Nexus Point (Meridian Series) (11 page)

       He did not know how long he lay
there that way. When he opened his eyes he was completely disoriented. He had
been dreaming, strangely aroused. It was a wild erotic dream and it almost
seemed that he could still feel the hands of a beautiful young woman as they
smoothed and caressed his naked body. As his senses coalesced, he suddenly
realized that he was lying in a dimly lit room! The light of a flickering oil
lamp was wavering on the walls and ceiling, and there was someone at his
side—someone touching him, soft hands spiraling over his bare chest.

       He thought of Jen, the young lab
tech that had become his partner after the mission. He had been waking up next
to her for the last several months, and it was only natural for his mind to
reach for the familiar. Was she having another nightmare, he thought. The
troubling dreams about that night on the project had plagued her ever since.
She would awaken, confused and disoriented, not knowing where she was; the
fading echoes of memory still shaking her with fear.  “Did you hear?” she would
cry out in the dark.  “It was on the news just now!”

       She was remembering things from
the old, unaltered time line in her dreams. The new world they were in—the one
in which Ra’id Husan al Din had never lived, was still  besmirched with the lingering
underpainting of the old. It would take some time for her to remember that
things had changed; that things were different now.  Paul would hold her in the
dark, whispering that everything was going to be alright. She must have slipped
out of the Nexus during the mission somehow, he thought. Her memories are all
mixed up. Sometimes she remembers the old world, and sometimes it’s all just a
dream.

       A dream…

       Soft hands… The warm smooth
touch… A floral scent of jasmine and—

       He started awake, eyes opening
wide with surprise. A young woman
was
sitting at his side, her arms
extended as she smeared a sweet oil over his body. But it wasn’t Jen. Paul
caught the scent of olive oil at once, and there was a strange spicy odor in
the room, like sandalwood incense mixed with jasmine What in god’s name was
going on here?

       His gaze was instinctively drawn
to the face of the woman. She was very young, eyes dark ovals above her
delicate features and smooth, rosy brown cheeks. She wore a sheer, silken gown
that covered very little, and it draped open in a languid disarray to expose
her slender body, alight with the gleam of oil. A beaded pendant dangled
between her naked breasts. Loose, dark curls of black hair framed her face, and
she wore a circlet of silver ovals at her forehead, adorned by a bright pink
flower.  He stared at the woman, somewhat amazed and confused, yet captivated
by her youth and beauty. Her eyes brightened in a smile, round almond brown and
full of energy.

               The woman bowed low,
with a slow reverence, and then leaned back, regarding him with a graceful
curiosity. Her hand smoothed the residue of olive oil on her bare thigh, and
she smiled at him again, warm and inviting.

       Paul was completely taken with
the situation, his amazement increasing as he eased up to see more of his
surroundings. He was in a room of smooth, shaped stone, the amber walls draped
with falls of rosy curtains. There was a lacquered wood lattice at one end to
serve as a kind of room divider. He spied a small window there, propped open
with a polished wood rod, and could dimly discern that there were other rooms
beyond. Close by the bed there was a small settee with an inlaid glass top
trimmed out with beautifully carved wood. A tall tapered vase sat on the
settee, with a slender pouring spout on one side, like the neck of a swan, and
the wide oval of a thin handle on the other. A small glass of carved crystal
sat next to the vase.

       The woman saw him gape in awe at
the scene, and smiled, with some amusement, as though she expected the
surprise. She reached for the vase with a graceful movement and slowly poured a
dark liqueur into the crystal glass. Paul had managed to prop himself up on one
elbow now, suddenly flushed with the awareness of his own nudity. His clothes
were gone and he wore little more than a thin loincloth, his slim body gleaming
with the sheen of scented olive oil.

       “Anaya,” the woman’s voice was a
melodious whisper as she extended the glass, holding it to his lips. A pungent,
spicy aroma effused his senses as he drank, gently encouraged by the smiling woman
at his side. The drink had a sharp, alcoholic bite and he nearly coughed when
he swallowed. The woman reached out, her hand softly cupping the side of his
chin to help him finish. Then she set the glass aside and sidled closer, eyes
alight with an almost mischievous fire. The closeness and fragrance of the
woman seemed to bring a heat to Paul. He felt flushed and light headed; his
vision blurred.

