Meridian

7

They made their rendezvous near the theatre and followed the winding route of Cyclotron Road to reach the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. Access to the facility was closely guarded, but each of the team members has been cleared long ago. Kelly produced his encrypted access card, rolling down the window and sliding the card through a reader. A camera was filming his face as he squinted through the drizzle of the night at the reader alcove. Somewhere, a computer was running pixels through a recognition algorithm and deciding who he was. It was enough to pass them through the first level of security that surrounded the complex.

They drove on past the circular dome of the Cyclotron building, and Dorland noted again how the bright, evenly spaced rectangular windows at the base of the dome gave the impression that an immense flying saucer was sitting on the rooftop of an otherwise nondescript building. The lights of the city glimmered in regular rows below them, defining streets that reached out to the dark blue edge of the East Bay, the waters illuminated with the soft amber glow of the city. They made a turn and headed for the lab in the newly renovated Building Complex Number 54.

A security guard emerged from a small white building on the left, squinting in as Kelly opened the front window to display his ID card. The guard nodded a greeting, almost as if he expected them, for they had been in and out of the facilities there with increasing frequency as the date of their planned project test drew near. Just the same, he checked all four ID cards, and carefully noted each person in the vehicle before he waved them through. They made their way around a bend and climbed the last switchback of roadway to Building 54. The parking lot outside the building was nearly vacant, but Dorland recognized a few of the vehicles as belonging to the Advanced Prep team members. He sighed with relief, glad that a few intrepid souls were still on their night shift standing a faithful watch over the Arch in anticipation of its debut performance on the morrow. They, too, were oblivious to the real implications of the project they were serving. Most were just promising Physics or Math students, serving out assignments they thought might help their post-graduate plans.

The cover story shielding the real intent of the Arch was that it was simply a test to see if particles could be moved in time, but it was already advanced well beyond that stage. Objects had been sent through the Arch and retrieved intact. Encouraged by their success they tried to send through small mechanical probes with cameras to capture images of the ‘other side.’ These never came back in a functioning state. The fragile electronics would just not work in the intense, otherworldly environment of the Arch. This fueled much of the debate about the long term prospects for success. Clearly things were going somewhere, but there was no evidence to prove they had actually traveled in time. Paul insisted that only a human being could make that determination, but could a person actually move through the arch and yet live? Could a sentient being travel in time, and interact with the past Meridian to change future events? These were the real questions the impending test planned to answer.

The rain was abating somewhat when they abandoned the Subaru and confronted the third security barrier before gaining entrance to the facility. This time each member had to pass a retinal scan, but at least they were in the outer hall and screened from the rain and cold. Once cleared, the inner doors opened with a click and they rushed through the lab entrance. Paul led the group, walking at a brisk pace with Kelly right behind him, the laptop computer huddled close to his chest and cradled like an infant in his arms.

“Evening Dr. Dorland.” A bright young graduate assistant that Dorland had enlisted as a project technician greeted them as they burst into the lab.

“Hello Jennifer, glad to see someone knows we’ve got a project underway here.” Dorland winked at her as they rushed in. “Is the Arch on standby?”

“Yes, sir. We started warming things up a few hours ago… But with the news and all, I thought—”

“Turn the generators over, Jen. We’re going to need full power in one hour. Kelly, you want to start the data feed?”

“I’m on it,” said Kelly, and he was already throwing off his coat and unzipping the satchel that held his laptop.

Jennifer, the lab assistant, stared from one person to the next, a bit wide eyed to find all four senior team members arriving in the dead of the night. She reached up and removed the MP3 player earphones she had been passing the time with, a bit flustered with the sudden intrusion in the quiet of the evening. She had been hiding from the stream of news events on the radio by playing a few of her favorite songs. Now, as she looked from one senior team member to another, the urgency that was driving the world on finally came home to her. At one point she thought the project would be called off, but now she could see that it was clearly more important than ever. She smoothed back a lock of her medium length hair, trying to gain some sense of composure in the growing haste of the others. “Evening, Professor,” she said to Nordhausen, but Robert was too preoccupied with his thoughts to heed her. “Then we’re still planning the experiment on schedule for tomorrow morning?”

Maeve rushed into a side room, her arms expanded around an immense bundled laundry bag. Jennifer instinctively went to help her but was intercepted by Paul. “Now Jen,” he tugged on her arm to emphasize his point. “We need the power ramped up ASAP.”

“Now? But—”

“Take it to 80% immediately. Is there anyone else on site?”

“Just Tom, down in the generator room. The storm has been causing a few problems and—”

“Tell Tom to turn that baby over right away. I want 80% power inside half an hour.”

“But, sir…”

The look Dorland gave her was enough to quell her protest. His dark eyes had a determined fire in them, and she surrendered with a confused nod, running off to the far alcove where the intercom enabled quick communication with the generator room. Dorland allowed himself a fleeting glance at her as she went, noting how the swathe of her amber hair caught the light. He always had a fond spot for Jen, and was not surprised to find her on duty tonight with the prep-team, or what was left of it. He knew the others were not due to check in for hours, and there would be no time to get anyone on the phone, particularly on night like this. No, they were going to have to manage with Jen and Tom, and this thought led him to revisit the discussion about who would be going through the Arch on the mission.

He looked around the room, noting how Nordhausen was already hunched at a desk, his nose buried in his weathered volume of the Seven Pillars. Kelly had the laptop interfaced, working with uncanny reflexive efficiency as he began to fire up the main system monitors. Maeve was in the anteroom, sorting all the clothing they had gathered from the theater wardrobes into neat piles. They had decided to give themselves as many options as possible, finding traditional British Army uniforms that they could wear beneath the more voluminous outer robes and headdress that would be typical of the Arab peoples of the time. This way, their obvious handicap in only speaking English, might be explained if they should run into trouble.

“What if we run into Lawrence’s men?” Maeve had argued on the way to the facility. “We’ll have to get very close to the place where they will be lying in wait if we are to have any hope of preventing their charge from going off. Has anyone even thought about this? These men were a bit wild and headstrong, weren’t they?”

“We’ll just have to risk it,” Dorland had said. “The British garb will be our ace in the hole in that event. God help us if we run afoul of the Turks, however.”

Now, as Paul considered the matter again, he was wondering who should take that risk. There was no question in his mind that he should go. It was his theory, and his project. Even though it was an awful risk, he felt the burden of responsibility sitting squarely on his shoulders now, and an uneasy sensation began to thrum in his chest as the realization of what they were about to do finally settled in on him. They might get through, he thought. The visitor from the future gave him every indication that they would get through if they tried. But there were still a hundred questions clamoring in his mind, and the greatest of these was the prospect of getting back. Would the retraction algorithm work? How should they set the variables? How much time would they allow? There were so many things they did not know yet.

