Meridian - A Novel In Time (The Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  “I can only imagine what the U.S. response will be to this if we fail to get it fixed. There was a desperate look in that fellow’s eyes—Mr. Graves, I mean. Whatever happened must have been terrible.”

  “Let’s hope we never have to know about it. So…It all comes down to an ambush by Lawrence and his Arab freedom fighters at Kilometer 172. I guess it’s time for us to start writing our will across the sky in stars. We had better get busy.” He thought for a moment. “I’ll see if I can narrow that location down. It might help us figure out who this Masaui could be.” He began requesting period map searches from the cartography database while Maeve jumped on a third terminal and started calling up images of typical fashion and dress in the year 1917.

  Time passed almost unnoticeably as they worked, each one hot on the trail of some key element that would be needed for the planned mission. It would normally take weeks or months to gather and refine this ‘Approach Data’ as it was called. They had taken five weeks to plan the Globe Theatre mission to 1612. Now, without the luxury of that time, they focused on rooting out the essentials for the mission: where should they go, and what role should they assume in the time they were entering? Beyond that, the problem of how to identify the key moment in time, the Pushpoint, loomed as an ever more daunting obstacle.

  Nordhausen was the first to narrow in on some useful data. He was still reading from his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, using a convenient date indexing scheme Lawrence had appended to the pages to aid his search. Soon he managed to locate a reference to Kilometer 172 in the narrative. “Here it is,” he said jubilantly. “It’s on the rail line between Deraa and Amman. Deraa was the lynch pin, of course. The rail line split just above that point and one spur headed for the coast at Haifa while the main line reached up to Damascus and beyond. South of Deraa, the line ran all the way down through the Hejaz region to Medina in Arabia. Here’s a good map, Paul.”

  Paul left his terminal and scooted over to Nordhausen’s where the amber gold of a map file was displayed. It was labeled ‘SKETCH MAP: Adapted from War Office material as embodied in G.S.G.S. 2957, by permission of Controller, H.M.S.O.’ Nordhausen was reading quickly through the narrative of his Seven Pillars.

  “Apparently this attack was a bit of a fluke,” he said. “Look here, the date is very precise: November 10, 1917. The odd thing is this: when they set out on the operation that resulted in this raid, they had no intention of blowing up a train. They were after a bridge in the Yarmuk Valley, but they were discovered as they approached it and had to flee. After some argument the idea for an attack on the railway grew out of their frustration—almost on the spur of the moment. They seized upon it to salve their failure at the bridge, and it resulted in the destruction of a heavily laden troop train that was heading north from Amman.”

  Dorland thought about the situation. “Any reference to Masaui in the narrative?”

  “Not a hint,” said Nordhausen, “but he had to be there, on one side or another.”

  “Well, that’s an Arabic name,” Maeve added. “Perhaps he was one of Lawrence’s men.”

  “A likely conclusion,” said Nordhausen, “but I’m afraid there were thousands of Arab soldiers in the Turkish Army—whole divisions of them, in fact. They were broken up and had their battalions scattered through the ranks after the Arab rebellion began. Masaui could have been a Turkish soldier on the train as well. This is maddening! Even if we solve this first riddle, and figure out which side Masaui was fighting on, how will we find him? Suppose he’s on the train. First we have to find some way of blending in with the Turks. If we somehow manage that, then what will we do: go from train car to train car and call the man’s name?”

  “Oh, don’t be foolish.” Maeve chided the professor as she leaned in to take a look at the map. “There could be a way to inquire about the man discreetly. Suppose I go as a foreign nurse, and the two of you get bandaged up as wounded soldiers.”

  “But we don’t speak the language!” Nordhausen was being difficult.

  “Well, I can manage a bit of German, Robert. Weren’t the Turks allies of the Germans? We could make up a list and put Masaui’s name on it as if he was being selected out of the ranks for some inoculation.”

  The professor thought for a moment. “It will be risky. Paul and I will have to play some ruse to keep our mouths shut.”

  “I’ll just bandage up your throats or something,” Maeve sketched out her idea. “We can make it look like you’re simply too sick to talk—victims of a gas attack.”

  “Good work, Maeve,” said Paul. “But we’re assuming Masaui is on the train. What if he’s with Lawrence?”

  “For that matter what if he’s not even there?” Nordhausen folded his arms. “Suppose he’s at Amman selling tickets, or at the terminal destination of the train waiting to meet someone?”

  The real difficulty of their situation was growing in Paul’s mind. He wracked his brain with the dizzying possibilities that flowed in from a thousand directions to this one moment. It would be absolutely impossible for them to consider all the contingencies. They had to choose something and get a focus on their mission. It was already well past midnight! The more he thought about the situation the more the weight of impossibility seemed to settle on him. Then the floorboard creaked in his mind and his thinking fell through to an obvious conclusion.

  “Wait a minute!” He nearly shouted. “The visitor must have known we would encounter all this potential variation in our target search. We have to rely on the clues in the note. They must have done the research, and the time and location are very specific. What was the outcome? What happened, Robert?”

