Anvil of Fate

Chapter 7

Long moments passed and Kelly and Maeve seemed inseparable, one person melded together there in the lab, Maeve reached into her pocket, and Paul was able to see that she held a small stone that caught the light and gleamed in the shadows between them.

“Heart of gold,” she said as Kelly looked at the nugget in the palm of her hand.

“Heart of gold,” he echoed. Then the two of them turned to the others, all smiles and tears. Maeve was the first to speak.

“Alright,” she said to Paul and Robert. “You get a pass on the operation to bring Kelly home, but God almighty, look what we have on our hands now!” She seemed to grow pale for a moment, swaying a bit and reaching out to Kelly for support.

“A bit light headed,” she said. “I’ll be OK in a minute.”

“It’s the dissonance you experienced when we established the Nexus Point here,” said Paul. “In fact… Where were you when Kelly called? Were you at home? Did you just drive here?” He had no idea what the world outside the Nexus still looked like just now, given the transformation they had just discovered in the Meridian. He was fishing for something.

“An hour ago,” said Maeve. “The Golem alert hit my cell phone and… well, I just couldn’t sit at home any longer. I had to do something. I tried calling both you and Robert, but no one answered. So I got in my car and drove over to see what the problem was. I was down in the RAM Bank checking the reserve power situation there on the lower floors when you and Robert arrived.”

“You were here? Why didn’t you come up when you heard the Arch system go on-line?”

“I thought it was part of the alarm system. You know… Golems find a variation, raise the alarm and the Arch spins up automatically to create a Nexus Point here. I just assumed you both were responding to the alarm as well, so I continued with what I was doing. I had no idea what you were up to, and frankly I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to know after what happened to Kelly… I wasn’t quite sure of anything. Then Kelly called me.”

“You were just down stairs?” said Kelly, quite surprised. “I thought you were at the apartment in Walnut Creek. Why didn’t you say so?”

“Look, it was all I could do to compose myself enough to walk up here!” she said. “You surprised me with your call, so I thought I’d come up and return the favor.”

“I understand,” said Paul. “But I wonder why the Arch failed to start an hour ago when the first alert calls came in.” He had a feeling of vague disquiet, but quickly moved on. “Well, you may as well know the worst.” He told her what they had found in the Golem reports. “This is radical! It’s mind blowing. No Holy Roman Church. No United States of America! Maeve… when did you get your Golem alert call?”

“A a few minutes past one. I called the two of you, then left right away. Probably got here by 1:30 or so.”

“So that was you on the phone? We were just leaving USF when you called. My cell phone rang twice, but it was in the briefcase in the trunk of the car, and we were in a hurry. The first call was probably the Golem alert, which means we’ve already lost an hour.”

“No United States?” said Nordhausen. “What the hell does the world look like out there now?”

“Good question,” said Paul. “Well, we’re obviously getting power from somewhere, so there must still be a city out there.”

“How is that possible?” said Nordhausen? “We can clearly see the whole damn Meridian is completely shattered on the monitors. How can there be a San Francisco if the new world was colonized by the Muslims?”

Paul was silent for a moment.

“Come on, man. This is your theory. What’s going on out there?”

Paul reasoned it out. ”The Heisenberg Wave has obviously not been emitted yet,” he said, with some surprise, then hope growing in his eyes. “We aren’t seeing what has happened here on the monitors… We’re seeing what will happen.”

“But the monitors are reading blood red for this time period,” said Robert, “and that assessment is based on data the Golems are supposed to be retrieving from the Internet. If there is still an Internet. But how could there even be any Golems at all out there if this was such a radical transformation. This is maddening!”

“We’re in a Nexus Point, Robert. And a very deep one at that. A Nexus is an intersection of all possible Meridians, all possible outcomes. Everything overlaps in a grand synthesis here. Yes, there would be no Golems in the changed Meridian, but they exist in this one, and this time line is being preserved here in the Nexus with all the others. At first I thought the Golems would only be aware of actual changed facts, but somehow they are picking up other data, an awareness of information that may be coming from other Meridians passing through this Nexus Point. I can’t say exactly how it works, but it does work. I guess we’ll have to make a another new entry in the lexicon and call it ‘resonance.’ A Nexus point is the heart of infinity itself. In here, we can apparently see and know what every other Meridian in the Nexus knows—what Time itself knows. This event must resolve to some outcome, right Maeve?”

He looked to her for confirmation, and got no objection. “And the resonance here is telling us what the most likely outcome of this intervention will be in the history up until our time. That’s what the Golems are picking up as they become aware of the weight of opinion of all others time lines out there. The monitors are showing us what the changed Meridian is most likely to become after the Heisenberg Wave generates, and pointing out the variations from our own history in the RAM Bank.”

“Then it hasn’t changed yet? There’s still a Holy Catholic Church? Columbus discovered America?”

“Apparently not, because we’re all still alive and well. And we can’t be alive if this transformation takes effect. In fact, we may be the very reason the Heisenberg Wave cannot fully manifest now. Our presence in a protected Nexus Point is causing a real problem for Mother Time, She has to wait on what we do here. But keep a close eye on the power. If we lose our Nexus field all bets are off.”

“Well, let’s use the Golems to look up what happens in the future then, if this resonance allows access to the all the data then we could find out what they did from their own damn history files!”

