John Schettler - Nexus Point

“Hopefully…” The man took off his pith helmet and revealed a dark stringy mane of hair. “But if your friend went in there, there’s no telling where he will end up. The moon is not yet full!” He gestured to the opening of the cave. “It will not be up for hours yet. The timing was all wrong! Don’t you see?” The man spent his anger letting it dissipate into a sullen resignation, as if some die had been cast and there was nothing to be done. Yet Nordhausen could still not discern what he meant.

“Who are you?” The leader asked the question with newfound suspicion. “How did you find this place? Tell me, before I have my men slit your throat for what you have done here today.”

The second death threat was not lost on Nordhausen. He cleared his throat and swallowed hard, realizing that by arguing he might be tempting fate with this man. But what else was there to say but the truth? “I’ve told you,” he said. “We were trying to remove a fossil from a dig. Now I’ll grant you that we were working the dig without proper permits and all, but that’s hardly a mortal offense. We stumbled in here to escape the heat, and for no other reason, I assure you. As for your green water, I know nothing about it, and I don’t care to know anything about it. We were supposed to be on a ship in the Red Sea by now. That damned helo pilot lost his nerve and dropped our cargo, and us along with it, here in the middle of nowhere. Now, that’s it! That’s all there is to say about it. Then you come along with your ill manners, accusations and death threats. And here I sit.”

The man’s eyes narrowed, and then a glimmer of a smile lit them, his lips sneering out, with little warmth. “In the middle of nowhere,” he repeated the phrase, but he did not mock. His expression transitioned, setting deeper with the same resignation the professor had heard in his voice earlier. “Well it seems you are not the only one marooned here now. I was supposed to go through, at moonrise, but the well is dissipated.”

“The well?” Nordhausen tried to ground himself in the exchange. “You mean to say this was a water cache you were worried about? Surely you would not have missed a liter or two. Besides, we haven’t even had a moment to drink. You were upon us before I could even fetch my canteen.”

The man looked at him, hand on his bearded chin now, considering. The guards returned, somewhat breathless, and shaking their heads in the negative. Words were exchanged in Arabic, and Nordhausen got the gist that Paul had not been found. The leader was decided. He glanced at the professor with a vacant look in his eyes. “It is done,” he said. “Your friend is not here, and if you are certain he was in that chamber then he has jumped through—or perhaps he merely fell through—but in either case the result is the same.”

“What in blazes are you talking about? Are you saying he fell into some chasm there? Have your men found… found his body?” There was real pain on Nordhausen’s face now, and he lashed himself inwardly for dragging Paul into all of this.

“My men found nothing,” said the leader. “Nothing at all. And the water you saw glowing in the dark no longer glows. The well is dissipated. If your friend went through then we are all in a Nexus Point now. Who knows how long it will last, or how deep it will reach.”

Nordhausen just gaped at him, not understanding what the man was saying at first, until he spoke those last few words and they jarred him with unexpected recognition.

“Nexus Point?”

The man shrugged, and smiled, his anger finally resolved. “You don’t have any idea what I am talking about, do you? Well, how do you Americans say it: we are all in the same boat now, yes? May Allah guide us safely home.”

It took Nordhausen a moment to absorb the full implication of what he was hearing. Nexus Point. It was part of Paul’s time theory. Could the man‘s use of the term have been mere coincidence? Now it was Nordhausen’s turn sink a line and tug out the answer to a question he dreaded to ask.

“What do you mean by that,” he ventured. “Nexus Point.”

The man gave him a derisive look. “You would not understand,” he said, and he seemed to speak more to himself than to Nordhausen. “What’s done is done. It will be at least another month now before the well can be used again. By that time the situation may have come to some resolution. As for your friend, that remains to be seen. At the very least it will introduce a variation, here… somewhere… Who can say? The well has been very stable, but the timing was off by at least four hours. The temporal locus may shift.” The man nodded his head, considering, almost oblivious of Nordhausen now. “There is no way to achieve any clarity here. I will just have to wait.” He looked up at Nordhausen as he finished. “ You have no idea what I am talking about, do you?”

Nordhausen gasped inwardly as the man finished. He had picked out two other terms that Paul often used when he talked about time. In fact, the other man’s words only made sense in that very context— time . Yet his anxiety only increased as his confusion abated. How could this man be spouting terms right out of Paul’s lexicon on time theory? His throat was dry and he swallowed to clear his voice. There was one surefire way to synchronize his thinking with this stranger. He looked him straight in the eye and spoke.

“Nexus Point… Variation… Clarity… Temporal Locus…” He plucked out the words and handed them back to his captor, watching him closely as he finished with one final addition of his own: “Pushpoint.” The man’s eyes widened with surprise. He had been staring past Nordhausen, deep in thought as he gazed back along the winding throat of the cave to the gloaming amber of Wadi Rumm. Now he fixed the professor with a hard, stare, his eyes alight with emotion.

“So,” he breathed. “Then you are not what you seem after all! You are a member of the Order! How quaint. I should have guessed as much. This story you concocted was too wild and preposterous to be believed. What was it you buried in the Wadi, eh? Did you bring in equipment?”

“Now, just a moment,” said Nordhausen. “You used those words yourself. Where did you hear them? What exactly did you mean?”

“Don’t be coy with me. It does not become you.”

Nordhausen glanced at the two guards, who were watching the conversation indifferently from the back of the cave hollow.

“Oh, do not concern yourself with them,” said the stranger. “My men do not speak English, and, even if they did, they would not understand what we were talking about. My, my, what a fool I have been to ramble on like this. You are very clever, professor—if that is how you prefer to be thought of. Tell me: how did you discover we were operating here?”

Nordhausen’s mind was racing with every phrase the man uttered. A moment ago it seemed that they had reached some common ground, but now the man was veering off onto another tangent, leaving confusion in his wake. The stranger waited for him to answer, but he could only burst out with a question of his own.

“Who in God’s name are you?”

The stranger smiled, this time with a little warmth, as though he had come to some new assessment of the professor and perceived him as an equal now—not simply someone to be bullied about for his trespass here.

“In God’s name? Yes, in Allah’s name I will tell you. I am Abdul Hakam, Servant of the Arbitrator. That is a given name, but also very telling. Others call me Rasil, the Messenger. And you? What is your given name?”

“Robert,” said the professor. “Robert Nordhausen.”

“Ah!” The man smiled broadly now. “Then you are named after a real warrior—one we call Badi al Zaman: the Marvel of Time. Many tales are told of Boulos and the Badi al Zaman. In fact, he lives this very moment. You even bear a resemblance. Tell me, when did you arrive? The penumbra has kept us all at bay for so long that it is surprising anyone is able to get back past the event now. What a day that was! We call that one the Day Of Retribution, but you found a way to nullify our advantage. Yes, I was in the Deep Nexus when everything changed, and I remember how it all was before things solidified again. It was a good time for us then, but now all is overthrown.” His eyes clouded over with a vacant darkness, resolving to a carefully controlled squint of anger.