  Nordhausen read a passage from his Seven Pillars. “Here it is,” he quoted: “When the engine was squarely over the mine I pushed down the handle of the exploder. The resulting explosion was even more effective than we had hoped. The old engine was lifted off the tracks, and her boilers were rent open in a cascade of steam and flying metal… Looks like they were successful.” He scanned forward through the narrative. “Many of the cars derailed, and the fire triggered a small ammunition cache causing further havoc. The Arabs attacked and butchered quite a few of the enemy in the confusion before they melted away.”

  Dorland rubbed his forehead. “That has to be the event,” he said. “The train was destroyed, and Masaui’s fate was sealed in the resulting chaos. It doesn’t matter who’s side he’s on.”

  “Are you suggesting he gets killed in the raid?”

  “Most likely, but that doesn’t matter. Whether he lives or dies is not our concern. If they planned this correctly, and I have to believe they did, then the event we need to alter has to be something obvious in the milieu they’ve pointed us to.”

  “But I thought you said it would be something utterly insignificant.” Nordhausen was confused.

  “Yes,” Paul explained. “It will be. All the Meridians flow into this one Nexus Point. They knew it would be impossible for us to test every time line that feeds this point for a possible intervention. Yet, we have to do something to change the obvious outcome of this time milieu. Whatever it is must be right there in front of us. Think! You’ve been pointing out how impossible it will be for us to interact with the people on the train, or within Lawrence’s camp, to find this man. They must have known that as well. So I reason that we don’t even attempt to find him. To me it looks like the destruction of the train is the key lever here. That’s what we have to prevent. If we change that outcome, then I believe the fate of Masaui will be altered as well. Don’t you see? We can’t possibly figure out what Masaui does, or fails to do, that eventually gives rise to the Palma Event. But I’m willing to stake everything on the chance that this is the lever we have to alter. That train must not be destroyed. Right Maeve?” He looked to Outcomes and Consequences for support.

  “It certainly has far less haze in the equation than trying to find Masaui,” Maeve agreed. “Yes, I like this. It has switch-like clarity. If the train blows up at Kilometer 172 on Novembe
r 10, 1917, then we have history as we seem to know it now; as it reads there in Lawrence’s book. If the train fails to blow up, then something changes in the time line for Masaui. It’s not for us to know what that is. You’re right. This is the key moment. Kilometer 172 is both a time and a place—a precise moment on the Meridian. Our visitor knew that, and the clue is vital.”

  “Then what should we do?” Nordhausen closed his book.

  “Get us Arab garb at the Drama Department,” Paul said to Maeve. “Your idea about the German nurse was good, but it brings us into contact with too many people on the train. We’d have to open the continuum at Amman, and board there. It’s too complicated. If we go as Arabs, we can cloak ourselves easily, and just drop into the desert somewhere near Kilometer 172. It’s perfect! Then we wait for Lawrence to lay his charge and we find some way of preventing the explosion. We do it with as little contact with the locals as possible.”

  Nordhausen was still the devil’s advocate. “But suppose we run afoul of the Arabs, or even Lawrence himself? None of us speaks Arabic.”

  Dorland’s mind worked quickly, brushing the argument aside. “Time will not want us anywhere near Lawrence,” he said quickly. “He’s a Prime Mover—or perhaps even another Free Radical, depending on your point of view. In any case, Time will not easily allow us to tamper with his history. That’s why Masaui is our target, and this incident becomes the Pushpoint that decides his fate.” He tacked on one last thought. “If we happen on the Arabs, we speak English.”

  “English? What good will that do us?”

  “We use Maeve’s first ruse. Say we’re a medical team that was captured by the Turks. Say we were on a train, but managed to slip away. Say we were taken in by an Arab family and—”

  Nordhausen interrupted him. “Say all of this in English?”

  “No!” Maeve held up a finger, her eyes brightening with an idea. “We just say one thing,” she concluded. “Aurens! That’s what the Arabs called him. We just invoke his name and point. Let his name be our shield and hope for the best.” They were all quiet for a moment before Maeve put in one last remark. “And a good retraction algorithm wouldn’t hurt either.”

  Kelly came running up, breathless, a notepad in hand. “I’ve got all the preliminaries in for the temporal locus,” he huffed. “Where’s that spatial coordinate?”

  “Just a second.” Nordhausen looked at Paul. “Arabs in the desert?”

  “I think it’s our best bet, Robert.”

  Nordhausen fidgeted a moment, consulting his book again. “The attempt on the Yarmuk Gorge Bridge was made in the pre-dawn hours on November 8th. After it failed they fled to Abu Sawana, arriving tired and hungry as the sun came up. As you might imagine, morale was low and they were all quite discouraged. They had to do something to make the raid worthwhile, particularly if Lawrence hoped to gain the support of other local tribesmen in the area. A botched operation was not good for recruiting purposes, you see. That’s when they hit on the idea of blowing up a train. The rail was close at hand, and they still had explosive charges left. So they decided to set up an ambush at one of their old lookout posts well north of Amman.”