“I don’t think that will work, but you could try it.”

“I did try it,” Kelly intervened. “All you get is crap people entered into Wikipedia, Sci-fi stuff, corny YouTube videos and other speculative data. No real information. The Golems are blind to the future because they see only information that was written about the past, about the history. Try Googling stock market quotes for a week from today. You get nonsense, no real data, because, it hasn’t happened yet. So forget it, Robert.”

“You’re telling me nothing will be written about it in the future?” The Professor was adamant.

“No,” Kelly frowned. “I’m telling you nothing has been written about it as of the moment of your query. You’ll note that everything the Golems fetch for us is from our present or the past. The history line ends with today’s date. The information is limited to the point on the continuum where the query originates. They can’t see the future, resonance or no resonance.”

“Yes,” said Paul. “If willful agents could know what is to come, then they could take preventative actions before those events happen and, if successful, they would immediately be exposed to Paradox. The event they prevented never happened, so how could they prevent it? No. Time seems to restrict all forward movement. You can only go back—to quantum arrangements that have already occurred. And you can return to your own milieu, as we obviously know, but you can’t go forward beyond the moment in which you live.”

“Kelly went forward,” Nordhausen pointed. “Graves and the rest of them saved him from Paradox and pulled him out of this milieu into the future! And all the moments between our time and that future are quantum arrangements too.”

“Well I didn’t say you could not be pulled forward to a specific time and location,” said Paul. “Hell, we just pulled Kelly forward over ten thousand years, to a specific location within a Nexus Point. My guess was that Graves and company simply moved him to a Nexus Point in their time as well, and kept him there—and a Nexus is a void in Time, so Kelly never really entered their milieu. He was in a Nexus the whole time. And yes, the line continues forward, but we don’t know what any of those quantum arrangements are. They are complete unknowns to us. We sent you to Rosetta, for example, only because we knew how to precisely code that time and place. But how do you code for an occurrence in Time you know nothing about? We could specify something in the math, but it would be a complete shot in the dark.”

Nordhausen shrugged, and Paul went on.

“Moving forward would require exact information as to time and location—information we just don’t have. Without it a person could shift right into the wall of a building, when we thought they were shifting to a safe vacant lot. The corona on the breaching bubble would probably destroy the inert mass there, allowing you to manifest, but you’d be stuck. There’s just not enough information to get a safe breaching point, even if it were possible to go forward. So we just cannot travel to the future, unless you want to do the Einstein shuffle and find a way to approach the speed of light for an out and back loop. But this is all irrelevant. While we stand here working out the theory, Time is holding her breath, waiting.”

“For us?”

“We’ve generated a Nexus Point here and, well, we aren’t just anybody, you know. We are willful operators—all Prime Movers and First Cause Initiators. We are the Founders, at least on this Meridian, and we’re sitting here with a functional Arch at our command, up and spinning at this very moment, and a good lead on what we think is happening in the history with this intervention. That’s power—tremendous power to change what happens with this event.”

Robert raised his eyebrows, obviously in agreement as Paul continued. “This wouldn’t be the case if we were still scattered about the city here and the Arch was down. Then I think the Heisenberg Wave would probably generate much more quickly. But fortunately we are here. Remember what LeGrand said when he was trying to convince us to act last time? From here we can act with impunity. Time cannot decide the outcome for this Meridian until we do act, or fail to act, and this Nexus Point dissipates. Only then can the Heisenberg Pulse emit the wave and actually work the final transformation, and knit all these potential outcomes back into one continuum.”

Maeve had a grim expression on her face. “So what we see here on the monitors is the likely outcome of what the Meridian will look like if we fail to prevent this tampering?”

“Precisely,” said Paul.

“Was this a side effect of the retraction scheme you ran for Kelly? Is it something we did?””

“Absolutely not,” said Paul. “If the alert went out when you say it did, then we pulled Kelly out well after that. It’s clearly a counter operation. Our adversaries may have been working up plans along this Meridian for some time. Kelly says this Hamza fellow he encountered was making some effort at correcting the errors of Abdul Rahman. That’s hardly a description of an impartial scribe. They were obviously analyzing this battle, looking for the Pushpoint that led to the defeat of the Saracens.”

“It was more a forfeit than a real defeat,” said Maeve. “At least the way I read what’s been written about it. Apparently the scouts and levees Charles sent to infiltrate the Moorish camp managed to stir up enough commotion that a substantial portion of the force attacking Charles broke off and rode back to protect the booty they had plundered on the way up the valley. The rest of the army saw this and thought they were retreating. Abdul Rahman was outraged, and he personally threw himself into the fray to try and rally his men. He was surrounded by the Franks and killed.”

“That was pretty much a fatal stroke against the army then,” said Paul. “A badly managed force is one thing, but a leaderless army would not have posed a significant threat any longer, particularly against a man of Charles ilk.”

“Right,” said Maeve. “When Abdul Rahman fell in battle, the Saracens broke off the attack altogether and fled. They all retired to their camp site to protect their plunder. Charles fully expected them the renew the battle the following morning, but they slipped away that night, a headless, defeated army heading back to Spain.”

Nordhausen had followed Paul’s Time theory as best he could. He didn’t quite grasp it, but if History was waiting on them now, he would do his part to move things along.

