Meridian - A Novel In Time (The Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  “Well, it didn’t seem so difficult when we were discussing the Bermuda Pamphlets earlier,” Dorland argued.

  “That was happenstance,” said Nordhausen. “The key to solving that event was in the timing of the storm. If the ships could be delayed in setting out from Plymouth, then it was very likely that there would have been no Bermuda Pamphlets. But this is different, Paul. The Crusades were a huge cultural, religious and political event—a wave of events that set Europe on a collision with the Moslem world for well over a century. Now the wave train is heading our way, and it would be like trying to stop the ocean with our bare hands. History has its imperatives, as you will be the first to admit. I’m afraid the Crusades are one of them. We’ve no hope in that area. They must occur.”

  “Then it has to be something else, perhaps closer to modern times.” He looked at the clock over the mantle. “We can’t just stand here gaping at one another. We have to move. We can talk about this on the way to U.C. Berkeley. Kelly—get your laptop. We’ve got to secure that comp cycle you need for the numbers.”

  “But— ”

  “No questions, let’s go. Maeve, would you grab that coffee and the coffee press?” Paul was scooping up his papers and notebook, and stuffing everything into his briefcase. “Come on, professor. We’re going to need you more than ever now. You’re the historian. Start thinking! Are there any books or references here you may need to bring?”

  Nordhausen gave him a hopeless look, but then came to some inner conclusion on the matter and nodded his head. “Quite right,” he said as he made for the bookcase. Impossible or not, he would give it his best try.

  Maeve threw the coffee makings into a bag, and followed them with anything edible she could find in Nordhausen’s cupboards. Then she ran to the closet to fetch the coats. The others gathered up their things and Kelly and Paul were making for the study door.

  “Hold on,” Maeve yelled at them. “It’s raining something fierce out there. Take your coats and umbrellas.” She reached into the closet and then stopped cold, her eyes wide. “Wait!” She shouted as Kelly opened the door and a blast of cold, wet air blew into the room.

  “It’s just a little rain,” said Kelly. “Meet us outside. We’ll warm up the car.”

  “I said wait!” This time her voice carried a note of urgency that took hold of the men by the door and spun them around. Maeve threw two jackets and an umbrella onto the floor, then emerged from the closet, holding a dark, gray trench coat in her arms. It was still damp from the rain. Paul recognized it at once.

  “Hello,” he said, his mood lightening.

  “Our visitor may have vanished,” said Maeve, “but his coat was still hanging just where I left it in the closet!” She extended the trench coat to the others, the light of discovery glistening in her hazel eyes. Paul and Kelly rushed to her side. They each had one thing in mind—to search the pockets for any sign or clue. Maeve knew what they intended, and she clutched the coat to her breast, an arm extended to ward the others off.

  “Stand where you are,” she warned them. “I’m not going to let you two tear this thing to pieces. Outcomes and Consequences will handle this, if you don’t mind.” She rushed to the study table, and set the coat down with an almost reverent sense of care. She stared at it for a moment, one arm still extended to hold Paul and Kelly at bay. She was afraid to take her eyes off it, as if she thought it might just disappear into nothingness if she turned her head to look at any of the others. Then she smoothed the fabric out on the study table and slipped her hands into the outer pockets. There was nothing inside.

  “Well?” Paul was hovering over her shoulder, restless with anticipation. She folded the coat open, her hand sliding along the smooth inner lining to find the interior pocket. She almost held her breath as she reached inside. She felt something—a piece of folded paper!

  “What’s that?” Kelly could not contain himself. Nordhausen had finally realized what had happened and was looking over his shoulder from the bookcase, frozen in the moment, his arms full of books he had pulled from the shelves.

  Maeve unfolded the paper and something fluttered out, slipping on to the floor. Kelly and Paul dove and it was Kelly who came up with it first. “Be careful you idiots!” Maeve scolded them, but Kelly’s excitement quickly faded when he saw what he had recovered.

  “It’s just a receipt,” he said, somewhat deflated. “For the coffee: One pound, Major Dickason’s blend.”