He tried to visualize the team of future researchers who had labored to reach them here with their urgent call for help. It took everything they could do, all of their resources, to get a single man back to this time with a message. Imagine the computers they must have used to coordinate things; the power generation capabilities, the general understanding they had of the whole process. Yet, they had missed their target by a full seven years, forcing the intrepid Mr. Graves to wait out the days in a monastery to reach a single, critical moment in time on a rain-slick street corner by the BART station. True, there had been profound interference generated by the Palma Shadow, and they would not have that obstacle to contend with on this side of the event. Yet the Shadow was building itself up even now, gathering strength and shape from each life the tsunami sequence was extinguishing, a great overspreading darkness that promised to swallow them all in time. There might be some interference, even if the way to the past was still open.

The last words of the visitor replayed themselves in his mind with a growing sense of unease. “A moment exists somewhere in time that 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.”

It was almost half past one, and they had less than three hours left to them now. What if something went wrong? What if there was interference from the emerging Shadow of the catastrophe and they ended up in the wrong day, in the wrong month, the wrong year? If they fell short of the target date, they would have to live out the time just as patiently as Mr. Graves had, assuming that was possible. What if they missed the mark by twenty years, thirty years? Paul was in his later forties, reasonably fit, and with good genes. He might live to be eighty or even ninety under normal conditions in the comfort of contemporary American culture. The other team members were close to his same age as well. If they missed the mark by too many years they would be forced to simply live out their lives as best they could in a distant past, with the hope of making it intact to the month of November, 1917. If they missed by fifty years? The prospect of missing on the other side of the target was something he did not even wish to consider.

He knew they would have to arrive somewhere prior to 1965, for they were all born in the last five years of that decade. If they did miss, or if the retraction algorithms failed, for any reason, they would be doomed. He imagined walking through the Arch and emerging some forty years beyond the target date, in the year 1957 instead of 1917. What would happen to them as they approached their birthdays in the late 1960s? According to his theory, they would have to die in some way, before the date of their actual birth. It was an uncomfortable prospect to consider—all too much to ruminate on now. The variables fought with one another in his mind, confusing him and throwing fuel on the fire of anticipation that was building in his stomach. They had to make the attempt, no matter what the outcome. Someone had to go, and he knew he would be the first to step through the Arch, come what may. Could he do it by himself? Was it necessary to risk the lives of any of the others?

Nordhausen was up from his reading and rapidly keying something on a computer terminal. Kelly was just completing the data download, feeding the precious Arion calculations into the Arch control unit. Maeve, God bless her, was trying to discretely slip out of her clothing in the ante-room to get into her costume. Lord, could he ever let any of them go? There would be quite an argument if he tried to prevent them. If he somehow prevailed and stepped through the Arch alone, would he ever see any of them again?

He passed a moment of sentiment, and then steeled himself. He could not be concerned with his own personal feelings now. Kelly and Robert were his closest friends. If he had to lose them to save them, and everyone else in the bargain, he would suffer the burden alone.

Maeve opened the squeaking door to the ante-room and emerged in British Khaki shorts and blouse. High wool stockings were pulled up to her knees and she was fiddling with a canvas belt and buckle as she came.

“You’ll need to put on something warm,” said Nordhausen. “It’s raining.”

“What? We aren’t going out again tonight,” Maeve scolded.

“No, my dear,” Robert humored her, “It’s raining there, in November of 1917. I just came across the passage in my Seven Pillars. I’ve been double checking it in the meteorological database. It seems they were dismayed by a nice thick winter rain the night of the attack. The ground was quite wet. Mud made for long work as they tried to set the charges and bury the cables.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll still have my Arab clothing on top of this. How do I look?”

“Wonderful,” said Kelly. “A fine British soldier—except women were just not in the Army back then, Maeve.”

“I’m a nurse!” Maeve protested meekly. “And that only if we’re discovered. Until then, I can swaddle myself under Meccan shepherd’s dress and hide behind the veil.” She raised a handkerchief to her face to cover her mouth and nose. Her hazel eyes darted about, and it was clear that she was intent on leaping through the Arch at the first opportunity. Her excitement was obvious, but it made Paul all the more anxious.

“Perhaps we better discuss this a bit,” he ventured.

“Discuss what?” Maeve had the belt buckle cinched up and was fishing about in the pockets of her shorts.

“About the mission,” Paul continued. “And about who should go and all…” His voice faded as he finished.

“Count me in,” said Nordhausen. “And you’re coming along, aren’t you Paul?”

“Yes, but…”

“Don’t even try, Paul.” Maeve was on to him at once. “If you think I’m going to let the two of you go tramping through history unattended, you’re crazy. Who knows what nonsense Robert may try to pull?”

“Oh, come now, Maeve,” the professor protested. “Are you still on that Bermuda Pamphlet thing? If there’s anyone here who has a respect for the history, it’s me.”

“That’s exactly my point!” Maeve forged ahead. “You’ll get back there and you simply know too much about things. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Your curiosity about what you think you know will be overwhelming. You’ll start sticking your nose into things just to satisfy yourself that you were right.”

“And just what is that supposed to mean?” Nordhausen’s chin jutted at her as he spoke, rising to the fray of the argument.

“Are you telling me you wouldn’t like to get a peek at Lawrence and his little band of cutthroats? Shakespeare’s desk is one thing, but if you go off and try a little stunt like that you could get us all killed!”

“Oh, please,” the professor turned away with a peeved expression, intent on his book.

“But don’t we need a watch on potential Outcomes here, Maeve?” Paul tried another approach, appealing to her logic instead of trying to back her down directly. “Normally it would take several weeks to develop your algorithms for Outcomes and Consequences. Won’t you need to stay here with Kelly and feed those numbers for processing?”

“What do you mean stay here with me?” Kelly looked up from his terminal and Paul could see that his argument had run into flak immediately. Maeve waved at Kelly to be quiet and took the floor.

“There’s no way I could complete the calculations in time. That’s why it’s imperative that I keep a close eye on the event from the mission end of things. What good are algorithms now? We haven’t done any of the primary research. We’re relying on the date and time from the visitor’s note, and the hope they’ve thought this through for us. No sir, Outcomes and Consequences will have to work its will on the mission end of the project this time. Under normal circumstances I would never even allow a breach like this. Going along is my one chance at assuring myself that the two of you won’t mess things up.”

“Give her a uniform and she becomes positively adamant.” Nordhausen rallied to Paul’s side. “God only knows what she’d do if we gave her a rifle to go along with that outfit.” He satisfied himself that he had evened the score for a moment and returned to his reading, flipping through the pages of his book.

