John Schettler - Touchstone

“Vapor barrier,” said Nordhausen. “We have slightly negative pressure in the Arch, at least relative to that in the main lab complex. Just a precaution. But my word, LeGrand, whatever are you doing here? How could you shift here from Rosetta? Why, not an hour ago you were gaping at the stone and no doubt wondering how the other side pulled off that little coup.”

“That’s an understatement,” said LeGrand. “It was no small matter. Who knows how they managed it, but Lord save us, there’s been a transformation—a grand transformation. It’s the very thing we live in fear of each and every day of our lives. The guardians spin out one scenario after another, the research takes years, but we are quite good at it now. The agents stand their watch on all the key milieus, waiting for new orders to come in at any time. It seems I have been given mine.”

“You mean to say you were pulled out and then immediately sent on a new mission?”

“Quite…” LeGrand ran the back of his thick hand over his brow, clearly distressed.

“Come on, Robert. Let’s walk him to the elevator and get up to the lab where it’s more comfortable.” Even as they started, something seemed to come to LeGrand and he looked from one to the other with an expression of great urgency.

“They must keep the Arch spinning,” he said quickly. “Don’t shut anything down. Can they hear me?” He looked around as they entered the elevator, and Maeve toggled the intercom button as the doors closed.

“Kelly?” She had a worried expression on her face. “Are you there?”

“Of course I’m here,” came the reply through the overhead speaker, but it had a strange resonance to it, as if the transmission was suffering interference, possibly from the Arch.

Maeve let out a long breath. “Good then… We have a guest, and we’re coming up now. All is well here. We’ll be there in a minute or two.”

“Roger that… Roger, Roger…”

She could not tell if Kelly was just repeating the phrase or if there was a feedback loop in the system. LeGrand looked up at the speaker, his eyes narrowing with concern.

“Dissonance,” said LeGrand. “They must keep the Nexus open. Tell them not to reduce the power. The Arch must keep spinning.”

“He hears you,” Maeve assured him. “But what was that you said? Dissonance? What do you mean?”

“No time to explain,” said LeGrand, smiling at the irony of his statement. “Don’t you understand? There’s been a grand transformation. Everything has changed… everything . The only stable wells in the flow of time are the Nexus Points that were open at the instant the Heisenberg Wave was generated. We’re in one now, and you must do everything possible to preserve it against the flow. Otherwise…”

He gave them a long look, his eyes reflecting both fear and sorrow as he spoke. “Otherwise we lose our last hope,” he said darkly. “Don’t you see? We’re an island now, in a raging stream of catastrophe and chaos. And time is running out.”

The visitorwas still eyeing the facility like a patron touring a museum.

“The original site,” he had said when he entered. “The Founders… All four together at once! This is more than any man could have hoped for in a lifetime. I am truly honored.”

Paul and Kelly were quite surprised when they saw Robert and Maeve escorting the man into the lab. Now they were gathered about the conference table in a room just off the main lab complex. Robert made the introductions, while Maeve watched with a sullen expression on her face. The professor recalled the heat of that last discussion with LeGrand, and he hoped the meeting would not soon disintegrate into a shouting match.

“So,” he concluded. “You’ve come with news about this transformation. It was the stone, wasn’t it. You see—I told you the Rosetta Stone was a crucial touchstone in the record of time. Without it we lose our knowledge of 5000 years of human history.”

“I’m afraid we lose a good deal more than that,” LeGrand said darkly. “In fact, we lose everything. The whole summation of our culture and civilization is swept away, lost, forgotten. Only the barest fragments remain, like the monuments of Egypt were pale reflections of that culture in our time.”

“Come now,” said Nordhausen, “it can’t be all that bad. Surely we lose our understanding of the past, but how does the loss of the stone bear upon our future?”

“You know quite well how, professor.” LeGrand’s grey eyes flashed as he spoke. “It was you who started this whole notion of the stone being an essential element for communication. Why, you were about to tell me all about it when we first met in Egypt—about Rasil, the Messenger; about the scroll you found in his pack.”

“You knew about that?”

“Not the details. Research had to brief me just now, before I was sent back.” He looked at the clock on the opposite wall, noting the steady forward progression of the second hand. The sight of it seemed to renew his agitation. “You’ve kept the Arch spinning, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” said Paul, “but we’re on internal generators. The connection to our outside power reserve appears to be severed. We’ve only a few hours fuel, I’m afraid.”

LeGrand’s eyes widened. “You’ve lost more than the connection to your local power company,” he said quickly.

“Yes,” said Robert. “We tried the radio, but the storm is playing havoc with the signal.”

“Storm?”

“We were up in the observation dome a moment ago,” said Paul.

“Yes,” Robert put in. “The whole city was shrouded in darkness. There was a freak storm raging—really quite unusual. In fact, I meant to go out and have a look.”

“No!” LeGrand nearly shouted, extending an arm to ward off some unseen evil. “You mustn’t leave the safety of the Nexus—none of you may leave. Don’t you understand? There’s been a transformation, and the whole of the world you knew—”

“Is gone,” Paul finished flatly. They all looked at him. “You weren’t looking at a storm, Robert. That was the frontier of annihilation—just a thin border zone at the periphery of our Nexus Point. Beyond it the world outside is likely to be very different from anything in our experience.”

“Yes,” said LeGrand. “Beyond the Nexus is the chaos of transformation. The world you knew is gone—all of it. The Nexus is a bubble in the stream. There are only three left that we know of, and this is one of them. The other two exist in the future, at our main operations center, such as it remains, and one more auxiliary site that we keep very well hidden. They were the only operations we happened to have going when the Heisenberg Wave struck, and I don’t know how much longer they will remain active. It was mere chance that I was scheduled for retraction, you see. I usually dally about a day or so after the stone is discovered—at least I did that on my first two missions to Rosetta. This time I told the messenger that I wanted to be pulled out as soon as possible. Fate would have it that my retraction saw one of our own Arch systems running at the time of the transformation. They sent me here to you because I was one of the very few travelers who were protected by a Nexus when the alarm came in. ”

“Only three systems left?” Nordhausen scratched his head. “I don’t understand. Why don’t your associates simply turn on the rest. Surely you must have others.”

“Once…” LeGrand seemed to sag with the admission. “We had twenty operational Arch complexes, but none of those sites exist now.”

Maeve could no longer restrain herself. “Good riddance to the lot of them! You see what your meddling has achieved? Are you telling me the world outside this complex is gone as well? Are you saying my Subaru isn’t parked in the lot outside; that I can’t make a stop at Peet’s on the way home this evening; that there’s no city out there at all?”