John Schettler - Nexus Point

After Rasil returned to him, the two men did not have long to wait until the Nexus failed. Rasil was the first to know of it, but Robert recalled the shivering sensation of déjà vu that had come upon him. The ride was over, and they had both survived. Apparently the Meridian had not been altered—at least not to any appreciable degree that he could discern there and then. What had happened to the world beyond the silent red walls of Wadi Rumm was anybody’s guess.

Rasil’s men were both safe, returning to the cave and setting explosives in the well. Rasil gave the order to detonate them with real reluctance. When the smoke billowed out into the russet evening he stared at Nordhausen with a look of recrimination in his eyes. The sharp report of the explosion echoed through the canyon, resounding from the tall pillars of wind sculpted stone.

“So goes the Well,” he had whispered. “No more will it deliver the souls of the faithful to our agents in Massiaf. I wonder how Sinan will fare without the scrolls to guide him now?”

“What’s that?” Nordhausen pretended he had not heard the man, still uncertain of his own fate now that the interval of safety within the Nexus Point had elapsed. Rasil was so focused on his own inner reverie that he did not realize the professor was so close at hand. He had given him a chilling look, his eyes replete with emotion that resolved to a feeling of intense hostility, carefully controlled, a smoldering anger that he kept in check.

Nordhausen was so taken by the man’s expression that he thought he was done for. “I suppose you mean to kill me now,” he remembered saying. “Finishing up all the dirty business of the hour, are we?”

Rasil had simply smiled, fitting his pith helmet in place and watching as his men retrieved their little train of camels. “No, my friend,” he said. “That is not permitted. Even though I am convinced you know more about this affair than you let on, it is not seemly for a Walker to strike down another as you suggest. We do not act rashly. And, after all…” He started away toward the squawking camels where his men mounted a few yards off, turning to speak over his shoulder as he went. “I am no assassin.”

They had left him there to simmer with it all, alone in the vast silent canyon; miles from any help. The helicopter showed up three hours later, stirring the silt and salmon grit of the canyon floor as it alighted. It had been sent on hire, said the pilot. The emergency call had come in just a few hours ago from the United States, saying that a researcher had gone missing in Wadi Rumm, and giving exact GPS coordinates of the site he had been preparing for shipment. He had Kelly to thank for that, and Paul, though he did not know it at the time. The professor remembered his joy at being rescued, but the long flight home was fraught with misgiving.

Kelly and Paul decided to let him stew. It was just a little slap on the behind for his headstrong ways, and he knew he had it coming. Days later he was back in Berkeley, elated to find that Paul was alive and well, and amazed at the tale he had told. Tonight they would meet for the final debriefing, and there was something he wanted to check in the library before he showed up.

When he opened the door the others were all seated at the conference table, half way through a cup of dark, rich coffee. “Major Dickason’s blend?” he asked.

“Arabica Mocca Sanai,” Paul chimed. “I developed a taste for it with my friends in Massiaf. My, you’ve been busy, Robert. I had no idea you were so industrious.” He thumbed at the far wall of the study where an immense, looming shape was mounted on a sturdy oaken frame riveted to the wall. It was the Ammonite, glistening under a sheen of protective lacquer that accented every calcified line of detail in its near perfect state of preservation.

“Splendid, isn’t it? I got men on the job the instant I was back. You didn’t think I was going to leave it baking in the hot desert sand, did you?”

“We had a hard time trying to decide whether to leave you there,” said Maeve.

Nordhausen placed his hand over his heart and proffered a humble bow. “Mea culpa,” he smiled. “Well, I suppose we should get started, and I hope this finally settles the argument over whether we should shut the whole thing down or not.” He looked askance at Paul. “You aren’t taping this session, are you? I don’t want any unexpected visitors to show up for coffee in the heat of our discussion here and send us gallivanting off to the cretaceous.”

“No tape, no cameras,” said Paul. “In fact, no one was told of our meeting here today. It’s not in any log or appointment book, and we should be discretely safe in the covering mists of time. No future historian will know this conversation ever occurred.”

“Unless they run a spook job on this place tonight,” said Kelly, prompting a laugh from Maeve.

“I’ll never forget the look on your face, Paul,” she began. “There I was, half naked and draped in a bed sheet, just trying to keep a hold on myself when I suddenly saw you gawking at me across the room!”

“Quite an amazing specter,” said Paul, “or so it seemed at first. I finally put the clues together, however: the lights, the cold mist, and you, my dear. I think I recognized you on some level, strange as the moment was.”

“Which leads us to my point,” said Kelly. “I think we may have discovered the truth behind all these reputed sightings of ghosts and spirits through history. If your hunch is true, Paul, if there is a Time War being waged, then the two opposing sides might be running recon missions into any number of milieus. That means we might get a glimmering of what they are interested in, of what they are up to, simply by researching ghost stories.”

“Good point,” said Maeve. “Most of what we call history is really lost in shadow. Just as we hope there will never be a record of this meeting, 99.9% of everything that has ever happened still remains unknown to us. If we decide to get involved in this, then it’s very likely I’ll be donning my little white sheet again and again, and frightening the wits out of people in the process.”

“So you’re calling it a Time War now,” said Nordhausen. “I thought the very same thing.”

“It certainly seems like that,” said Paul. “These people thought I was a member of some nefarious group they called ‘the Order.’ I think this Sami figure I told you about was positively set on killing me. It was clear that someone was using the sink at Wadi Rumm to send operatives back to the time of the Crusades.”

“Right to that little band of Assassins at Massiaf,” said Maeve. “What a nifty place to recruit from.”

“Quite,” said Nordhausen. “In fact this Rasil fellow was muttering something under his breath at the end about Sinan—the Old Man of the Mountain, as the Crusaders knew him. Rasil called himself the Messenger, and I don’t think he was just being artful in that. He was supposed to be taking messages through the Well to Massiaf—probably the odd scroll I came upon in his satchel.”

“You figure he was doing this on a regular basis?” said Kelly. “That makes sense. He was taking Sinan instructions or something.”

“Well it certainly would explain a lot of the folk lore that surrounds that man,” said Maeve. “Legend has it that he had a strange clairvoyance, and seemed to know what was happening—or what was going to happen in the events of his day. He would receive letters from important figures and simply dictate his response to them without even opening the message. The odd thing was that his responses answered the content of the original message, line by line, if the stories hold water.”

“I think you’re on to something there, Maeve,” said Paul. “Let’s assume Sinan was an agent, permanently posted in that time milieu—a very critical period in the conflict between the West and the Muslim world. I had the distinct impression that a few of the other people I met were privy to the whole time travel thing: certainly the Kadi, and I would guess that the Sami would be in on it all as well. Now that I think of it, Jabr must have known something too. He spoke modern English! He called it the Saxon tongue, but even the Middle English of Chaucer’s day would be virtually unrecognizable to our ears in this time—and that was more than a century before Chaucer. If fact, he called me a Walker, and said he was one as well. Maybe he meant Time Walker.”