“The importance of this encounter cannot be understated,” he said. “Charles may not have truly earned his nickname here, but in subsequent years he is relentless in opposing further Muslim incursions. He learned from this battle and began to develop his own heavy cavalry, with stirrups to aid the untrained riders, and within five years he had some fairly reliable horsemen.”

“But I thought the invasions ended here at Tours,” said Paul.

“In a broad sense, they did,” the professor continued. “But the Muslims tried landing by sea at Narbonne again four years later in 736, and Charles Martel was ruthless confronting them. And he hounded them out of Provence as well, wiping out Muslim bases in southern Gaul. His son, Pippin the Short, finished what he started, and of course then we get Charlemagne, his grandson.”

“So if Charles dies, or fails at the Battle of Tours, everything changes,” said Paul. “That’s what the Golems are picking up from information in the Nexus. That much is clear. But now comes the hard part. Where’s the Pushpoint? What do we have to do to preserve the integrity of this Meridian? Or, stated another way, what in the world did they do to change the outcome of this battle?” He looked from Robert to Maeve, but neither one spoke.

Maeve went to the history module and began typing a few searches. “Suppose they tried to prevent the birth of Charles,” she began.

“God, that could lead us anywhere,” said Robert. “You could go back generations and knock off a distant ancestor. These people are a cult of Assassins, right? That’s what they do for a living.”

“But that is very dangerous,” said Paul. “If you deliberately eliminate someone from the continuum, you are also eliminating all his descendants, not just the one you may wish to target, and you are eliminating all their respective descendents as well. It gets exponential, and the farther back in Time you go the more dangerous this is. You know the old saying… everyone knows someone, who knows someone…”

“But we prevented the birth of the terrorist Raid Husan al Din,” said Nordhausen.

“He was unmarried, and had no descendents,” said Maeve. “I challenged LeGrand on this, and he confided the information. Husan Al Din was a Free Radical.”

“But Charles Martel is another matter entirely,” said Paul. “He’s a Prime, and you don’t mess with Primes, right Maeve? You drilled that into our heads early on. So my bet is that they could have done nothing to threaten the birth and early life of Charles. No. The Pushpoint has to be somewhere else.”

Kelly had been listening intently, and he was tapping his desk with a thought emerging in his mind. He had been talking with Hamza about the archive, wondering where they would find the space for all the information they needed to store. Then he remembered the scribe telling him about the auxiliary stones they were carving and moving to other locations. That’s how he was able to get his name out there and get the attention of Paul and the Golems!

“Wait a second,” he held up a hand. “Hamza said he was only carving the main narrative there on the archive walls. He said the details of an event would be carved on a stela and moved elsewhere. There just wasn’t enough room there, and they didn’t want all their eggs in one basket either, particularly after I showed up. But here’s the interesting part—he had a way of coding in the location of the stela. Yes, he showed it to me. What was that symbol he pointed out.” He pinched his lower lip, trying to remember.

“Give me a piece of paper!” He was looking around and spied a notebook and pen across the desk. “OK, Robert, what the hell does this mean?” He drew some Hieroglyphic symbols on the paper and handed the notebook to the professor. He had drawn a line of birds, and a circle with an X inside.

“Where did you see this?”

“Never mind that now, what does it mean?”

Nordhausen was puzzled for a moment. “Must be phonetic,” he muttered. “Sau…”

“That’s it!” Kelly remembered. “Zau. Hamza said the details of this event were to be carved on a stela and sent to another location. This is its location code. Where is Zau?”

Maeve was at the history module. “I’m going to take a chance and assume it’s somewhere in Egypt, and fairly close by the archive site,” she said. “These stones were not that easy to move.” A moment later she had a reference.

“Ah… Zau, the ancient Egyptian name for Sais. A place called Sa el-Hagar today. It’s in the Western Nile Delta.”

“Sais?” said Nordhausen. “That’s odd. If I remember my Herodotus, that’s the grave of Osiris, god of the afterlife and resurrection. But those ruins were ransacked by the peasantry after the old temple sites and ancient religions were banned when Rome adopted Christianity under Theodosius the First. It’s a fairly ancient site, though. The Greeks believed it was built by Athena, and antedates the great deluge that supposedly destroyed the lost realm of Atlantis.”

“They were just usurping stories of Neith,” said Maeve. “She was an Egyptian goddess of war. Sais was her proverbial home town and the origin site of the cult that worshiped her.”

“Well, Neith also had a lighter side,” said the Professor. “She was also a primordial deity associated with the first waters of creation—a great mother goddess. And in other interpretations she is depicted as the goddess of the loom, weaving all the strands of the world together to make a whole. She was supposed to do this each day. And incidentally…” The professor turned to Kelly. “Neith was thought to be the Mother of Ra. Having no husband, she was therefore a virgin goddess who nonetheless gave birth to, quite literally, the sun of the heavens above. Sound familiar?”

Maeve was looking the information up. “Plutarch said that when this deity was subsequently identified with Athena, an inscription was carved at her shrine that read: ”I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.”

“Damn,” said Robert. “How’s that for a description of Mother Time herself—she weaves the strands of the Meridians together to recreate the world each day. She knows all that hath been, all that is, and all that shall be.”

