Touchstone

4

He stood gazing up at the colossal red granite Horus looming six cubits over him. Nordhausen had seen this before in photographs. The god was 5000 years old already and would live forever. The building housing him was barely one hundred years old, and would one day be dismantled or fall into ruins, but Horus would remain. These islanders were wrangling rudely shaped megaliths into circles when Horus was sculpted 2181 miles away, the distance of the hypotenuse of the 1500 mile square, Sacred Jerusalem with Gizeh at one corner and London at the other. He was as perfect, smooth, curved, beaked and taloned, as he had been in Karnak. He had last been worshipped in the desert 1500 years ago, by an Ethiopian who had made a pilgrimage.

In ancient times, the Egyptians had seeded the earth with gods, and slowly, slowly, they were dispersing throughout the world. Perhaps someday, when the right obelisk was installed in the right cosmic vortex, who knew what long planned harmonic convergence might ensue?

The professor smiled to himself, pleased that he was finally busied with the real work of his time jaunt. The revelry of the previous night was still shrouding over him like a hangover, but what was done, was done. He was here and there was nothing else to do but make the most of things with the time that remained to him. He had dropped off his formal wear this morning at Madame Tussaud’s on King Street, redeemed his deposit, had a spot of breakfast at a street café, and now he was here—at the British Museum.

Nordhausen’s musings were interrupted by the arrival of a governess and a small girl, very well dressed in deep blue velvet and black satin, eleven or twelve years old. The governess was paging through a guidebook, while the little girl solemnly looked up at the huge raptor, perching still and tense.

“This is a pagan god of the Egyptians, dear. It was captured from Boney, and brought to our island.”

“I wonder what it means,” the girl said, and ran her hands over a column of deeply incised hieroglyphics.”

“No one knows, dear, it is all a great mystery. It says here that the last people to use hieroglyphics died almost eighteen hundred years ago.”

Nordhausen was somewhat surprised by the woman’s remark. He knew he should keep his mouth tightly closed, but what harm could come from a little pleasant conversation? “Why, not at all,” he said. “This is the god Horus in the form of a falcon. See, here is the name of the pharaoh Rameses, who built this statue.” He pointed to the royal cartouche, and spelled out, “Ra-me-ses. This circle with the dot is Ra, the sun god. This funny knot is the symbol ‘mose’, which means ‘to give birth,’ so it stands for ‘M’, and these two hooks are S’s.”

The girl put her fingers on the hieroglyphics, and slowly traced, “Ra-me-ses.”

“Oh, sir,” interrupted the governess, “How is it possible that you would know all this? It’s an evil looking thing, that much I’ll give you. Has an unholy look about it, yes?”

“Unholy? I dare say, Madame. There is nothing holy about it. In fact, the Egyptians were quite fond of human sacrifice at one point, and I suppose this monument here has seen its fair share of blood through the ages.”

“My word! To speak of such things before an innocent child! Don’t touch, Marie! Come along now.” She grabbed the girl firmly by the arm, and hurried her out of the gallery, leaving little more than a frown in her wake.

Well I’ve done it again, thought Nordhausen as he mentally kicked himself. Suppose they were going to take the whole tour of the museum and I’ve gone and spoiled it all for them. Suppose the little girl was to find some glowing inspiration here that sticks in her mind and feeds the fires of her imagination—and now I’ve gone and put them out. Damn it man, when will you learn to keep your bloody mouth shut?

Angry at himself again, Nordhausen decided to go in the other direction. He resolved not to get involved with anyone else, if at all possible. He would just mind his own business and be done with this trip. As he sauntered towards the far end of the hall, he glanced at the cards on some of the displayed items. They were very curious, even for this curious world he found himself in. Not a single one identified the item, beyond a general description: Sandstone Goddess; Memorial stele; Porphyry pharaoh, from Luxor.

Nordhausen began to get a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. He began to look at every single item around him. Nothing was dated, nothing was identified. He could read a number of royal cartouches on various objects, and recognized Rameses, Thuthmose and one or two vaguely familiar others, on various statues, but none of them was named on the placards.

Something was very wrong. It was nearly a hundred years after the discovery of these objects by Napoleon during his expedition to Egypt in 1799. By now several scholars should have worked out the details of the hieroglyphics: Ackerbad and Silvestre de Sacy in 1802, and the initial work of Thomas Young on the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone itself. It was Young who proved that the proper names in the hieroglyphics section of the stone did, in fact, have phonetic values, and were not merely symbols, as had been hypothesized earlier. He then introduced the idea of the proper names being inscribed with ovals around them, known as cartouches.

