John Schettler - Meridian

Maeve heard his comment about her mother, and her eyes hazed over with pain. The visitor continued, very intent on what he was trying to say.

“I could go on and on about this forever, and we haven’t the time. I didn’t come here to point history’s finger at any of you. We came to our own conclusions about why you never tried. The research was shunted aside, and not discovered again until… much later. The point is, we now think everything turned on the death of Mr. Ramer. The accident at the Seven-Eleven was a Primary Lever on all of you. I argued the point most eloquently, and the council finally acceded. There were many who saw the Palma Event as a Finality—so rooted in the stream of the continuum that it could not be altered. I had to quote them chapter and verse from your papers on the theory, Mr. Dorland. Eventually I convinced them that if they were correct in that assumption, there was one chance of altering the Radical Transformation. One slim chance.”

“Pushpoint…” Dorland spoke the words with an almost reverent whisper. “Every Finality creates one moment in time where the possibility of reversal blooms in a brief interval at one given point on the continuum. The two opposites arise mutually. Then, the event solidifies and the shadow it casts on the continuum becomes impenetrable.”

“I could not have said it better, Mr. Dorland.” The visitor took a deep breath, the lines of his face long and drawn, his eyes almost pleading. He was sweating profusely now as he spoke. “Dear me… I may have already said too much here…” The wind was still howling at the night outside, and the visitor eyed the windows with a glimmer of fear, harried a bit by the sound. He seemed to pause at the edge of a precipice in his thinking, and then leapt over.

“It’s too late for us—In the time of my natural life. We can’t see through the Penumbra, through the shadow cast on the time line by the Palma Event and all it gives rise to. We’ve tried to reason it out—we’ve thrown enormous computing resources at the problem, such as we had available in our time. It was leading us nowhere. Every attempt we made at opening up the continuum failed. Every time we tried to go back to the crucial moment we were stopped by the Penumbra of Palma. It acted as a great barrier. Then I came up with this little idea. We were trying to get back too far, I told them.” His thin hands waved about to add emphasis. “If we could focus all our resources on sending one man through; and if we could just reach any time at all close to the onset of the event, then there would be a chance to prompt action from here, from this side of the shadow—before the wave-front strikes the coast. We made six attempts. They all died in the Arch. The shadow was just too formidable for us. We made… adjustments. We tried something new, and I volunteered for the seventh attempt. Thank God, I made it through.”

“When did you arrive?” Dorland was spellbound.

“Seven years ago. We missed our mark, you see. Bit of a bumpy ride getting through the Penumbra. It’s a miracle I got through at all.”

“Seven years? Why, you had all that time to plan alternative action and you waited until the night of the event to do anything?”

“You don’t understand,” said the visitor. “The Lever was here—it was now. It was instrumental that I prevent the death of Mr. Ramer. That was all. There was nothing I could do to prevent the rise of Ra’id Husan al Din and his Holy Fighters in this time. They were part of a fire that started long ago, and we could not get far enough back to do anything about it.”

“But you had information—vital information that could have worked to change history in any number of ways. All you had to do was call the FBI and tell them about the bomb.”

“Who would have believed me?” Graves looked at them. “An anonymous tip called in among the thousands of anonymous tips in the deluge of misinformation and false alarms that became the heart of the terrorist strategy after the World Trade Center fell. Would you have even believed me, say, four years ago; before you dreamt up this project?

“But where have you been all this time?”

“In a monastery! I had to avoid contact and let things germinate on their own to prevent the possibility of Paradox. It’s very real, you know. It’s not just a clever twist of the mind. It kills. Time is a harsh mistress, Mr. Dorland. We have lifted her skirts once too often, you see, and many have died. We know better. That little stunt you were planning with the Bermuda Pamphlets, for example, could have gotten you all killed! The only way to be certain, to be safe, was to limit my influence on the time line as much as possible until the actual moment where I could do some good. All our research pointed to the death of Mr. Ramer as a Primary Lever on the three of you. We decided to gamble everything on that one throw of the dice. Outcomes and Consequences had very good numbers for us. They predicted that, if Kelly had lived, you would most certainly have tried something with your experiment. You wanted to visit the Globe in 1612 to take in the Tempest— it’s all on the tape we recovered. We had to decide what to do. Should we simply act on Mr. Ramer’s behalf and hope for the best, or take more drastic action?”

“Well you have certainly let the cat out of the bag with this little visit.” Dorland was pacing again, his mind a whirl. “The possibility of Paradox is very real now. You’ve revealed things here—”

“I know…” There was fear in the visitor’s eyes. “But we had to take the risk. It was our last chance at survival. I was resolved not to say anything to you here until we were safely in the void. I was very patient, Mr. Dorland. Very patient.” He clutched at his chest as he spoke, his fist tightly balled, eyes wide with the intensity of his argument. “It was your theory…” His breathing seemed to come faster as he spoke. “A moment exists, somewhere in time, and it can undo the catastrophe that is about to change the entire world. We must find it, and that quickly. We are in the eye of the tempest now. We have less than six hours before the wave-front is scheduled to make first landfall. You have a fully operational Arch ready here, and you must use it tonight.”

Nordhausen put down his shortwave and leaned heavily on the table. “Use it tonight? To go where?”

“You must find the Meridian and stick the needle in…” The visitor seemed pale and drawn as he labored to persuade them. “Oh my… I was hoping the void would keep me a while…” He gave them all a wild-eyed look. “Stick the needle in…” he said again, and then collapsed, fainting dead away and sliding off the chair onto the floor.

Maeve was the first to render assistance, Kelly at her side. Together they reached to cradle the visitor’s head from the hard wood floor of the study. A moment later, Paul helped Kelly lift the man and they carried him gently to the reading room where Nordhausen kept a small love seat. Maeve rushed in with another wet towel and began swabbing the old man’s forehead. She could see no signs of serious injury, but was concerned nonetheless.

“He’s light as a feather,” said Kelly. “Has a pallid look to him, doesn’t he? Do you think he’s had a heart attack?”