Nexus Point

4

Maeve was riding back along the bridle path on her favorite horse, Giselle. The late afternoon sun was dappling through the oak trees in the valley, and the air had a warm sweetness to it that spoke of fresh sage. She reminded herself to stop and collect some at the trailhead. It would be just the thing to season that pot roast she had planned for the evening meal. But now there was more simmering in her mind than the roast. She had been thinking her way through the events of these last few months, trying to place everything into context and impose some semblance of order. While the challenges of the time travel project delighted her, the consequences that could result from it all were overwhelming.

Outcomes and Consequences—that was her mission in life these days. The dangers inherent in the enterprise, once only speculation about contamination and fateful effects, had suddenly been made painfully obvious to her. Kelly nearly vanished in the cold frost of Paradox. She had been thinking a lot about that in recent days, and running whole segments of the mission over in her mind.

From the moment when the unseen future first knocked on Nordhausen’s door in the person of Robert Graves, she had an odd feeling that there was something amiss in the whole equation—something she could not quite work out in her probability algorithms. And that something irked her like a shirt that needed ironing. It sat like unwashed dishes on her kitchen countertops, and waited like an unpaid bill on her desk—things that Maeve would never allow in the carefully managed space of her own personal life.

She kept everything in quiet order, and the structure of her world was wholly predictable at any given moment. She would ride Gizelle back up the bridle path, and give her a good rub down in the stables. She would take the Subaru into town on the way home and stop by Noah’s for bagels and a shmear. And she wouldn’t forget that fresh sage for the pot roast either. The steady certainty of her life had been something in which she took great solace—something of her own making. It was an extension of her considerable will power, and the determined competence she thrust against any problem the world would dare to concoct for her. Up until now she had been quite content in her world, with outcomes that were wholly satisfactory—until Kelly vanished.

Time travel, it seemed, could be quite untidy.

She thought back over the mission again, for the hundredth time. Everything had been so rushed that it was hard to get at the details of her recollection now. There were two moments that still bothered her. The first was the odd telephone call from her mother that pulled her away from the forward end of the mission. She remembered the strange echo of her mother’s voice reverberating in the receiver, as if some infernal loop had already begun; as if time was suspended in the repetition of her mother’s last words, undecided, uncertain, and afraid.

That uncertainty had become a real feeling for her at that moment—not just a nagging, misplaced cipher in her probability algorithms. It settled into her with a pulsing beat of anxiety, and it never quite went away. Even now, months after Robert and Paul had returned to the present, she still felt its presence, like the thrumming of adrenaline in her chest. The world was not the way she always fancied it to be. Now, nothing was certain; nothing fixed and determined—not even the past.

For someone who had always labored to define clear and well established borders, this defiant ‘quantum uncertainty’ in time travel was a daunting and frightening prospect. Heisenberg, damn him, was right. He predicted that physical quantities and properties fluctuate randomly and therefore can never be accurately known. While the effect of this uncertainty was most evident on the sub-atomic level, where things like the speed and charge of particles could be highly unpredictable, the fact remained that this basic uncertainty was at the core of all reality—if that term could be applied in any meaningful way. Put simply: nothing was written. That is how Paul would say it, imitating Lawrence with the remark. She realized now that she hated the whole notion inherent in that statement.

Nothing was written; nothing forbidden, and everything was permitted. That was the chaos that now sat hunched in the center of her mind like an old, unwelcome hobgoblin to plague her thinking. She wanted it out, wanted it gone, wanted things wrapped in nice neat boxes again, and stacked up just so. But the world would never be that way for her again. All of her careful habits, all the meticulous checks and balances that governed her life, were futile efforts at imposing order on chaos. It was very unsettling, to say the least.

She remembered that awful moment in the lab when she had first realized the full implication of all of this. She had suddenly hit on the idea that, if the mission was successful, and the history was actually changed, then the book Lawrence wrote about his exploits in the desert would also have to change.

She had been reading through it the last week or so, wondering what it must have been like for Robert and Paul to actually be there. With each episode she found herself wondering if this was the real story of the event, or something that had been altered again and again by the shifting eddies of time. Lawrence had written three versions of the book before it settled down. Now, even though he was dead and gone, the text was still being re-written!