“And we’re the first mortals to have raised her veil,” said Paul. So where is all this leading us? What’s the significance of this site at Sais?”

Nordhausen thought for a moment, then something occurred to him, a sudden conjunction of worrisome thoughts that had been nagging at him since that moment at Rosetta when he first laid eyes on the altered Rosetta stone.”

“Sais!” He said. “Yes! It was an ancient temple site. That’s where they would have published Ptolemy’s decrees.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Kelly.

“The damn Rosetta stone!” said Nordhausen. “We’ve always known it didn’t originate at the fort where it was found at Rashid—at Rosetta. It was obviously brought there from somewhere else. These proclamations were published at significant sites, places of worship and cultural centers. Many historians believe the Rosetta stone probably came from Sais, and as I said, that site was pilfered by the peasantry when the Romans converted to Christianity. The temples were all torn down and literally became quarry sites for other building projects. The Rosetta stone probably came from the Temple at Sais and was just stuck into the walls as part of the fortifications built at Rashid.”

Paul snapped his fingers, suddenly very focused on what Nordhausen was saying. “Find out who built those fortifications, Maeve.”

“Hold on a second, let me run a quick search.” She had the information in short order. “Qaitbay, a Mamluk Sultan in the fourteen hundreds. He was a general and commander of a Mamluk army, but also renowned for his many architectural building projects. He built all over the Middle East, from Mecca to Jerusalem to Cairo—”

“To Rashid,” said Paul. “How interesting.”

“What are you getting at?” asked Kelly.

Paul sighed heavily. “Let me see if I can pull this together. We’ve got this hidden archive where the details of key events are being carved, and you tell me the location code carved on a stela containing details relating to the history surrounding the Battle of Tours was placed in the city of Zau, Sais, the ancient temple site where Ptolemy III also published his decree—the very same decree that was busted up when the temple was torn down and quarried away for use in other building projects.”

“By a Mamluk Sultan architect,” said Maeve.

“In the wall foundations of the site where they found the Rosetta stone!” Nordhausen had the epiphany as well.

“Exactly!” Paul was energized now. “At least on the Meridian where we found ourselves after the Rosetta Mission. We always wondered how they could have run that intervention to alter the Rosetta stone so dramatically. One thought was that it was another stone, carved somewhere else and substituted for the decree of Ptolemy III. I think we may have our answer.”

“The damn thing was carved by Hamza and the scribes!” Kelly leapt ahead. “And, by god, it relates directly to the events now involved with this Grand Transformation—that’s’ what the altered stone was describing, the details of the events surrounding the Battle of Tours!”

Chapter 8

“But why would they want that discovered?” asked Nordhausen. “It would give their enemies a means of learning the details and allow them to run a counter operation against their mission.”

“No,” said Maeve. “The stela we saw at Rosetta was clearly not the proclamation of Ptolemy III. There was no Greek or Demotic on it, only hieroglyphics, and therefore this stone provides Western scholars no means of translating the old Egyptian language. Besides, it was discovered by chance, and only on the Meridian we were riding, as Paul noted. In effect, I’ll bet the West remains baffled by the meaning of the Hieroglyphics to this day in the altered data the Golems are fishing up now.”

“Confirmed,” said Kelly, still typing rapid queries into the Golem module. “Look at this index title: Mysteries of Ancient Egypt Remain Unsolved.”

“I agree,” said Paul. “That’s what gave the Assassins the advantage they needed to reverse our intervention at Palma. But in light of the catastrophic consequences of the Tours operation, it’s likely nothing will ever be dug up at Rosetta. If Charles loses at Tours there’s certainly not going to be an invasion of Egypt by Napoleon! So I’m coming to see Palma was designed merely as a quick jab before the big right cross. It was meant as a blow against the contemporary power structure of the future West, and perhaps even created as a powerful distraction. Once it happened the Order was aghast at the consequences to their end of the Meridian, and they focused all their resources on that problem, which included enlisting us as well.”

“While the main attack was being planned here,” said Kelly, pointing at the history module, “at the battle of Tours.”

“Yes,” Paul agreed, a note of finality in his voice. “Tours is the fulcrum that levers the entire Meridian. It’s one of the first major crisis points after the Muslims come roaring out of Arabia following Mohammed’s death. If Charles Martel fails to stop them at Tours, all of Christendom is subjugated to the Moorish Umayyad Empire. The New World is discovered and colonized by Muslim explorers, there’s no United states, and no need for Palma at all if this transformation is allowed to occur.”

“Then I’m not subject to Paradox if the Nexus fails here?” Kelly’s eyes brightened hopefully.

“Quite the contrary,” said Paul. “Now we’re all in the same boat as you are. The Heisenberg Wave that this intervention will generate is going to be awesome. There may still be a city here after it works the transformation. The natural harbor of the bay almost assures that. But I guarantee you, it won’t be called San Francisco, and there won’t be any Lawrence Berkeley Labs here. In fact, there won’t be any Paul Dorland! My ancestors immigrated here in the early 1800’s from Germany. Who knows if that even happened?”

“God almighty,” said Nordhausen. “That goes for all of us. They’re going to eliminate the four of us as well in this attack—but wait a second—” He stumbled in his thinking. “How could that be? We’re the people who discovered Time travel. We’re the First Cause, the Founders of all this, correct? How could they run an operation that eliminates us? It would mean they never discover Time travel!” He looked at Maeve, head of Outcomes and Consequences, the question obvious in his eyes.

