Touchstone (Meridian Series) (35 page)

       All
the while the great weight of what he was about to attempt began to drag on
him. A read of the DVD video for embedded data produced the coordinates, in
both space and time. He found himself staring at the numbers, disbelieving
them. The temporal coordinates were going to take him over ten thousand years
into the past! He was going to take one small step in the Arch tunnel and
emerge in pre-dynastic Egypt! What would he do there? What would he find?

       LeGrand
had come to his side, his eyes begging an audience, with a look that was almost
reverent. “Mister Kelly,” he whispered. “May I have a word with you on the
mission?”

       Kelly
caught Maeve out of the corner of his eye. She had come back with his
costuming, a simple Arabic robe, and she was trying to stay busy in the
anteroom, fussing through her accessories, a headpiece, braided sash and
sandals, but he could feel her intermittent gaze on him, and knew that she was
keenly aware of LeGrand, and very uneasy.

       “When
you arrive,” LeGrand began, “you will be able to clearly sight the location of
the sphinx by looking for the moon. Understand? Just turn toward the light. You’ll
be arriving at night, for your own security, and you should be able to see the
monument easily enough. There will be a watercourse that flows to the cleft
between the lion’s front paws. Make your way to that depression, and approach
the monument by following the stream.” He smiled, the weight of his cheeks
seeming to strain with the effort, but his grey eyes held real warmth. “Do you
swim?”

       “Swim?
Yes. I do a workout at the YMCA every other month.”

       “Splendid.
You may have to do a bit of that as you approach the sphinx. The stream will
enter the monument—we aren’t sure exactly how, but you’ll figure it out. I have
every confidence!”

       Kelly
digested that a moment, then asked: “And this lock on the waterway you
mentioned—it’s meant to regulate the flow of the watercourse?”

       “We
believe so. The water flows toward the monument, but when the river is at high
flood stage, the lock prevents the interior chambers from being flooded. If you
can see that it fails to do that, some time before the dawn, then we believe
the mission might have a good chance for success.”

       “Before
dawn?” Kelly gave him a searching look. “Let me understand this: you say the
lock regulates the river at high flood stage. Then the flood comes with the
dawn?”

       LeGrand
hesitated briefly, his face soon set with resolve. “I’m afraid so.”

       “How
can you know that?”

       “We
have a way of taking a quick peek at things—don’t ask me to explain it, but
Research tells me this is what will happen.”

       “And
you expect the flood to damage the monument?”

       “We
hope as much. Our research has determined that the ground beneath the eastern sphinx
is somewhat compromised. The river is actually intruding and infiltrating below
the monument in deep aquifers. There is a zone of instability there. If the
flood waters are allowed to penetrate to the hidden inner chambers of the sphinx,
we believe that the pressure may just be enough to… to cause a collapse.” His
eyes held Kelly’s now, waiting.

       “I
see…” Kelly looked down, his finger tapping aimlessly at the side of a
keyboard. “And where will I be when this happens?”

       “A
difficult question,” said LeGrand. “We went round and round with it ourselves.
Mr. Graves was a real advocate for you, of course. Many others as well. The
problem is this, however: we just don’t know what you might do once you arrive,
or what may happen to you. You know how things go. You reach to tie a loose
strap on your sandal and lose your footing—that sort of thing. There’s an
infinity of variation between the setting of the moon and the rising sun. How
could we hope to account for it all?”

       “Of
course,” said Kelly, the numbers man acceding to the impossibility inherent in
the math. There was no way they could write a retraction algorithm that would
be able to predict his exact location at the key moment. “Then you’re timing
the retraction to the particle decay?”

       “It’s
the only chance we have,” LeGrand agreed quickly. “I’ve had a word with Mister
Dorland, and he seems confident that he can get just the right infusion in the
particle chamber.”

       “Right,”
said Kelly, but his tone was hollow. He knew that Paul would do his best, but the
quantum fuel situation was grave now. Even if there was enough left to pull him
out, the situation could be chaotic. He’d be underground, with a flood tide
careening through the chambers of the sphinx. How would he escape?

       LeGrand
seemed to sense his thoughts and spoke softly, his voice laden with emotion.
“We know we may be asking a great deal of you, Mister Kelly…”

       “Yes.”
A voice spoke from behind them and they turned to see Maeve. “You put it
lightly, but that’s about the size of it, isn’t it? You people couldn’t leave
things be. You had to have them
your
way, and now you’re going to ask a
great deal indeed. You’re dumping the whole thing on us—on Kelly.”

       “Maeve…”
Kelly raised a hand in a placating gesture, but she shook her head, the anger
flaring in her eyes, and then melting away as tears spilled out, streaking her
cheeks.

       “Maeve…”
Kelly was up, his arms around her now, pulling her close.

       LeGrand
swallowed hard, but saw that this was a battle he could not fight and
discreetly withdrew without another word.

       “You
know what this means, Kelly.” Maeve wept as she spoke. “You
know…
”

       “You
were listening. You heard what LeGrand said. Yes, I know. But you mustn’t worry,
Maeve. I’ll figure something out once I’m there. If I can get in and out before
the flood at dawn, then I should be well away from the place before anything
happens.”

       “Kelly…”
She pulled back from him, her eyes meeting his. “You know I’m not talking about
that. It’s—“

       He
put his hand over her lips to silence her. “I know,” he said. “You don’t have
to go through it all now, love.”