The Seven Pillars, a metaphor for solidity and truth, suddenly seemed to be built upon very shaky ground. Perhaps there was something in the human heart that reached for a truth that was unalterable. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, wrote Keats, or what’s a heaven for? Knowing, or believing that there was something out there that was fixed and permanent, had long been a comfort to the human soul. Now the Arch had proved that anything was possible, and any semblance of truth, as she once knew it, was gone from her life. She had firm ground under her feet when she walked into the Lab that night, but now all was quicksand. Nothing was certain, not even the comfort of finished, printed text in the books that she so loved all her life.

She remembered how they had started that night with an argument about Shakespeare. They were worried that Nordhausen’s wayward curiosity might contaminate the time line. The man wanted to go rifling through Shakespeare’s office and she resolved, then and there, that he would not set one foot out of her sight if the Arch actually worked. It wasn’t merely Nordhausen’s eccentric temperament that she was determined to set a watch on—it was Shakespeare! The thought that the professor might do something to alter a single word of that man’s verse was the most compelling argument anyone could make against the time project that night. If Paul’s theory was correct, then a carelessly spoken word to a stranger in the past, a heedless stumble in the dark, a mislaid object, could wreak havoc on future time. It would be as if Shakespeare ‘never writ.’ The most maddening thing was that they might not even know what they had done to alter the record of time. Things would simply change—just like Lawrence’s narrative in The Seven Pillars. She would reach for The Tempest on her library shelf one night and find it missing, gone, annihilated. Worse yet, she might never know the damage was done.

The thought that every book in her library was now subject to sudden revision had become a seed of a deep discomfort, and it was growing in her with each day that passed. She could lose any one of them: Bronte, Whitman, Keats, all blown away with the slightest breath of time. That volume of poetry she had been reading last night—would it be the same tonight? It was more than unnerving to her now, it was frightening. It wasn’t merely words and books that could change on a whim, it was everything. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle had finally come home to roost.

She remembered how she had confronted her greatest fear at the end of the mission. Robert and Paul were still flushed and dizzy with the elation of their return. The Arch was a scintillating montage of light and the generators were whining as they strained to provide the power required for the retraction jump. She recalled the excitement she had first felt with Robert’s return. Then Paul came through and everyone was safe at last. She had the barest moment of relief before that odd rumble shuddered through the Arch, like a ghostly train passing in the night. A howling sound droned in its wake, and she felt the fear gather strength within her.

Things were different.

She knew it even before she dared to look at the pages of The Seven Pillars. Something had changed and she could feel it like a shift in the weather, a faint, yet palpable variation in the certainty of her life. Something had changed.

That was the moment she knew Kelly was gone. Before they ever took the elevator ride up to the main lab she knew, in her heart of hearts, that he would not be there. The twisted ripple of Paradox was at work. Heisenberg was running wild. Everything was different now.

When Paul found the farewell note Kelly had scrawled, she could barely bring herself to look at it. The errant strokes of his pen were strokes upon her heart. She knew this moment was waiting for them all if the mission was a success. It was simple logic: if the Palma Event never happened, then there would be no reason for Mr. Graves to come back and seek their help. It was Graves who made everything possible: first by preventing Kelly’s untimely death, and then by tucking that little clue away in his raincoat. If Graves never came, then…

Kelly was gone.

Time railed in a confounding loop of Paradox, and lashed out at anything that did not belong on the changed Meridian. Paul tried to explain it to them once. He said that the notion of Paradox was so insulting to time that she would find a way to punish the offenders for their mischief. Paradox was not a mind-puzzle, but a real effect. It was a cleansing and healing force of time that promised nothing less than annihilation for all those who would dare to meddle, and it wanted to charge Kelly with his life. Kelly did not belong. His presence could no longer be accounted for, and the quantum foam of uncertainty wanted to simply engulf his life and suck it away to oblivion. At least that is what they believed at first. His miraculous reappearance at the memorial service had shaken them all—Maeve more than any other.