  “What about this,” said Maeve. She still held up the paper the receipt had been riding in and there was something written on it. “Looks like the address here at the study, and… What’s this? How odd. It’s your name Kelly, and an English name: Lawrence. Then this other...” She pointed at the paper, tilting it at last so Paul and Kelly could see. They leaned in, squinting. Paul angled to one side to keep from casting a shadow on the note. “What was the name of that terrorist?”

  “Ra’id Husan al Din.” Nordhausen hurried over. “And something about the Holy Fighters.”

  “No,” said Maeve. “That’s not what’s written here. It looks like Masaui—Is that a ‘u’ there near the end? And what are these numbers: 11101917 - K172? There’s another word. Can you make it out Paul?”

  “It looks like another Arabic word: ‘Hejaz.’ Could that mean something, Robert? Can anyone remember any reference to those names on the news in recent months?”

  “Masaui? How is that spelled,” Kelly asked? “Wasn’t that the name of the 20th hijacker during the World Trade Center incident?”

  “Yes, he was the guy the FBI picked up before the event. I remember the trial now.” Dorland was reaching for details in his mind. “But I thought that name was spelled differently.”

  The clock on the mantle chimed, as if it signaled their time was up and the mystery would escape them, but Nordhausen’s eyes narrowed with thought. He put the armload of books he was carrying on the table, and reached out to take the note. Maeve released it to him, but kept her eyes glued to the paper. Kelly had gone around behind her and was poking about in the outer pockets of the coat.

  “What did you say about this interval, Paul. This Nexus Point business, and all.” Nordhausen was pulling on a thread of some recollection, staring at the note and scratching the back of his neck.

  “What?”

  “You said time was dreaming—that we were the dreamers; that we were the most dangerous people on earth right now. Damn!” He rushed back to his bookcase, his finger tracing over the third shelf. “Now don’t tell me I left that book in my office library. No, here it is!” He had a thick volume out of the shelves and was flipping through the pages, a broad smile on his face. The others hurried over, but Maeve snatched up the trench coat, afraid to let it out from under her nose. Nordhausen read from his book.

  “All men dream,” he began, “but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” He smiled at them, snapping the book closed with an almost jubilant air. “T. E. Lawrence,” he said to them. “You know—Lawrence of Arabia! It’s one of his most famous quotes. This is the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He spent years dawdling over it. Had the whole thing in manuscript and then lost it on a train ride. Can you imagine that? Well, he set about to re-write the damn thing from memory! A dangerous man indeed, that one.”

  “Very poetic,” said Kelly. “But we’re running out of time, professor. I’ve got to get to U.C. Berkeley and fire up that Arion system. What in blazes does it mean?”

  “It means our visitor inadvertently left us a little clue. Oh, he probably only meant to reinforce his memory. Look here, he wrote down the address, then your name, Kelly, then the name Lawrence.”

  “So you just thought you’d offer us all a nice quotation.” Kelly was getting frustrated. “This isn’t a word association game!”

  “Well don’t be a dolt, man. Everything
on this page is significant. He wrote the place he had to be, and the person he had to save. And look here, he’s given us these other names as well, along with a date.”

  “A date?” Paul’s eyes widened.

  “Yes, it’s right here,” said Nordhausen. “The first part of this number: 11101917. That would be November ten, nineteen seventeen. It so happens, my dear friends, that a certain Lawrence of Arabia was in the desert that very year, helping the British in their campaign against the Ottoman Turks in the First World War. He was campaigning in the region of Hejaz. That’s on the paper as well. This other name must be a person of some importance from that time, or perhaps a place. Here, let me see if I can find a reference.” He flipped through the index, but was frustrated. The name was not there. “That’s odd,” he muttered. “I was certain I’d find it…Perhaps in my other volumes…”

  “You won’t,” said Paul. “If what you say is true that last name is the needle in the haystack. See how its been underlined?”

  “Then it should be easy enough to track him down.” Nordhausen was nosing at his bookshelf again.

