John Schettler - Nexus Point

“What age are you?” The question was curt and sudden, demanding in the voice of the captor again.

Nordhausen did not quite know what to make of it, or why his age would be relevant. “My age? Well, I was born in the 1960s,” he began.

“Ah, then you are of the seventh age—I am of the ninth—so you would not know of what I speak. I will tell you then, for we are safe in a Nexus now, and no harm can be done. The Moslem world once stretched to a third of the surface of the earth. The muezzin’s call to prayer reverberated from a hundred thousand minarets, all over the world. When the hajj came, the multitudes thronged to Mecca in numbers that would stagger the imagination. Do you have any idea what it was like? The sea of pilgrims became an ocean of believers clothed in the simplicity of the iraam. They would stretch for miles and miles on the roads leading into the city. There were so many that the holy days had to be extended to accommodate them. They smothered the plains about Mount Arafat, flowing in to the sacred Mosque of Haram and circling the Ka’ba in an endless murmuring stream of prayer that had no end. We were nearly three billion strong then! Now…” The darkness returned to his eyes, then flared with the light of determination. “Things are different now, and I suppose you know as much about that as any man, yes? That was truly a masterstroke, my friend! You will have to tell me how you accomplished it! Strange that the Order recruits from this time—but agents are kept in every era now, by both sides. The struggle continues, so do not rest easy. We have a saying: ‘nothing is written,’ and we hope to see the pilgrims clot the roads to Mecca again one day—rest assured.”

Rasil’s eyes glowed as he spoke, a challenge in his words and a smile animating the dark stubble of his beard. “But forgive me.” He gestured to his guards, indicating that they should release the professor’s bonds. “There is no need for this now, and I understand your outrage at the treatment you received. Forgive my poor manners. I did not know! You are very clever, my friend. So, how did you learn of this place?”

Now Nordhausen was truly flustered. The stranger, Rasil as he called himself, was talking like one of the lab techs at the Arch complex in Berkeley! He used yet another of Paul’s favorite terms: Penumbra. Who was this man? He tossed about possibilities in the twinkling of a moment’s thought: was he a government agent trailing the two of them on their trip to Jordan? He discarded that card at once, for it had been mere happenstance that the helicopter landed here—unless the damn pilot was in cahoots all along—but no, he had forced the pilot to land at gunpoint. This meeting was entirely random, yet this man was talking like he had been in on the time project from the very first.

Then the notion that he had been avoiding finally tackled him and he fell flat on his belly with the realization.

This man is a time traveler. He’s another one of Mr. Graves band of meddling miracle workers from the future! It was the only thing that made any sense. How else could the man know these terms and speak them in such a clearly related context? And he thinks… by God, he thinks I’m a time traveler as well, or at least some agent in that enterprise. That’s why he’s changed his manner and gone all civil and polite of a sudden. A moment ago he was threatening to cut my throat, and now he’s grinning at me like a Cheshire cat.

A time traveler! Paul argued it himself: the clearest evidence that time travel was possible would be visitations from the future. Nordhausen knew only too well that anything was possible now that the Arch had torn its first fateful breach in the continuum. The notion that this new technology would survive into future generations, and be used, was not a difficult leap. But what would this man be doing here in the middle of Wadi Rumm? A sudden answer came to him, all in that same fleeting instant. Paul…

“Something’s happened to my friend, hasn’t it? You knew we would be here,” he was groping in his thinking now, “and you were trying to intervene somehow, just like you did with Kelly, yes?” The notion that Paul had suffered some accident in the cave preyed upon him with a vengeance as he finished. “But you were too late.”

“Too late? You mean too late to stop you? No, my friend, I was right on target. I came through from… Let us just say that I was timely enough with my arrival. But you have not answered my question. How did you discover this place? When did you arrive, and, since we are both safe here in a Nexus, what were you about?”

Nordhausen was still struggling with the idea that some dire accident had befallen Paul, when an inner sense put the subtle clues in the man’s words together and handed him the solution.

This man thinks I was sent here; on some kind of mission. He’s asking me about arrival times, and I damn well know he doesn’t mean my flight to Amman. Nordhausen covered his mouth with his hand for a moment, as though unwilling to let his mind blurt out any of his confusion and bewilderment. One thought still clawed at him: Paul.

“Damn, I wish I had never dragged him into this now. What’s happened to him? Do you know?”

“Ah, you are worried about your friend. I understand. Then he did not intend to jump here? Do you mean to say that he was merely sent to observe? I see!” Rasil nodded his head with inner confirmation. “That is why you arrived early. You meant to establish yourselves here as observers—perhaps you set up a monitor in the Wadi to try and analyze the vectors. But you did not expect us at this hour and our meeting was mere coincidence. Am I correct? Then your friend became restless and wandered into the cave for a closer look. Too close, perhaps. If you are telling me the truth, and he did not intend to jump, then it is almost certain that he has fallen.”

Nordhausen clasped his forehead, straining to get his mind around all of this. The man’s words would lead him through a thorny path, and then land him right smack in the middle of his greatest fear. Paul must have slipped over some unseen ledge in the heart of the stony cavern.

“Fallen?” He repeated the word, his worry and self-recrimination wrapped about it like a wet blanket.

“That is not good,” said Rasil. “He was not prepared, and this will certainly be hard on him, if he gets through safely at all. And it will introduce a variation, at the very least; possibly even a more significant transformation if he is not very careful at the other end. We will just have to wait and see. I will be interested to hear your thoughts on this.”

There was much more in Rasil’s words than Nordhausen caught at first. It was almost as if… “What do you mean: if he gets through?” he blurted out. “You’re not making sense! You mean to say that you know where he may have fallen? Why, we’ve got to get in there! We can dig up the truss from our cargo and use the tethering line if we need to. You’ve got two strong men here.“

“We cannot go through that way,” said Rasil. “As I said, the well has dissipated. The reaction takes time to build up. It will be another month before the energy is sufficient—but I doubt if we will be using this gate again, now that you have discovered us. Your friend has gone through in my place, and things may be very difficult for him: dementia, nausea, not to mention the physical danger of the fall itself. But, if he is fortunate and Allah wills it, then he will land safely on the other side. What happens to him there is not for us to know. We are in a Nexus Point, my friend. This business has tempted fate, and now we must simply wait.”

Maeve sat at the lab console, her elbow leaning heavily on the armrest of her chair, chin in hand. Her deep hazel eyes scanned the long rows of display panels, replete with dials, switches, readout monitors and colorful LEDs. It was hard to believe that they could control destiny from this very room. With the right calculations, and enough research into the loom and weave of past events, they could stroll through the Arch and emerge in any time and place of their choosing. The notion still staggered her with its implications. How they managed to keep the whole thing a secret thus far was beyond her. The moment the government found out about this they would swoop down and seize the entire operation: facilities, people, data, everything.