Nothing was written—not even death, it seemed. Kelly was saved and snatched away to some distant Nexus Point in the future. She did not yet understand how they did it, but apparently they knew something more about the continuum than she could divine at this point, and so she lived with the mystery, as she lived again with Kelly.

The months that passed brought them much closer. The love she felt taken away from her before its time finally began to bloom, and she took great joy in her relationship with him. Oh, he had his quirks and his silliness, as all men did—particularly when he was around Paul. But there was something in the intensity of his moods, the expression of his poetry, and his simple intelligent reflection on almost any subject that she dearly loved. She did not appreciate the notion that all of this was the artifact of some careless incident from the past—that it was all as temporal as the phases of the moon. Somehow, she wanted to find that same permanence and sureness in her love that she so labored for in the world she built around her. She did not want her love to become a fool of time, but rather, as Shakespeare had so artfully expressed it, ‘an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.’

The life she had now with Kelly was always at risk in her mind, as much as her heart wanted that permanence. She knew that it had been stolen from time like a chip slipped under the table when the dealer was looking the other way. As much as she tried to put the fear aside, it persisted in her now, and each day was an effort to master that feeling in the safe little rituals of her everyday life.

She sighed, feeling Gizelle stir beneath her, as if aware of the unsettled mood that had fallen upon her. She was reaching the head of the bridle trail now, and she needed to stop and look for that sage, and perhaps a sprig or two of wild thyme while she was at it. She put the strange notions in her head aside for a while, and thought about dinner with Kelly. He was probably finishing up the data run at the lab now, and they would meet at her apartment in two hours. Or at least she thought they would. She could never be certain of anything again.

Heisenberg be damned!

5

The dinner was long over and they were settling in with a cup of coffee before Kelly got up the courage to broach the subject with Maeve. He had been working through the data runs from the mission, documenting everything for permanent archival records as they contemplated the termination of the project. Maeve had been the strongest proponent for shutting everything down, with Nordhausen arguing most of the other side, as one might expect. The historians had a taste of the sublime power of the Arch, and they wanted more. Outcomes and Consequences, with the burden of making sure everything turned out all right, knew just how dangerous the technology could be. It was Nordhausen’s curiosity and the excitement of discovery against Maeve’s prudence and reasoned caution—with just the right dash of fear thrown in for good measure. In the end, the uncertainties about the future of the technology had proved a strong argument.

Maeve gathered momentum when she forced them to consider the real implications of the project. How long could they keep something like the Arch a secret? The government was certain to find out what they were doing, if they didn’t already have their suspicions. Once that happened they would certainly move in and take the whole project over as a matter of ‘national security.’ Nothing could be more inimical to the project team leaders than that thought. Once the Feds got their hands on the technology there would be no end to it. The knowledge would certainly leak out, and the resulting proliferation issue would give rise to conflicts that would be stupefying. “Suppose they use the Arch as a weapon,” Maeve had argued. “You know it’s inevitable if we don’t shut this down. One side will try to use the Arch to undo the other, and the result will make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like child’s play.”

The long silence in the room had choked Nordhausen’s argument to death that night. They would shut it all down. Paul convinced everyone to stick by the cover story that this was all just an effort to poke around in the theoretical physics. They were just playing with particles in the micro-scale of an accelerator scheme—just tickling Heisenberg on the chin. He would write the paper for the physics department and they would all have to find a way to make it worth something to the private investors. He was certain they could squeeze two or three patents out of the whole thing, and these should provide enough reward for the key contributors.

Their lease on the facility had another six months, and that gave them plenty of time to tie up loose ends and plan how they could best put the whole thing quietly behind them. Three months later Kelly was just completing his data packing, scouring the numbers for any red flag that would be difficult to explain to an auditor or an over zealous investigator. The problem seemed innocuous at first. There was something amiss in the power usage curve.

Someone had transposed some numbers, and the more he looked into it the more suspicious he became. It was not long before he uncovered some log entries that put him on to the culprit. Nordhausen had copied some data blocks into the machine two weeks ago, but the information was not in the archives. A check of the logs showed some very spotty deletions, and the file sizes and system clock dates all corresponded to a single evening in early July.

