Nexus Point (Meridian Series) (36 page)

       One among them would not agree, however:
Reginald of Kerak, Arnat, the Wolf. It was he that lit a fire beneath Saladin
by daring to set his greedy hands upon the Sultan’s caravan. It was he that
broke the long truce between the East and the West, and set a hundred thousand
souls marching to this place in anger. When Guy relented and thought to stand
at Saffuriyah, Reginald was fretful and beside himself with anger. It was an
insult, he said, that heathen soldiers should come to Tiberias and sully the
land of Galilee with their blasphemous words an deeds. It was unseemly, he
bellowed, that with all the might of Christendom at hand the King should cower,
and wait for the hand of his enemy to strike. One man refused the council of
all others, Reginald, Arnat, the Wolf of Kerak. Then, to his side came De
Riddeford, the dour head of the all the Knights Templar. Together they would go
to the King’s tent that night, and argue with him until the sun was nearly up,
bending his mind to another, more dangerous course. Poor Guy had not the spine
to stand by his earlier decree, and he wavered, reversing himself in the hot
morning, and ordering instead that all the Christian host should set forth to
attack.

       The assembled lords protested, for there
would be no water for two long days until they reached the Sea of Galilee where
Saladin waited for them. They would be in grave danger under the merciless sun,
extreme with thirst and then forced to fight while their need was greatest.
Yet, Guy, set upon in the night by the Wolf and his accomplice, would not hear
their words. Reginald shouted the dissenting voices down, accusing them of
cowardice and sacrilege, and demanding they hold their allegiance to the king
and march as he ordered.

       Paul knew the history, yet he doubted if he
would see any of it play out. His time was ebbing away. The chill of eternity
was settling around him, and he seemed to be fading, insubstantial, a ghostly
figure waiting for the final moment to strike. He heard strange sounds at the
edge of Jabr’s recitations—otherworldly sounds, like hounds racing wild over
the purple veiled highlands, braying at the slowly setting moon. He shook
himself, gathering strength by sheer force of will, and he listened once more
to Jabr’s voice—his one tether to the here and now.

       “I swear by heaven and the one who comes in
the  night;” he chanted the Sura of Nightly Visitations. “And how may you learn
of the one who comes by night?
The star of piercing brightness shines; so remember, there is not a soul that
roams this earth without a keeper. Then let man consider of what he is created:
He is created of water pouring forth, pure and flowing water…”

       How true, thought Paul; how thin and
insubstantial was the life of a man, constantly flowing away to some unknown
end, merging at last in the ocean of life and time.
But
there was hope in that verse as well—
there is
not a soul that roams
this earth without a keeper,
he repeated the phrase in his mind.

      
As Jabr spoke Paul shivered with an icy
chill. Could this be the moment, he wondered? Then he saw how Jabr shuddered as
well, pulling his robes tight about his thin frame and looking over his
shoulder. His eyes opened wide at the sight of a strange, frosty mist hovering
near the arch of the hidden vault. Paul saw it too, and he struggled up with a
start, seeing a human form take shape in the haze!

       It was a woman, veiled in white, with tawny
hair. The light of her eyes shone upon him briefly, with strange recognition.
He gaped at the spectacle, as if an
angel
had come upon him in his hour of greatest
need, a visitor in the night, called to this place by Jabr’s faithful reading
of the holy Koran.

       The spirit quavered in a mist of a thousand
colors, reaching an arm towards him as though she were come to lay claim to his
soul. Poor Jabr quailed at the sight, bowing low. Then the icy fire of the mist
and light failed, and the vision was gone, fading to blue vapors that fled into
the shadows.

       Jabr started up, his face beaming with
celestial joy. “Jibra’el has sent an angel, Do-Rahlan! An angel has come to
guard your soul and call you home!” He clutched the volume of the Koran to his
breast and stood. ”I will go bring offering. We will burn sweet incense here, Allah
be praised!” All of his hopes had come true. Allah, the Compassionate, the
Merciful, had seen fit to accept this man as a believer.

