27
“So we’re back to this,” said Robert, with a fallen expression. “It’s Kelly again, at the edge of annihilation, and all because of my meddling.”
“Why do you think that way?” Paul tried to console him, but Robert just shook his head.
“I had to have my precious manuscript… had to see Old London to breathe in the milieu of Sherlock Holmes. Now look at it. The moment I stepped into the grand gallery of the British Museum and saw… or rather felt the obvious vacancy there, I knew something was amiss. The Rosetta stone was gone, and I knew in my gut that I had something to do with it. It was me, Paul; my damnable fascination with history, and books, and opera, and all the rest. I sat there in the bar and toasted with Oscar Wilde! I consorted with Primes, as Maeve would have it, and now look at this affair.”
“Don’t be silly, Robert. We’ve already determined that your missions have caused no significant change in the Meridian. You merely happened upon this Time war, that’s all. It was mere synchronicity. The real culprits are the terrorists—on either side—who keep meddling with the history.”
“I suppose,” said Robert, needing some consolation now. “But what makes us any different, Paul? We’re the ones meddling now, and we’re paying a hell of a price for it—we’re giving them Kelly, for God’s sake, or humanity’s sake—and not even that. We’re taking sides here. Anything we do to save the things we love will wreak havoc on another culture. It’s maddening!”
Paul was silent, the gravity of his friend’s words finally reaching him on an emotional level. “Perhaps Maeve was right all along,” he said softly. “Perhaps we should have never started this thing, but it seems that this mission will finish it—one way or another. Yes, we are taking sides, I suppose. But what else can we do? We’re being asked to choose now—between the promises made by two possible futures. We have an eye on one, as it springs from our own culture, our own understanding. We haven’t seen the other, a world ruled by fundamental Islam, but we’ve seen enough of it to hazard a guess as to what that would be like. And we have LeGrand’s word as well. In the end, this is Kelly’s choice. If he wants to do this, then how can we stand in his way? In spite of all of that, there is still some truth to what you say. This has to stop. We cannot allow any future meddling in the Meridian again. After this, I’m shutting the whole thing down.”
Kelly was half an hour getting ready. The sudden realization that he was about to embark on a mission had primed his system with the adrenaline of anxiety. He was burning it off, fidgeting with the system console to be certain all the equipment was in order. He cleared as much RAM as he could find, and keyed in some backup subroutines.
All the while the great weight of what he was about to attempt began to drag on him. A read of the DVD video for embedded data produced the coordinates, in both space and time. He found himself staring at the numbers, disbelieving them. The temporal coordinates were going to take him over ten thousand years into the past! He was going to take one small step in the Arch tunnel and emerge in pre-dynastic Egypt! What would he do there? What would he find?
LeGrand had come to his side, his eyes begging an audience, with a look that was almost reverent. “Mister Kelly,” he whispered. “May I have a word with you on the mission?”
Kelly caught Maeve out of the corner of his eye. She had come back with his costuming, a simple Arabic robe, and she was trying to stay busy in the anteroom, fussing through her accessories, a headpiece, braided sash and sandals, but he could feel her intermittent gaze on him, and knew that she was keenly aware of LeGrand, and very uneasy.
“When you arrive,” LeGrand began, “you will be able to clearly sight the location of the sphinx by looking for the moon. Understand? Just turn toward the light. You’ll be arriving at night, for your own security, and you should be able to see the monument easily enough. There will be a watercourse that flows to the cleft between the lion’s front paws. Make your way to that depression, and approach the monument by following the stream.” He smiled, the weight of his cheeks seeming to strain with the effort, but his grey eyes held real warmth. “Do you swim?”
“Swim? Yes. I do a workout at the YMCA every other month.”
“Splendid. You may have to do a bit of that as you approach the sphinx. The stream will enter the monument—we aren’t sure exactly how, but you’ll figure it out. I have every confidence!”
Kelly digested that a moment, then asked: “And this lock on the waterway you mentioned—it’s meant to regulate the flow of the watercourse?”
“We believe so. The water flows toward the monument, but when the river is at high flood stage, the lock prevents the interior chambers from being flooded. If you can see that it fails to do that, some time before the dawn, then we believe the mission might have a good chance for success.”
“Before dawn?” Kelly gave him a searching look. “Let me understand this: you say the lock regulates the river at high flood stage. Then the flood comes with the dawn?”
LeGrand hesitated briefly, his face soon set with resolve. “I’m afraid so.”
“How can you know that?”
“We have a way of taking a quick peek at things—don’t ask me to explain it, but Research tells me this is what will happen.”
“And you expect the flood to damage the monument?”
“We hope as much. Our research has determined that the ground beneath the eastern sphinx is somewhat compromised. The river is actually intruding and infiltrating below the monument in deep aquifers. There is a zone of instability there. If the flood waters are allowed to penetrate to the hidden inner chambers of the sphinx, we believe that the pressure may just be enough to… to cause a collapse.” His eyes held Kelly’s now, waiting.
“I see…” Kelly looked down, his finger tapping aimlessly at the side of a keyboard. “And where will I be when this happens?”
“A difficult question,” said LeGrand. “We went round and round with it ourselves. Mr. Graves was a real advocate for you, of course. Many others as well. The problem is this, however: we just don’t know what you might do once you arrive, or what may happen to you. You know how things go. You reach to tie a loose strap on your sandal and lose your footing—that sort of thing. There’s an infinity of variation between the setting of the moon and the rising sun. How could we hope to account for it all?”
“Of course,” said Kelly, the numbers man acceding to the impossibility inherent in the math. There was no way they could write a retraction algorithm that would be able to predict his exact location at the key moment. “Then you’re timing the retraction to the particle decay?”
“It’s the only chance we have,” LeGrand agreed quickly. “I’ve had a word with Mister Dorland, and he seems confident that he can get just the right infusion in the particle chamber.”
“Right,” said Kelly, but his tone was hollow. He knew that Paul would do his best, but the quantum fuel situation was grave now. Even if there was enough left to pull him out, the situation could be chaotic. He’d be underground, with a flood tide careening through the chambers of the sphinx. How would he escape?
LeGrand seemed to sense his thoughts and spoke softly, his voice laden with emotion. “We know we may be asking a great deal of you, Mister Kelly…”