John Schettler - Meridian

He caught a glimmer of bewilderment in her eyes and smiled again as he ushered her off toward the stair well. Something was suddenly tugging at his attention in the main console circle. Maeve was badgering Nordhausen and urging him to get into costume. Paul turned and saw that something well beyond Maeve’s overweening air of self-assertiveness was bothering the professor. He knew the man too well. Nordhausen seemed oblivious to her entreaties, and then he swiveled suddenly in his chair to look at Kelly where he was still fidgeting at the main data terminal.

“Can we change the time?” His question had an edge of urgency in it.

Kelly looked up, obviously frustrated. “What? Change the time? Are you kidding?”

“What’s wrong?” Maeve’s eyes narrowed, and she folded her arms, giving Nordhausen an accusing stare.

“Well, I was just thinking that we ought to give ourselves a little time to get settled in once we arrive and—”

“What’s wrong , Robert?” Maeve was becoming fierce now, and the professor gave her a sheepish look. He scratched the back of his neck, and glanced at his volume of the Seven Pillars. Paul saw how his finger marked a place where he had been reading.

“There was more than one train,” Nordhausen blurted out. “Just after they laid the charge at Kilometer 172 they were surprised by a train coming down from the north. No one seemed to see the damn thing in the rain, so they let it go by. The second train out of Amman came up from the south at mid-day, and a third was scheduled six hours later from the north out of Damascus. They were staggered on the single line, you see, about six hours apart.”

“And…” Maeve looked as though she was ready to explode.

“Well I’m not exactly sure which one we need to concern ourselves with, that’s all.”

He looked from one to the other, obviously flustered, but trying to muster what little remained of his dignity under Maeve’s adamant stare. “We might end up tampering with the wrong train…”

Kelly dropped his pen.

Paul passed a moment of great hesitation as the implications of this latest obstacle struck home. Three trains… All at Kilometer 172 on the tenth of November, 1917. Two passed through unscathed. One was blown up and derailed. If there had only been two trains the outcome would have been easy enough to decide. They would simply work to make an end of the first train and, that failing, they would labor to spare the second—the one that had been blown up according to Lawrence’s narrative. But three trains added just the extra measure of complication to the mission that could prove its undoing.

“OK,” he said as his thoughts spilled over. “Let’s reason this thing out. Go get into costume, Robert. I’ll discuss this business with Maeve.”

“Right.” Nordhausen was only too glad to extricate himself from the situation, and he slipped away as Paul settled into a chair, looking oddly out of place in his 19 thcentury Arabian clothing against the backdrop of humming blue computer screens and 21 stcentury technology. “Was there anything else in that note you can recall that might help us out here, Maeve?”

“Nothing I can remember. Our visitor couldn’t write all these details down. I’m sure he meant to discuss this with us. They must have known about this potential complication.”

“Of course they had to know, but we’ll just have to work it thorough. Let’s start with the first train. Suppose we manage to alert Lawrence’s men to its approach—even if that means we expose ourselves to a Prime Mover on the time line.”

“That would be risky,” said Maeve.

“Yes, but if they get the first train, then the derailment on the tracks will prevent the other two from getting through, or at least it will delay them. Lawrence’s boys will grab their booty and high-tail it out to the desert. The second train, the one that blows up as the history reads now, will be spared.”

“How would we alert the Arabs without exposing ourselves?” Maeve was stubbornly trying to protect the Prime Mover from contamination. “If we go running up, shouting the alarm in English, it will certainly get Lawrence’s attention. We’d become entangled in the whole situation and retraction would be very difficult.”

“Well, we don’t have to actually say anything. You’d be amazed at how effective a few shouts and gestures can be. They’ll see us and assume we’re a few stray cohorts raising the alarm.”

“Possibly,” Maeve equivocated. “Or they might just take us to be vagrants and shoot us down. But—”

“Then maybe we could do something to make the train more visible.” Paul was sorting through the possibilities.

“You mean board the train and pull on the whistle or something?” Maeve handled that argument with the obvious sarcasm it deserved.

“Alright,” said Paul, deep in thought. “What if we just made our way to the tracks and pulled some debris across the line. Not enough to cause any real harm, mind you, but perhaps enough to force them to stop and clear the rails.”

“Not very practical, and risky again,” Maeve folded her arms.

“But why?”

“It’s a desert, Paul. It’s not like the rail line is lined with trees. To start with, I’ll bet we would have a rough time finding anything to block the rails. There was probably very little beyond scrub and an occasional tamarisk about.”

“What about rocks,” Paul argued. “There should be plenty of rocks and gravel around. We could pile up just enough to force them to stop.”

“And arouse their suspicions as well,” Maeve countered. “That’s the real complication, Paul. If we block the rail line they’ll be on the alert for possible sabotage. We would risk exposing the Arabs, and Lawrence himself, to a danger they did not have to face historically.”

“Lord, every mission they undertook had the risk of discovery inherent in the operation.”

“This is different,” Maeve countered. “The Turks would be on the alert. They’d be looking for trouble ahead on the line. They might get off a telegraph to call for help. The second train was a troop train, if I remember Nordhausen’s reading of that passage. Suppose they coordinate and catch Lawrence in a trap.”

“You’re reaching, Maeve.” Paul needled her.

“Yes, but you get my point. What if Lawrence is captured? We cannot expose a Prime Mover to unforeseen hazards—a risk forced upon him by our direct actions. There has to be another way.”

Dorland leaned on the arm of his chair, his hand cupping his chin as he thought. “Alright,” he concluded. “Let’s stay with our assumption that the middle train is the key—the second train. To reverse that outcome we will have to find a way of sabotaging the wires or fiddling with the charge so it doesn’t go off. That’s up close and personal. We risk exposing ourselves there too.”

“Yes, but it might be done by one of us. Lord, if they failed to see or hear the first train coming, then I’m inclined to think that one of us could sneak up and do the job.”

“Possibly, but if we fail then the second train blows and the whole mission plays out as it does in the history we have now. We aren’t giving ourselves much room here.”

“What about the third train?” Maeve jumped ahead to the obvious next step in the progression of their thinking. “Think, Paul. If we do manage to save the middle train, and if Lawrence persists in his plan, then it’s the third train that goes boom in the alternate time line. The way I see it we’ve still got a 50 percent chance here. If Masaui is on the middle train, and we save his life by preventing its destruction, then the fate of train three is irrelevant.”