“I checked the sign-in sheets for the lab,” he told Maeve as he stirred his coffee. “There was only one shift reported that weekend because of the Independence Day holiday. Everyone left early on Friday, but a grad student was in for three hours that night, and it was just logged as a routine security call.”

“So, what’s the problem?” Maeve asked. “Was he fishing around in the data?” Her fears got the best of her. “Oh, Kelly, what if this guy was working for the Feds? Do you think he found anything?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Kelly assured her. “All the vital system files are encrypted.” He shifted in his chair, looking for a more comfortable position as he considered what he was about to say next. “I found one other thing in the accounting log that set me thinking,” he explained.

“The accounting log? I thought that was closed and sent off to the auditors last month?”

“It was, but I was just running checksums on the file blocks on that disk when I noticed something out of place. There was a deposit listed with a revised file date—a rather large deposit.”

“I’m not following you.” Maeve reached for the Arabian steaming pot that she used to serve coffee, and slowly tilted the long golden neck to warm her cup. “Are you saying someone tried to cover up a deposit? A withdrawal is one thing, but a deposit? Do we have an unknown benefactor who might be trying to get in on a share of the patent royalties?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Kelly. “But it does make sense.” He considered the issue for a moment, then discarded it. “No, on second thought it would not explain the other clues.”

“Clues? You’re making this sound like a mystery novel. What are you getting at?”

Kelly heaved a sigh and decided to let his suspicions tumble out. Still, he was careful in how he approached the matter. After all, he was talking about a mutual friend.

“Did Robert have any further discussion with you about the project after our meeting in June?”

“Nordhausen? No, I haven’t seen him for several weeks now. The last I heard he was yanking on Paul’s arm to fly over to Jordan with him. It seems he has some sentimental attachment to a fossil he claims to have discovered on their first jump.”

“Yes, the Ammonite. He told me about that. In fact, he’s over there right now. I’m surprised he convinced Paul to go. They left last weekend and won’t be back for another ten days. But this is different.” He scratched the back of his neck and Maeve was immediately on guard. She had seen Kelly make that gesture before, and it was always the preamble to something uncomfortable he felt he needed to say.

“There’s something going on here, isn’t there?”

“Well, you said it yourself: why would someone want to try and cover up a deposit to the project bank account? Only a few people could even get access to that account to do such a thing, and it wouldn’t be hard to track down the dates with the auditor.”

“So?”

“So I gave him a call.”

“And?” Maeve let just a pinch of impatience creep into her voice.”

Kelly hesitated for the briefest moment and then let the matter go. “The deposit was made on Monday the 5^th of July, and the system file discrepancies were all traced to the 3^rd.”

“You mean right after you discovered a grad student had come in on a holiday weekend…” Maeve was starting to piece things together now. “Get to the point, Kelly. Your coffee is getting cold and I’m not letting you touch that pot until you come out with this.” She fixed him with that hazel-eyed stare that had won so many victories for her in the Outcomes Committee.

“The deposit was made by Robert,” he said nonchalantly.

“Nordhausen?” Maeve seemed genuinely surprised. “What do you figure he was up to—salving a guilty conscience for all the money he cost us with research? Lord, he spent nearly ten percent of the budget trying to isolate vectors for the Shakespeare mission, and then the whole thing was trashed at the last minute. Maybe he was feeling guilty.”

“I’d like to think so but—“

“But you know him as well as I do. OK, Kelly. What was he up to this time?”

Kelly could feel the heat entering her tone and he wondered if he had made a mistake in bringing this up. Yet he had come this far, and there was no way to back out gracefully now that he had dangled out these irregularities. He tried to explain.

“Well, the numbers were pretty significant—in file size, I mean. There were several hundred terabytes of data with altered checksums, and the whole block had been shunted off to the recycling bin. That was erased, but I was able to recover the base code for the data blocks and—“

“English please.”