       They
looked at one another and Kelly could see that she understood him. He knew that
his chance of escaping the sphinx alive was the least of his worries. It was
what happened after that mattered. Whether he succeeded or failed, there was
still Paradox to answer, and Paradox was jealous. It had been cheated once
before, and now it would have its chance to even the score. Yet Kelly was
undaunted. All he could think of at the moment was how he might bring some
small comfort to Maeve. “Don’t you see?” he began. “I’ve been there before.
I’ve faced down the void and danced on my own grave. Something will happen,
Maeve. And if it doesn’t…well… what are we, anyway? What are we?”

       She
looked at him through the pain, wanting to understand him, yet unwilling to let
him go.

       “I’ll
tell you what we are,” she whispered. “We’re promises, and hope. We’re a
whisper in the night; a yearning. We’re everything we ever dreamed of being,
and more. We’re the whole of it on one single breath; a lifetime in one kiss, a
hundred years…” She smiled wanly, her heart breaking open as she spoke.

       “A
hundred years,” he whispered back,” and not a moment now to spare.”

       He
held her close. The silence in the room was palpable. Paul was hunched over the
particle infusion chamber, unable to look at them. LeGrand had retreated to the
history module where Robert was sandbagging himself in behind a wall of
research files and books. He was tormented, trying to master his emotion with
his work, his attention pulled to the scene and then yanked back again to the
pages of a thick, leather bound volume. He was searching for something, driven.

       Paul
was the first to break the silence. He composed himself and turned to face
Kelly with as much of a smile as he could muster.

       “Time,”
he said, and Kelly looked up at him. “Time we got the system up, mister.”

       “Right,”
said Kelly, easing away from Maeve.

       “I’ll
see to the consoles,” Paul put in. “You had better get dressed for the part,
amigo.” It would give them another few moments together in the anteroom, he
knew, and Maeve gave him an appreciative smile as she led the way.

       They
were not long. The minutes passed quickly and Kelly emerged, his arms extended
in a graceful sweep as he displayed his Arabic getup. Everyone smiled as he
pranced about the room, a regular Lawrence of Arabia in his own right.

       “There
were Arabs in Egypt before the Pharaohs came?” Paul laughed as he asked the
question.

       “Well,”
said LeGrand, “there shouldn’t be, but there are—the other side has men in the sphinx.
I thought this might give our man here a bit of an advantage, and suggested the
garb to Maeve.” He laughed with them, but his gaze was ever pulled to the clock
on the wall by the door. Paul saw the worry on his face, and he swallowed hard,
shoring up his will for the moments ahead.

       “Best
get down to the Arch,” he said. “You go too, Maeve. You can see him off at the
yellow line.”

       There
was a long silence. Kelly stood up straight and looked from one to the other.
He was thinking of what he might say to them now. He was leaving them all, he
knew, and he would never see any one of them again.

       “No
goodbyes,” said Paul, his voice breaking.

       Kelly
smiled as his heart flooded with a warming sense of compassion. “Don’t mourn
because it’s over,” he said softly. “Rejoice that it happened.” Then he turned
suddenly, his robes wafting up on the still airs of the room, and he strode
quickly away to the yawning oval door that would take him down to the Arch.

       Maeve
went after him, her thoughts a torrent of confusion, and yet with some hope.
He’s out for us all, she thought, for LeGrand, and Paul, and Robert, and all
the rest. He’s on his way for everything we have ever loved, and yet for
everything we have railed against as well. He on to it now, all of
it—Shakespeare and Stalin both, and he won’t come back. She was certain of that
now. He would not come back.

       A
surge of emotion seized her as they went, hand in hand, down to the Arch. She
cursed them all, Einstein, and Heisenberg, and every other name she could bring
to mind. She wanted  back every moment she had given to the project, the long
hours of research, the endless calculations, the mind numbing struggle with
outcomes and consequences that she could never really be certain of. There was
no
certainty. It was all a show, and she cursed it silently beneath her breath
before she let her anger go at last and took hold of her love again.

       Kelly would go for the West and do what he could
to set things right. He was willing to give up his life—but for what? What was
it? The poetry; the music he so loved? Strangely, it was the voice of a poet
that came to her now, with the only comfort she could fathom in this moment of
parting. This was the second time she had faced this certainty… this terrible
sense of loss. The first was the moment she reached for the volume of the
Seven
Pillars
, afraid to look and see that the history once written there would
be changed. She knew, of course, that its altered course would make an end of
Kelly, who’s life depended on the calamity of Palma—on the catastrophe that began
the great fall into the gray world that even now loomed around them, just
beyond the gossamer thin barrier of the Nexus.

       She lost him once, and now she must lose him again.
A line of poetry came to her, stubbornly, reflexively, as if to say that saving
at least this much would mean something in the end… ‘My life closed twice
before its close…’

       Yes,
she thought, how appropriate. I will endure this again, and then live with what
remains. And when death finds me, somewhere ahead, it will seem a small and inconsequential
thing to me then, after this. She held the poem close in her mind, and finished
it as they reached the bottom of the elevator. It was Emily Dickinson, that shy
wisp of a woman with the whole of life in the turning of one simple rhyme:

      
My
life closed twice before its close;

      
It yet remains to see

       If
Immortality unveil

      
A third event to me,

       So
huge, so hopeless to conceive,

      
As these that twice befell.

       Parting
is all we know of heaven,

      
And all we need of hell.

Part X

Resolution