John Schettler - Touchstone

The light on the infusion chamber began to blink red, and then went out. Paul looked over his shoulder with a worried expression. “I hope you have them, Kelly. The infusion mix is expended and the Arch is out of gas.”

“Hold on…” Kelly was watching his chronometer digits settle on a new target date. “Got them!” he exclaimed.

“Paul sighed with relief. “Good, I’ll go down and smooth things out with Maeve while you re-set things up here.”

“Umm… Don’t bother,” said Kelly, and the tone of his voice put Paul on edge.

“Why not?”

“Well, they’re not in the Arch. I knew we wouldn’t have enough intermix on the infusion chamber, so I just used my emergency pattern signature to nudge them forward to the correct target.”

“You mean…”

“Yup. I moved them to July 15, 1799. There was nothing else I could do once the particle infusion went yellow. There just wasn’t enough particle density for a retraction. But I took three pattern signatures while they were in the flux tube before the mission launch, so I just grabbed their pattern and we had just enough gas to get them where they were supposed to be in the first place.”

“But how will we get them back? This was just supposed to be a Spook Job.”

“We’ve still got the main mission retraction scheme programmed. When they manifest on the original target coordinates, and don’t get yanked home, they’ll realize something went wrong. They’ll just have to start the mission early.”

“Assuming the target coordinates were clear,” Paul suggested the one thing that could pose a real complication for them now. “What if they manifest right in the middle of a column of Turkish soldiers? I’m still a bit nervous about that breaching site. These blind jumps could be dangerous. That little coffee spill sent them back to the very day someone took a pot-shot at Napoleon as he entered Alexandria. Lord, who knows where they landed?” Then another question took the forefront of his thinking. “Did they shift OK?”

“Solid Green. Readings were 100%,” Kelly assured him. “I just patched in the original target vectors and bumped them forward. A little jump like that has almost no chance of pattern loss on the shift. Let’s just hope the target was clear.” He looked down at his coffee cup with a frown. “New rule,” he said with finality as he pointed a finger at his mug. “No coffee at the workstations during mission time.”

“Right,” Paul agreed, but his mind was already centuries away, wondering what was happening with Robert and Maeve.

And Robert and Maeve were wondering much the same. They heard heavy booted feet clomping down the hallway and, just as the door gave way, Robert felt the chill accompanied by that airy lightness of being that characterized time shift. He vaguely discerned the shape of a uniformed man bursting through the doorway, but then the milky green haze of eternity masked his vision, and his stomach rolled with the shift. This time he closed his eyes, hoping that Maeve had done the same. A moment later he felt the solidity of soft earth under his feet, and the travelers appeared in a haze of icy fog.

Robert steadied himself, feeling Maeve’s hand tight in his own. When he opened his eyes the room they were in had vanished. It was dark now but, as his eyes adjusted, he realized that it was just before dawn. The sky was lightening and slowly revealing a gray-brown landscape of undulating, sandy ground, with small stands of date and palm trees scattered here and there. There was a tinge of salt in the air, and Robert breathed deeply, taking in the fresh breeze that was coming off the ocean. He could not see the shoreline from the low depression in the ground where they huddled in the cold, but he could feel it, and hear the distant roll of wave sets breaking on the shore.

“Where are we?” Maeve’s voice was unsteady.

“I… Well I think this must be the road to Alexandria.” Nordhausen squinted trying to make out the lay of the land. “Kelly must have moved us back on our original target. I wonder where we were before?”

“Thank God,” said Maeve. “We almost had a nasty encounter there. When will you learn to keep your hands to yourself, Robert?”

“The damn musket wouldn’t have gone off in the first place if you would mind your own rules!” The professor was still rubbing his right earlobe where Maeve had given him a hard pinch. He stood upright, composing himself and straightening his white wig. There was a tinge of hesitation to his movements now, as if he expected another time shift at any moment. “At least the target vectors are clear. When the retraction kicks in, keep your eyes closed. In fact, close them now. We’ll need our wits about us for the real shift. I’ll give Kelly the thumbs up and he can drop us back here when the Arch is ready—unless you have an hour’s meeting in mind for debriefing on that little mishap we just went through.”

“Mishap? What’s got into you, Robert? You knew something was amiss and yet you went wandering off to gawk out the window. That bit with the rifle serves you right.”

“It was a musket, and I was only looking at it—until you tried to rip my ear off. I hope no one was injured when the damn thing fired. Do you have any idea who was out there? Napoleon! Yes, he was riding behind a column of French Guardsmen, and I have little doubt that those soldiers thought we were shooting at them. If someone was hit, it could have caused a major transformation. Let that be a lesson to you, my dear miss outcomes and consequences.”

Maeve just folded her arms and gave him a smoldering look. Then it occurred to her that they were still there. They weren’t being pulled back to the Arch complex in Berkeley. Whatever had caused the brief misfire was still plaguing the mission.

Nordhausen’s next remark seemed to vocalize her own thoughts. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Spook Job thing has a limited duration, right?” He fidgeted, looking around as if he was waiting for an overdue train. “Well,” he breathed heavily, “we’re here for good, I think.”

“Right,” Maeve agreed. “Something went wrong. We’re here for good.” There was very little enthusiasm in her tone, and the thought of what she was saying suddenly struck her. What if something really did go wrong and they could no longer get home? Where were they, exactly? Was Nordhausen correct in assuming they were back on the original target date?

At that moment the landscape about them was bathed in the bright yellow light of a rising sun. Brilliant shades of ochre and orange chased long shadows from the trees, and the sky took on a wonderful shade of azure blue. Sea birds wheeled above them, calling through the light morning mist.

“Dawn,” said Robert. “That’s a good sign. We were supposed to arrive just a few minutes before sunrise on the 14 th. “

“So it seems,” said Maeve.

They stood in silence, taking in their surroundings. They were standing in the lee of a sandy dune, and Maeve saw that a thin track led away in both directions, just a few yards off. “The road to Alexandria?” she looked to the professor for confirmation and he nodded his agreement.

Maeve waited, looking this way and that, while the professor watched her with a half amused expression on his face. He looked like an English barrister who had caught a serving wench pilfering something in the streets.

“Well?” he asked, eyebrows raising in a smug expression.

“Well what?”

“Do we just stand here and wait for Kelly to pull us out, or does my lady give her leave for a bit of a stroll?” He pointed toward the sound of the ocean. “That would be north, I suppose. So, if we head east we should come up on the outskirts of Rosetta in no time at all.” He made a grand gesture, infusing the movement with all the politeness he could muster, but it was clear that he was enjoying Maeve’s discomfiture. “Unless of course you wish to insist we stay put. In that case we can just stand here for another forty-eight hours until the final retraction scheme kicks in.”