Kelly scratched the back of his neck again and Maeve’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Only one thing could account for that much data,” he explained. “Oh, he used the secondary drive system, and had everything running through the simulator to make it look like it was just a trial run and all, but the data transfer tags were pretty clear.” He resisted the urge to explain the technical discrepancies and acceded to Maeve’s request. “It was coordinate information—temporal and spatial.”

“Coordinate info? For the Arch?”

“Yup.” He let that simple affirmation sit with her for a moment before he said anything else.

Maeve was staring at the Arabian coffee server, her eyes riveted to the gold plating as though inscribing her thoughts there. “And the money?”

It seemed to Kelly that she had already come to some inner conclusion, but she wanted to hear what he thought just to confirm her growing suspicion. “There was a spike in the electricity usage that month and the deposit was just enough to neatly balance our books.” He didn’t want to say any more.

Maeve pursed her lips until they were nearly white. She set her coffee cup on the settee, as if she was unwilling to hold anything as delicate as inlaid china while she let her emotions run with this latest surprise. There was a faint tremor in her hand as she released it. Kelly was just about to say something but she held up a warning hand to silence him. He had that pleading look in his eyes, as if all of this was his fault, but Maeve knew better.

“What in God’s name is that man up to,” she breathed, and the question was more an accusation. “He was running numbers and using gobs of electricity on the holiday weekend—when no one would be around to bother him. And you say he had a grad student sign in for a routine security call? Baloney! He used it, Kelly. He used the Arch, damn him. I knew something like this was going to happen if I let him out of my sight. I just knew it!”

She stood up, her knee jostling the service tray on the settee and Kelly put his hand on his forehead, regretting his candor and hoping he had not re-ignited the long-standing feud between Research and Outcomes.

Maeve’s anger continued to vent. “We’re going to have to lock that place down now, lease or no lease. My god—I still can’t believe he would try something like this. No clearance, no outcome study: the risk was enormous! How could he have run the calculations? It took us nine months to get good numbers on the Shakespeare drop.”

“Well, you can get a pretty good bead on spatial coordinates without even using an Arion system. As for the temporal numbers—”

“Where? Where did he go, Kelly?” Maeve seized on that now, and it was clear that she was very concerned about contamination.

“Like I said, I could only retrieve the base code, and there wasn’t enough data to work that out.”

“Then we’ve got to get over there and keep digging. I want to know what he did, and I want to know it tonight.” She folded her arms, as if trying to set some boundary of civility on her anger. But Kelly had seen Maeve like this before. He knew that they were in for a long night in the lab.

“Do you really want to do this now? I mean, Robert is in Jordan for the next ten days. What’s the rush?”

“What’s the rush? Don’t you realize what this means? He used the Arch! The last time we tried that we changed everything and you nearly got killed!” She sat down. Very flustered. “Damn him,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. I was reading Dickinson last night, and now…”

“Emily Dickinson? What has that got to do with any of this?”

“Oh nothing—at least I hope as much. But the thought that the poem I read last night wasn’t the one she wrote –“ She came up short, her anger choking off her voice. “If there’s one line of that poetry changed—one word—I’m going to roast Nordhausen over a slow fire!” She fixed Kelly with that determined stare that said she would do exactly that.

“We better get started,” he sighed. “Bring the coffee. We’ll need it.”

6

Nordhausen stumbled his way back through the winding cave, struggling to remember which way they had turned when they explored earlier. He made a left when he should have taken a right, but the false corridor soon reached a dead end and the error self-corrected. He reached the upper level of the subterranean formation a moment later, and was pleased to see the rosy red light of the setting sun framed in the irregular opening of the outermost crevasse. But, to his surprise, the picture was not an empty landscape! Two men appeared silhouetted in the opening, and he came up short, caught unawares.

A moment’s hesitation passed when he realized that they could easily be one of the touring groups he had told Paul about earlier. His start was soon colored with the elation of discovery and good luck as he realized that they would certainly have transportation nearby—possibly a bus or landrover. He hastened forward, rushing toward the mouth of the cave with a greeting on his lips, only to find the men had quickly unshouldered firearms and leveled them at him in a gesture that was clearly hostile.

