John Schettler - Meridian

“Oh, don’t be foolish.” Maeve chided the professor as she leaned in to take a look at the map. “There could be a way to inquire about the man discreetly. Suppose I go as a foreign nurse, and the two of you get bandaged up as wounded soldiers.”

“But we don’t speak the language!” Nordhausen was being difficult.

“Well, I can manage a bit of German, Robert. Weren’t the Turks allies of the Germans? We could make up a list and put Masaui’s name on it as if he was being selected out of the ranks for some inoculation.”

The professor thought for a moment. “It will be risky. Paul and I will have to play some ruse to keep our mouths shut.”

“I’ll just bandage up your throats or something,” Maeve sketched out her idea. “We can make it look like you’re simply too sick to talk—victims of a gas attack.”

“Good work, Maeve,” said Paul. “But we’re assuming Masaui is on the train. What if he’s with Lawrence?”

“For that matter what if he’s not even there?” Nordhausen folded his arms. “Suppose he’s at Amman selling tickets, or at the terminal destination of the train waiting to meet someone?”

The real difficulty of their situation was growing in Paul’s mind. He wracked his brain with the dizzying possibilities that flowed in from a thousand directions to this one moment. It would be absolutely impossible for them to consider all the contingencies. They had to choose something and get a focus on their mission. It was already well past midnight! The more he thought about the situation the more the weight of impossibility seemed to settle on him. Then the floorboard creaked in his mind and his thinking fell through to an obvious conclusion.

“Wait a minute!” He nearly shouted. “The visitor must have known we would encounter all this potential variation in our target search. We have to rely on the clues in the note. They must have done the research, and the time and location are very specific. What was the outcome? What happened, Robert?”

Nordhausen read a passage from his Seven Pillars. “Here it is,” he quoted: “When the engine was squarely over the mine I pushed down the handle of the exploder. The resulting explosion was even more effective than we had hoped. The old engine was lifted off the tracks, and her boilers were rent open in a cascade of steam and flying metal… Looks like they were successful.” He scanned forward through the narrative. “Many of the cars derailed, and the fire triggered a small ammunition cache causing further havoc. The Arabs attacked and butchered quite a few of the enemy in the confusion before they melted away.”

Dorland rubbed his forehead. “That has to be the event,” he said. “The train was destroyed, and Masaui’s fate was sealed in the resulting chaos. It doesn’t matter who’s side he’s on.”

“Are you suggesting he gets killed in the raid?”

“Most likely, but that doesn’t matter. Whether he lives or dies is not our concern. If they planned this correctly, and I have to believe they did, then the event we need to alter has to be something obvious in the milieu they’ve pointed us to.”

“But I thought you said it would be something utterly insignificant.” Nordhausen was confused.

“Yes,” Paul explained. “It will be. All the Meridians flow into this one Nexus Point. They knew it would be impossible for us to test every time line that feeds this point for a possible intervention. Yet, we have to do something to change the obvious outcome of this time milieu. Whatever it is must be right there in front of us. Think! You’ve been pointing out how impossible it will be for us to interact with the people on the train, or within Lawrence’s camp, to find this man. They must have known that as well. So I reason that we don’t even attempt to find him. To me it looks like the destruction of the train is the key lever here. That’s what we have to prevent. If we change that outcome, then I believe the fate of Masaui will be altered as well. Don’t you see? We can’t possibly figure out what Masaui does, or fails to do, that eventually gives rise to the Palma Event. But I’m willing to stake everything on the chance that this is the lever we have to alter. That train must not be destroyed. Right Maeve?” He looked to Outcomes and Consequences for support.

“It certainly has far less haze in the equation than trying to find Masaui,” Maeve agreed. “Yes, I like this. It has switch-like clarity. If the train blows up at Kilometer 172 on November 10, 1917, then we have history as we seem to know it now; as it reads there in Lawrence’s book. If the train fails to blow up, then something changes in the time line for Masaui. It’s not for us to know what that is. You’re right. This is the key moment. Kilometer 172 is both a time and a place—a precise moment on the Meridian. Our visitor knew that, and the clue is vital.”

“Then what should we do?” Nordhausen closed his book.

“Get us Arab garb at the Drama Department,” Paul said to Maeve. “Your idea about the German nurse was good, but it brings us into contact with too many people on the train. We’d have to open the continuum at Amman, and board there. It’s too complicated. If we go as Arabs, we can cloak ourselves easily, and just drop into the desert somewhere near Kilometer 172. It’s perfect! Then we wait for Lawrence to lay his charge and we find some way of preventing the explosion. We do it with as little contact with the locals as possible.”

Nordhausen was still the devil’s advocate. “But suppose we run afoul of the Arabs, or even Lawrence himself? None of us speaks Arabic.”

Dorland’s mind worked quickly, brushing the argument aside. “Time will not want us anywhere near Lawrence,” he said quickly. “He’s a Prime Mover—or perhaps even another Free Radical, depending on your point of view. In any case, Time will not easily allow us to tamper with his history. That’s why Masaui is our target, and this incident becomes the Pushpoint that decides his fate.” He tacked on one last thought. “If we happen on the Arabs, we speak English.”

“English? What good will that do us?”

“We use Maeve’s first ruse. Say we’re a medical team that was captured by the Turks. Say we were on a train, but managed to slip away. Say we were taken in by an Arab family and—”

Nordhausen interrupted him. “Say all of this in English?”

“No!” Maeve held up a finger, her eyes brightening with an idea. “We just say one thing,” she concluded. “Aurens! That’s what the Arabs called him. We just invoke his name and point. Let his name be our shield and hope for the best.” They were all quiet for a moment before Maeve put in one last remark. “And a good retraction algorithm wouldn’t hurt either.”

Kelly came running up, breathless, a notepad in hand. “I’ve got all the preliminaries in for the temporal locus,” he huffed. “Where’s that spatial coordinate?”

“Just a second.” Nordhausen looked at Paul. “Arabs in the desert?”

“I think it’s our best bet, Robert.”

Nordhausen fidgeted a moment, consulting his book again. “The attempt on the Yarmuk Gorge Bridge was made in the pre-dawn hours on November 8 th. After it failed they fled to Abu Sawana, arriving tired and hungry as the sun came up. As you might imagine, morale was low and they were all quite discouraged. They had to do something to make the raid worthwhile, particularly if Lawrence hoped to gain the support of other local tribesmen in the area. A botched operation was not good for recruiting purposes, you see. That’s when they hit on the idea of blowing up a train. The rail was close at hand, and they still had explosive charges left. So they decided to set up an ambush at one of their old lookout posts well north of Amman.”