Nordhausen didn’t expect the testy governess to know such things, but surely the Curator of the museum should know all this by now. Young’s main contribution to Egyptology was published in the 1824 Encyclopedia Britannica. The work of the French scholar Champollion would follow up on this thesis and do much in the way of explicating the hieroglyphics. But nothing was named here.

He stood in the middle of the empty hall, surrounded by huge, mute stone gods and kings, dully lit in the gray afternoon light that streamed in from the high windows. He heard the rushing of his blood, the loudest sound in this vacant room.

Recrimination vexed him, and the awful thought that he was somehow responsible for the unexpected change preyed upon him. But what could he have done to accomplish this? Surely not his innocent spat with the governess just now. He hadn’t done anything… partied with a bunch of swells last night, but that couldn’t have done this. What was going on?

Suddenly he became aware of a great absence. The most famous, the most important Egyptian relic in the world, was nowhere to be seen. He took a deep breath, made a quick circuit of the room, and then did it again making certain he missed nothing. He then made his way, in short, reluctant steps, toward a docent who sat reading in a chair. The docent, in a navy blue uniform with shiny brass buttons, looked up at the distraught Nordhausen, and immediately adopted a concerned expression.

“Sir, how can I help you?”

“Where,” his voice broke. “Where is the Rosetta Stone?” he finally rasped out.

“The Rosetta Stone, sir? I don’t believe I know that item. Can you be more specific?” He looked puzzled.

“The Rosetta Stone,” Nordhausen croaked, “Black basalt panel about so by so,” he gestured, “Same message in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek…”

The man gave him an odd look, noticing his dress and immediately sizing him up as a foreigner. “No, sir, doesn’t ring a bell for me. Perhaps you were misinformed. We’ve nothing meeting that description here.”

Nordhausen could feel the blood draining from his face. “Kindly direct me to the Egyptian Curator,” he said.

“Certainly, sir, though I’m certain you’ll get much the same answer from him. Just go through this corridor, up the stairs, and it’s the fourth office on the left. Says ‘Curator of Egyptian Antiquities’ right on the door.”

Numbly, Nordhausen followed the directions, and was soon rapping on a heavy oak door, in an oak paneled hallway.

It was opened by a middle aged gentleman, with white hair and luxuriant, flowing mutton chop whiskers. His upper lip and chin were shaven, but huge sideburns erupted from his cheeks.

“Yes, sir, can I help you?”

“I am looking for the Egyptian Curator?”

“You have found him. I am Wilbert Wilberforce, himself, at your service. How can I assist you?”

“I was hoping to find the Rosetta Stone on display here, can you tell me where it is, sir?” Nordhausen almost pleaded.

“The Rosetta Stone? Which Rosetta Stone? There is a whole collection of artifacts that came in from Rosetta—”

Nordhausen cut in. “Black basalt slab, about so big, in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek.”

The Curator’s eyes narrowed with a hint of recognition. “Oh, let me see, I may know what you mean,” Mr. Wilberforce mulled. “It is not on display, sir, it is in storage, downstairs. May I ask your name, sir, and your interest?”

“Not on display?” Nordhausen was immediately relieved. The great void in his mind was at least filled with the certainty that the stone was here, but why would they have it in the warehouse?

“Forgive me,” he said quickly. “My name is Robert Nordhausen, I have heard of this stone, and have come all the way from San Francisco, in the United States, to make a study of it.”

“Well, sir, you are in luck. I am unoccupied today and I would be happy to accommodate you. Let us go see if we can find this stone of yours. Follow me.”

Nordhausen was delighted. “You are too kind, sir. I was afraid, for a moment, that something was amiss.”

“Excuse me, sir?” The Curator gave him a sidelong glance.

“Well it’s just that none of the displays have any clear identifying labels. I suppose you’ve just not come round to detailing the history yet, is that it?”

“Detailing the history?” The Curator scratched his head. “Well, we’ve got what we can out on the main floor, but there’s simply not enough room for everything else. You’ll see.”

Wilberforce led Nordhausen down to the end of the corridor, and through a service door which opened into a plain dark stairwell, lighted by a skylight high above. The upper floors of museum were illuminated only by natural light.