       Paul gaped at the place where the apparition
had appeared. The cold residue of fog was strangely familiar to him. Something
in his mind tugged at him, whispering some inner knowledge of what he had seen,
but he did not heed it. Jabr was up and gone to another chamber of the vault,
and Paul waited, a feeling of hope and redemption dawning on him.

       Then the distant sound of men’s voices came
to him, echoing in the stony recesses of the archive. There was anger in the
words, though he could not make out what they said. A clamor of strife and
warning resounded from the entrance to the cave. They had been found! Aziz was
barring the way, guarding the entrance while he shouted the alarm.

       The Sami had come, with five men on fast
horses. Even as Aziz drew his sword, faithful to his charge, black arrows
whistled from the shadowy slopes and struck him down. The Sami had come, his
heart flushed with the thrill of the hunt, and the vengeance he would soon mete
out upon the stranger for the shame he had endured. He could not allow the man
to stand before Sinan, no matter what his master had pressed upon him. He would
say the man cursed him, and fell upon him with death in his eyes. Sinan could
not condemn him, for in his heart of hearts he knew as well that every action
would simply make a new truth. The Sami would act by the credo he held dearest.
Everything was permitted, he thought to himself as he sped on up the hill, and
nothing
was written. Nothing at all.

       A thousand years, and half a world away,
Kelly sat breathlessly at his  terminal, monitoring the progress of Maeve’s
brief jump. He kept a tight rein on her, just a five second window opening at
the coordinates he had fed into the machinery of the Arch. He hoped it would be
enough for her to see whether his hunch was correct—that Paul was actually
there in the place where the token had been unearthed. Even as he closed the
breach, bringing Maeve back to the year 2010 in Berkeley, doubt gnawed at him.
He heard all Maeve’s arguments alive in his mind, but then, a second later it
was her voice in real time that commanded his attention, speaking over the
intercom from the Arch corridor below.

      
“Kelly? It worked. I’m back. Good God! It
was amazing, but he’s there. He was right in front of me, gaping at me like he
had seen a ghost!”
The excitement was driving her on.
“Eight feet…maybe
ten feet away from me, Kelly; and directly in front.”

       “The angel has spoken!” Kelly beamed with
elation. “Get dressed, Maeve. I’m adjusting the Arch coordinates now. Make sure
you’re out of the chamber!”  His hands moved with feverish motion as he began
to key commands. Easy, now, he said to himself, forcing calm on his agitated
movements. You have to get this right.

       He was feeding in the last known pattern
signature on Paul from the first mission. It would not be precise, but there
would be some data there that would find a match. He wanted the system to open
a breach and locate the centermost point of any matches it found—and he would
set the search coordinates just where Maeve indicated, ten feet from the GPS
position where she had appeared. Once he had this central anchor he could tell
the system to expand outward from that point. It was a gamble, but it was his
only chance. He was going to scoop up a tiny segment of reality from another
time and place, and bring it here to the Arch corridor. He had the retraction
set to shift everything spatially as well.

       Now he could only hope that Paul’s theory
was correct—that time did not want him there, and would do anything possible to
send him on his way. The system would be looking for anomalous readings within
the sphere of his retraction scheme—anything that didn’t belong in the milieu
of 1187.

       His coordinates were in, and the Arch was spinning
out smoothly at 100% power. He raced to the retraction module and opened the
safety on the switch. “I hope you’re right, Paul. For God’s sake—let this
work.”

       The Sami’s men swept past the fallen body of
Aziz as they reached the top of the ridge. They found the hidden cleft in the
hillside and burst through, sharp knives drawn at the ready. They were driven
on by the Sami, as much by the fear of his following as anything else. The Sami
strode into the hidden vault, his hand tight on the hilt of his dagger. Just
one flick of his wrist and the blade would run true. Its poison would steal
away the life of the heathen in their midst. The wolf in the fold would be
slain, and Sinan would see the wisdom of his deed in the end.

