John Schettler - Touchstone

“Look here, Maeve!” He waved at her. “Come to the window!”

“Get away from there, Robert! What’s got into you? Put that thing down and get over here. We mustn’t move. We mustn’t touch anything. Don’t you understand?”

“It’s him, Maeve! Oh, if only Paul could see this. Look, he’s just there.” He gestured with the musket, jabbing it at the open window as the sound of marching feet beat heavily on the cobblestone alleyway.

Back in the control room Kelly was frantically trying to replace his damaged keyboard. He got the new unit plugged in, and shifted into his chair with a huff.

“What happened?” Paul was gesturing at the chronometer. “The readings are stabilizing, Kelly.” He looked at the particle infusion station, surprised to see the light was still holding at green. It should be yellow by now, he knew, and the retraction sequence should be kicking in to bring Maeve and Robert back.

“I must have hit the keyboard when I lunged to try and stop that spill. It looks like I triggered my shift modulator by accident.”

“Shift modulator? Is that something new?”

“I installed it last week. It was a new module I was using to make minor adjustments to the breaching sequence. I set it so I could nudge things by minutes, hours, days or even whole years if I needed to adjust the temporal locus, and I have spatial flux programmed as well.”

“You moved them?” Paul gave him a wide eyed look.

“Well, not intentionally. It was an accident!”

“Where? Where are they, Kelly. The particle decay is still green. Why didn’t the emergency retraction scheme kick in?”

Kelly bit his lip, his eyes darting from one reading to another as he thought. “It did kick in—or at least it tried to. Look!” He pointed at an indicator on the console. “It went into emergency suspend mode.“

Paul dragged a chair over and slid in next to Kelly, his dark eyes taking in the situation as his friend pointed out the indicators. “You bumped them in space-time when you spilled the coffee,” he concluded. “Where are they?”

“Not far, I hope,” said Kelly. “Looks like they moved ahead of the target date… here, I’ve got a good reading now. They’re early.”

“How early?” Memories of that wild shift into the chasm of time flooded back to him now, and he was visualizing Robert and Maeve, all dressed up in their 19 thCentury garb, as they strolled through the late Cretaceous.

“Just a few days or so,” Kelly reassured him, almost as if he could read Paul’s apprehension. “Damn, I was supposed to turn the number lock off on my keypad before I initiated the run, but I just forgot.”

“Have you got a new breaching date?”

“Just a second… Here it comes now: July 2 nd, just a few days off… but wait, It looks like the year is off as well. I’m reading 1798.”

“Backup chronometer agrees,” said Paul. His mind was reaching back in the history, and he knew the date was familiar. He reached for one of the volumes in Nordhausen’s research pile and began flipping through the pages. He did not have to look far, for all the relevant data was bookmarked. “Just as I thought,” he said with a deflated expression on his face. “It’s the date of the initial landing. Napoleon has just arrived off Alexandria. Lord, they’ll be right in the middle of things If the spatial coordinates hold.”

“They didn’t,” said Kelly sheepishly. “I really screwed this one up. Sorry Paul. Looks like I bumped them a few kilometers as well. All that from a damn coffee mug!”

“Pushpoint,” said Paul. “Little things have great effects. Let’s get them back, Kelly. The infusion chamber can’t hold for long. It must be feeding in the particle reserve to keep the singularity spinning. We have to yank their butts back to Berkeley, and fast!”

“I’m on it. You get over to the infusion module and hold that mix steady while I reset the retraction to these new coordinates. If they have their wits about them, and stay put, we should be able to pick up their pattern signatures from the flux.”

“Let’s hope Maeve has the good sense to keep a tight rein on Nordhausen.” Paul was hurrying, his movements betraying both the urgency and danger inherent in the situation. The error was not bad, but the hold they had on Robert and Maeve was keyed to the original target dates. The system tried to run a retraction scheme, but they were not there. Now Kelly was feeding in the new coordinates, a worried look on his face.

“There’s no way I can key this decimal in time. I’m patching the retraction vectors right into the space-time chronometer data. It’s the only way I can be sure.” He toggled three switches, and held his breath.

“Robert!”Maeve raised her voice as much as she dared, but it was clear that the professor was in a daze of excitement. He was completely beside himself, eyes alight with the fire of discovery and a ruddy glow on his cheeks. She had to do something. Kelly would be working, he’d be trying to pull them out. Robert had moved from his initial point of manifestation, and her instincts told her that this would complicate things, perhaps fatally, if Kelly was trying to retrieve them. In spite of her caution she found herself rushing across the room and grabbing Nordhausen by the lobe of his right ear in a hard pinch. “Damn it, Robert! Put that down and come away from the window!”

There was a loud crack, deafening as the musket went of in a flash. The professor was so startled by the ignition that the musket tumbled wildly from his grasp and fell with a hard thump to the pressed clay floor.

Maeve released him, covering her ears with the shock of the sound, but she quickly recovered and seized hold of Robert’s arm. There was shouting and wild commotion outside the narrow window. She heard the neigh of a horse and the scuffle of many booted feet. Deep voices barked out commands and she immediately recognized the language as French.

“What are you doing!” Nordhausen was aghast. “I could have killed someone! Do you know who’s out there?”

The world was spinning out of control. Maeve felt a dizzy sensation of nausea settle in her stomach. All she could think of was getting back to that first point of entry on this strange new world. It was the only safe island she could see, a retreat to the moment when they had first appeared, as though none of this had even happened. She would stand there, close her eyes, and make it all go away. But even as she pulled the professor along, she could hear the men outside drawing ever nearer.

“Stand here,” she commanded, her eyes riveting the professor. “And whatever happens next, don’t you dare move a muscle or say one single thing if those men find us here—understand?”

Nordhausen gave her a breathless look, but nodded his assent. They could hear men below them in the alleyway beating on a wooden door with the butts of their muskets. The door gave way with a loud crash and booted feet tramped into the rooms below them. The sound of their approach drove a rising anxiety through Maeve as she whispered a silent prayer.

“Kelly… Do something!”

Nordhausen took her hand again and the two stood stone still, just as they had been in the Arch only moments ago. Maeve felt faint as the voices and heavy footfalls grew louder on the stairs below them. The soldiers were hastening up to the second floor, kicking open one door after another.

“You’d better hurry, I’m losing the particle density.” Paul saw the reading turn yellow, and he knew the quantum fuel that was keeping the breaching sequence alive was ebbing fast. Kelly gave him an anguished look, hesitated for one brief moment, and then toggled a console switch. There was only one thing he could do now, though it meant he would have to sacrifice one of his emergency pattern signatures. He crossed his fingers, hoping that he would not have to move the travelers a second time.