Wilberforce went on, as they descended the stairs into the gloom. “I have not looked at this one for years,” he shrugged. “It is certainly a curiosity. Perhaps I should consider displaying it. Although, I don’t believe it is as large as you indicated. Ah, here we are.” He opened the door into a dark room, fumbled about until he found a match, and lighted a gas lamp on the wall.

Rows of rough shelving were revealed, running the length of the basement room. They were stacked with Egyptian artifacts, of all shapes and kinds, from statues, to domestic articles, to funerary gear, to odd lumps of stone with remains of paint or carving.

They walked deep into the room, Wilberforce stopping once to light another lamp. They reached the end of the storage room, where a number of stone tablets leaned against the wall.

“Oh, my,” said Mr. Wilberforce. “I should have brought a couple students to assist us.”

“That’s fine,” Nordhausen said, and walked up to the pile. “If it’s here, I will recognize it.”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Wilberforce. “May I ask how you know about this stone, sir? I am sure nothing much at all has been published.”

Nordhausen gave the Curator a dark look, his misgivings churning up again. “Nothing published you say? Why, what about the work of Champollion, and that of your own Dr. Young before him?” He manhandled the first tablet out of the way, walking it on its corners with the help of the Curator. They did the same with the next, which was quite heavy, and stopped to catch their breath. The dim gas light cast long shadows.

“I—I—read about it in a French encyclopedia entry,” Nordhausen continued.

“French?”

“Why certainly. Champollion wrote about it all in a letter to a Mr. Dacier, revealing what his many years of research had come to. Why, he worked it all out from this very stone and published a book in 1824 detailing his work on the alphabet.”

“Forgive me, sir, but I’ve heard nothing about it.”

Nordhausen shrugged his shoulders and set to moving the next stone. Little grains of fine sandstone grated off the panel as he rocked it away and against the first two. Mr. Wilberforce didn’t seem to care, which was another thing that rankled in the back of Nordhausen’s mind. These slabs would get prime display in any museum in the world. The Rosetta stone was perhaps the most famous artifact ever recovered in Egypt—yet it was, stored away in the dingy cellar of the museum like so much trash. His eyes widened when he caught sight of the next slab.

There it was, hidden behind the stone he had just moved, dwarfed by the slab behind it. The thick black stone from Rosetta, but as the Curator had intimated, it was considerably smaller than it was supposed to be!

He stared at it, unwilling to believe what he was seeing for a moment. Then strained to push it closer to the light, almost afraid to set his hands upon it. This was it. There was no mistaking the characteristic basalt, with the demotic and Greek text laid out in neat lines etched into the stone. He swallowed hard. Where was the top third? Where were the hieroglyphics?

The stone was broken entirely across the top. There were only a few lines of hieroglyphics remaining, the last few lines of the text, and those were the very words that were missing from a chipped area at the bottom of the slab.

Nordhausen stood frozen. What had he done? It was not possible that he had done this, was it? What did this mean?

“Good lord,” he breathed. “It’s broken!”

“Just as it always was,” said Wilberforce.

“Always was? Are you saying there was nothing more of the hieroglyphics than this single line at the top?” Nordhausen looked aghast at the man, who now began to purse his lips with a hint of indignation.

“We take very good care of everything we receive, sir,” the Curator said a bit defensively. “I can assure you that these stones are in the very same condition they were received in—if not better.” He folded his arms, a bit perturbed by this strangely dressed visitor.

“Of course,” said Nordhausen, remembering to watch what he said just now. Still, his mind was racing feverishly ahead. If something as significant at this was altered, what else was different? Oh lord, what would he find when he got back?

Nordhausen took a deep breath.

Mr. Wilberforce was politely waiting for him to say something.

“Thank you, sir,” he said with a deflated tone. “It is not how I imagined it to be. It is useless for my studies. Please excuse me, I am very tired.”

Without waiting for reply, or even escort, Nordhausen wheeled about, and walked rapidly out of the cellar, out of the museum, and dully made his way back to his hotel.

What else was different?

The thought gouged him with every step he took. He raked through each moment of his time jaunt, wondering where the fatal blow had been struck. Was it the flagrant contact with Prime Movers he had the night before? He kept replaying the scene in his mind, trying to root out what he could have done to cause this catastrophe—for a catastrophe it was. The Rosetta Stone—a touchstone that had been the key to unraveling the mysteries of Ancient Egypt, was now nothing more than a useless slab of black basalt. How, how, how could this be?

