He gave them a long look, his eyes reflecting both fear and sorrow as he spoke. “Otherwise we lose our last hope,” he said darkly. “Don’t you see? We’re an island now, in a raging stream of catastrophe and chaos. And time is running out.”
24
The visitor was still eyeing the facility like a patron touring a museum.
“The original site,” he had said when he entered. “The Founders… All four together at once! This is more than any man could have hoped for in a lifetime. I am truly honored.”
Paul and Kelly were quite surprised when they saw Robert and Maeve escorting the man into the lab. Now they were gathered about the conference table in a room just off the main lab complex. Robert made the introductions, while Maeve watched with a sullen expression on her face. The professor recalled the heat of that last discussion with LeGrand, and he hoped the meeting would not soon disintegrate into a shouting match.
“So,” he concluded. “You’ve come with news about this transformation. It was the stone, wasn’t it. You see—I told you the Rosetta Stone was a crucial touchstone in the record of time. Without it we lose our knowledge of 5000 years of human history.”
“I’m afraid we lose a good deal more than that,” LeGrand said darkly. “In fact, we lose everything. The whole summation of our culture and civilization is swept away, lost, forgotten. Only the barest fragments remain, like the monuments of Egypt were pale reflections of that culture in our time.”
“Come now,” said Nordhausen, “it can’t be all that bad. Surely we lose our understanding of the past, but how does the loss of the stone bear upon our future?”
“You know quite well how, professor.” LeGrand’s grey eyes flashed as he spoke. “It was you who started this whole notion of the stone being an essential element for communication. Why, you were about to tell me all about it when we first met in Egypt—about Rasil, the Messenger; about the scroll you found in his pack.”
“You knew about that?”
“Not the details. Research had to brief me just now, before I was sent back.” He looked at the clock on the opposite wall, noting the steady forward progression of the second hand. The sight of it seemed to renew his agitation. “You’ve kept the Arch spinning, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” said Paul, “but we’re on internal generators. The connection to our outside power reserve appears to be severed. We’ve only a few hours fuel, I’m afraid.”
LeGrand’s eyes widened. “You’ve lost more than the connection to your local power company,” he said quickly.
“Yes,” said Robert. “We tried the radio, but the storm is playing havoc with the signal.”
“Storm?”
“We were up in the observation dome a moment ago,” said Paul.
“Yes,” Robert put in. “The whole city was shrouded in darkness. There was a freak storm raging—really quite unusual. In fact, I meant to go out and have a look.”
“No!” LeGrand nearly shouted, extending an arm to ward off some unseen evil. “You mustn’t leave the safety of the Nexus—none of you may leave. Don’t you understand? There’s been a transformation, and the whole of the world you knew—”
“Is gone,” Paul finished flatly. They all looked at him. “You weren’t looking at a storm, Robert. That was the frontier of annihilation—just a thin border zone at the periphery of our Nexus Point. Beyond it the world outside is likely to be very different from anything in our experience.”
“Yes,” said LeGrand. “Beyond the Nexus is the chaos of transformation. The world you knew is gone—all of it. The Nexus is a bubble in the stream. There are only three left that we know of, and this is one of them. The other two exist in the future, at our main operations center, such as it remains, and one more auxiliary site that we keep very well hidden. They were the only operations we happened to have going when the Heisenberg Wave struck, and I don’t know how much longer they will remain active. It was mere chance that I was scheduled for retraction, you see. I usually dally about a day or so after the stone is discovered—at least I did that on my first two missions to Rosetta. This time I told the messenger that I wanted to be pulled out as soon as possible. Fate would have it that my retraction saw one of our own Arch systems running at the time of the transformation. They sent me here to you because I was one of the very few travelers who were protected by a Nexus when the alarm came in. ”
“Only three systems left?” Nordhausen scratched his head. “I don’t understand. Why don’t your associates simply turn on the rest. Surely you must have others.”
“Once…” LeGrand seemed to sag with the admission. “We had twenty operational Arch complexes, but none of those sites exist now.”
Maeve could no longer restrain herself. “Good riddance to the lot of them! You see what your meddling has achieved? Are you telling me the world outside this complex is gone as well? Are you saying my Subaru isn’t parked in the lot outside; that I can’t make a stop at Peet’s on the way home this evening; that there’s no city out there at all?”
“I really don’t know,” said LeGrand. “I was pulled forward and immediately sent into the ready room for a quick briefing. I have no idea what lies beyond these walls, but I know one thing—if any one of us should step beyond the influence of the Arch field, we would immediately be exposed to the full force of Paradox—annihilation may be too strong a word, but perhaps not. Who can say what place you may hold in the Meridian taking shape out there? Who can say if any of you exist there at all?”
Maeve’s hand was shaking. “So you’ve finally done it,” she said with real anger. “It’s just as I feared.”
“On the contrary,” said LeGrand. “This was not our doing. Would we wish such a reversal on ourselves? No—our adversaries have brought this calamity upon us.”
“Just as you did to them on that very first mission, correct?” Maeve held his gaze, and LeGrand took a long breath.
“Yes,” he admitted. “That first mission to the Hejaz worked a transformation. When you prevented the destruction of the second train, you set a new template for all future time. You didn’t notice it in your own lives. The change rippled forward from 1917, but the effects did not gather strength until 2010, the date when Palma was to erupt as a result of the plot hatched by Ra’id Husan al Din. With your help, we stopped that catastrophe from occurring, and then set a watch on that island to secure it against any future tampering. Can you blame us? You, of all people, should understand, Miss Lindford. If the Palma event were not reversed, the whole of Western civilization would have spiraled down into oblivion. We had to act to save ourselves—to save it all—Christendom, Western culture, art, literature, the sciences—all the things you love so dearly—would you rather we left them to the ashes?”
“They were meant to die,” said Paul. “It was all meant to end at Palma, wasn’t it… The world we made possible was never meant to be. And this whole affair, this Time war, was the result of it all. Our adversaries, as you call them, were simply trying to preserve the integrity of the original Meridian, Maeve. I know this has crossed your own mind as well. Look… it’s difficult for us to admit it but, to use an old phrase, we’ve all been living on borrowed time.”
LeGrand looked from one to the other. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” he pleaded. “That’s why I’m here. We’ve one more chance to set things right! We found out what they were doing, you see, only too late to intervene. You were on to it, professor. Your little trip to the British Museum put us on the trail. It was the scroll, you see, the rubbing.”