Nexus Point (Meridian Series) (38 page)

       “That’s how I remember the history,” said
Robert. “So you mean Paul’s trip didn’t change a thing?”

       “Perhaps,” said Maeve. “It could be that an
operation was underway to try and effect a change by taking out the Lever that
led to the battle—Reginald, the Wolf of Kerak.”

       “Yes!” Nordhausen remembered his research.
“The hieroglyphics in that scroll I was telling you about: they spoke of a
wolf! Here, let me read you my notes.” He fumbled about for a moment, producing
a folded leaf from his shirt pocket. “I have the translation right here. The
Wolf shall go forward and prey upon the bounty of the lord... Yet if he be
slain for his misdeed, then all will be overthrown.”

       “Well, Reginald certainly preyed upon the
bounty of the Lord,” said Maeve. “His raid on Saladin’s caravan broke the truce
and ignited this whole conflict. You’re certain that was on Rasil’s scroll?”

       “Absolutely. And there was talk of the Gate
of the West—that’s the Horns of Hattin, right? There was also mention of an old
man returning, a temple priest of time, as the characters read.”

       They looked at one another and Paul summed
up their thinking. “Rasil was carrying instructions. There’s no doubt about it
from this information. They were trying to make sure that Reginald lived. Must
have been hard for them to spare the brute but, by doing so, they got the Horns
of Hattin.” He had a vacant look in his eye, as though struggling to recall
some far off memory. The glowing eyes of the wolf he had encountered outside
the archive had returned to him, and its low growl haunted the frontiers of his
thinking.

       “Then who was trying to kill him?” Kelly
asked the obvious question.

       “My guess would be this group they called
‘the Order.’ They kept asking me if I was a member of the Order—if I was a
Templar and such.”

       “How odd,” said Nordhausen. “Rasil assumed I
was one of these operatives as well. That’s why he was so tight lipped about your
destination at the other end of the well. The Templars were supposed to have
been stamped out long ago, but who knows—perhaps there’s a remnant active, some
secret group run from the Vatican cellar. Well, whatever they were planning to
do, it failed.”

       “But what’s to stop them from trying again?”
Kelly led the discussion to an obvious, though troublesome question.

       “Right,” said Nordhausen. “They failed this
time, but suppose they just go back to some other point in Reginald’s life and
do something—or to a point before he was born to eliminate him from the time
line altogether.”

       “That may not be as easy as you think,” said
Paul. “He’s certainly a major lever on events, if not a Prime Mover of his own.
Eliminating him would have repercussions that would be impossible to predict.
No, I think it would have to be something more subtle, like simply finding a
way to delay him on the road. That would leave the bulk of his Meridian intact,
but it still might accomplish something to alter a key event.”

       “Right,” Maeve put in. “Maybe Paul’s arrival
did something to counteract the transformation they had planned—a distraction,
an unaccountable variable in the mix. We may never know, but I’ll say this: if
we don’t shut this thing down, and I don’t see how we can with this war going
on, then we weigh in on the side of Mother Time.”

       “What do you mean?” asked Paul.

       “We know how things are now,” Maeve
explained. “It’s the world we believe to be our own—at least I do. I don’t know
about the rest of you, but I need something to hold onto each day, something I
can use to make sense of the world. There’s enough uncertainty out there as it
is. If we get involved, it must be to preserve the past as we know it now—to
put a stop to this Time War by foiling their efforts, if we can.”

       “Just like Paul did,” said Kelly.

       “Right, only we do it with more sense and
direction. We keep watch, and we plan, and we get it all right. Understand?”
Maeve’s point was well taken.

       There was a moment of silence where they all
seemed to sign on to her proposition. “It’s the only moral thing we can do,”
said Paul. “You’re right. The Arch is power—more power than all the armies that
ever walked the earth. We could blow the whole thing up, but something tells me
the people in generations hence will go right on with their war. The moment we
developed the Arch we made time travel possible. It was destined to
succeed—perhaps even a Grand Imperative. Who knows how long this war has been
going on? Something tells me it started with the effort to reverse Palma—with
Graves’ mission. Now both sides are running operatives into key Nexus Points of
the past to try and bend the history their way. My fall into the Well was just
another Pushpoint: one of those stumbling moments in time that led us to
discover all this. Keeping the Arch alive is the only way we can know what’s
going on, or do anything about it when something begins to slide into the
abyss. If we use it, we use it with the intention of preserving things—just
like Maeve says.”

       “Who’s to say our Meridian is the way things
are supposed to be?” asked Nordhausen.

       “We are,” said Maeve. “We started it. The
Time project originated on our Meridian. We’re all Prime movers, right? Then we
make this the Prime Meridian. The world we know now will be our reference point
on everything we do, and the Arch will be our own Royal Observatory—a place
where we can monitor what’s happening and take corrective action.”

       They were all in agreement, and Paul placed
his hand upon the table, his vote slapped onto the hard wood. Kelly was the
first to cover his hand, then Maeve placed her palm on his. She looked at
Nordhausen, a challenge in her hazel eyes. He nodded agreement and reached out,
cupping her hand with his own. The four hands formed the hub of a wheel, a
Nexus of consent and resolve. They had a mission in life now, a pledge and a
purpose, for as long as they lived.

       Nordhausen was already thinking ahead. “Then
we all get a cell phone,” he suggested. “Perhaps one of us should be on station
at the Arch at all times.”

       “We’ve got a lot to think about,” said Paul.
“Security will be our first concern, I’m afraid.”

       “Security? You still worried that the
government will step in?” Kelly was thinking about how he might start setting
up data mirrors and redundant services. Even something as simple as an
earthquake could put their single Arch facility out of commission.