Paul’s voice returned to him, “somewhere, lost on a single wayward thread of time, a moment exists that is mated to every great event on the continuum, a whisper of inconsequential absurdity that is forever paired to the great moments of history…” He called them Pushpoints, thought Nordhausen, and I’ve gone and pushed one—that much is certain.

The thought of Paul seemed to give him a moment of solace. He had to get back! He had to get to Paul and tell him about this. If there was anyone else in the world that could help him figure this out, it would be Paul. After all, he was the one who dreamt all this time business up in the first place.

He hurried along, as if the quickening of his footsteps would somehow hasten his return to his own time again. But he suddenly realized he was still stuck here. The retraction sequence would not kick in for hours—at least in this time. Barely twenty minutes had passed back in the Berkeley labs. He had timed his jump to finish before Paul came on duty tonight to relieve him of his shift, but at least he would be the only other team member at the facility when Nordhausen completed his return… If there still was a facility, a Paul Dorland, a world he could yet make any sense of.

Maeve’s warnings were a cruel crown of thorns for him now. He resolved to lock himself away in his hotel room, where he waited miserably for the Arch to pluck him back to whatever horror might await him in San Francisco, in the twenty first century.

5

The retraction sequence kicked in like clockwork and snatched the professor away in a haze of icy fog. This time he made a point of keeping his eyes tightly closed, so he could think things through with a clear head when he returned. He was already wondering how he would explain all this to the other project team members. Kelly’s Golems were sure to key in on the altered Meridian. He had little doubt that cell phones were ringing and people were hurtling toward the lab facility to check on the alert. In a way, that might help him, he thought. The Arch was set to activate itself in the event of an alert. If anyone showed up and found the turbines running the alert would provide a nice cover story. He could say he was the first on the scene and…

No… That just would not do. He knew that Kelly would certainly be able to home in on the exact moment the equipment was activated. He’d retrieve the exact coordinates, just like he uncovered the trip to Reading Station when Nordhausen went after Lawrence’s lost manuscript. Besides, these were his friends, and he had given his word and… What should he do?

To his great surprise, there was no one waiting for him at the Arch when he returned. Excellent! The access corridor was empty when the great locks separated. He rushed up the ramp to the elevator, and was bouncing on his toes impatiently while it glided up 50 meters of rock. The tunnel leading out of the hill to the lab was vacant. When he reached the heavy automatic doors leading into the lab, he pressed his face to the small glass window and peeked through. No one was there.

He punched the button on the wall that opened the doors, and they parted. The lab was empty, though the consoles were lit up and a bright red emergency light was flashing on the alert panel. He quickly glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. He had been gone about 30 minutes… unless it was 12 hours and 30 minutes… or 25 years and 30 minutes… no, there was no use getting lost in that! He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

Be here now. Be here now.

First things first. He had to get out of these silly clothes and see what he could find out from the RAM bank report. He hurried to his office, and doffed his Victorian outfit, his mind churning. Even as he reflexively stuffed the clothing away in a laundry sack, he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was already working his cover-up. Then the urgency of his discovery seized him again. What was going on? Was the world the same one he had left, or was it radically changed now? Kelly’s RAM bank should be noting the differences and spitting out references by now. He hurried back to the lab, almost afraid to see reams of computer paper littering the floor from an overworked printer.

To his great relief however, there was no data waiting for him in the report tray when he settled into a chair by the desk. He tapped his finger on the desk, wondering what to do. Then it occurred to him that he should initiate a search, starting with the very date he had targeted and running in keywords that he was certain of… The Rosetta Stone!

In the London he had just left, the Rosetta Stone was no more than an anonymous slab of basalt, but he had seen the stone several times in his Meridian of Origin, in London, in the British Museum. Was it still there?

He swiveled over to his computer, called up the search engine, and nervously typed in: ROSETTA STONE. He paused an instant and hit Enter. There were approximately 137,000 hits. He exhaled, noticing that he was holding his breath, and began to review the data.

This was not good. All he was getting was genealogical data and junk references. He needed to refine his search a bit, and decided to focus on one of the scholars who had done the key work in deciphering the stone. He typed in: FRANCOIS CHAMPOLLION and immediately received about 1500 hits. The man existed!

He opened the first page, an encyclopedia article:

Yes, yes, thought Nordhausen. Get to the point. The man deciphered the hieroglyphics!