Maeve breathed deeply. “One of two things could happen,” she said. “If we are indeed essential imperatives to the discovery of Time travel, then Time must find some way to preserve us. But given the enormity of the transformation that will occur after Tours—no America, no San Francisco, no Lawrence Berkeley Labs—I find it difficult to imagine how Paradox could give us a pass here. What, would we just be standing here in the transformed city after the Heisenberg Wave passes us? What would we be wearing? Levis? Calvin Klein? Van Heusen? Geoffrey Beene?” She pointed at them, one after another. “I don’t see how it would be possible. The change is too dramatic.”

“And the second outcome?” Nordhausen leaned heavily on the console table. His brow furrowed, eyes hard and set.

“Well,” said Maeve flatly. “If Columbus doesn’t discover the New World, it’s clear that someone else does.”

“A Moroccan Berber,” said Kelly.

They all took her point. But Nordhausen still held forth with a hint of protest in his voice. “See here. You mean to say that we’re replaced by other founders in the altered Meridian? We just become insignificant nobodies in the flux of Time?”

“I’m nobody. Who are you?” said Maeve.

“Are you nobody too?” Kelly finished.

Nordhausen folded his arms unhappily. Now he looked at Paul, hoping he would elucidate some aspect of the physics of Time travel that would make this outcome impossible. The thought that he had been indispensible, a First Cause and Founder, had been a comforting shield to him through the trials of all these recent months. For the first time the renewed appreciation of his mortality yawned in his soul again. It was a humbling feeling of vulnerability, and he could see it growing in the eyes of Kelly and Maeve as well.

“Paul?” he said, the unanswered question dangling like a loose shirttail.

Paul sighed. The weariness of the hour weighed heavily on them all. “Technically,” he began, “what Maeve says is theoretically possible. Many major breakthroughs had instances where there were concurrent discoveries and development of the technology that resulted—the discovery of the atomic bomb being one example.” He could see a deflated look settling over them. “But there’s a third possibility,” he said with a note determination.

Nordhausen perked up. Maeve cocked her head to one side, hoping Paul’s next argument would also stand the test of her own judgment.

“Well,” said Nordhausen impatiently. “What is it, man? Out with it!”

“It’s obvious,” said Paul. “They fail at Tours. Their intervention does not succeed. The Grand Transformation is averted. There is no Heisenberg Wave, and when the Nexus dissipates all is well, because we find a way, here and now, to stop them.”

The silence was palpable. Then Kelly started typing again. “I’ll bring up everything I can on the battle,” he said. “Something tells me the Pushpoint is there.”

“Good call,” said Paul, already heading for the door. “I’m going down to the garage to siphon that fuel we may need for the backup generators. Robert, you can still read the damn hieroglyphics, right? So get with Maeve and see what you can dig up in the history about that stela. And would somebody please make some more coffee?” Paul was through the door and down the steps.

“We’ll need to look at data from this Meridian,” said Maeve—the Prime Meridian. It’s the only place we’ll find anything on the stela unearthed at Rosetta. It never existed in the pre-Palma time line. Kelly, is there a way to filter this resonance Paul is talking about and isolate information to a given Meridian?”

“Well it’s all one big duck soup,” said Kelly. “I can’t focus on one potential Meridian or another. But if the information is in the soup somewhere I can program a special search.”

“Please,” said Maeve.

“They would have made rubbing of the stone immediately after its discovery,” said Nordhausen, “just like the Assassins were doing with their messengers. So I’ll bet there’s an image of this stone, or some copy of the hieroglyphics that appeared on it somewhere in the data. Let’s start with that.”

Maeve was already at a workstation, rapidly typing in queries as Kelly fine tuned the search algorithms. “Right again, professor,” she smiled. “Here’s a nice photo of the stela.”

“See if you can get something closer… There, that image looks promising.” They were staring at a photo of the massive slab of stone, elegantly carved with the artistic hieroglyphs. The professor leaned in, squinting at the images on the screen. “That’s it,” he said pointing. “There at the top. I remember the translation… ‘Through the ages now he comes to a mystery: one death gives birth, a great wind upon the face of the sea, in a place forever hidden where the lions roar: ‘mine is yesterday, and I know tomorrow.’ …it’s speaking about Kelly. His was the life that was to be sacrificed, or rather exiled to a distant and lost past. His was yesterday, but indeed, he knew tomorrow.”

He ran his finger further down the image on the screen, whispering under his breath as he did so, sounding out the Hieroglyphics in his mind.

“Now we get to the heart of it,” said Nordhausen. “Look here… ‘stirrings of unrest… Heed them not, or the mighty host flees before the enemy, and many will die.’ There’s a break here… Then it reads: ‘Plunder taken… the road becomes the path of Martyrs. For he who would be slain must live…’ That’s not history,” Nordhausen shook his head. “That’s a damn warning! It’s telling them not to heed the distraction Charles created in the rear areas! It’s a clear warning that their booty becomes the source of their defeat.”

“He who would be slain?”

“Probably Abdul Rahman,” said Robert.