       As if sensing the change, the
woman extended her arms and gently guided him until he lay prone again, cradled
in soft cushions. A warm drowsiness settled on him, but he passed a moment of
keen awareness when the woman slipped off the silver gray robe and slid next to
him. She lay at his side, pressing close and draping a long, brown leg over his
body. A floral fragrance surrounded him. Her arms pulled him into a silky
embrace, a hand whispering softly over his chest to his throat and then up to
smooth through his hair. She nuzzled at his neck, and he felt a warm, moist
kiss there. What in God’s name was happening here?

       The light in the room seemed to
diminish, and his vision faded. Now there was only scent, and smell, and touch;
warmth, and the soft trailing caress of the woman’s hand. He heard something
whispered in his ear, but he did not understand the words. The voice at his ear
became a soft kiss, laden with affection and the barest hint of a tease. A
tingling heat seemed to effuse his body, as he passed into a state of
semi-consciousness.

       He had to be dreaming, he thought—a
dream so real that it was totally convincing; totally absorbing. One moment he
had been falling to a certain death, and then the water. Tattered memories
intruded on the dream as his mind struggled to create some sense of his
situation. But the dream became ever more engrossing, suffusing his body with
an ardent heat. As his consciousness faded, a fleeting thought suggested that
he may have died after all! He must have fallen on the rocks, but how could
this be happening?

       It was as if he had landed in
Paradise.

9

He awoke
to find he was
alone, the room dark and masked with purple shadow. Off in the distance he
could hear the faint sound of water running over stones. The smell of sweet
incense was still on the air, and now it was mingled with another aroma that
seemed to summon his senses to clarity—coffee! He moved with languid motion,
his limbs still numbed and sluggish. Images of the soft skinned beauty still
floated in his mind, bound up with the rising notion of incredulity, but she
was nowhere to be seen, and he was inclined to think the whole episode a dream.
Yet… the room he was in was the same. Where was he? Could this be a hidden
sanctuary in the heart of Wadi Rumm? He knew the place had long been a hideaway
for the Bedouin tribes, but this was more than he could have imagined.

       There was a sound, and shadowed
movement. He heard a sharp scrape and then the darkness was scored with a
bright flash. Someone was there, sitting quietly in the shadows. He strained
against the darkness, hoping to see the lovely woman he had awoken to earlier.
An oil lamp sputtered to life and the warm glow pressed back the shadows to
reveal the figure of a robed man seated on a billowy cushion. Paul squinted,
trying to focus on the man, but his vision was blurred and indistinct. The
figure leaned closer, and Paul saw that he had a thin, hungry face, with
delicate bone structure, long hollow cheeks and a scraggly gray beard falling
just a few inches from the point of his chin. The eyes were dark and deeply set
over a narrow nose. On his head the man wore a headpiece of thatched palm
fronds woven to an onion dome point. The eyes seemed to penetrate him with an
unblinking gaze. They were full of knowledge; full of silent conclusions, and
they stared at him with just the hint of curiosity in their welcome.

       “Bismi llaahi r-hrahmaani
r-rahiim. As Salam 'alaykom
”
The words whispered out in Arabic, and then, to Paul’s surprise, in English.

        “In the name of Allah, the
compassionate, the merciful. Peace be with you.” The man’s  voice was quiet,
yet firm. He waited as Paul struggled to sit upright.

       Paul cleared his throat to
speak, yet his mouth was very dry. The man extended a small porcelain cup, eyes
bright with invitation. Paul looked at it with some suspicion at first, but the
aroma of pungent coffee pulled at him. He reached out and took the cup, raising
it to his lips with a shaky hand. The nutty earthiness of the brew seemed to
enliven him, and he drank, grateful for the taste of dark, roasted coffee after
missing it for—how long had he been here this way?

       “Arabica,” the man said softly.
“I see you find it enjoyable. Please, indulge yourself. It is polite to drink
three times before we speak.”