But nothing whatsoever about the hieroglyphics! Nordhausen swallowed hard. Of course… It made perfect sense now. He had seen it with his own eyes. The stone was broken, and the entire body of knowledge surrounding the ancient Egyptian writing was broken with it. He scanned the rest of the article, hoping to find some hint or clue that would lead him to believe that things were all right, but there was nothing; nothing about his greatest achievement: the reading of the stone.

Then it occurred to him that this was not the only source of information about the Egyptian writing. He scoured his memory, trying to recall other instances of artifacts that had been inscribed with multiple languages. “Bubastis!” he said aloud, remembering a relatively new find there just a few years back. He immediately keyed in a new search and came up with an article in short order dated April 19^th, 2004.

Yes, he remembered taking more than a passing interest in this find, as it was just like the Rosetta Stone, a possible key to translating the hieroglyphics. His hopes sank as he read on:

Nordhausen began to panic. Something had happened, and he had no idea of the consequences at this point. He began to search, desperately: HEIROGLYPHICS… TRANSLATION… INTERPRETATION… DYNASTIC EGYPT… BOOK OF THE DEAD… he typed in the names of Pharaohs, archeological sites, museums with noted collections… But it was all a fruitless effort.

Nowhere was there any indication that there was any translation of Hieroglyphics. Except… In his head! He thought hard for a moment, conjuring up the image of the cartouche he had seen on the statue of Horus. He could clearly see the carved figures in his mind, and he remembered how the little girl had traced her finger on the stone… “Ra-me-ses.” He knew how to read them! They all made perfect sense in his head. He had taken a class in graduate school thirty years before, and had been able to transliterate without reference help of any kind. While a student, he had actually kept a journal using hieroglyphics instead of Roman letters! It had been a fun project, and helped him to learn, but that was thirty years ago.

He heard the door behind him open, and he hurried to close the screen he was watching, his guilt reflex overcoming his better judgment. He spun around to see Paul Dorland regarding him with a curious look on his face.

“Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you! Did you get the alert call?” Paul gave him a frustrated look.

“What? Why yes, of course. It was my shift. I was just down looking over the Arch to see if it was all in order… got here as soon as I could… been right here… working,” Nordhausen lied, feeling terrible about it at once.

“Well, I was just here ten minutes ago,” said Paul. “The consoles were humming at full tilt and Kelly’s Golems were running wild. But you were nowhere to be found.”

“I went down to check on the Arch, I tell you… and to the bathroom, if you don’t mind. If you had waited for me here, you would have seen that I came right back.”

“Mmmmhmmmm,” Dorland replied. He made no effort to hide his skepticism. “Anyway, here’s what I’ve managed to find out. The alert call went out at three past four, and we’ve got a preliminary spatial locus somewhere in the Middle East. Nothing hard yet. The Golems are doing a data comparison with the RAM bank now, but, as you can see, there hasn’t been much to report,” he flipped through some pages on a clip board he held. “It’s a bit early, but we should be getting something soon. I’m surprised you didn’t have this ready. It was your shift.” He looked up, suddenly perplexed by his friend’s demeanor.

“Robert, what is it?” He had caught a look of misery on Nordhausen’s face, so at odds with the man’s normal easy going nature, that he was struck by it.

“Oh, Paul,” Nordhausen moaned.

“What?” Dorland was now alarmed.

“Oh, Paul, something has happened…”

“Robert, what? Are you all right?”

“I don’t know… something is very wrong…”

“What are you talking about? What happened? You mean to say you did get a report before I arrived?” He rushed to Nordhausen’s side, eyes scanning the desk top as though he expected to see a variance report.

Nordhausen sat with his face in his hands. He couldn’t look at Dorland. “It was my fault, Paul. I… used the Arch…” he muttered, in a low voice, almost inaudibly.

“You what?”

“I used the Arch!” He lifted his head from his hands, and the look of despair was deep and clear. “I used the Arch and something changed.”

Paul stiffened. He held his clipboard to his chest, and said, slowly: “Robert, what did you do?”

“Nothing! I didn’t do anything! At least not anything I can clue on. But I must have done something, because things are clearly wrong.” Nordhausen gave him a pleading look. Suddenly the whole story came spilling out in a gush of disjointed narrative, clothed in rationalizations and justifications, causing Dorland to slowly sink into the other office chair while Nordhausen went on.