“Well?” Maeve let the word become a challenge, daring anyone else to try and prevent her from joining the mission team. “That’s it then. You two had better get undressed. You can’t wear those clothes and we’re running short of time. If I’m not mistaken, Bermuda is going to go under in about fifteen minutes. Get ready!”

Paul started to say something, but realized it would be futile to try and change Maeve’s mind at this point. In the end, each of them had to decide their own fate in this. Yet a strange thought came to him as he made his way to the anteroom. What if they did try, and they failed? What if all the senior team members went off on a time jaunt and that was the reason no one was able to re-visit the Arch again until the end of the century? He soon realized that this course would doom him to endless reverberations, and he let it go. They had to rely on the integrity of the visitor’s story. If Paradox was going to emerge from this mission, they would have to suffer the consequences. Too much was at stake.

He went into the anteroom and eyed the piles of clothing on the floor. It did not take long to ferret out which was his. At a little over six feet, his lanky frame could be destined for none other than the officer’s trousers Maeve had dug up for him. The matching long-sleeved Captain’s shirt even had the proper insignia on it. He started undressing, more intent on the Arabian headdress in his pile, complete with parallel gold circlets noting him as a Sherif. Rank has its privileges, he thought, even if he had been unable to assert his authority and prevent the others from coming. Something in him wanted company when he stepped through that portal. In spite of his misgivings, he was inwardly glad that Robert and Maeve would be coming along. Maeve’s presence, being a woman dressed in obvious male garb, could cause problems if they were discovered. But her no-nonsense approach to things, and the added insight she would undoubtedly bring on potential Outcomes and Consequences, would be a plus.

They needed Nordhausen along for the history. He had buried himself in Lawrence’s book for the last forty minutes. It was Kelly he was worried about. Who else could run numbers if he came along? He decided to try and enlist the support of Maeve in the one battle that remained to be fought before they left.

By the time he had donned his clothing, Jen was rushing back from the generator room. She was out of breath from climbing the stairs.

“The intercom system doesn’t work,” she breathed, “so I had to use the stairs.”

“Must be the storm,” said Paul. “Nothing we can do about it tonight. Sorry Jen, I hope you’re in shape.”

She was staring at Paul in his long Arab robes. “What on earth? What’s going on?” She looked from Maeve to Paul, obviously confused. Maeve was oblivious, huddling with Nordhausen as the two of them were working out the details of their approach to the situation.

Paul went over and took Jen by the arm, a bit pleased to have a brief moment with her like this. Somehow, the change of clothing imbued him with a sense of adventure. He had come to terms with his fear and apprehension and was determined to carry the mission through. Now the same exhilaration that had possessed Maeve a few moments ago seemed to infect him as well. He proffered a slight bow, warming to his role, with just the hint of flirtation in his manner. He was no longer Dr. Dorland, Chief Project Administrator. Now he was a Sherif of the desert, dark, mysterious and delighting in the secret he held in the palm of his hand that so confounded the young woman. She broke into a smile, and Dorland walked her toward the circular bank of control consoles, whispering as he went.

“As you can see,” he said, “the mission parameters have changed. The launch time has been moved up twelve hours.”

“What? Twelve hours?”

“Yes. We’re trying something new.”

Jen looked very surprised. “Can you change things this late? I thought we needed time to program everything.”

“It’s all been planned,” Paul reassured her. “There were several alternate mission profiles worked up.” A little white lie would do no harm, he concluded. “How do you like my costume?”

“How strange,” she smiled, but that was one thing she always liked about Dorland. He was a bit unpredictable.

“And the professor and Miss Lindford are getting ready for the operation as well. We haven’t decided about Mr. Ramer yet. He’s still working up some numbers and I was hoping we could count on you and Tom to monitor things up here when we go down to the Arch.”

“System Monitor? Me?” She took a deep breath, as if taking in the obvious implications of the position. It would be no small matter to ride shotgun on the main system terminals while the Arch was at full power.

“You’re fully trained,” Dorland pressed on. “And frankly, you’ve shown the best record of any technician these last six months. I’ve… had my eye on you lately.” He smiled inwardly at the double meaning that he hoped would only be apparent to him. “I think you’re best qualified for the job. You’ll have Tom to watch the power levels in the generator room and perhaps Mr. Ramer here to see to the computers. Sorry about the intercom, but we still have the stairs.” He smiled as he gestured to the stairwell leading down to the power generators. “Once we start the experiment you’ll have approximately two hours on the system monitors. The important thing will be the retraction module, of course. You must be certain it reads green the whole time. If the readings fall into the yellow I want you to run the focal routines on terminal three. Can you remember that?”

“Two hours?” Jen seemed a bit flushed with the responsibility he was handing her. “But the other team members won’t be here until at least six AM. Should I call them in now?”

“I’m afraid there won’t be time for that. This will be a brief mission; just a little test, that’s all. We should be finished before four o’clock this morning…”

The futility of what he was trying to do became more and more apparent to Paul as he spoke. How could he enlist Jen’s support and try to keep her in the dark about the real intentions of the mission? It wasn’t fair. She had heard the news about Palma, and would probably begin to put questions together in time. The more he tried to spin out his cover story, the more uncomfortable he became. At last he sighed with resignation and looked her straight in the eye.

“You’ve heard the news, right Jen? So you know what’s at stake.”

She gave him a perplexed look, but he could see that his point was hitting home. “So we’re going to see if we can do something. Kelly’s working up last minute numbers now.” He waited, watching her reaction closely. Bewilderment became fear, and then understanding. He forged on.

“Watch the retraction module closely now, will you? We don’t want to lose our lifeline.” Paul smiled, reassuring her that all would be well and, as her features softened, he realized how very attracted he was to the woman, and how very stupid he had been all these months to hide behind his project title and do nothing about it. Somehow, the precipice he was slowly approaching in his own personal time line had emboldened him. He imagined himself sweeping the woman off her feet, a wild eyed Sherif of the desert felling her with a passionate kiss. Instead he reached out and touched her shoulder. “Thank you, Jen” he said. “I knew I could count on you. Now, tell Tom to take the Arch to 100 percent in ten minutes.”

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.

8

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^th century Arabian clothing against the backdrop of humming blue computer screens and 21^st century 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.”

“But if he’s on the final one…” Paul latched a tender onto her train of thought for a moment. “Then Masaui needs to die. The way history reads now, that train might be delayed by the destruction of train two, but it is otherwise unharmed. We have to reverse that outcome as well to be certain.”