       The five assassins fanned out, flitting from
one chamber to the next like silent shadows. Then there came cries of fright
and alarm. The Sami rushed after them, finding at last the hidden vault of the
archive. There was a chill upon the air, unearthly cold, and the room shimmered
in a wavering mist. The blue fire flared in his eyes as he sought for his
enemy, and he thought he saw the shape of a man cowering on the floor, a heavy
fog surrounding him. At once he moved, his hand striking out like a coiled
snake, his dagger lancing at the formless shape in the shadows.  Yet he heard,
to his great dismay, the chink of the blade where it struck the hard stone wall,
glancing harmlessly away and falling with a dull thud on the thick carpeting of
the alcove. He rushed forward, braving the frosty mist when his men quailed at
the sight. His arms reached out, striking this way and that in wide arcs as he
groped in the violet haze, but all to no end. The stranger was gone.

Epilogue – The Time War

Nordhausen was the last
of the project team
members to arrive for the meeting in his study that night. He told the others
to go right ahead and let themselves in, using the key he left under his mat. 
He had been delayed at U.C. Berkeley, purportedly doing some research there
that he claimed had some bearing on the debriefing. As he hastened up the steps
to the study door he was still thinking about it all, the dig, the Ammonite,
Paul’s strange disappearance, and his own narrow escape from Wadi Rumm.

       After Rasil returned to him, the two men did
not have long to wait until the Nexus failed. Rasil was the first to know of
it, but Robert recalled the shivering sensation of déjà vu that had come upon
him. The ride was over, and they had both survived. Apparently the Meridian had
not been altered—at least not to any appreciable degree that he could discern
there and then. What had happened to the world beyond the silent red walls of
Wadi Rumm was anybody’s guess.

       Rasil’s men were both safe, returning to the
cave and setting explosives in the well. Rasil gave the order to detonate them
with real reluctance. When the smoke billowed out into the russet evening he
stared at Nordhausen with a look of recrimination in his eyes. The sharp report
of the explosion echoed through the canyon, resounding from the tall pillars of
wind sculpted stone.

       “So goes the Well,” he had whispered. “No
more will it deliver the souls of the faithful to our agents in Massiaf. I
wonder how Sinan will fare without the scrolls to guide him now?”

       “What’s that?” Nordhausen pretended he had
not heard the man, still uncertain of his own fate now that the interval of
safety within the Nexus Point had elapsed. Rasil was so focused on his own
inner reverie that he did not realize the professor was so close at hand. He 
had given him a chilling look, his eyes replete with emotion that resolved to a
feeling of intense hostility, carefully controlled, a smoldering anger that he
kept in check.

       Nordhausen was so taken by the man’s
expression that he thought he was done for. “I suppose you mean to kill me
now,” he remembered saying. “Finishing up all the dirty business of the hour,
are we?”

       Rasil had simply smiled, fitting his pith
helmet in place and watching as his men retrieved their little train of camels.
“No, my friend,” he said. “That is not permitted. Even though I am convinced
you know more about this affair than you let on, it is not seemly for a Walker
to strike down another as you suggest. We do not act rashly. And, after all…”
He started away toward the squawking camels where his men mounted a few yards
off, turning to speak over his shoulder as he went. “I am no assassin.”

       They had left him there to simmer with it
all, alone in the vast silent canyon; miles from any help. The helicopter
showed up three hours later, stirring the silt and salmon grit of the canyon
floor as it alighted. It had been sent on hire, said the pilot. The emergency
call had come in just a few hours ago from the United States, saying that a
researcher had gone missing in Wadi Rumm, and giving exact GPS coordinates of
the site he had been preparing for shipment. He had Kelly to thank for that,
and Paul, though he did not know it at the time. The professor remembered his
joy at being rescued, but the long flight home was fraught with misgiving.