. “But I’ll need time on an Arion to solidify all this.”

Paul gave Kelly a curious look. “You sure you’re OK, buddy?”

“Me? I’m fine. A complete recovery. Whatever you guys did it was pure genius. I think you’ve protected my integrity in this Meridian for good, but I’ll tell you, the thought that someone was digging up my grave…”

“I had the same feeling,” said Paul. “In fact… This may be my imagination, but I think I was being followed on my way over to the lab this morning.”

“Followed?” Maeve did not like the sound of that.

“Well, I may just be paranoid but I stopped for a Bagel and coffee at Peet’s, and there was this guy in a car parked across the street. He was just sitting there, smoking a cigarette, but when I came out he started his engine and I swear he was behind me all the way until I hit Cyclotron Road and the outer security shack.”

“Spooky,” said Nordhausen.

“It’s got me thinking about security issues now,” said Paul. “We’re going to have to be more careful than ever.”

“You think they may have spies right here in Berkeley—a permanent operation running here to keep an eye on us?” Kelly looked up from his laptop, clearly unhappy, as he had been the first target. “You think they may try a hit or something—on the facilities here?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul, “but consider this: Suppose that guy was an operative from the future. He could have been verifying something as simple as my arrival time for this meeting. You said it yourself, Maeve. Most of all the history is unknown to us. It’s made up of all the little nothings of the hour that surround the big moments—but that’s where the key Pushpoints are. Hell, Graves came back the night of our first planned mission intent on saving Kelly’s life. All he had to do was step in front of him near an off ramp and delay him for a few brief seconds. You can’t run an operation like that without knowing a lot of precise details.”

“Well, how would they know about this meeting?” Maeve asked. “We aren’t keeping minutes anymore, and nothing is hard scheduled.”

“How could they know? Just by watching the four of us arrive here, that’s how. That takes reconnaissance, surveillance, a lot of sleuth work. You follow me?”

“Right,” said Nordhausen. “Hell, they ran an operation last night to strike at Kelly. I suppose it makes sense that they might have someone posted here to do the equivalent of a damage assessment. You know,” he looked at Maeve now, “to see what the consequences of their mission were. They ripped off Kelly’s DVD and thought that would be the end of it, but the Nexus must have still been in force for a time, because Paul and I were here, and the Arch was spinning at near 100% after my mission.”