       Paul let the rich coffee swill a
bit in his dry mouth, tasting the hint of cardamom and ginger root in the cup.
His mind was shouting questions, but for the moment he was more than happy to
simply smell and drink the  delectable coffee—a brew worthy of Peet’s, he
thought. The cup was small and it did not take him long to drink it down. As he
finished the stranger extended a thin arm holding a golden pot with a long
spout shaped like a raven’s beak. He finished the third cup in little time.

       “Al-hamdillaah,” the man
breathed. “Praise be to Allah.
You have taken a sufficiency of our hospitality, I
hope. For a Bedu this is a duty and great pleasure. Samirah has attended to
your bodily needs, as is our custom. I trust she was pleasing to you. Now you
have slept and awakened, and soon we will fill the yawning chasm of your
stomach with a feast that would satisfy the Sultan himself. But first we will
speak, if you are able.”

       The man proffered a smile, and
Paul could not help seeing more in those eyes than his words seemed to offer.
The visitor was watching him very closely, studying him with a mixture of both
dignified respect and wary caution.  Paul chanced to speak, his voice cracking
a bit as he cleared his throat.

       “Where am I?”

       The visitor smiled, as though
the question was little more than a ruse and not to be taken seriously. “You
either know very well where you are, or you take me for more of a fool than I
appear if you are sincere. Come now. Let us begin more graciously, as equals.
For you have come in through the Well Of Souls, and you are changed now. You
are here. Is it not a place you intended to be?” Again, the smile that masked
more than it revealed, a thin veil over layers of hidden emotion.

       Paul was confused. “The Well Of
Souls,” he said, pulling the odd piece of fruit from the man’s basket. “You
mean the sink I fell into…” He rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead in
a moment of distress as he recalled snatches of that headlong, rushing fall. “I
thought I was dying.”

       “Yes,” the man maintained his
knowing smile. “It is often so when you jump. In a way you
have
died,
yes? The harmony has changed, as you have changed. Now you are here. Your soul
has been reborn, and if your body follows reluctantly, it is but a small price
to pay. Tell me, were you bold enough to open your eyes when you fell? Did you
see it? I think you were brave, my friend. Otherwise you would not have needed
three days, and all the considerable skills of Samirah to persuade you to
return to the world of men. But you are safe now. You are solid. The vibration
has resolved itself. You must tell me why you have come.” The question was
tacked on quickly, with forced levity dressed out in a thin grin above pearly
teeth. Yet the more the man said, the more confused Paul became.

       The man waited a brief moment,
and the bemused expression on Paul’s face swung him to a new tack. “Forgive
me.” The dark eyes shifted and the smile faded. “I have not introduced myself.
I am Jabr Ali S’ad, the Gatekeeper here. And you?”

       “Dorland,” said Paul more on
instinct than anything else. “Paul Dorland”

       “Ah, is it a noble name—an
ancient name? Pa’ul Do-Rahlan! It sounds fearsome. Would that I had such a
name, but the Bedu speak of things in very simple terms. It is the desert in
us. We see things with a clarity and simplicity that you Westerners may not
fully appreciate. My name is an ancient one and, for that reason, it is common.
But it is also a lucky name as well. And you? What is signified in your name?
Is the house of Do-Rahlan a venerable one?”

       “Venerable?”

       “I thought as much. Why else
would
you
be chosen.”

       The man paused, smiling again,
yet his eyes were wells of deliberation. Paul thought he caught just the barest
hint of fear in them, and he was very perplexed. His first question had been
lost in the man’s forced civility and feigned joviality. He asked again: “What
do you call this place?”

       Now the man laughed. “Very
direct! I like that. You wish me to open myself to you? Why not. We are one and
the same, yes? But the guest should be the first to speak. You are already in
my debt, you know. The river was not being kind to you, and it was only
fortunate that I was at hand in meditation and prayer when you fell through. As
Allah willed it. So then, you begin.” The man rested his elbows on his knees,
leaning in to close the distance between them. “Have no fear, we are completely
alone. I have sent the serving girls away while we speak, but I can call them
back for you later.” There was that fleeting smile again, and then the man’s
eyes settled into a quiet stare—waiting, penetrating the stillness with hushed
anticipation. “You begin,” he whispered, “and I will follow after.” He had a
look on his face that was one of a polite final offer, and the silence seemed
to add fire to the eyes, building their resolve as he waited for Paul to speak.