“What more?” asked Maeve. “Can you read this line?”

The professor ran his finger along the Hieroglyphics. “The weave undone… A loose twine… where horses were brought to gather…”

“That’s sounds interesting,” said Maeve. “The weave undone? A loose twine?”

“Where horses were brought to gather. Perhaps that means together” said Nordhausen. “Ah! Paul said this is primarily a cavalry army. They had been raiding hither, thither and yon with their light Berber horsemen. Abdul Rahman held the heavy horsemen close as his main force. But there were six days of raids and skirmishes back and forth before the main battle while he wisely gathered in all his other columns. Here, in this other source it reads: ‘for six days each side had tormented the other, they finally arrayed themselves in battle lines and fought fiercely.’”

“So both sides must have been jumpy, which is why we get this admonishment not to heed the disruption of the camp in the heat of battle… But that bit about the twine?”

“I have no idea… Remember that this stela was presumably sited in Sais, the home of the cult worshiping Neith, the weaver of days by some interpretations. Could that bit about the twine be metaphorical?”

“There’s more on the stela.”

Nordhausen continued translating. “Hold them fast… those who drink the wind… lest they trample thy endeavor and the host is made to flee…” It breaks off there,” he said. “But the next time the cartouche appears it says this: “For the unseen one that comes in the dusk shall unseat all….”

“That’s all,” he said. “There’s nothing more. And it’s clearly another warning. What do you make of it?”

Maeve sighed. “It’s fairly obtuse,” she said. “Maybe you’re correct in assuming it’s metaphorical, but what could it be referring to?”

“Very strange,” said Nordhausen. “What would they do with all these cryptic phrases? I don’t see how this information could be instructions on how they must act.”

“It’s cryptic to us,” said Maeve, “but it’s a code, Robert. They may know exactly what each of those phrases refer to. Remember all the cryptic phrases the BBC was broadcasting to the French underground prior to the D-Day invasion? They were perplexing to the Germans, but made perfect sense to the intended recipients.”

Robert nodded, conceding the point. “And this is odd. That phrase, those who drink the wind, is associated with this cartouche. It’s a royal name, or at least it is being used to confer special status to the named person. If it was phonetic it would read Ke-hai-lan. I’m not familiar with any Egyptian deity by that name, or Pharaoh either.”

“Well it’s probably referring to a person from the 8th century then. Perhaps one of the Arab generals or leaders?” Maeve was trawling for anything she could find.

“Hold on a second….” The professor was scouring the image of the stone, noting any instance of that cartouche. “Yes,” he said. “Every time it appears it is accompanied by this determinative figure of a horse.”

“A horse?” Maeve was struck by that, a gleam of recognition in her eye. “Could it read—”

At that moment there was a shudder throughout the building, and the sound of an explosion. They looked up at the overhead lighting as it fluttered, then dimmed, then went out altogether. The room was bathed in red emergency lighting now.

“Power outage!” Kelly shouted. “I’m firing up the number one generator!” He flipped a switch and they could hear a turbine rolling over with a distant wine, somewhere far below them.

“We’re off the grid,” said Kelly, watching the levels closely. The Arch spin-flux integrity had slipped to 45%, and it was still falling. “Come on, baby. What’s taking the auxiliary turbine so long?” The power level was falling, down to 41% now, but then it stabilized and began to climb. “That’s better,” Kelly breathed. “It’s a good thing we had it at 50%. That 10% buffer saved us. You can’t maintain a Nexus Point with less than 40% on the spin.”

The red emergency lab lights winked off and the overheads came back on. “I’ll take it back to 50%,” said Kelly. “Hope that didn’t affect the Nexus field much. I better give Paul a call.”

A moment later he was on the lab intercom system. Paul was down in the garage, just finishing up filling three fuel jugs with gasoline he had siphoned from the cars. He swore loudly when the power fluctuated, then the garage was suddenly plunged into darkness. A queasy feeling came over him, and he swayed.

Off in the distance, near the entrance to the circular ramp that led out to the surface he caught a glimpse of something in the pale emergency lighting. It wavered, then resolved to the form of a hooded man holding a long object in his right hand and slowly advancing, peering intently at him as he took a step forward.

“Who’s there?” he said, leaning heavily on his Honda for support. But when he looked again the figure was gone. “Guess I’ve been breathing too many gas fumes,” he said aloud to himself, still feeling light headed.

The lights came back on and he heard Kelly on the intercom: “Hey Pablo, I just had to make a trip to the mound. Went to the bull pen for a setup man. Looks like the grid outside is down, and the number one generator is coming on-line as we speak.”

Paul went to the nearby wall, toggling the intercom switch. He was very tired. “Good job, Kelly. I’ll be right up…” Then a wave of nausea swept over him and he fell.

Chapter 9

When Paul failed to arrive Kelly went down to the garage level to look for him, finding him sitting on the floor, somewhat dazed. He called up to Robert and Maeve, and they soon had Paul up in the control room, a fresh cup of Peet’s coffee in hand. It was his turn to be swaddled in a nice warm blanket.

“I thought I was the one suffering jet lag, Amigo.” Kelly quipped. “What are you trying to pull on us?”

“It was very odd,” said Paul. “I thought it was the fumes from the gasoline at first, but then I got very light headed.”