  “Just the opposite,” said Dorland. “He won’t be in any of your books because he’s a person of absolutely no significance whatsoever—at least to the time and place he lived in. Lawrence, there, is our light post. He’s the great romantic hero of the tale—at least for us in the West. Lawrence was certainly a Prime Mover, but the real mover and shaker of the world is this other fellow: Masaui, and he’s not the 20th hijacker. I’m certain of it.”

  “You’re on to something there.” Nordhausen was still flipping through his volume of the Seven Pillars. “It’s perfect! This was the time and place where the Arab people first rose up in rebellion for their independence against foreign colonial powers. The long conflict with the modern West was just getting started. The First World War just got in the way, and the British, true to form, made the Arabs promises they could not keep while they used them to master the Turks. Lawrence was a bridge between both worlds. He was a British serving officer, but in his heart he had come to know and love the Arabs and he was helping them win their freedom, or at least he thought he was.”

  “Yes,” said Dorland. “And the British used Lawrence, even as they used the Arabs. Then they went and made a hero out of him to sweep it all under the rug.” He took a deep breath. “You were right, Robert: we could have never completed the research for a mission in the few hours remaining to us. They had to know that as well. They were trying to reach us here because we have a viable Arch in place on this side of the Palma Shadow. The minute I suspected who our visitor really was I knew he must be here with vital information. Our visitor has given us a nudge in the right direction after all. We’ve got our clue! Bring that book, professor. We’ll need it. Come on, let’s get over to U.C. Berkeley. Something tells me this Masaui has something to do with this. We find him, and we become the dreamers of the day. Let’s move!”

  5

  En Route, Berkeley, California - 11:55 PM

  They gathered their things and were soon huddling in Kelly’s Subaru Forester, shivering with the cold yet fired by the urgency of their mission. Kelly started the vehicle and backed it off the curb where it had come to an abrupt halt when he rushed to the scene with his news. The vehicle jolted off the pavement, and Nordhausen complained from the back seat where he sat with Dorland.

  “Now have a care, mister, no need to get us all killed along the way.”

  “Relax,” said Kelly. “I’ve been living up here for over 30 years. I know just the route to take, panic or no panic. Besides, it seems to be settling down out here. People have gone indoors to get out of this rain. I’ll bet everyone is huddling around their TV sets or trying to call friends and relatives back east.”

  Nordhausen folded his arms, and Dorland noted that he gave Kelly a strange look, as if he expected trouble from some quarter. It occurred to him that the professor might be afraid Kelly would suddenly vanish, leaving them all in a driverless vehicle, careening along some rain swept street to their doom.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” he leaned over to Nordhausen with a whisper.

  “What?”

  “He’s a Prime Lever; possibly even a Free Radical now. Didn’t you hear what the visitor said? I don’t think we have anything to fear just yet.”

  “Well what if...” Nordhausen lowered his voice. “What if time tries to undo our visitor’s intervention and there’s an accident waiting for us out there? And what happened to Mr. Graves? How can you be sure that time won’t find some way to make amends for his mischief? Perhaps she already has. The man just disappeared!”

  “What are you two talking about back there?” Maeve leaned around, her arm draped over the back of the front seat.

  “Nothing,” said Nordhausen. “Just running through the history in my mind again, that’s all. How much time will you need to program the temporal locus, Kelly?”

  “If that date is good, not much time at all—twenty minutes. I’ll need time for the Arch configuration, however. Perhaps half an hour.”

  “How long to U.C. Berkeley?” Dorland was getting worried.

  “Maybe twenty minutes, considering the condition of the roads tonight.”

  “Then figure an hour on the Arion system, for your calculations and anything Maeve might need. It’s another ten minutes up to the lab. If you need time on the Arch we’re going to lose Bermuda. We’ll only have three hours left!”

  “If I go any faster I’ll get us all killed,” said Kelly, but he nudged the accelerator just the same and the SUV sped along, the windshield wipers battling with sheets of rain. The professor gave Paul another worried look.

  “What about the spatial locus?” Dorland changed the subject, trying to pull in all the loose threads he could and give each one at least a moment of his own computing time.