       “It’s not the government I’m worried about,”
said Paul. “It’s the likes of Rasil, and this Sami fellow I ran into—or even
Sinan, for that matter. We have to be careful; very cautious. No more keys
under that mat, Robert.”

       “You think we could be targets?” Nordhausen
scratched his head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think Rasil recognized me,
even though I gave him my name—yours as well. Perhaps we’re not as important as
we think… Then again.” He lapsed into thought, struggling to remember. “Yes,
Rasil did say something very odd to me when I told him my name—something about
my being named after a great warrior he called the Marvel of Time. Why, he even
said I bore a resemblance to the man.”

       “It may be that he was referring to you,
Robert. If we get mixed up in this we’re likely to become well known to our
adversaries—historical figures akin to the founding fathers in their eyes, and
the stuff of legend and story. You made a call on Rasil’s satellite phone,
remember? They’ve probably got a line on exactly who answered. And that means
they know we were involved in this incident somehow. We all have to be
careful—very careful. We can’t leave any historical record of what we’re about
here. Even our research queries have to be very guarded now. We have to shield
ourselves with as much haze as possible, and make this Milieu a tough nut to
crack.”

       “You’re afraid they might—“ Maeve expressed
the logical conclusion to Paul’s fear.

       “Try to get rid of us?” Paul came out with
it. “The thought has crossed my mind, in spite of Rasil’s mercy in sparing
Robert. We have to assume that there will be people in the future who would see
us as obstacles in their scheme. That makes us targets as well.”

       “Lord,” said Nordhausen, “They could just go
back in time and murder our grandmothers. It’s the Terminator all over again.” 
He tried to be glib, but there was real fear in the prospect he had suggested.
“For that matter, what’s to stop them from pulling a 9-11 and sending someone
back to fly an airliner into the Arch complex here?”

       “Time,” said Paul. “She may have something
to say about all this as well. We’re Prime Movers, people. We were the ones who
first discovered how to travel in time. Even if they could pull something like
that off, or rig it so we were never born, then what—how would they come to the
knowledge of time travel without our research on the Arch?”

       “Someone else might come up with it,” said
Nordhausen. “That was common all through history. Elisha Gray was researching
the telephone, just like Bell. The two of them rushed to the patent office just
hours apart. The first manned flight had several close competitors; hell, even
the top secret Manhattan Project had rival groups in both Russia and Germany
working to build the bomb.”

       “Your suggesting someone else may be working
on time travel technology—even as we speak?”

       “It’s a possibility. And from their vantage
point in the Ninth Age, they would certainly know about it.”

       “Well,” Paul sighed. “We were there first. Graves
came back to us
,
right? So I’m betting we are all Prime Movers. In that
case, it may not be so easy to tamper with our life histories, as we did to
poor Rai’d Husan al Din when we reversed Palma.”

       “But wasn’t he a Prime Mover as well?”

       “A Free Radical,” Paul corrected. “He worked
a Radical Transformation on the Meridian, but his influence was completely
destructive. We, on the other hand,  appear to be essential elements in the
discovery of time travel. We may even be imperative.”

       “How do we know that they haven’t already
killed us? I mean, in some future event,” he explained. Nordhausen was not yet
convinced. He looked at them, somewhat disturbed.

        “My only hope is that we are all so
significant to Mother Time that we will cast deep shadows—shadows so
impenetrable that our presence in the time line will be difficult to tamper
with.”

       The significance of what Paul was saying
spread to the eyes of his compatriots. An air of weighty seriousness settled on
the room. “So,” Paul concluded, “we’ve got our Arch, and Kelly’s Golems, and
the RAM bank idea gives us a good touchstone on the history. Now we stand the
watch.” They all nodded agreement, but Nordhausen was already thinking about
Paul’s last statement.

        A touchstone, he mused. Yes indeed! He was
still turning over the hieroglyphics in his mind, and an idea began to bubble
up. There were lots of discoveries that failed to survive to his present day.
Many artifacts had become lost, damaged or destroyed. Perhaps he could use the Arch
to have a look at them first hand, and find out more about Rasil’s scroll. If
it was indeed a rubbing, as he suspected, it seemed to him that some of the
history
was
written in stone. The more he thought about it the better it
sounded in his head, though he did not want to bring his idea up in committee
just yet. He had an inkling of where he might find a good cache of old stone
carvings from Egypt that had been lost to his day. This was going to be great
fun, he thought. Great fun indeed!

Afterword - History Is Bunk

“We do not know very much of the future
Except that from generation to generation
The same things happen again and again.
Men learn little from others' experience.
But in the life of one man, never
The same time returns. Sever
The cord, shed the scale. Only
The fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns.”

Thomas Becket in T. S.
Elliot's

Murder in the Cathedral

One of the most challenging
things about time travel
stories is the fact that they are all about change—about cause and effect, and
the outcomes that derive from alterations in the flow of that causality.
History, as we know it, is the slow, sedate flow of those events, as written
down or dug up by a handful of writers, scholars and archeologists. But
history, said  Henry Ford, is bunk—it is really only a point of view, and a
very limited one at that.

       Take the history of the world as seen
through the eyes of any given culture, and it will read quite differently. Each
culture has its own moral and social systems, its own religious beliefs and
creed, and a set of imperatives that drive it forward into the future.
Inevitably, these cultures come into contact with one another, and conflict
ensues. For us in the West, our history has been, in fact, a succession of
these encounters and conflicts, leading at last, (as we like to think) to the
supremacy of the modern Western cultures that make up our “First World.”