“The Nexus field weakened when we lost primary power,” said Kelly. “It’s very likely that it diminished somewhat, and you may have been dangerously close to the border zone.”

Paul nodded. “That sounds like a plausible explanation,” he said. “But it was strange… Just after the power went down I thought I saw someone near the entrance ramp to the garage, peering intently at me—in fact, slowly advancing towards me, holding something.”

“Holding what?” asked Robert.

“Well… it looked like a sword!”

They stared at one another, perplexed.

“What would happen if someone encountered a Nexus Point in the outside world, Paul?” Nordhausen was curious. “What would it look like, a huge shimmering ball of light or something?”

“Of course not,” said Paul. “We’ve had alerts before, and the Arch was up and running when we arrived here, walking right into the Nexus Point it was generating. So it has no unusual appearance at all. But the longer it stands, the deeper it goes. After a while people on the outside become out of phase with the Time inside the Nexus—or vice versa—so someone from the outside might have no awareness of the four of us, for example. We may be slightly out of phase with the normal vibration of their Time—there, but unseen.”

“Can someone enter it from the outside? I mean, could a lab tech decide to come to the facility here early and just wander into the Nexus? What if that was a maintenance person holding a mop?”

“Sure,” said Paul. “Aside from the fact that this portion of the facility is behind a gated security entrance, there’s nothing to stop someone on the outside from coming here. We could come and go, for example, but I don’t advise we try it. The longer you are in a Nexus Point the more out of phase you are with the world outside it. That’s what causes the odd dissonance when you first cross the border. You have to re-phase with Time and the dissonance can be fairly debilitating, as I can attest!” ”

“So the Assassins could just rush in here and put us all to the sword?” Nordhausen was still digging.

“If they could see us,” said Paul, recalling the vision he had perceived. “My guess is that Time has a way of dissuading them because a Nexus Point is protected from the effects of causality. It’s like a Time out, to turn a phrase nicely, or a kind of neutral zone. Who really knows? If this is correct the Assassins know it would be foolish to try what you propose. And, well, we’re still here, so we might be out of phase in here, and therefore protected by other means as well. They could walk in and yet be unable to even see us!”

“Then who was that down in the garage?” The professor finally got to his point. “You say it appeared as if he was looking at you, coming toward you, as if aware of your presence?”

“What Kelly just said is very likely the culprit,” said Paul. “The Nexus probably contracted slightly with the power outage. I must have still been inside, but very near the border, and it was a near run thing. Perhaps I was right at the edge. In such an instance I might have started to re-phase with the outside Meridian and become vulnerable to causality, if only for a brief moment. Yes,” he concluded. “Whoever it was seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see them.”

“Someone with a sword?” Maeve had a dubious look on her face? “How likely is that in the Berkeley Hills at four in the morning?”

“The Fedayeen commandos!” said Nordhausen, half jokingly.

Paul raised an eyebrow, and gave him a serious look. “That may not be as far-fetched as it sounds,” he said. “Remember, this could be the only functioning Arch outside the control of the Assassins at the moment. They certainly know that, and I’m willing to bet they also know Kelly is missing from his exile at the edge of the Nile, ten thousand years ago. That means they know we’re up and running some kind of operation, and they also know who we are and what we’re capable of. This is their opus magnum—this operation against the outcome of Tours—and I would not put it past them to send someone here with bad intent.”

“To assassinate us?” The professor seemed indignant.

“We thought that impossible before,” said Paul, “but the fact that they might yet discover Time travel on their own if this operation succeeds makes us fair game. What was it De Gaulle said? Graveyards are full of indispensable men. You said it yourself, Robert. They should have cut my head off when they had me at Castle Masyaf, and perhaps the Sami was intending exactly that. They have shown great respect and an unwillingness to do any harm to fellow Walkers, as they call us Time travelers, but that may have changed given the importance of this operation. The Battle of Tours causes such a radical transformation that even we, the Founders, become expendable as far as Time is concerned. The Golems clearly indicate the overwhelming possibility of a Meridian forming where our lives would most likely be extinguished, as if we’d never been born.”

“But only if the transformation occurs,” said Maeve.

“Correct,” Paul agreed. “Yet LeGrand taught us that both sides have operatives at key moments in the Time Meridian—agents in place. I wouldn’t put it past them to have agents here, in our time, to keep a watch on what we do.”

They sat with that for a while. It was the second odd occurrence Paul had experienced that night, the first being the strange specter of Kelly walking through the glass door at the Harney Science Center. What was going on here? Time seemed to be fragmented, losing cohesion in the display of these odd effects.

Paul took a last sip of his coffee, and looked at the time. He could not think about it any longer. “It’s 4:30!” he complained. “We’re wasting time, not to mention vital fuel stocks. Did you find anything in the research that could lead us to a fulcrum on this event?”

“We found images of the stone they unearthed at Rosetta,” said Robert. “Thank God the information was still in the soup, as Kelly puts it. I was able to do a rudimentary translation. It contained an obvious warning about the battle, an admonishment for them to gather in all their cavalry and take no heed of the disturbance in the camp.”

“No,” said Maeve. “I think there was something more there. What was that line again about the wind?”

“The wind? Let me think. I believe it read: “Hold them fast… those who drink the wind… lest they trample thy endeavor… Or something to that effect.”