“Don’t shoot!” he said instinctively. “I mean you no harm. Lord, am I ever glad to see you. We thought we would have to hike all the way to Akaba from here. Thank God!” He extended his open palms to indicate his friendly intent, but the men just stared at him with dark, surly glances. Nordhausen saw that they were clearly Arabic, both dressed in loose fitting robes and head dress, with weathered olive faces colored by the usual facial hair. One wore a full beard, and the other sported a trimmed goatee. “English?” he asked gingerly, realizing that the men probably did not understand a word of his greeting. He began to have flashbacks of his brief sojourn in the desert with the two Arab guides he had encountered. Then he recognized a checkered scarf at the throat of the bearded man, and he suddenly knew that these were the same men he had sought to pull into his ruse when the helicopter made its forced landing to escape the authorities! Could we have caught up to that little caravan, he wondered? Perhaps they meant to shelter here as well.

When the third man appeared in the cave opening, all doubt was removed. The white pith helmet and khaki overcoat were impossible to mistake. Before Nordhausen could say another word the apparent Westerner made a terse gesture, his fingers snapping to accent his command and the two Arabs rushed forward to seize the professor by the arms, dragging him rudely back to the cave opening in spite of his flustered protests.

“English?” The Westerner grinned at him. “What are you doing here? And do not say you are lost! We have been watching you for some time.”

“Thank god,” Nordhausen began, relieved that he could at least communicate with the man. The stranger’s thick accent made Nordhausen realize this man was Arabic as well. The notion that they were Bedouin brigands emerged in his mind as he winced with the hard grip of his assailants. “Is this necessary? You can see I mean you no harm.” He gave his captors a wan smile, but they glared at him just the same.

The man in Western dress gave another command in Arabic, and one man took a firm hold on Nordhausen, pulling his arms behind his back while the other patted him down in a cursory search. Once satisfied that he was not armed, the leader nodded and the Bedu guards released the professor, stepping back to either side, guns still at the ready.

“Who are you?” The leader said tersely, and the impatience in his tone of voice was obvious.

“I’m a professor of history and archeology. We’re out here on a dig, you see, and we were landing supplies for our team.”

“That is a lie!” The man’s assertion was so cold and sharp that the warning was implicit. “Another lie and I will have my guards do a more thorough search. You spent an hour burying the cache you dropped, and I would guess it is not something you wished to share with the RJAF, or anyone else, for that matter. What were you carrying?”

The man’s tone convinced Nordhausen that he had better leave off his little ruse and come clean. It would be a simple enough matter for these men to go and unearth his treasure. Besides, Paul was waiting for him in the dark of the cave. He decided to let out with the truth, and he told the man about his Ammonite.

“What I said was true,” he began. “To a point, that is. I am a history professor, and I was working with a dig crew some miles east. We discovered an interesting fossil, and I was moving it to a safer location for study. That’s all.”

“Interesting fossil? You mean valuable, yes?”

“It was an Ammonite, if you must know.”

“Ammonite? What is that? A mineral?”

“No. It was an ancient sea creature—dating back many millions of years. A real museum piece, in fact.”

“Only you do not work for a museum—am I correct?”

The man was going to peel the onion one way or another. There was no point in coloring the truth with him. “No,” he admitted. “I was recovering the find for personal reasons. I’m a bit of a collector.”

“Ah, then you were not simply moving it to a safer location for study.” The man’s tone had a mocking edge to it now. “It is illegal to collect such things—for personal reasons. You were thinking to steal it, then. You are a bit of a thief as well, I see. That is why you waved at me like a monkey when you leapt from your helicopter. Yes? The RJAF was on to you and you thought to cover your escape somehow. How very clever! This Ammonite must be worth a great deal of money to take such a risk.”

Robert gave the man a blank stare. “Yes, yes, it’s all true.” He was still thinking of poor Paul, but he wanted to get this conversation to civil ground before he brought him into this. “All except the money. I may have been taking the fossil out without permits but I’m no thief as you suggest. I had no intention of selling my find. Why, I would never dream of such a thing! If you must know, I was planning to mount it on the wall of my office. After all, the thing was mine. I discovered it you see, and I put a great deal of time an effort into the recovery. I’m sure things can be worked out to everyone’s satisfaction and, if the Jordanian government wants restitution, I would be happy to comply.”