“So, you see, I didn’t do anything! I was just there, and—”

“Didn’t do anything?” Paul gave him an incredulous look. “You say you went out to the opera?”

“But I just watched the show… then went across the street to a club after and…”

“And what?”

Nordhausen hesitated, for the bit about his encounter with Wilde and Gilbert was a source of great anxiety to him. He started to tell his story and saw how Paul just put his hands over his ears with a flabbergasted look on his face.

“You didn’t do anything?” Paul just stared at him. “Robert, you shouldn’t have been there in the first place!”

“Yes, I know, I know…” Nordhausen covered his face in his palms again, wanting to hide from his own foolishness. “But I just don’t see the connection,” he muttered.

“What connection?”

“Between Wilde and the stone. How could an innocent session in a bar cause damage to the Rosetta Stone? I can’t see it.”

“What are you talking about?”

‘That’s the problem, Paul. It’s the stone. It’s broken, but I can’t figure how. I went there to look at the carvings, and I saw it… but it was wrong! The Rosetta Stone. Our whole understanding of the hieroglyphics was based upon that one object—but now it’s changed. What does it mean? How could it have happened?”

The recital had left Nordhausen drained, and he sat slumped in his desk chair, waiting now for Dorland to say something.

“I don’t know what to make of this, Robert. I have never even heard of this thing—what did you call it? The Rosetta Stone? And what’s all this about understanding the hieroglyphics? No one has ever translated ancient Egyptian writing. Yes, there are pyramid freaks, and conspiracy theorists and other cranks who claim to be able to read them, but they’ve remained a mystery for thousands of years.”

“No, no, no,” Nordhausen protested, waving his hand. “That’s just what I mean! Someone did translate the hieroglyphics. I was looking up the references only a moment ago. Champollion, a French scholar, identified the phonetic connection in the glyphs centuries ago, but none of that work is published now. Oh, God, what have I done?”

Paul put his clip board down and folded his arms. “This is too much for me to swallow at this point,” he said. “I’m still not sure what you’re driving at. You just told me that this guy’s work was never published. Do you realized how crazy that sounds? How could you know about something that was never—” Paul caught himself, and a squall of concern swept over his features.

Nordhausen’s empty emotions were suddenly filled with a backlash of anger. “Well I am not insane, if that’s what you’re thinking. I planned this very carefully. I told you I was going to check on the writing. It was a legitimate mission, though I know I should have cleared it with the rest of the team. In any case, what’s done is done. Yes, I had my toast with Wilde and Gilbert in the bar, and I went to the museum the very next day. It was well thought out. How long have you known me, Paul? Since high school! Maybe I shouldn’t have gone back, but that’s not the issue here. Something bigger is going on now. We’ve got to find out what happened to the Rosetta Stone!”

6

“Rosetta Stone!” Dorland shot back. “There you go again. What are you talking about? Look, I’m trying to be sympathetic here, but you’re not making any sense. What’s this stone you keep rambling on about?”

Nordhausen sighed heavily. “It was discovered in 1799, during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. They were trying to improve an old fort near the town of Rosetta and uncovered a huge slab of black basalt with inscriptions in three languages.”

“Wait a second,” Paul interrupted. “I’ve read that history many times. Sure, Napoleon invaded Egypt, and was stranded by the British Fleet. He fought a few battles, tried to march off to Palestine, then got tired of the whole campaign and escaped to leave all his men to fend for themselves. That’s all in the history, but I’ve never heard of this Rosetta thing.”

“Well he brought teams of savants with him. Do you remember that? They carried back all their records and artifacts and published volumes about them.”

“Yes, but there was nothing with a clue to translating hieroglyphics.”

“Don’t you see?” Nordhausen was getting frustrated now. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! There was an artifact. It was called the Rosetta Stone—perhaps the most significant find of the whole expedition! There were three languages: Demotic, Greek and the Hieroglyphics, and they all said the same thing. That was how Champollion made the connection between them. It was a touchstone, a key reference point that opened everything up.” He gave Paul a wild look, then changed his tack, hitting on some new thought. “Paul, I can read them,” Nordhausen insisted.

“Read what?”

“The hieroglyphics! I know what they mean—I’ve known about them for over thirty years. Hell, I’ve got old notebooks in my study—We’ve got to get over there!”

“Notebooks? Hold on now, Robert.” Nordhausen was up off his seat and looking about him, as though searching for something.