“Right,” Maeve agreed. “Train two needs to be saved, and train three needs to blow up. It’s the only way to cover both bets. That’s why we can’t touch the first train. If we meddle with that, both of the other two trains will be spared.”

Jen came running up the steps from the generator room, breathless with excitement. “Tom says the power can go to 100 percent any time. You can toggle it from the main panel up here. I’ll see that the feeds are all tapped in.” She went off behind the main console.

“Great!” Paul clapped his hands together, rubbing them with anticipation. He looked at his watch, and Maeve pointed at it, almost aghast.

“Take that off or you aren’t going anywhere.”

“What?”

“Nothing from our time can go through, Paul.” She looked over her shoulder at Jen, moderating her tone a bit. “At least nothing that would look obviously out of place. You know that!” She gave him a bemused look. “Suppose we leave a nice twenty-first century Timex glistening in the sand for some poor shepherd to find? Get rid of it.”

“Right,” Paul fussed with the watch band as Nordhausen came huffing up in full costume.

“Behold the Caliph!” He smiled broadly, extending his arms to display his long flowing robes. Maeve caught sight of his shoes and saw that he was still wearing a pair of Bass hiking boots.

“Wonderful,” she said with an edge. “Those cleated, Vibram soles were all the rage in 1917. I found a pair of old boots for you, Robert. Go put them on.”

“The damn things are too tight,” Nordhausen complained.

“Too bad!” Maeve’s cheeks flushed red as she pointed to the ante-room. “Look, do I have to take you both in there and do a strip search on you before we go? Nothing from our time goes down to the Arch! Got that? Lose the shoes, and leave that book and your classic Parker ink pen behind as well, Robert.”

The professor gave Paul a wry wink as he shuffled away. “Come on, Paul. I’ll frisk you if you’ll return the compliment.” He laughed, lightening the mood. “We can spare Maeve the trouble.”

“I’m clean.” Paul looked at Maeve. “You have my word on it, but if you ladies would care to explore the issue further…” He raised his eyebrows jokingly, looking from Maeve to Jen.

“We’ll take your word on it,” Maeve grinned.

Kelly slid away from the data portal and hurried over. “Numbers are in the system. I shaded a variable to try and give us a little more time, like Nordhausen wanted. No good trying to change the date at this point,” he explained, “but if we miss our mark it will push things in the right direction, behind the event and not in front of it.”

“Glad to hear that much at least,” said Paul. He could put aside the worry of landing in 1957.

“I better get dressed.” Kelly looked around. “Where’s my costume?”

Paul looked at Maeve, and she read volumes in his eyes as he considered what to say next. “I’ve been thinking, Kelly,” he began uncomfortably.

“Paul and I have been discussing things.” Maeve saw where he was going immediately and deftly came to his rescue, a co-conspirator on the effort to leave Kelly behind. She had other reasons, which she would keep to herself for a time, but now she decided to weigh in with Paul. “One of us has to stay here to watch the data flow, and you’re the numbers man.”

“What? Hell, I’ve got everything programmed. It’s all automated. All we have to do is toggle the Arch to full power and go through.”

“It’s not that simple,” Maeve forged ahead. “Nordhausen hit us with these three trains at the last minute. We’ve had to consider Outcomes and Consequences, and we’ll need someone here to make a possible adjustment on the retraction.”

“Adjustment?” Kelly gave her a bemused look. “What are you talking about?”

Nordhausen came tromping up, clomping his new army boots audibly and lifting his gown to display the battered old leather for Maeve. “They’re too tight,” he complained again.

Maeve saw that he still had his copy of the Seven Pillars in hand and she stepped over and snatched it away from him. “Give me that.” She shot him a fiery glance and then handed the book to Kelly.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Nothing,” said Maeve. “Until four o’clock, that is. Just take the book and put it in a drawer somewhere out of sight while you help Jen with the system monitors.”

“I wasn’t going to bring the damn thing.” The professor was slightly miffed, still thinking Maeve was riding the warpath on him for his suggestion about the Bermuda Pamphlets. “I wish you’d get over this.”

“No. This has nothing to do with you, Robert,” Maeve made a real effort to calm herself. “It’s for Kelly.”

“What are you talking about? I’m coming too, Maeve. Where’s my costume?”

“Kelly…” The tone in Maeve’s voice pulled at him. “Put the book in a drawer. Monitor the system panels with Jen here.” She glanced at the young technician, noting that she was fully focused on some task behind the console. “If we aren’t back by four AM I want you to open the drawer and read the passage in Lawrence’s narrative where this attack was made at Kilometer 172. Read it very carefully, but be quick about it. Paul, when is the tsunami sequence scheduled to make first landfall on the east coast?”

“Around dawn; a little after four in the morning, our time.”

“The visitor gave us the exact time,” Nordhausen said quietly. “He said eleven past the hour.”

“Then you’ll have eleven minutes to do your reading, Kelly,” Maeve continued.

Paul finally understood what she was getting at. “Yes!” He pointed at the book. “If we’ve done our job… If we’ve found the Pushpoint and changed things, then you can read the result in the book!” He looked at Maeve, just a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

“Exactly.” Maeve supported him at once. “There were three trains, Kelly. As the history reads now, number two blows up. Remember that. You’re a Free Variable now.”

“What?” Kelly was struggling to understand the time theory again. He was a programmer and a networking genius, but the logic of Dorland’s theory had always escaped him.

“Yes, a Free Variable.” Paul took up the charge. “You said it yourself, Kelly. You aren’t supposed to even be here. We’re supposed to be over at the morgue identifying your body by now. Like I said earlier, this is an alternate time line for you,” he whispered, “for all of us in one sense, but particularly you, Kelly. Right now we’re in a Nexus Point. This is very rare, you see. Even though the tsunami is moving hundreds of kilometers per hour, it is still taking this precious time to make its way across the Atlantic. That interval is creating a Deep Nexus! The Palma Event has occurred already, but its primary effect is in the ripple of this tsunami wave. While we’re in the Nexus, in eye of the storm, if you will, we can all act as Free Variables! This means that even if we do go back and alter the time line you should still remember this conversation. The record of these events will be preserved in your mind, even if physical alterations in the matrix of reality occur here.” He tried to say it another way. “If we change history the passage in the book will change, Kelly. You’ll be able to read about it, possibly even discover what we ended up doing. Look, the visitor vanished, but we all still remember him, right? Then you should remember this conversation as well! If we don’t get back before four AM, you’ll have those eleven minutes to decide what to do with the retraction module. I’ve told Jen to monitor it very closely, but we may need programming. We may need your magic, Kelly. You’re the only one who could re-program the algorithm on this end if something goes wrong.”