  Nordhausen’s finger marked a place in his book. “They approached the rail line again near Minifir on the 9th to lay their last explosive charge at the culvert near Kilometer 172. They fled east after the attack, across the line into the desert to reach Abu Sawana again. We should be on the west side of the line then, probably here.” He fingered a location near the rail line close to Minifir, then keyed a new query for the cartography data base. In a few moments he had coordinates for Minifir, and extrapolated from that location to choose a drop point. “I hate rushing like this,” he muttered to himself as he worked. Kelly leaned over his shoulder and began scribbling the coordinates down.

  “Take off another second in each direction,” said Nordhausen. “Lord, it looks like open desert on the map, but we’ve no way of knowing what was really there. We could appear right in the middle of some wandering band of Bedouin vagrants, for all I know.”

  “It’ll have to do,” said Kelly as he started off. “If anything changes, let me know at once.”

  “I’ve got to get over to the Drama Department.” Maeve realized she had a lot of rummaging to do in the wardrobe.

  Kelly came up short, fishing in his pocket and tossing her the keys to the Subaru. “Here,” he said. “You’ll have to drive yourself. I need another twenty minutes on the Arion system.”

  “We’ll come with you, Maeve,” said Paul. “Now that we have our coordinates, we might as well carry on the preliminary briefing. Listen everyone. We’ve got to get up to Lawrence Labs as soon as possible. We’ll come back for you, Kelly, but if you finish ahead of us, take University Drive and head for the East Gate. Then we can take Gayley up to Hearst Avenue and head up past the Cyclotron to the lab.”

  The Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories were just beyond the campus, up a winding way called Cyclotron Road. Born on the Berkeley campus, the facilities had grown considerably over the years, and eventually moved to the rolling green hills that overlooked the university. A host of scientific disciplines were rooted in the lab, which was a major center of research and a place where some of the most profound questions imaginable were asked, and sometimes answered, with the secret arts of Quantum Science. They took the universe apart, bit by bit, discovering atoms, protons, electrons, neutrons; and then breaking each one down into smaller and smaller particles, and watching how each one behaved. Once the physical structures of the universe were ferreted out and understood, science thought it would finally have the answer to how everything related to everything else. Soon, however, they began to encounter strange things in the corners of their vacuum chambers and cyclotrons. The deeper they looked, the more they found that the universe was playing with another set of rules altogether in the realm of the very small. Things that were once thought to be impossible, even unimaginable, suddenly became odd realities. Travel in time, long debated by physicists, was one of those unimaginable things.

  One theory of time held that any given moment was simply a specific arrangement of every quantum particle that made up the universe. The particles, always in motion, created the perception of a forward progression in the flow of time, which was really nothing more than the constant variation of those particles, morphing from one state and position to another. To be in any place, or any time, all one had to do was find a way to tell all the particles of the universe to assume a given state or position in relationship to one another. Any reality that was ever possible could become this moment; this reality. The realization of the theory seemed impossible, however, for one could never know how to arrange each particle of the universe just as they were at the Globe Theatre in 1612. It was challenge enough to understand even one particle of the universe—but science held that the whole of the universe had sprung from one single point. If that were true, then any possible universe might arise in the same way.

  The way, it was found, was through the seeming annihilation of a small black hole. Dorland found a theory, and the theory became an Arch. It was found that the crushing effects of gravity as one approached the singularity could be neutralized by simply getting the black hole to spin at a fantastic rate of speed. The resulting reality was like a dead spot of calm in a whirlpool, or the eye at the heart of a swirling hurricane. It was realized in the center of the Arch, and anything that passed within its aura was protected from the annihilation of the event horizon. The Arch opened and forged a safe pathway through the event horizon of a controlled black hole, and all that lay beyond it.

  While it was impossible for humans to physically re-arrange the particles of the universe into a new pattern, a quantum singularity achieved this result effortlessly. Humans only had to tell the universe what they wanted—what shape and time to assume on the other side of the singularity. Mathematics was their voice, and the universe, being about nothing of any particular importance at any given moment, was kind enough to heed
them and comply.

  Three years later, after extensive research and with the backing of corporate sponsors and private funds, a project was born at Lawrence National Laboratories just outside the U.C. Berkeley campus in California. The government believed it was simply another particle chamber to test the theory Dorland expounded. They never dreamed that the project had reached such an advanced state, ready to actually send objects through the Arch and retract them safely. That secret, however, was closely held by the key project team leaders, project staff, and a few select individuals from Maeve’s Outcomes Committee.

  Dorland was the guiding light, and a small band of dedicated physicists, engineers and mathematicians had built the first prototype of a mechanism they hoped would tame the universe at last. They had an idea, and a theory, and an Arch. They didn’t know if it would work, but had faith that it might—until a man appeared at Nordhausen’s study door that night, out of a driving rain at the edge of a storm; with a pound of Peets coffee and an answer to all their doubts. It would work.

  That was the only thing that offered them consolation as they bent themselves to the feverish task of configuring the Arch that night. They were confident that they could create a new milieu that was very close to the moment they desired, but yet they were afraid nonetheless. Quantum Mechanics made promises, but would keep them at a whim, and who knows what mischief they might accomplish when they first sought to tamper with the fabric of being itself?