Meridian - A Novel In Time (The Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  Nordhausen still held his right arm in an iron grip, but he slowly let go. Paul could hear him breathing heavily and caught the vapor of his breath in the cold night air. “We made it through,” he said.

  Nordhausen was looking around them in all directions, trying to immediately place some familiar object in his new frame of reference. He felt a queasy, dizzy feeling, as though he had just been spun around and around, and then let go to grope his way in the dark. He dropped to his knees.

  “You all right?” Paul knelt beside him.

  Nordhausen put a hand down to steady himself, feeling the clammy wetness of the ground broken by sharp, flinty gravel. He took a deep breath. “Amazing!” he exclaimed. “It’s so dark.”

  “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, the
re 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.

  “What a storm,” Paul exclaimed. “Beautiful, isn’t it? And terrible.” Paul’s eyes widened at the at the sight, but his excitement left him when he saw the look on Nordhausen’s face. “What’s wrong?”

  The professor stood up, sniffing the cold air, clearly disturbed. “That’s not a thunderhead, Paul. Smell that?... A kind of musty, sulfuric odor, yes?”

  “Almost volcanic.” Paul was noticing things now, his senses attuned to the land and sky about him as the growing light revealed more features on the gloomy landscape. He had a sinking feeling that something was amiss.

  “The only volcano of note in the area would be down near Ma’an. It shouldn’t be active, however.”

  “What about all the volcanic wastelands out east?”

  “Dormant for thousands of years,” said Nordhausen.

  “You studied that map of yours well.”

  “That and a few other notes on the geology before we left.” Nordhausen was hefting the stone in his hand. “Have a look at this,” he said as he extended the polished rock to Paul. “I saw a lot of them on the ground back there.” His arm gestured down the pathway where they had struggled in the rain earlier. “It’s quartz,” he said with an air of finality. “Shocked quartz, to be precise. Notice the striations under the surface? This is very rare, but look how the lowland glitters in places out that way.” He pointed at the gravely plain. “More of these quartz deposits, whatever they are. I found several pieces of it, and lots of little glassy beads on the ground as well.”

  “I’m not a geologist, Robert. What’s up?”

  “Shouldn’t be here.” Nordhausen shook his head as he shielded his eyes, straining to pick out more features to the west. “We’re in the wrong place. We may have shifted east into the volcanic debris fields after all.”

  “You’re telling me you can make that kind of judgment based on a few rocks?”

  “Well let me put it to you this way—” Nordhausen had that tone in his voice that was just skirting the edge of sarcasm. “You wouldn’t expect to find palm trees in a conifer forest. These rocks are out of place—or we’re not where we were supposed to be. See any sand out there? It should be a broad flat plain rolling east from the rift valley edge, a dry and sandy region with occasional wadis and lots of multi-tiered islands of sedimentary rock. And this sky…” Nordhausen craned his neck up at the heavy clouds overhead. “The air is heavy, alright. It’s laden with sulfur and ash and other airborne particles. Look here.”

  He stooped and groped the flat rock he had been sitting on, holding up his hand as evidence. A ruddy smear stained his palm. “I’ll wager this is all over the place. And it’s not only the rocks.” The professor held up a small blanched leaf.

  “Taking samples, Robert? I thought you were interested in history, not botany and geology.”

  “Couldn’t help but notice this bit here.” Nordhausen offered his last exhibit. “Fern,” he said quietly. “Nothing I recognize, exactly, but the leaf structure is very apparent. Now, how can I be plucking dead fern leaves out of the Jordanian desert in 1917?”

  Paul looked at him, wanting to argue the point for hope’s sake but seeing that Nordhausen was very confident about his assessment. The sinking feeling grew to a pit of anxiety in his gut. “Great,” he said. “That’s just great. We have one chance to save the world and we botch up the coordinates. Well, if we’re not in the Arabian desert, then where the hell are we? Can you tell me that much?”

  “I don’t think it’s a question of where, Paul. I think it’s a question of when.”

  The implications of what Nordhausen was saying finally hit home. Something was terribly wrong in the setting all around them. The sun was struggling to rise, laboring up through the menacing sky, but it didn’t seem to be getting much lighter. The wan light was filtered by the brooding clouds, casting an eerie henna glow on all the land about them.