“Yes, notebooks. Good lord, what if they’re gone too?”

“Sit down, Robert. You’re getting weird on me now.”

“Sit down? Is that all you have to say about this? I thought you were the time theoretician here. Think man! I just came through the Arch, only minutes ago in fact. No, I wasn’t in the bathroom. I lied about that, but you’ve got to believe me on this point. I was back in Old London, just like I said, and I’ve done something to change the Meridian. But I remember the world I came from, Paul, and it had the Rosetta Stone, the hieroglyphics and all. I remember how to read the glyphs, and I can prove it to you. Hell, that’s why I went on the mission in the first place—to read samples of the hieroglyphics that might have been lost to our time. I figured they might still be intact in an earlier time, and what better place to look than the British Museum? So I went back, damnit. Yes, I screwed up again, and I’m the first to admit that. But I know I’m right about the stone, the glyphs, and all the rest.”

Paul gave him a long, searching look. He scratched the back of his head and started to say something, then caught himself, the change in his thinking obvious on his face. Robert’s jibe about the time theory had pricked his attention. If it was true, and the alert had been called because of his friend’s use of the Arch, then Robert would have been in a Nexus Point, a protected bubble in the stream of time. He would know things, aspects and elements of his original Meridian, while everyone outside the Nexus would remain oblivious. “Alright,” he began. “Let’s slow down here and take this one step at a time. You say you used the Arch.”

“Yes.”

“And you went to London and had a drink with Oscar Wilde and company—just like you, Robert. What were you thinking? You don’t get involved with Primes! How many times do we have to tell you these things?”

“Well it wasn’t my fault. I was just sitting there, trying to mind my own business and they latched on to me. The next thing I know I was judging a poetry contest. I had no intention—”

“Yes you did, my friend. You went to the opera, right? No fault in that. We were going to watch Shakespeare when this whole thing started. But, just like Maeve warned, you can’t resist the urge to start poking around in the history. I’ll bet you loved every minute of that little encounter in the nightclub. What did you say you were drinking?”

“Oh, come now. I was in complete control of my faculties at all times. Yes, I conversed with them, Wilde and Gilbert both. But it was just happenstance. I never had any intention of tampering with a Prime Mover, and I tried to extricate myself from the situation as soon as I could.”

“Happenstance? That’s the point Robert—that’s exactly what a Pushpoint is—something completely innocuous in the immediate milieu that has enormous power to catalyze the future.”

“Do you think that’s where the damage occurred?”

“Damage?”

“Yes, man. I’ve been trying to tell you that the Rosetta Stone was damaged! All the Hieroglyphics were gone. That’s why no one ever made the connection between the languages, don’t you see? I’ve done something to change things—God only knows what—just like we changed things after the Palma Event. We never did figure out what happened that time, Paul. Neither one of us got anywhere near Lawrence’s explosives, but yet we did something to alter the event. We stumbled on one of your pushpins and everything was different.”

“Pushpoints,” Paul corrected, very annoyed.

“Whatever!”

Nordhausen was getting quite exasperated now. “The point is that we did something to the Meridian without even knowing it. We changed things, yet we all remember what was supposed to happen that night because we were in the Nexus…” His eyes widened with sudden realization. “That’s it, Paul! That’s it! I was in a Nexus Point! That’s why I remember it all—why I can still read the hieroglyphics, because I’m retaining memories from the time line I came from.” He gave Paul a searching look, almost pleading. “You’ve got to believe me,” he breathed, slumping back into his office chair. “Kelly’s Golems will bear me out. There’s no way they could miss something like this.”

Paul took a deep breath, his mind resting in his own time theory now. The professor was quite distressed, but was certainly convinced that he had done something to change the continuum.

“Very well,” he said, granting Nordhausen a measure of respect. “I agree. If you used the Arch, then you were certainly in a Nexus. Let’s assume that all this is true. All we have to go on now is your word that things are different—that we’re supposed to understand these hieroglyphics, and we don’t.”

“The notebooks, Paul.” Nordhausen held up a finger. “Let’s get over to my study and see if they’ve changed. Would they change?” He looked to Paul for the answer. “Champollion’s work vanished. God, what if my notebooks are altered as well? What does the time theory say about a situation like this? Would my personal effects be altered even if I was in a Nexus? Come on, man—You dreamt all this up!”

Dorland relented, giving the professor the benefit of the doubt. “You’re saying you wrote the hieroglyphics in a notebook?”