Kelly finally realized what they were saying, but he still had a bewildered look on his face. “Well, what do I look for?” He gave the book a forlorn glance.

“I’ve marked the place and scribbled all over the pages as well,” said Nordhausen.

“The way it reads now, Kelly, the second train, the one coming up from Amman, was blown up by Lawrence and his men. At four AM you read the passage through. If the second train gets by unscathed, and the third train blows up, the one from the north, then we’ve done our job and you can pull us out. Otherwise hang tight until the last possible minute. Let the fail-safe retraction scheme bring us home. It may give us just the extra time we need there.”

“What about the first train?” Nordhausen asked.

“Ignore it,” said Paul. “Maeve and I have worked this out.”

“Now, put the book away in a drawer like I said,” Maeve cautioned him. “I want it out of sight. Don’t touch it until four AM. Understand?”

“What if the damn thing vanishes, like the old man, or the note?” Kelly had a desperate look on his face.

“I think it will remain a stable element in this environment,” said Maeve, and Paul nodded his ascent.

“Lawrence is going to write the book one way or another. The note was a Radical Variable, the book should hold true, except for the outcome in this particular narrative. The only way it could vanish is if we do something that gets Lawrence killed.”

Jen had finished her work behind the main console and came running up with the good news. “Everything’s ready! You can toggle the primary power surge from the main console now.”

“Well people,” Paul took a deep breath. “The three of us are wasting precious time. Let’s head for the Arch!”

They started away in a rush of motion, leaving Kelly in their wake holding the volume of the Seven Pillars, and looking like a lost child. Paul looked over his shoulder at him.

“Take care of us, buddy!”

Kelly forced a smile in spite of the strange feeling that settled over him now. “Count on it, mister,” he said reflexively, but his heart was very heavy. He had the odd feeling that something was going to happen—something unexpected. His friends were all going off without him and he might never see them again. He swallowed hard, forcing himself to focus on the things he might have to accomplish here.

They reached the heavy sealed doorway that would take them into the Arch complex. Paul was already entering the access code on the security panel, leaning in to let the retinal scanner verify that the numbers were being keyed by him.

Maeve hesitated a moment, looking from Paul to Kelly, then she turned and rushed back, reaching Kelly in a wave of motion and throwing her arms around him. She smiled warmly, giving him a tight hug.

“Don’t touch the book until four AM,” she whispered. “And if we’re not here to read it with you, bring us all back, Kelly… Bring me back to you. Hear me?” It was an action that was well out of character for Maeve, as she had guarded her feelings for Kelly very carefully. Here, however, at the edge of a leave taking that could become permanent, Maeve broke out of her shell of propriety. The action had an immediate effect.

Tears welled in the corner of Kelly’s eyes as Maeve released him. He was wrestling with a flood of emotions. All the sweat and labor of three long years was finally coming to a head. He was still flustered with the notion that he was living a second life, and the time seemed all the more precious to him as each second ticked away. Now the three people he felt closest to in the world were going off and leaving him with a history book! It was all too much to process at once.

The heavy titanium doorway opened with a hiss as the pressure variance between the two rooms equalized. Maeve turned and hurried over to the doorway where Paul and Robert were already making their way through the dark entrance with a last wave.

The moment was jarred with the ring of a telephone on the main console. Jen reached for it as Maeve hastened towards the yawning portal. The door was programmed to open for a brief interval and then automatically close again. If she didn’t make it through she would have to enter the access code all over again. Paul heard the phone ring and froze in his tracks, an odd look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Nordhausen nudged him. “You don’t think we’re getting a last minute call from our friends in another century, do you?”

“Hang on a second,” he waited breathlessly as Maeve approached the entrance.

“Oh, Miss Lindford! It’s for you,” Jen called, her hand covering the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver.

“What? Who would be calling me at this hour?”

“Long distance,” said Jen. “It’s your mother.”

Maeve rolled her eyes, as if acknowledging some deep inner fear that had finally come to pass. She had come to terms with the fact that her mother was going to be killed if the tsunami sequence reached the east coast. Her one hope had been that she would not even hear about the event, remaining quietly asleep in her little cottage on the shore of Boston Harbor.

Events had overtaken her, and Maeve managed to suppress the sorrow that welled within her as the evening unfolded. She would find time to grieve the loss later, she told herself. Then the visitor arrived with his pound of coffee and she threw her emotions into the one hope that they might actually prevent this catastrophe.

Time passed in a dizzy rush after that. Now it was running out. The Deep Nexus that had formed around them would soon begin to dissipate as the tsunami sequence surged west. She could feel it. Surely the alarm was up all along the Eastern Seaboard by now. All the media channels were broadcasting full tilt, and she had no doubt that every fog horn and lighthouse along the coast was signaling danger to any who could see or hear. Something must have awakened her mother and, by some miracle, she managed to get a line to the one place she knew Maeve would probably be if she was not at home.

Maeve stopped, nearly at the door, looking over her shoulder at Jen, her eyes wide with the urgency of a decision that clamored for an answer. The heavy metal door was swinging shut, gliding silently on well-oiled hinges; moving as inevitably as the great swell in the Atlantic. She looked at Paul and Robert, then at Kelly, and Jen where she waited, holding the telephone in two hands like something hot that she had just taken out of the oven. It would be the last time, Maeve thought, that she would ever hear her mother’s voice. If she slipped through the narrowing portal she might never see this world again.

All these thoughts passed in a fluttering instant within her mind, and her heart leapt with the only choice she could possibly make. She looked at Paul and Robert.

“Go!” she yelled at them. “Don’t wait. There’s no time!”

The great polished door swung closed, the seals taking hold at once with a sharp metallic clank followed by a sibilant hiss as the pressure reasserted itself. She stared at the impenetrable mass of titanium alloy, her eyes wet with tears. Then she heaved a quiet sigh and turned toward Jen at the main console. Kelly was frozen with a heart-rending look on his face. He started toward her, but Maeve held up a warding hand, intent on reaching the phone.

“This first,” she said with quiet dignity, and Kelly gave her an assuring smile.

When the door clamped shut the pale blue overhead lighting winked on to illuminate a long cylindrical tunnel. Paul stared at Robert, but was soon galvanized by the urgency of the moment.

“We’d better hurry,” he said, leading the way down the long tunnel as it angled ever more sharply into the depths of the hillside. The complex was buried deep underground, a precaution to help shield the environment against the strange effects that might be released should anything go wrong with the spin-out of the singularity. The tunnel led them to an elevator, and they rushed in, catching their own reflection on the polished metal doors: two ghosts in long white Arab robes. There were only two buttons on the elevator panel. One was clearly labeled ARCH and Paul pressed it without a moment’s hesitation. He glanced at the clock on the elevator wall, noting the time at 2:20 AM.

