John Schettler - Touchstone

“I see…” Kelly looked down, his finger tapping aimlessly at the side of a keyboard. “And where will I be when this happens?”

“A difficult question,” said LeGrand. “We went round and round with it ourselves. Mr. Graves was a real advocate for you, of course. Many others as well. The problem is this, however: we just don’t know what you might do once you arrive, or what may happen to you. You know how things go. You reach to tie a loose strap on your sandal and lose your footing—that sort of thing. There’s an infinity of variation between the setting of the moon and the rising sun. How could we hope to account for it all?”

“Of course,” said Kelly, the numbers man acceding to the impossibility inherent in the math. There was no way they could write a retraction algorithm that would be able to predict his exact location at the key moment. “Then you’re timing the retraction to the particle decay?”

“It’s the only chance we have,” LeGrand agreed quickly. “I’ve had a word with Mister Dorland, and he seems confident that he can get just the right infusion in the particle chamber.”

“Right,” said Kelly, but his tone was hollow. He knew that Paul would do his best, but the quantum fuel situation was grave now. Even if there was enough left to pull him out, the situation could be chaotic. He’d be underground, with a flood tide careening through the chambers of the sphinx. How would he escape?

LeGrand seemed to sense his thoughts and spoke softly, his voice laden with emotion. “We know we may be asking a great deal of you, Mister Kelly…”

“Yes.” A voice spoke from behind them and they turned to see Maeve. “You put it lightly, but that’s about the size of it, isn’t it? You people couldn’t leave things be. You had to have them your way, and now you’re going to ask a great deal indeed. You’re dumping the whole thing on us—on Kelly.”

“Maeve…” Kelly raised a hand in a placating gesture, but she shook her head, the anger flaring in her eyes, and then melting away as tears spilled out, streaking her cheeks.

“Maeve…” Kelly was up, his arms around her now, pulling her close.

LeGrand swallowed hard, but saw that this was a battle he could not fight and discreetly withdrew without another word.

“You know what this means, Kelly.” Maeve wept as she spoke. “You know… ”

“You were listening. You heard what LeGrand said. Yes, I know. But you mustn’t worry, Maeve. I’ll figure something out once I’m there. If I can get in and out before the flood at dawn, then I should be well away from the place before anything happens.”

“Kelly…” She pulled back from him, her eyes meeting his. “You know I’m not talking about that. It’s—”

He put his hand over her lips to silence her. “I know,” he said. “You don’t have to go through it all now, love.”

They looked at one another and Kelly could see that she understood him. He knew that his chance of escaping the sphinx alive was the least of his worries. It was what happened after that mattered. Whether he succeeded or failed, there was still Paradox to answer, and Paradox was jealous. It had been cheated once before, and now it would have its chance to even the score. Yet Kelly was undaunted. All he could think of at the moment was how he might bring some small comfort to Maeve. “Don’t you see?” he began. “I’ve been there before. I’ve faced down the void and danced on my own grave. Something will happen, Maeve. And if it doesn’t… well… what are we, anyway? What are we?”

She looked at him through the pain, wanting to understand him, yet unwilling to let him go.

“I’ll tell you what we are,” she whispered. “We’re promises, and hope. We’re a whisper in the night; a yearning. We’re everything we ever dreamed of being, and more. We’re the whole of it on one single breath; a lifetime in one kiss, a hundred years…” She smiled wanly, her heart breaking open as she spoke.

“A hundred years,” he whispered back,” and not a moment now to spare.”

He held her close. The silence in the room was palpable. Paul was hunched over the particle infusion chamber, unable to look at them. LeGrand had retreated to the history module where Robert was sandbagging himself in behind a wall of research files and books. He was tormented, trying to master his emotion with his work, his attention pulled to the scene and then yanked back again to the pages of a thick, leather bound volume. He was searching for something, driven.

Paul was the first to break the silence. He composed himself and turned to face Kelly with as much of a smile as he could muster.

“Time,” he said, and Kelly looked up at him. “Time we got the system up, mister.”

“Right,” said Kelly, easing away from Maeve.

“I’ll see to the consoles,” Paul put in. “You had better get dressed for the part, amigo.” It would give them another few moments together in the anteroom, he knew, and Maeve gave him an appreciative smile as she led the way.

They were not long. The minutes passed quickly and Kelly emerged, his arms extended in a graceful sweep as he displayed his Arabic getup. Everyone smiled as he pranced about the room, a regular Lawrence of Arabia in his own right.

“There were Arabs in Egypt before the Pharaohs came?” Paul laughed as he asked the question.

“Well,” said LeGrand, “there shouldn’t be, but there are—the other side has men in the sphinx. I thought this might give our man here a bit of an advantage, and suggested the garb to Maeve.” He laughed with them, but his gaze was ever pulled to the clock on the wall by the door. Paul saw the worry on his face, and he swallowed hard, shoring up his will for the moments ahead.

“Best get down to the Arch,” he said. “You go too, Maeve. You can see him off at the yellow line.”

There was a long silence. Kelly stood up straight and looked from one to the other. He was thinking of what he might say to them now. He was leaving them all, he knew, and he would never see any one of them again.

“No goodbyes,” said Paul, his voice breaking.

Kelly smiled as his heart flooded with a warming sense of compassion. “Don’t mourn because it’s over,” he said softly. “Rejoice that it happened.” Then he turned suddenly, his robes wafting up on the still airs of the room, and he strode quickly away to the yawning oval door that would take him down to the Arch.

Maeve went after him, her thoughts a torrent of confusion, and yet with some hope. He’s out for us all, she thought, for LeGrand, and Paul, and Robert, and all the rest. He’s on his way for everything we have ever loved, and yet for everything we have railed against as well. He on to it now, all of it—Shakespeare and Stalin both, and he won’t come back. She was certain of that now. He would not come back.

A surge of emotion seized her as they went, hand in hand, down to the Arch. She cursed them all, Einstein, and Heisenberg, and every other name she could bring to mind. She wanted back every moment she had given to the project, the long hours of research, the endless calculations, the mind numbing struggle with outcomes and consequences that she could never really be certain of. There was no certainty. It was all a show, and she cursed it silently beneath her breath before she let her anger go at last and took hold of her love again.

Kelly would go for the West and do what he could to set things right. He was willing to give up his life—but for what? What was it? The poetry; the music he so loved? Strangely, it was the voice of a poet that came to her now, with the only comfort she could fathom in this moment of parting. This was the second time she had faced this certainty… this terrible sense of loss. The first was the moment she reached for the volume of the Seven Pillars , afraid to look and see that the history once written there would be changed. She knew, of course, that its altered course would make an end of Kelly, who’s life depended on the calamity of Palma—on the catastrophe that began the great fall into the gray world that even now loomed around them, just beyond the gossamer thin barrier of the Nexus.