“Yes, I kept a journal using hieroglyphics instead of Roman letters—A little code I was playing with. Will it still be there? Will it vanish, or change, just like Lawrence’s Seven Pillars?”

“No…” Paul was suddenly deep in thought, pulled into the crux of the problem by Nordhausen’s obvious enthusiasm and distress. “No, if you were in a Nexus Point when the change occurred then that would make you a Free Variable, like we all were Free Variables during that first mission. In that case…” He paused, his hand playing over his chin as he thought. “Well, the integrity of your own personal Time Meridian should remain quite stable. It’s very likely that your notebooks would be unaltered. The knowledge you claim to have in your head about this stone relies upon them. They would have to exist.”

“Then we’ve got to get over to the study! It will prove everything I’ve been saying!”

“But—” Paul held up a warning finger. “You have apparently created a Gordian knot. Without the original work of the scholars who deciphered the hieroglyphics, then how could you have ever learned to decipher them, or even written your notebooks? That means you may be exposed to—”

Nordhausen was up off his chair before Paul could finish his thought, reaching out to take his friend by the arm and pull him along.

“It’s clear that we won’t resolve this by speculation. Let’s go look! My study is just a few minutes away.”

“Hold on,” said Paul. “We can prove it right here.” He sat down at a terminal and began typing.

“What are you doing?” Nordhausen was at his side, still very agitated, his impatience getting the better of him now.

“You say there was something called the Rosetta Stone. The Golems are out searching the Internet right now, but let me do a direct query to the on-line RAM bank—the reference bank we’ve kept running since the incident in Wadi Rumm.” It was not long before he had a report in hand that confirmed everything his friend was saying.

“See what I mean?” Nordhausen was delighted. “It’s all there: the discovery date, the significance of the find, Champollion’s work and even good photos. Look here,” he pointed at an image. “This whole section was gone when I saw the stone in the British Museum and, without that, no one could make the connection with the other languages. Come on—let’s go get my notebooks and see if they’ve survived!”

“What about Kelly and Maeve?” Paul cautioned. “There’s an alert on, and we can’t just leave the Arch facility in the middle of things. The Golems haven’t even finished their report yet.”

The phone rang, on the emergency line reserved for the senior team members, and they both craned their necks to look at it. Paul was the first to the receiver, smiling when he heard Maeve’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Hello, Maeve,” he began. “You coming in soon? We’ve got an alert from Kelly’s Golems and… What’s that?… Oh lord!” His eyes widened with shock and surprise and Nordhausen felt his stomach churn. Paul listened, his expression becoming more grave with each passing second.

“We’re coming right over,” he said. “No, don’t worry about the Arch, the Golems are working the report now and it will take them at least an hour… Yes, I’ve got Robert right here. He’s on to something as well. Hold on, Maeve. We’ll be there in a flash.”

“What?” Robert was about to explode.

“It’s Kelly,” said Paul. “He’s collapsed. They’ve got him over at University Hospital. I’m afraid your notebooks will have to wait, Robert.”

“Collapsed?” The look on Robert’s face was plain, and it was clear that he immediately associated this news with his own misdeed in using the Arch. The professor was up and heading for the door in an instant, but something jarred Paul’s thinking and his anxiety increased with every step his friend took. The notebooks…

“Robert, wait! Stand where you are! Don’t take another step!” His tone was so urgent and strained that it served as a strong leash, jerking his friend around, who stared at him with wide eyed surprise.

“Now what?” Nordhausen gave him an exasperated look.

“The notebooks,” Paul repeated. “The Meridian has changed, Robert. There’s been a Transformation. Don’t you see? I know nothing about these hieroglyphics, the Rosetta Stone, and all the rest. But the information is safe and sound in Kelly’s RAM bank—and in your head.”

“Yes, yes—but we can talk about this on the way, Paul. Come on!”

“Let me finish!” Paul’s voice was riveting. “It’s not a Gordian knot, Robert. It’s Paradox I’m worried about now. It’s you. The information about the Rosetta stone is in your head too, alive and well. But if you set foot outside the protective bubble of the Arch Nexus, then…”

“Then what?”

“You expose yourself to Paradox—Free Variable or not. Time has no way to account for your knowledge of the glyphs if you set one foot outside this room.” He folded his arms, his breathing finally stilled now that he had given birth to his fear and delivered his warning.

Nordhausen just stared at him.