“How gracious of you.” Robert’s questioner did not sound accommodating. “You are an American, from the sound of things. Americans are not welcome here, as you must know. They have been stealing from us long enough. I can tell you of many other things they take from this land without permits—like all Westerners. You think all this is here for your pleasure, eh?” He gestured broadly to the sweeping expanse of the Wadi valley, barely visible through the winding fissure behind him. “And the Arabs are just quaint little people of the desert who must be amenable to your every desire.” The man’s eyes narrowed above a thin, brown nose. “Where is your friend?” The question was pointed, with just a bit of anger sharpening the words.

“My friend? Why, he’s waiting for me in the cave. We were going to make camp and we were looking for water.”

The man seemed very unhappy with this revelation. “In this cave?” He seemed to stare past Robert, squinting into the throat of the cave. “Is he armed?”

“Armed?” Nordhausen figured the man was worried that Paul had them in his gun sights. “Well, we did have a pistol with us, but I wouldn’t be concerned. Paul’s not the sort to do anything foolish.”

“Oh? Yet he is in your company, yes? He is an accomplice, is he not? Call him! And you had best hope that he is as prudent as you believe.”

“By what right do you go about ordering strangers, sir?” Robert mustered a little indignation, his mood rankling with the temper of this man.

“You would prefer that I send my men in to search for him? They may not be so gentle in that event.”

Nordhausen waved the men off and called out, his voice receding to an echo in the cave, but there was no answer. “Oh, come now, Paul. Don’t be difficult here.” Robert looked at the group leader with a shrug. “I left him just a moment ago,” he explained, “but, as you can see, I have the flashlight, and it is very dark inside. Perhaps he has lost his way. Why, I was stumbling on dead ends even with the advantage of the light. I’m sure he can hear us. Give him a moment.”

The leader was not convinced. “He hears but does not speak.” He snapped his fingers again, flicking his wrist at one of the Bedu guards. The bearded man stepped past Robert, obviously intent of searching Paul out.

“Now see here—“ Nordhausen was justifiably concerned. He had dragged Paul into this mess and he felt bad enough already. Paul was taking it all with his usual good humor and even temperedness, but the thought that these men would drag his friend out like a scoundrel kindled a protective instinct in him. “There’s no need to be uncivilized about this now. We were just seeking shelter from the sun, and water.”

“Water is a precious commodity in the desert,” said the leader. “These caves are very special to us. They belong to the Bedu who live in this valley. It is not wise to enter a man’s home unbidden, or to drink from his water without permission. Yet you Americans would not understand that, would you?”

“Oh, come now? You’re saying this cave is someone’s home? Why, it’s completely empty—no sign of habitation at all. Surely you would not deny a man shelter and water in a desert like this? Spare me your bruised Arabic pride. If you think we have wronged you, say so plainly and decide what you’re going to do about it.” The professor was recovering a measure of his own pride now, and he was tired of being questioned like a schoolboy by this man. “Otherwise you can take your men and leave the two of us alone here, if you will. We’ll find our way to Akaba on our own if you refuse to help us.”

The leader tensed as Nordhausen spoke, clearly annoyed. He cocked his head to one side, as though suddenly perplexed. Then he stepped closer, resolved, and to Nordhausen’s surprise he delivered a hard slap to the side of the professor’s face. “That is for the insult,” he said bruskly. The other man flashed Nordhausen a toothy smile, a look a pleasure plain on his gnarled face.

“Leave the two of you alone, you say? Do I think you have wronged me? A thief comes to my homeland and thinks to take me for a fool. And he enters a place where it is death to come unbidden. Do I think you have wronged me? Well I will let you in on a little secret, my American friend. You will regret this day, because now I must decide what to do about this intrusion. And may Allah lay his hand upon me, for I do not feel merciful with beggars and thieves.”