John Schettler - Meridian

“Yes,” said Maeve. “I’ve got the note right here.” She reached into the pocket of her coat, groping around and coming up empty. Dorland watched as she shifted to search another pocket. “Give me a second.”

“It’s a location.” Kelly’s voice had a definitive tone to it. “I started combining temporal and spatial coordinates in my final algorithm sequences last month. But I wasn’t using alphanumerics. The ‘K’ thing is odd, but I was coding the location right after the primary date sequence, and using a hyphen to separate the data. It should have been another long number for longitude and latitude, right down to the hours, minutes and seconds.”

Dorland smiled to think how spatial coordinates still used a temporal metaphor to fine-tune their location on the planet. Everything was described as being a given number of hours, minutes and seconds on one side of the Greenwich mean or another—the Prime Meridian, as it was called. “What was that number again, Maeve?”

She was still fishing through her pockets in silence and, as he watched her, it suddenly dawned on Paul that the note was gone. He had been thinking about the disappearance of the visitor for some time, and it bothered him. It was clear that the man just didn’t get up and walk out. Yes, there was that moment when it seemed that someone had opened the front door. Nordhausen even commented on it. Yet the security chain was still in place, and the windows in the reading room were locked from the inside as well. When he extended his hand to the place where the visitor had been resting on the love seat the chill in the air was palpable. He knew then that the visitor had been reclaimed by the continuum in some way—but how? Was it a complication of time caused by the fact that he had tampered too directly with the lives of everyone else in the room? Was it the nullifying power of a Paradox that snatched him from the love seat? Or was it simply that his comrades had yanked him out of the moment, calling him back to some distant future?

What was that future, he wondered? His own theorem of time dictated that it was impossible to return to any moment on the continuum when you actually lived. The visitor was an elderly man in his seventies. That meant he came from a time at least seventy years in the future—from the end of the twenty-first century, or beyond. What had happened to him?

He considered the possibilities while he watched Maeve’s ever more frustrated search for the note. One thought gave him hope: if the mission Mr. Graves had been sent on was to succeed, then the Palma Event would be undone, and what reason would he have for being here in the first place? Paradox, in all its confounding majesty, loomed heavily over the situation. Would that explain his sudden disappearance? But why now? We haven’t gone through the Arch yet, and might never go through the Arch. We still have to work out the numbers and time is running short. Yet Graves had vanished. If it was Paradox that had reclaimed him, then something has already altered the time continuum so radically that his mission here was made ludicrous. Could the answer lie with Kelly? With the note? Was there another Pushpoint trigger hiding in something as simple as Maeve’s inherent civility that led her to take the man’s coat?

“Did someone have the note?” Maeve looked around, giving the others a glance that was half accusing but was becoming ever more sheepish as each second passed.

“It’s gone, isn’t it.” Paul spoke in a quiet voice.

“You had it for a moment, Robert, didn’t you?” Maeve pointed an accusing finger.

“I just left it on the bookcase,” said Nordhausen. “Didn’t you take it with you?”

“Well, I thought I had it right here in my pocket.” Maeve looked around as if she might find it on the seat of the vehicle.

“Did you bring the man’s coat?” Nordhausen pressed her.

“I left it on the study table, but…”

“It’s probably gone as well.” Paul folded his arms, still thinking.

“What are you getting at?” Nordhausen nudged him.

“The man is gone, the note is gone; you get my point, professor. Something’s happened to the continuum.”

“What? Are you saying things have already changed?”

“Yes,” Paul was certain now. “Kelly’s alive, for one thing. We’re heading for U.C. Berkeley in his car instead of the hospital in my car. We’re in a Deep Nexus now, a kind of no man’s land on the time continuum. None of this was supposed to happen, so it’s very tentative until we achieve our final outcome. It’s not fixed yet; not solid. I’m not quite sure yet, but I think Mr. Graves’ job was accomplished. A Meridian of time is in play here, and he’s stuck the first needle in.”

“He said that,” said Nordhausen. “Those were his exact words!”

“No,” Paul corrected him, “he said we had to stick the needle in. It’s like acupuncture.” The image was clear in his mind. “The Palma Event was so traumatic to the continuum that it needed intervention at more than one point on the Time Meridian. Mr. Graves stuck the first needle in when he stepped in front of Kelly’s car and prevented the accident that was supposed to take his life. The rest is up to us. The coat and the note were very odd. Without Maeve’s polite manner we might never have had those clues. This may seem strange, but I’m beginning to think time is on our side in this one. The horrible violence of the Palma Event has somehow been such a violation that she may just be smiling on us now. Yes, some sort of complication may have snatched away our visitor, but at least we all saw the note—right? We all remember it.”

“Then what was that last number?” Nordhausen reiterated his quest. “If Kelly’s right then it must be the last coordinate—the spatial coordinate we need for the Arch.”

No one could remember the number. They had been so taken by the rush of the moment that it just didn’t have time to register in anyone’s head. “I know it was K17 something,” Maeve repeated.

Nordhausen had a small pocket flashlight out and was squinting at his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He was certain there would be some reference in the book to the number—but what? The thing to do was to find Lawrence’s diaries for the month of November, 1917. What exactly was he up to that month? He renewed his search with dogged determination, certain he could unravel the last clue.

“Let me think,” he spoke aloud. “They had already taken Akaba that summer by mounting a raid from the landward side. After Lawrence crossed the Sinai to bring news of the raid to Cairo, he eventually rejoined his Arab cohorts. Now what was he up to in November? Ah! Here it is.”

“What is it?” Dorland leaned over trying to see where the professor’s finger pressed against a line of text in a circle of wan yellow light from the flashlight. The light fluttered and grew weaker.

“November, nineteen seventeen…” Nordhausen read aloud. “I have rejoined Auda and his followers with the aim of causing some mischief along the route of the Hejaz…” The flashlight suddenly went out.

“Damn!” Nordhausen shook the light, and it fluttered on briefly before failing again. “Of all the time for the batteries to fail! Has someone got a match?”

“Does that help?” Kelly switched on a small ceiling light.

“Good man, Kelly” The professor bent over his volume again, angling the book to cast as much light as possible on the page of interest. “Yes, it’s right here. Lawrence was asked to put pressure on the Hejaz Railway. He made raids against the line at numerous points in October and November; the first at Kilometer 587, then at Kilometer 489 and later at 172.”

“That’s it!” Maeve was certain of the last number on the note now. “It was K172. What an elegant way to note the exact spatial location! We have to be at Kilometer 172 on the Hejaz Railway when Lawrence makes his raid. You were correct, Robert. Everything on that note was of great significance. Our visitor managed to deliver his message, in a way he never intended, but deliver it he has.”