“We lost Bermuda, Professor,” he said quietly. “The wave was scheduled to hit there a little after two AM, our time.”

“It was a saving grace in 1611 when the Plymouth expedition made landfall there,” said Nordhausen. “They once feared the place, you know. Called it the Devil’s Island.”

“God help them now,” said Paul. The queasy feeling of anticipation seemed to redouble when the elevator shot down, leaving their stomachs behind.

“It’s better this way,” said Nordhausen. “Maeve has a wonderful head on her shoulders, but a woman would have been very much out of place in the milieu we’re opening; perhaps unexplainable. That nurse business was a good try, but really, what would a nurse be doing in the middle of the desert in Bedouin clothing? Did you know that there was not one single speaking female role in the movie?”

“What?”

“Lawrence of Arabia,” Nordhausen explained. “The entire cast was male—what blessed relief! It was, as they say, a man’s world in 1917. It’s better she stays behind.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Paul conceded. “But don’t get any ideas just because you won’t have Maeve watching your every move. We’ve got to be very careful. This is going to be like a delicate surgery. We have to find our Pushpoint and enable it while creating as little disturbance in the flow of events as possible.”

“I hope there’s time,” Nordhausen worried. “Look at the clock! What if we land in a place that takes us hours and hours to find the ambush zone? We’ve only got an hour and a half.”

Paul shook his head. “Plenty of time. Once we step through the Arch we’ll have all the time between the interval when we emerge and the actual attack on the train. It doesn’t matter how much time is left on this end. We could walk through the Arch a minute before four in the morning and return in thirty seconds, having spent a decade in the past! You never will get a handle on temporal mechanics, will you? Our visitor tonight emerged seven years ago, by his account. He lived out all that time on our Meridian but, in the world he came from, he might have been gone a just few brief moments. Maeve will hardly have time to take her phone call before we get back; you’ll see.”

“What if we miss our target?”

“That’s my main worry,” Paul confided. “Kelly said he shaded a variable to drop us on the negative side of the event. We can’t risk arriving too late, you see. But arriving too early could be just as much of a problem. Suppose we suffer the same fate as our visitor from the future, and miss the mark. We would have to scrub the mission and wait for the fail-safe retraction to kick in, unless we disable it. In that case, if we were to land around 1900, would you be prepared to live out seventeen years in the alternate time line? Think about it, Robert. You can still change your mind if you want. Thus isn’t going to be a quiet evening at the Globe. Kelly is good, but he really had to rush these calculations tonight. We haven’t had any time to fine-tune the breaching point.”

Nordhausen shook his head as the elevator came to a halt. “You aren’t getting rid of me that easy,” he said. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m scared shitless right now, but I’m still going.” Then he thought about the prospect for a moment and asked another question. “I’ve never quite understood how the retraction sequence works. How do we get back?” The question underlined the fear they were both feeling now.

“What? Oh, it’s a bit complex. The infusion is going to permeate the Arch with a tachyon surge. We may even feel the whole thing when we get inside. No one knows yet. In any case, we can weave particles into the fiber of our quantum matrix and give them a designated half-life, in a manner of speaking. We set the spin resonance to respond to one of two events: the temporal signature of the target time, plus a given interval, or the final decay of the infusion. One way or another, we’ll be pulled back through the singularity in the Arch and return. That’s what happened to our visitor! I think he had a very brief time with us after he intervened to save Kelly. That was his mission, you see. Whether he was free-lancing with his coffee run is another question. Did you notice how he kept looking at his watch? He was very agitated, almost as if he expected something to happen to him at any moment.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Nordhausen. “We won’t have an Arch on the other side. How will we get pulled back?”

“Simple,” Paul smiled. “The door we’re about to open is going to remain open for us, Robert. Time may be a harsh mistress, to repeat that old cliché, but she’s also a tidy one.” The elevator doors slid open and they stepped out into another long metallic tunnel. Paul reached back and extended an arm to block the closing doors.

“You see?” He smiled at the professor. “Time will extend an arm and keep the portal open for us. She knows we don’t belong on this side of the door, and she won’t rest until we’re safe in our own Meridian again. You’ll see.”

A great oval door was waiting for them at the end of a short tunnel, much like the portal above. Paul keyed the entry code and looked for the intercom to the control console while the heavy door swung inward with the same snapping hiss as before. He thumbed the call signal on the intercom and spoke.

“We’re opening the outer lock, Kelly. You can ramp it up to full power and start the spin sequence.”

“Roger that,” Kelly’s voice was reassuring on the other end of the line. “Maeve says to check your pockets and all.”

“Tell her we’ll be very discreet campers.” Paul suddenly smiled with an inner recollection. “And we’ll spend a lovely couple of hours in the Arabian Desert.” He let a little southern twang into his voice, knowing that only Kelly would know what he was talking about.

Nordhausen gave him an odd look, and Paul explained.

“I took this camping trip once out on the Olympic Peninsula with Kelly. The park ranger was coming by to collect the camping fees, and these two old people were trying to pretend they were just day visitors… Oh, never mind. You had to be there.”

The professor patted his torso, compliant with Maeve’s abiding caution to the last. He was surprised to find something in a small cache pocket within his gown, and he reached inside to fondle it with his fingers. Beads, he thought? Then the a faint familiar odor came to him and he realized that Maeve had secreted a supply of loose coffee beans in a cloth pouch, along with a few other items that he did not have time to explore. He smiled.

They were in a small, spherical chamber, and the heavy door was already swinging shut behind them. The faint whir of spinning turbines came to them now, resonating from the bowels of the earth with a palpable vibration that gathered strength with each passing moment. A pump began to operate somewhere and they felt their ears pop as the outer door sealed behind them and the chamber added pressure. They instinctively turned to face the last barrier between them and the Arch. It was a another massive metal door, split down the middle with a single seam—the final safety lock. The two halves would slide open any moment now.

“Power at 100 percent,” said Kelly over the intercom. “Everything all right down there?”

“We’re all yours,” said Paul.

“Well don’t cause any trouble in the park. Got that?”

Paul smiled. It was another of their favorite catch phrases, the warp and woof of a long friendship. Kelly spoke again: “Spin configuration looks wonderful, Paul. I’m infusing the chamber now… On my mark… And you are good to go!”

The titanium-steel alloy split asunder as the two halves of the final barrier slipped open with a metallic whisk. They found themselves staring down an iridescent corridor, broken at intervals by gleaming arches of pulsating light. The final Arch was brilliantly lit with a chaotic radiance of color and movement.

