John Schettler - Nexus Point

“I’ll have a few Golems take a look at some real-time data base servers on satellite imaging.” Kelly was all business again. “Let’s have them fetch any unusual imagery from the vicinity of these coordinates.”

The Golems did not disappoint. In a matter of minutes they had returned links to NASA and private industry data bases, one of which had some unusual readings on infrared. “Something was generating a lot of heat near the source of this call,” said Kelly. “Getting other readings as well.”

Maeve sighed. “Alright, let’s say something is going on there. God only knows what. Let’s give Robert the benefit of the doubt. God only knows why . Let’s say Paul was with him and something happened to him—perhaps a residual effect of the original time shift.”

“Right,” said Kelly. “We may be seeing some kind of after effect that is commonplace. Maybe he’s slipped out of sync and lapsed somehow. Maybe we didn’t have a good hold on him when we brought him back.”

“Why not call Robert back with the redial feature on your phone?”

“No, he sounded spooked. I’m as tempted as you are, but it was clear to me that he did not want to be discovered making that call. We have to assume he’s in some kind of danger here as well.”

“From this Rasil?”

“Right—an Arabic name, if I’m not mistaken.”

“This is starting to smell,” said Maeve. “What if someone found out about our first mission and the bad guys are up to some mischief here?”

“Terrorists? We re-wrote that whole history. Ra’id Husan al Din was never even born in this Meridian.”

“True,” said Maeve, “but think for a minute. We could have never completed that mission without help from Mr. Graves. He was carrying the vital clues that enabled us to zero in on the incident at Kilometer 172. Remember how desperate he seemed? His little group of scientists and researchers in the future were on their last legs. It was all they could do to get a single man through the shadow cast by Palma so we could use the Arch from here. And Graves waited seven years in this Meridian to make contact with us. That’s patience, planning, and real determined intent. Suppose someone else from that era didn’t like what Graves and his fellows accomplished?”

“You think the Meridian is being tampered with by someone in the future?”

“Obviously! We’ve been sitting here on the only Arch known to be in existence right now, and then your little Golems start going crazy and we get a phone call saying Paul has shifted in time. We just finish locating the probable origin of the variance, at least the temporal locus. The contamination all begins late June of 1187, right before one of the most pivotal moments in the history of the conflict between the Western world and the Muslims. Everything before that time is quietly green on the chronometer.” Maeve was piecing it all together now, just as she would fashion her briefing arguments for the Outcomes Committee.

“The Golems flag a high variance data file,” Kelly continued her train of thought, “and we’ve got an image of a token I know Paul carried with him at all times—right there, near this place called Masyuf.”

“Ma- sigh -af,” Maeve corrected him again.

“Right – exactly where we isolated the beginning of the Heisenberg Wave. He’s there, Maeve. Thick as thieves with the Assassins—the prototype for all our modern day fundamentalist terror cells. I just know it.”

Maeve stared at him, deep in thought. Her mind was ticking off details, drawing silent conclusions, the look in her eyes reflecting her inner states. “I agree,” she said. “Now, what do we do about it? We didn’t send Paul anywhere. We’ve no pattern signature on him for this jump and, correct me if I’m wrong, we need that to bring him back. Right?”

“Generally…” Now it was Kelly who was working the problem in his head. He took off his baseball cap, and scratched the back of his neck. “I was moved without a pattern signature,” he said slowly. “Paul said it was possible if you have an exact location on someone. That’s how Graves and company pulled me out. They saw my location on the DVD footage from Paul’s security camera. We talked about it privately afterwards. Paul seems to think that when someone travels in time their very presence is offensive, as he termed it, in the new Meridian. Time doesn’t want them there. She’s a bit like you, Maeve: a place for everything, and everything in its place.”

“So we get Paradox cleaning up everything that doesn’t fit after the protective interval of the Nexus fails.” The implications of what she was saying hit home to both of them. “Which means Paul could be in trouble—at the brink of complete annihilation, just like you were before Graves’ people pulled you to safety.”

“Right…” Kelly bit his lip. “So we’ve got to try and fetch Paul.” He looked at her, drawing the obvious conclusion to their thinking.

“But how?” Maeve returned the obvious question.

“We’ve got the Arch on standby and I can have coordinates set up for the temporal and spatial location of this hidden archive in thirty minutes.”

“But Kelly, how will we know Paul is there?”

“The Red Arrow,” said Kelly with finality. “It was to be used only in matters of utmost importance. The coming of that damn King of Diamonds is a sign of grave and present danger. He’s there , Maeve. I’ll bet my life on it. He used the token as a sign to indicate his geographic location at the moment of greatest danger.”

“Kelly…” Maeve saw the pain in his eyes but she had to speak her mind. “That book could have been moved a hundred times in the last thousand years. Sure, it was unearthed from its final resting place, but that’s not evidence that Paul was in that archive. He could have dropped the card anywhere before it got stuck it in that book. See what I’m driving at?”

Kelly had a frustrated look on his face, but he put his baseball cap back on and pointed at the screen. “Then we’ll go look,” he said firmly.

“What?”

“We’ll run a spook job and take a peek.”

“Now you’re not making any sense again,” Maeve protested. She hated to play the devil’s advocate with Paul’s life at stake now, but facts were facts, and that part of her who ruled on Outcomes and Consequences could not overlook these things. “Spook job?”

“Sorry,” said Kelly. “That’s just my term for a recon operation. We think we have a good picture of events from the written history that has accumulated over the years, but we don’t. We only see the account of a few key writers and researchers—perhaps only 1% of what actually happened was written about. Sure the big stuff gets a lot of coverage, but we all know that it’s the little stuff that really matters. The humdrum moments of inconsequential time on the Meridian can hide Pushpoints that set all the big events in motion.”

“True,” Maeve relented. “I was going to argue this in the Research Committee, but it seemed to play right up Nordhausen’s alley, so I didn’t push it. To really know if we’re going to open the right spot in a Meridian, we have to run a lot of reconnaissance. That way we could take a look at a situation and see if our research is correct.”

“Exactly!” Kelly had the fire lit in his belly now, and he was already walking over to the coordinate module. “Ninety-percent of our actual Arch time would be short jumps to simply take a peek at something—spook runs.”

“Why do you call them that?”

“Because on a recon operation we just open the Meridian for a few seconds—we don’t do a full breaching sequence. The traveler just appears, like an apparition, if you will, and then vanishes again. But for that brief moment they should be able to see the milieu we’re targeting. Then we bring ‘em right back home. I know it may be a long shot, Maeve but I have to do this—for Paul. I’m going to take a peek inside that damn archive in the year 1187 and see what’s there. If anything, it might give us some clue—or at least confirm if this line is anywhere close to the mark.”