  “But Kelly said he was just going to shade the variable a bit.” Paul’s protest seemed futile. “He said it was too late to change the time coordinate; that all he could do was nudge it a bit. I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, he nudged it, alright. Lord!” Nordhausen’s eyes were alight with a sudden realization. “Shocked quartz, glass tektite bead deposits, withered fern…” Before he could voice his conclusion Paul pointed at something down on the eastern slope of the ridge.

  “What’s that?”

  Nordhausen followed the line of his arm, noting a strange form on the ground a few hundred yards below them. They instinctively started towards it, drawn by its smooth regular shape and blanched color in contrast to the reddish-yellow cast of the ground around them. If they had brought any sense of caution with them, it was quickly abandoned when they finally reached the spot. Nordhausen could barely believe his eyes.

  “Look at this! It’s in almost pristine condition.” They were staring at a strangely familiar shape embedded in the rock face. It was an almost perfectly preserved fossil, over two meters wide; a beautifully regular shell that curved in a graceful arc from the edge of the ridge. There were long, tubular extensions from the base of the shell that reached out for several feet in curvy parallel lines before they vanished beneath the russet crust of the ground.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s an Ammonite!” Nordhausen smiled. “They were large squid-like creatures—very ancient. Look at the preservation! I’ve never seen anything like it; particularly exposed to the elements like this. It’s hardly calcified.”

  “But what’s it doing here?”

  “Oh, they’ve found quite a few fossils like this in the region,” said Nordhausen. “This whole area was once a shallow sea bed swarming with these big fellows. But that was millions of years ago. In some locations in Jordan, such as the Ajloun region, Ammonite fossils were found in building stone. Most of the time you can hardly recognize them, as their hard shells are deeply embedded in the soft limestone. You’d never see one like this!” He circled the find with obvious admiration. “Why, it’s too complete, and too well preserved.” His voice began to take on a hollow tone, losing its enthusiasm.

  “It’s too young.” Paul came to the obvious conclusion, and each one looked at the other, as though waiting for an answer that would lead them out of the dilemma that was becoming ever more apparent to them.

  “Shocked quartz, glass tektite bead deposits, withered fern—”

  “And Ammonites.” Paul folded his arms, as much to console himself as to fend off the chill of the morning. They stared at the fossil and then looked around them at the roiling sky. The horizon was still blood-red, lightening to shades of ocher and orange. The sun was making no headway against the overriding gloom above them.

  “What’s it all mean, Robert?”

  “Well,” Nordhausen gathered his caliph’s robe about him and sat down, square on the smooth rounded shell of the Ammonite fossil. “It means we may very well be in Jordan, but I’m damn well certain it’s not 1917.”

  11

  Lawrence Berkeley Labs - 2:40 AM

  Maeve stood in the great oval entrance to the Arch corridor. The sliding doors were open and she could still see the strange, milky auroras of light swirling between the metallic ribs of the Arch itself. There was a solid yellow line on the floor, and she edged toward it cautiously, keeping well back. The sound of the generators was slowly winding down, and the vibration under her feet stilled itself. She called out for Paul and Robert, peering into the montage of dissipating color, but heard only the returning echo of her own voice.
>
  They were gone.

  A flood of emotions arose as she considered the full implications of that. On the one hand she was relieved to see that the two men were not lying dead on the cold metal flooring of the corridor. The breaching sequence had worked—it had all worked—and the two men had vanished from the present Meridian into the ocean of time. Where they would emerge was anybody’s guess. They could be anywhere, though she hoped Kelly’s optimism might prove true. Now her mind returned to the error readings on the temporal vector display. The error had been numerically small. It might only be a matter of hours or days, which was the whole point of shading the temporal breaching point on the negative side of the event. Nothing could be done if they arrived too late. Early was always workable, she concluded.

  Satisfied that there was nothing she could do here for the moment, she turned and headed back toward the elevator shaft, her mind still cluttered with thoughts of Kelly and the strange call from her mother. The digital clock on the elevator wall gave her a moment’s anxiety. It was nearly 3:00 AM!

  Up in the control room she found Kelly hunched over his laptop, his finger tapping on a touch pad as he scrolled through a long series of numbers and formulae.

  “Looking for footprints?” Maeve leaned on the back of his chair, and he gave her a tentative glance. She could see the guilt in his eyes, and the fear.

  “They got through, didn’t they.”

  “They went somewhere,” said Maeve. “I hope you’re going to tell me where in a second. What was the variance on the temporal readout?” She looked at Jen, but the young woman had an odd look on her face, not following what they were talking about.

  “Mr. Ramer?” Jen hesitated to answer the question, prodding Kelly for help.