“Put your headdress on, professor!” Paul had to shout over the torrential sound resonating in the narrow passage.

“What if we miss the target, Paul?” Nordhausen gave him a wide-eyed look. “What if we miss it by fifty years?”

“No time for that, Robert!” Paul squinted into the scintillating sheen of light and motion in the Arch. They started forward, eyes fixed on a thick yellow line painted in the place where the last metal barrier had stood. Once they crossed that line they would be a few short steps from the event horizon of a tiny black hole. The spin-out of the entire quantum phenomenon was the only thing keeping them from being sucked into oblivion now. It was an elegantly simple effect that seemed to hold true because of the odd interaction of gravity and centrifugal force. Just as one could put a finger into the heart of a whirlpool and not get wet, and again like the dead space of calm in the eye of a hurricane, the interaction of quantum gravity conferred the same benefit to a spinning black hole. Here, in the sacred sanctuary created by the Arch, the annihilating effects of the singularity at the heart of the black hole were tamed and rendered harmless. It was all in the spin; all in the incredible vortex of energy and light, that swirled around them as they stepped over the line.

Paul felt Robert groping for him in the whirling storm of light, and the two men locked arms. Somehow the simple grasp of another human being made the last few steps possible for them. The final, brilliant span of the Arch loomed ahead of them and they felt their skin tingling as with the prickle of a thousand needles. There was no pain—only the strange sensation that something was permeating the entire fabric of their being, rending them through with the cold, penetrating gaze of eternity. It was suddenly very cold, and a violet haze seemed to enfold them. They were under the Arch. Infinity yawned, and the two men slipped through into the void.

9

Maeve gave Kelly a furtive glance as she stepped past him to the Main console. Jen extended the telephone receiver, a question in her eyes when she saw how Maeve received it so tentatively, as if uncertain or fearful in some way. Maeve put the receiver to her ear, listening for a moment before she spoke.

“Mother?” she said at last, her voice breaking a bit, a look of anguish on her face.

“Is that you, Maeve?” The old woman’s voice seemed distant and remote, fading in and out as if it were carried on a wireless signal.

“Are you there?” She waited, hearing a faint wash of static on the line before her mother’s voice emerged, a barely discernable whisper, as though from another world.

“I’m frightened, Maeve… I’m frightened.”

“Where are you, mother? Are you home? Are you in bed, dear?”

Something interposed itself between them, a shadow, thin and insubstantial, yet palpable in its effect. The overhead lights flickered for a moment and Maeve was distracted by the sound of Paul’s voice emanating from the intercom.

“We’re opening the outer lock, Kelly. You can ramp it up to full power and start the spin sequence.”

“Roger that,” Kelly’s was all business, his eyes focused on the main power flow panels, arms extended as he began toggling switches and twisting dials. Maeve listened at the receiver, but static masked the connection. She covered the mouthpiece briefly and whispered something at Kelly.

“Maeve says to check your pockets and all.” Kelly passed the message on through his console microphone.

“Tell her we’ll be very discreet campers.” Paul’s voice returned with a strange southern twang to it, and she knew that he was reaching out to Kelly in their secret language, a mythology of long steeped friendship that passed between them as a silly, effortless banter.

“Power at 100 percent,” Kelly informed. “Everything all right down there?”

“We’re all yours,” said Paul.

“Well, don’t cause any trouble in the park. Got that?” Kelly smiled as he spoke again: “Spin configuration looks wonderful, Paul. I’m infusing the chamber now… On my mark… And you are good to go!”

The static on the telephone increased, and Maeve tried to talk through it, urging her mother to wait a moment. Her eyes were glued to Kelly, watching his animated movements at the main console. He snapped his fingers, waving at Jen to take a seat next to him on the targeting vector readout.

“Watch that color bar,” he said quickly. “Let me know what it’s reading.” His eyes were scanning the bright phosphorous displays on the panels, the green numbers reflecting onto his face and forehead until it seemed that his brain was being flooded by an endless digital stream of ones and zeros.

“Looking good… looking good…” he intonated his inner assessment of the data stream, making minor adjustments to the spin stabilization unit. “What’s the bar showing?” A quick glance at Jen brought her to life and she focused on her read-out panels, a bit flustered but comforted as her training kicked in and she fetched a reflexive status call from memory.

“Three green,” she said, a little more confidence in her voice. Her momentary distraction over Maeve’s reaction to the telephone call dissipated, and she was focused on the task at hand.

“Sing out if anything changes.” Kelly seemed mesmerized by his screen. He twisted a dial, fine tuning some setting in the breach vectors. The sound of the generators came to them from deep beneath the earth. It was a swelling vibrato, with deep bass overtones and a definite rumble. Maeve felt a subtle vibration building as she pressed the phone to her ear again.

“Mother?” She queried, but there was no sound from the other end of the line. “Are you still there?” The static seemed impenetrable, but she hung on, painfully distracted, eyes riveted on Kelly where he worked the main console.

“Blue line on the bar,” said Jen, with just the hint of a warning in her voice. “Vector reads five-seven.” She looked at Kelly, who gave her a momentary glance, a knot of tension furrowing his brow as he made a further adjustment.

“Now?” he asked, eyes widening with anticipation.

“Shifting into violet,” said Jen.

Kelly looked at her full on, eyes darting back to his main read-out panel. He bit at his lower lip. “Toggle the number three switch on your array!” Kelly raised his voice, emphasizing some inner decision he had been struggling with.

The spatial locus readings were solid green, but the temporal vectors were starting to shift on him: green into blue into violet. He decided to suppress his shading algorithm, hoping he could nudge the waveform back in the right direction. “Come on now,” he breathed. “Come on…”

Jen watched her readings, frowning as the color shifted again. “The bar is yellow now,” she said quickly. “Nine by five.”

“Shit!” The single word carried a cascade of emotions. Kelly covered his mouth with his hand, eyes wide, as though he were searching frantically in his mind for a solution. He must have entered a bad variable, but where? There would be no time for a diagnostic. Kelly was scanning his main readout, desperate for some clue. The spin-out looked good, and they had a stable Arch array. The power readings were fluctuating but still maintaining 97% of full capacity. The spatial locus was dead on. It had to be the temporal shade.

“Enable that switch again!” He shouted, pointing at Jen’s panel.

“What?”

“Toggle number three!”

Jen passed a moment of hesitation and returned the switch to its original position with a snap. Kelly slid over to her station, the wheels of his chair skidding on the polished tile floor. The bar was moving again, spiking up into the yellow and then falling off to the violet. Maeve was frozen, the telephone limp in her hands as she watched Kelly press the palm of his right hand to the side of his head.

