“No city lights, no cars, no streetlamps,” said Paul. “And on a night like this we won’t even get much starlight. Did you bother to check the phase of the moon?”
“Yes,” said Nordhausen, “It was very regular that month. Full on the 1st of the month, a half moon on the 7th, dark on the 14th, and full again on the 28th. If we’re on target we should see a waning crescent for the 10th. Do you see it? It should be up by now, unless this is a pre-dawn hour.”
“Can’t make out a thing in this weather, but you’re right. It’s dark as hell. And cold!”
“We’ll find out soon enough, I suppose,” said Nordhausen.
“Are you all right?” Paul put a hand on Robert’s shoulder.
“That was weird. Breathtaking! Did you open your eyes?”
“Are you kidding?”
“You mean you closed your eyes? Oh, Paul, it was awesome. The range of color and the movement of the light was head spinning. It had a discernable rhythm to it, though. Almost… musical in organization. I’m just a little dizzy, that’s all. It’s passing. Here, help me up off these wet stones!”
“We should find some cover. It’s cold! I thought this was the desert.”
“It is the desert, but it can get down near freezing here in the winter. You don’t have much fat on those bones. I hope you dressed for the rain. I tried to warn you.”
Paul extended a hand to help Nordhausen to his feet. Their eyes were gradually adjusting to the darkness, but the light drizzle of rain masked the surrounding skyline and they could barely make out the formless undulation of the ground.
“I can see how Lawrence’s men would miss the first train,” said Nordhausen. Is that a hill over there?”
“Looks like a low ridge. There may be a wadi at the bottom that isn’t flooded out, or even a cave. Let’s move in that direction. If we can get ourselves out of the rain and hunker down until dawn, we should be able to see the Hejaz Railway from the top of that rise.”
Robert nodded his agreement and the two men began to pick their way over the broken ground. It was slow going, for the area was littered with sharp-edged rocks that were slick with the rain and made for very treacherous footing. Nordhausen nearly slipped and fell, righting himself at the last minute. He stooped for a moment, to get his breath, and his eye caught something on the ground that he didn’t expect to find.
“That’s odd,” he murmured to himself as he picked up a smooth rock and hefted it in his palm. He squinted about him, noting how the minimal light seemed to be reflected from similar stones here and there. Paul came up behind him and he struggled up onto his feet again. “A bit out of shape, I see,” he breathed.
“Me too,” said Paul. “The air seems so heavy. Maybe we’re just feeling the effects of the time shift.”
“Or the creep of old age. We’re both over forty now, you know.”
They struggled along, eventually reaching a low shelf of stone at the base of the ridge. At one point the effects of erosion had cut away the softer ground near the bed of the wadi and formed an overarching rim of rock that provided some shelter from the rain. By the time they had sloshed their way across a thin stream of runoff, they were wet, tired and shivering with the cold. They huddled in the dark, their backs pressed against the hard stone behind them to avoid the occasional wet gusts of drizzle and rain.
“What miserable weather,” said Paul.
“Not what you expected, I know,” Nordhausen replied. “At least the rain seems to be tapering off.”
“What’s that smell?” Paul screwed up his face. “Where’s all that sweet, unpolluted desert air?”
“Yes, I noticed that too. And the rain has a bitter taste to it as well. Very odd…” Nordhausen was still rolling the small rock in the palm of his hand, noting the smooth, even surface, deep in thought. He leaned out, squinting up past the lip of overhanging stone to try and spy out the moon or some guiding star. “Moon must be down,” he said. “But I think the sun will be up soon. See that red smear off there? I think we may be getting close to dawn. It seems to be growing lighter up ahead. That would be east, then. At least we’re heading in the right direction.”
“Want to look for a way up this ridge? Might warm us up.” Paul was tired, but driven by the urgency of their mission. He stood up, stooping to avoid the outcropping of rock overhead, and started down into the wadi, grateful to be moving to get some blood flowing through his limbs. The rainwater had run off quickly, and they were able to make their way along the wadi using little islands of gravely rock embedded in a fine reddish silt. Paul angled to the right, looking for a safe way up the side of the ridge and picked out a path that seemed promising. He looked over his shoulder every so often, and saw that Nordhausen was falling behind him as he climbed. The professor seemed to stop now and then, picking at the ground or peering at an occasional clump of withered plant growth. Paul gestured at him to hurry.
It was another ten minutes of hard climbing, but they eventually reached the top of the ridge. Paul squinted towards the blood-red dawn to the east, looking for some sign of the railway, but it was still too dark. Nordhausen huffed up and sat down on a flat shale, winded and perplexed.
“Should be light soon,” he said. “Look how red the horizon is. There must be heavy clouds out that way, or smoke. The light seems too diffused.”
“Can’t make out much from here,” said Paul. “God, I hope the spatial coordinates were accurate. What was that business Kelly said about shading a variable or taking off a second or two on the numbers?”
“What? Oh the variable shade would have been a temporal adjustment I asked for. Kelly wanted to be sure we arrived before the 10th. The spatial data was approximate, of course. It was the best I could do on short notice. We certainly seem to be in the desert, but who can say where?”
“That’s what worries me.” Paul flapped his arms to try and warm himself, his long robes flowing in the dim light. “We could be miles and miles away from the rail line. Lawrence and his men had camels to get around, but we’re on foot. If the spatial coordinates are off, we could be in trouble.”
Nordhausen was quiet for some time. When he spoke, his voice had a tentative quality to it, as though he was feeling his way through something in his mind, not quite certain. “It’s the temporal coordinate that worries me more. The land forms here seem too fresh and sharp.”
“What do you mean?”
“This ridge we just came up,” he explained. “There was too much smooth rock face. It should be heavily eroded—in terraces—at least that’s the typical structure of the land in this region. These hills seem odd: too unweathered; too young.”
“Well I wouldn’t worry too much about that. There’s plenty of variation in nature. Maybe we’ve climbed a big hunk of basalt.”
“That’s an igneous rock, and there shouldn’t be much of it around.”
“Well, there were basalt deposits in Egypt that served as good quarries for the pyramids, and some in the Sinai as well.”
“Not here, Paul. Most of that geology in Jordan is farther north, above the Red Sea. The landforms here should be sedimentary rock: calcite, and dolomite limestone, and perhaps some flints or marl clay beds thrown in as well. If we’re in the lower Trans-Jordan region, where we’re supposed to be, there should be very little basalt exposed to the surface like this. That rock would have to be very old.”
“Look there!” Paul pointed east toward the red horizon where the smoky clouds parted and the sunlight streaked through in hues of deep auburn and amber. The sudden illumination shocked them with the vision of a broiling sky, thick with dark, knotted clouds that seemed to smolder and glow, replete with red embers wafting up on heavy smoke. Nordhausen looked around, a troubled expression on his face.