“It was the lost manuscript,” Nordhausen pleaded, “not the original. It was stolen on the train ride Lawrence took—”
“I knew that was what you were up to,” Maeve’s eyes narrowed, and she swiped at Robert again, the parasol rapping hard on the back of Paul’s chair as he dodged.
“Hey, take it easy,” Paul protested, but Maeve was angling for a better chance at getting the professor on the head.
“Kelly!” Robert yelled. “Do something! Stop that crazy woman before she runs me through with that thing.”
Kelly had a big grin on his face, and he simply folded his arms and smiled, leaning back in his chair as he struggled to suppress his laughter.
“I’ll show you who’s crazy,” Maeve lunged forward with the parasol, plugging the professor right in the belly with a hard jab. He yelped in protest, but then simply held up his hands in surrender.
“Alright, I give in. I did it, and I’ll never live down the shame. I was just a selfish man, hoping to rescue something from trash heap of history, and it all came down around me, to no good.”
Maeve was ready to give him one last jab, but she relented, plunking the parasol down on the floor with a hard thump and leaning on it heavily. There was a moment of strained silence, then Kelly burst out laughing.
“We knew you were after something,” he said. “Maeve did the follow-up research and narrowed things down. The only event that was even remotely significant was the loss of the manuscript. So, you actually found the darn thing, did you? And you mean to say you still have it?”
“Yes, yes, I confess. It’s stored in a vault in my study. I know—the consequences could be devastating. Suppose it was meant to be discovered by someone else—years from now—when we are all gone. I’ve had that in my belly ever since.”
“And you’ll get a lot more in your belly if you so much as think of another stunt like that again,” Maeve vented. “Next time I will run you through with this—or worse!”
Nordhausen passed a brief moment of terror, imagining the full brunt of Maeve’s anger unleashed upon him for his misadventures, though he knew he would deserve every agonizing second. He had been headstrong, and foolish, and he deceived his dearest friends at the same time. The whole weight of time seemed to fall on him now and he slumped against the console behind Paul’s chair, deflated and clearly upset with himself.
Maeve saw the expression on his face, but a gleam of mischief came to her eye as she looked at him.
“Do you know he tried to shoot Napoleon just now,” she said to Paul.
“What?” Paul looked at Robert, aghast.
“Now, see here, Maeve. I did no such thing!” The professor was trying to defend himself, his eye still fixed on the parasol.
“Oh, yes,” said Maeve, having her fun now. “Just after we manifested—before you moved us back on target. He waltzed right over, picked up a rifle, and he was aiming the damn thing out the window at Napoleon.”
“I was not!”
“I barely got to him in time.” Now Maeve smiled, unable to keep up the front of her anger, and satisfied that she had made her point with the professor.
Paul looked from one to the other, and Kelly was still laughing, holding his stomach as he rocked back in his swivel chair.
“Alright,” Nordhausen protested as he realized Maeve was playing out the moment for all it was worth. “Enough of this. You can think up some horror for me later, and I promise you I will submit to any punishment you decide to mete out. But the stone! We’ve got to figure this out! How could they pull off a switch like that? Could they have carved it elsewhere, at the target time, and then floated it to the site on the river?” The professor was trying to conceive the operation himself as he went along, filling in the gray with wild assumptions.
“Again,” said Paul, “what would they do with the original? It weighed 720 Kilos. You might get away with carrying some small object back on your person, like our literary thief here, but not an object the size of the Rosetta Stone. No… this is worse than we think,” he said.
Nordhausen waited, hanging on the unspoken conclusion that was evident in Paul’s voice. “Well?” he was unable to contain himself.
It was Maeve who spoke up now, her eyes fixed on Paul this time. “There’s been a transformation,” she said, matter of factly. “That’s why you pulled us out early; that’s why you won’t let the Arch spin down, isn’t it, Paul? You’re keeping the Nexus Point open for us here, because you know things have changed. Has anyone been outside this room since we returned? Does anyone have the slightest notion of what the world looks like out there?” There was an urgency in her voice, and an edge of fear.
Kelly wasn’t laughing any longer, and the four team members stood in silence, listening to the distant thrum of the generator turbines. Paul spoke next, his voice laden with the weight of Maeve’s deduction.
“I’m afraid she’s correct,” he said. “The alteration to the stone is too pronounced, too radical. If what you are saying is true, and it bore no inscription in Demotic or Greek, then our adversaries have managed to pull off a major coup while we were dallying about with this Rosetta business. God only knows what they’ve done.”
“What do you mean?” Robert looked at him, slipping out from behind the chair.
“What I mean is this: you say you think the Assassins were using the glyphs as a code, correct? Then this whole affair has been aimed at preserving the secrecy of that language. Now, I don’t know how they accomplished it, but they’ve managed to permanently do away with the Touchstone that led to the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. That means their code is secure, and all the messages they’ve been sending back and forth through time will remain a secret. Who knows what advantage that has given them in the Time war—perhaps it was enough to swing things in their favor again.”
“Yes!” Nordhausen put in loudly. “Khalid said something about a transformation—do you remember it Maeve? He said there was a miracle. They worked it, day and night, and the best they could achieve was a hundred years of enmity. But now something has changed! Khalid said it was all made new again!”
“Khalid?”
“Someone we met at Rosetta. In fact, we met two agents in place. One man, a fellow named LeGrand, was clearly an operative of the Order. I was a bit obtuse on that point, but Maeve saw right through him. Then we were approached by a second man, an Arab. Later, at the dig site, the two men spoke, and it was clear that they knew one another—as adversaries.”
He gave Paul the details of their mission, and angled back to those final moments before the retraction pulled them out. “Can you imagine,” he began, “the man actually apologized. He asked forgiveness and said he would pray for us. I wonder what he meant by that?”
Maeve looked at Kelly, who was rocking back and forth in his chair, a steady squeak punctuating each move.
“What about the Golems, Kelly? I thought they were supposed to warn us of any variation in the Meridians.”
“Good point,” said Kelly, getting up quickly. He went over to the history module, leaning in to inspect the console. “We haven’t heard a peep from the Golems.” He settled into a chair and began entering commands.
“Is there a radio handy?” Nordhausen asked.
“Radio? Yes we have a shortwave built into the history console there.” Kelly pointed and Paul spun his chair around, fixing his eyes on the communications module.
He reached out, his hand hovering over the dial as if it might burn him. Then he switched on the radio and they all hushed to listen. The speaker played a steady wash of static, which seemed to surprise Kelly at once.