  “Ask the professor.” Kelly begged off on the question.

  “What about it, Robert. Know where we’re going yet?” Maeve was eager to get a handle on the situation so she could start considering her outcome algorithms.

  Nordhausen thought for a moment. “Well, we’ve got the date and a few other clues on that note. When we get to the university I’ll look up the references and see what I can find.”

  “This is worrying me.” Maeve wasn’t satisfied. “I’ll need time for Outcomes and Consequences as well, Paul, and I can’t do a thing until Robert gives us a target. What are we trying to accomplish?”

  “Masaui,” said Paul. “That’s the key name. It’s something to do with him.”

  “But how do you intend to find the man? We’ve got a good date, and a general idea of where to go, but we could end up a thousand miles from any place where we could do some good. We haven’t the time to do the research.”

  “I’ll find the references,” said Nordhausen. “Just quiet down and let me think. Our friend from tomorrow was very succinct. He gave us the year and he must have given some information on the spatial locus as well. There was another number on that note…” He lapsed into silence and Maeve rolled her eyes, giving Dorland a disparaging look.

  “He’ll work it through, Maeve,” said Paul. “You can use the time to run over to the Drama Department and see what you can do for us in the way of costuming. I mean, we can’t very well go barreling through the Arch in these clothes: rain jackets and umbrellas in the desert, not to mention blue jeans and sneakers.”

  “Good point.” Maeve was eager to latch on to something to do. “OK, everyone. Give me your sizes for shirts, pants, coats and shoes. I’ll write it all down and rifle the costume wardrobes while Nordhausen fine-tunes the target.” They complied as she wrote the information down. Then Paul returned to the problem at hand.

  “What about that last number?” Dorland was still turning things over in his own mind. “What was it Maeve?”

  “K17 something,” said Maeve. “But it looked as though it was part of the date sequence.”

  “Was it hyphenated?” Kelly spoke up as he took
a corner a little too sharply and the tires squealed on the wet pavement. The SUV tilted ominously, but righted itself and revved up as Kelly sped down the road.

  “Watch what you’re doing!” Robert gave Kelly a wide-eyed look.

  “Don’t worry,” said Kelly. “Some SUVs used to roll over a lot about ten years ago, but they widened the wheel base and lowered the center of gravity. This one never had the problem. It’s got four wheel drive.” He gave Robert a reassuring smile. “Was the number hyphenated after the date sequence?” His hand was on the stick, down shifting as they went around another bend.

  “Yes,” said Maeve. “I’ve got the note right here.” She reached into the pocket of her coat, groping around and coming up empty. Dorland watched as she shifted to search another pocket. “Give me a second.”

  “It’s a location.” Kelly’s voice had a definitive tone to it. “I started combining temporal and spatial coordinates in my final algorithm sequences last month. But I wasn’t using alphanumerics. The ‘K’ thing is odd, but I was coding the location right after the primary date sequence, and using a hyphen to separate the data. It should have been another long number for longitude and latitude, right down to the hours, minutes and seconds.”

  Dorland smiled to think how spatial coordinates still used a temporal metaphor to fine-tune their location on the planet. Everything was described as being a given number of hours, minutes and seconds on one side of the Greenwich mean or another—the Prime Meridian, as it was called. “What was that number again, Maeve?”

  She was still fishing through her pockets in silence and, as he watched her, it suddenly dawned on Paul that the note was gone. He had been thinking about the disappearance of the visitor for some time, and it bothered him. It was clear that the man just didn’t get up and walk out. Yes, there was that moment when it seemed that someone had opened the front door. Nordhausen even commented on it. Yet the security chain was still in place, and the windows in the reading room were locked from the inside as well. When he extended his hand to the place where the visitor had been resting on the love seat the chill in the air was palpable. He knew then that the visitor had been reclaimed by the continuum in some way—but how? Was it a complication of time caused by the fact that he had tampered too directly with the lives of everyone else in the room? Was it the nullifying power of a Paradox that snatched him from the love seat? Or was it simply that his comrades had yanked him out of the moment, calling him back to some distant future?