“God…” he breathed, watching the dizzying array of numbers spin on a digital countdown readout. “Oh God…”

“Maeve???” The sound of her mother’s voice seemed to echo from the receiver, pinging with a trilling rhythm as if stuck in a reverberating loop. Maeve stared at the telephone, real fear in her eyes when she heard the strange sounds emanating into the room. “I’m frightened… frightened…” the echo seemed to resonate in her mind. No one else seemed to hear it.

“What’s wrong?” Maeve let the telephone slip from her grasp as if it had burned her hand.

Kelly had a desperate look on his face. “Phase inversion,” he said. “I wonder if they’ve crossed the line yet? Damn, we should have had cameras in the approach tunnel.”

“Phase inversion? Are you certain?” Maeve rushed over, leaving phone receiver dangling over the lip of the desk by its cord.

Kelly was staring at the main console, his mind racing the digital countdown indicator on the upper panel. It was speeding past 15 seconds, the millisecond displays spinning rapidly and giving the impression that time was moving much faster than it should. He had to do something, and quickly. A sudden thought occurred to him as he looked at the pattern buffer. The infusion! If they were moving as planned in the Arch corridor they would have already passed through the infusion. He should have a good signature for both of them in the pattern buffer now, an immense bank of hundreds of thousands of terabytes of computer memory, holding a virtual description, in mathematical terms, of their quantum matrix. He made a lightning fast mental calculation, looking at the reading on the temporal vector range and ciphering in his head. Then he moved, practically knocking Maeve over as he lunged for the vector gradient controls.

He thumbed a switch.

The digital clock passed through eight seconds.

His fingers moved in a blur on the keyboard, eyes glued to the screen. He gave the module the access code to the pattern buffer, and fed the data sample to the core vector guidance unit. Then he opened a protective cover on a side panel and he punched his index finger home, depressing an ominous red button.

“What are you doing?” Maeve blanched when she saw what Kelly had done. “That’s the vector loop!”

“What’s the bar doing?” Kelly shouted at Jen, ignoring Maeve for the moment. His voice had a frantic edge to it.

“Blue by one-seven point two.”

The digital clock passed three seconds.

Kelly leaned heavily on the main console, his finger poised on the buffer-loop release button as he counted to two. It seemed the longest two seconds of his life, a life he should not even be living, he realized; a life that had been stolen from the larders of Time.

He pressed the release, his breath expelling as he did so, his other hand groping to one side feeling for some support. His head felt very light, and his hands were shaking.

The digital clock ran out and a loud buzz signaled that the Arch breaching sequence had run its course. Kelly’s arm waved lazily behind him, groping the still air of the room. Maeve saw his distress and took hold of his arm at once, easing him down into a swivel chair.

“What happened?” She was as much concerned for Kelly’s condition as anything else, but her emotions seemed pulled in a hundred directions. The telephone receiver swayed back and forth, and not a sound came from the earpiece now. The console was still fluttering with digital readouts and waveform ray tracings on the thin panel displays. Kelly sat in utter stillness, pale and confused. Jen still sat at her workstation, looking from the color bar to Kelly and Maeve and then back again.

“Did something go wrong?” she ventured.

Kelly said nothing, prompting Maeve to look over her shoulder at Jen’s view panel. Now the various elements of the scene that had just played itself out began to gel in her mind, like odd, unrelated clues suddenly coalescing to a certainty. She squeezed Kelly’s hand, almost as if to assure herself that he was still there; still warm; still substantial.

“You initiated an emergency pattern loop,” she whispered, retracing the moment that had passed by in such a rush. “The countdown was at three seconds and you sent a loop command through the system.” Her voice gathered strength as the realization of what had happened solidified in her thinking. “Kelly, how could you? How could you possibly key the right variable without a computational cycle?”

Kelly gave her a vacant look. “There was no time,” he said quietly. “The temporal vectors were spiking out of the target range and I had to do something.”

“Something?” Maeve’s eyes widened. Her Committee had set down one ironclad regulation to be followed without fail in the event of any irregularity on an attempt to breach the continuum: Abort. Kelly, being a senior project team member, knew the importance of the regulation as well as anyone there, for any irregularity, beyond the obvious possibility of equipment failure, would most likely stem from an error in the calculations.

“The bar spiked into yellow—It must have been an incorrect entry on the shading variable I keyed for Nordhausen. I told him we couldn’t change the time, but I tried to shade the breach on the negative side of the target event, just for safety’s sake. Then the bar started to spike and there were only fifteen seconds on the clock. They were in the infusion and…”

“Oh God,” Maeve whispered. “But a loop, Kelly. Why initiate a vector loop?”

“It was the only thing I could think of,” Kelly began. “Actually… I thought of it last week, as a possible safety procedure for retraction.”

“Retraction?” Maeve gave him a look that immediately demanded more.

“Yes,” Kelly stammered, still physically upset by the experience. “I was thinking that once we had a signature on their temporal matrix from the infusion, we could run a loop vector, and use the timing on the cycle in conjunction with the half-life setting for retraction. Theoretically, it would allow us to run a retraction routine for every complete cycle of the loop, at specific points during the half-life decay sequence.”

“Theoretically?” Maeve’s eyes widened to emphasize her displeasure.

“Well none of this has ever been done before, Maeve,” Kelly protested. “It’s all theoretical at this point. Give me a break! We don’t even know if the breach worked.”

Maeve looked quickly at the console, finding the microphone to the PA panel in the Arch corridor. She flipped the switch and called for Paul and Robert several times, but there was no answer. Her lips tightened as she looked at Kelly, real concern in her eyes.

“So maybe it worked,” Kelly offered, hoping to look at things from the bright side.

“And maybe they’re lying unconscious in the Arch corridor,” Maeve countered. “Or maybe they’re dead! I’m going down there.”

“Wait, Maeve.” Kelly reached for her arm. “You can’t. The door is sealed and it won’t open for another five minutes until the particle flux effects have cleared.”

“Fine then,” she pulled away. “You can open the lock in five minutes. I’m going down there. God only knows what may have happened.” She looked at Jen, clearly angry.

“What?” Jen was looking from one to the other. She had been trained on the panel readouts, and knew all the appropriate status calls for her station, but very little about the actual theory and mechanism behind it all. Paul’s quiet warning to her added a sense of urgency to the situation. Something was clearly wrong, but she did not know exactly what it was.

Maeve gave her a stern look. “What does the color bar read now?”

“Blue at zero point two-five.”

“That’s close,” said Kelly trying to salvage something from the situation. “It’s well under one percent, which means—”

“Which means they’re likely to land in November,” Maeve interrupted him. “What century they end up in, however, is anybody’s guess.”