“Those who drink the wind,” said Maeve, deep in thought. “That really struck me. What was the name in that cartouche again?”

Nordhausen had to go back over to the monitor, peering in at the image of the stela again. “I make it Ke-hai-lan,” but its meaning eludes me.”

“Could it be Ku-hay-lan,” said Maeve, substituting a vowel in the first syllable to change the pronunciation.

“As you wish,” said the professor. “I still can’t recall any personage of importance by that name. Should we Google it?”

“But you said this cartouche was always accompanied by another symbol, a determinative, the symbol of the horse, correct?” Maeve was pulling on a rope and reeling the professor in.

“Yes, now that you mention it,” said Robert. “I took that to mean the cartouche held the name of one of the generals, an officer of cavalry. Would that help?”

“Well,” said Maeve definitively, folding her arms. “Kuhaylan is the name of one of the five major breeds of Arabian horses, a primal name.” She had owned horses most of her adult life, riding several times a week on the trails of the East Bay hills. “And get this—the name comes from a mythical tale about the Angel Jibrail, the Angel Gabriel for us, who comes to Ishmael sleeping in the desert, and wakes him with a dust storm, a whirling wind spout actually. When he awakens Jibrail orders the storm to abate, and it resolves to the shape of a horse, as if the horse had devoured the dust storm. So they gave the name Kuhaylan to this strain of Arabians, which means ‘Drinker of the Wind!’”

“That’s it then!” Robert clapped his hands together. “Look here!” He pointed at the stela again, searching for the lines he had translated earlier. “Yes, yes, here it is… ‘Hold them fast… those who drink the wind… lest they trample thy endeavor and the host is made to flee… For the unseen one that comes in the dusk shall unseat all….’”

“Then it’s not a royal personage in the cartouche,” said Maeve.”

Kelly put it more directly: “It’s talking about the damn horses,” he said. “Hold them fast… those who drink the wind… Perhaps it’s another warning to keep a firm hold on the cavalry. The charge broke and dissipated when there was a disturbance in the rear areas, and a good segment of the cavalry broke off to secure their loot.”

“Yes,” said Robert. “There was a warning inscribed about that earlier in the stela. Here… ‘stirrings of unrest… Heed them not, or the mighty host flees before the enemy, and many will die. Forsake all plunder, lest the road become the path of Martyrs. For he who would be slain must live…”

“It’s a good lead,” said Kelly, “and an obvious warning aimed at altering the outcome of the battle.”

“Right,” said Paul, “but there’s a lot of haze there. I mean, it’s too broad. There’s no obvious Pushpoint, just a general admonition to keep the cavalry under control. How would they be able to accomplish that if they sent someone back to this milieu? Would he have to be in the guise of a respected military advisor who meets with Abdul Rahman and his Emirs before the battle? He might do so, though there is no mention of any such man in the history the Golems dig up. But even if he delivered his message, convincingly, there is still the fog and heat of battle, and men react in unanticipated ways. Panic and disorder can spread very quickly on a battlefield. A false rumor can undo even the soundest of military plans.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Robert.

“But there was something more,” said Maeve. “What was that bit about Neith and the weaver of days, Robert?”

Nordhausen scratched his head, looking at the screen again until he found the line in the hieroglyphics. “The weave undone… A loose twine… where horses were brought together….”

“No,” Maeve pointed. “You said you translated that ‘to gather’ the first time. ‘where horses were brought to gather,’ not together.”

“Yes, I suppose it could be read that way.”

“Well where do they gather horses?” Maeve was on to something now.

“In a corral,” said Kelly.

“Right,” said Maeve. “I keep mine in one. Could it be they were holding a large group of horses back in the camp, perhaps looted from the farms and fiefdoms of the countryside? They’d already overrun half of Gaul by this time. Tours is just a hundred miles southwest of Paris! And if they did have them in an enclosed place of some kind they would have to have some kind of a gate.”

“A loose twine!” Kelly said excitedly. “Somebody left the gate open and the damn horses got out! A loose twine… where horses were brought to gather…”

“It could have been a stampede! It’s exactly the sort of thing the camp raiders would try to start.”

“Now that’s a Pushpoint!” said Paul. “A loose twine. It’s practically defines the workings of a Pushpoint—something odd and utterly insignificant that ends up causing major ramifications. They probably did collect numerous horses and other animals as they pillaged north. They would be highly prized by a mounted army, and yes, they would have used horse holders in the rear areas, or perhaps have some enclosure where these animals were kept safe from the battle. I love it. It’s clear and specific, a pointed warning… a loose twine!”

“Alright, let’s assume this was the disturbance in the camp,” Nordhausen agreed. “So they sent someone back to secure these horses, and prevent this stampede. I suppose it’s as good a scenario as any. The hieroglyphics clearly say hold them fast, those who drink the wind.”

“Keep a firm hold on the horses,” Maeve said it another way. “And if they can’t manage that then all the other lines were just backup—heed no disturbance, don’t worry about the plunder…”

They all looked at Paul, waiting to see if they had the makings of an intervention. “Well,” he began. “If this is more than speculation then we may have a chance here. If their mission was to go back and tie that knot—”

“Then we have to make sure we un-tie it,” said Kelly. “But how in the world do we do that?”