Meridian - A Novel In Time (The Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  “I guess we’d have to kill ourselves first then, wouldn’t we?”

  “Oh, be quiet.” Nordhausen was tired of arguing with him.

  “How would we do it?” Paul tacked on one last thought.

  “I suppose I could wait until you go to sleep tonight and just bash your skull in with one of these rocks.” Nordhausen gave him a look that was intended to end the conversation.

  “No,” Paul lapsed on foolishly. “I think the best thing would be to just find a high cliff somewhere and throw ourselves off. We’d have to hope you are right about the environment fending off the bugs in our gut. I’d hate to think about the prospect of burning ourselves alive.”

  “Will you shut up about this!”

  Paul held up an arm in a placating gesture. At least, he thought, he wouldn’t die here alone. He looked at the fire, seeing the flames burning low. “I’ll see about finding some more of that dead fern,” he said wandering off. He went round the shoulder of the hill and spied out some beds of dry grass and fern in the distance. By the time he had gathered enough for the fire and returned he was surprised to find Nordhausen gone.

  “Robert?” The fire had gone out and the tin cup Nordhausen had been using lay tilted on its side. It was fearsomely cold. He was taken by an involuntary shiver as he looked around in the gloom for any sign of the professor. He shouted again, but his voice seemed to die in the heavy stillness of the air. Now where would Nordhausen go? Was he out collecting shocked quartz? He searched the ground for any obvious sign of disturbance but there were no footprints to be seen. A queasy feeling came to him as he squinted at the gloomy horizon.

  “Nordhausen?” His voice seemed very distant, thin and distended, almost an echo. He realized that he was loosing consciousness, and he slipped to the damp, pasty ground, thinking that the noxious gasses in the atmosphere must be overcoming him. Maybe Nordhausen wandered off to look for something and collapsed. Maybe they weren’t going to make it out of here alive after all. They wouldn’t have to jump off a cliff or burn themselves up. The fire and brimstone of the fifth extinction was going to chalk up its first two primates, long before they ever had the chance to evolve… His head swam and his vision blurred.

  He was very cold.

  MERIDIAN

  Part V

  The Desert

  “I seek refuge, with the Lord of the Dawn,

  From the mischief of created things;

  From the mischief of darkness as it overspreads;

  From the mischief of those who practice

  Secret Arts…”

  Sura CXIII – Koran

  “Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.”

  Alfred Lord Tennyson: Locksley Hall

  13

  Hejaz Railway - November, 1917

  Dorland remembered the dizzying spin in his head and the awful sensation of cold. He suddenly felt light as a feather, insubstantial, his life ebbing away on the chilled breath of the wind. The dark morning faded and he seemed to drift for a moment, vapor-like, a phantom hovering over the wrecked barren landscape about him. Then strange lights rushed at him from all directions and he shut his eyes, fighting off a rising sensation of nausea as he slipped away into unconsciousness.

  When he regained his awareness again he was lying on the ground, shivering and wet. The air had a strangely sweet smell to it, cleaned by a recent rain and laden with the scent of fresh washed stones. He moved, struggling to his feet on instinct, his body driven by some involuntary compulsion that he seemed to have no control over. The dizziness that had felled him a moment before was still with him, though not as severe. His vision swam, a blur of shadow and wet mist.

  He felt his legs moving in a jerky, reflexive rhythm as he struggled for footing on the damp earth. He was walking; stumbling across the undulating ground in the night, a solitary ghost on a dark, lifeless plain. Time passed unheeded, and he heard a faint sound rumbling in the distance, like rolling thunder that never ceased. He moved on, with aimless abandon, entranced by the fading memory of the brilliant lights in his mind. Some inner compass carried him west, though he did not know that at the time. As he walked and stumbled over sharp-edged shale and clumps of gray rock, he heard a strangely familiar sound emerging from the low rumble in the distance.

  There was a rhythm to the sound, and a steady urgency as it resolved itself in his mind. A faint, high note sounded above the churning wash and his brain attached a meaning to the sound at last. He struggled to focus his eyes, looking around him to try and locate the sound. A dim light glazed across his field of vision and he turned towards it, his ambling pathway suddenly attached to the wavering light on the black horizon.

  A cool wind struck him full in the face when he turned. The ground under his feet was suddenly flat and firm, a bed of smaller rocks reducing to a fine gravel. Each footfall made a distinctive crunch on the scattered stone, and then his feet struck something hard and he fell.

  He passed a moment of darkness where his awareness faded with a prickly sensation of light headedness. Then the blood rushed to his temples and he felt the icy touch of hard metal against his cheek. A strange humming rang in his ears, an eerie resonance of the sound he had heard earlier. He moved his arm, hand groping forward in the murky night, until he was able to sense the cold rim of an iron-hard shape on the ground near his head. His mind began to make gradual sense of the clues it was fed and he realized, at last, that he had stumbled upon the bed of a railroad.

  The emergence of something familiar in the bleak landscape gave him a reference point to rally on. His sense of self gathered strength and he remembered who he was now, and what he was supposed to be doing. An inner voice, the voice that had narrated his experience for as long as he could remember, began to speak to him again. We were wrong, it said. We must have simply landed on the volcanic debris fields earlier, far from our intended drop point. I was looking for Nordhausen and must have fallen and hit my head. Who knows how long I’ve been wandering around out here?

  He struggled up on one elbow, noting the lattice of coarse wood beams spaced at regular intervals between two metal rails. The place had a name in his mind now, and his sensibilities sharpened somewhat. His attention was soon focused on the sky, looking for the telltale drifts of cinder and smoky ash. Instead he saw streaks of gray-black clouds, which thinned in places to open on patches of starry sky.

  This can’t be right, he said to himself again. It was morning before—a brooding red dawn with that strange sulfuric smell on the air. Now it was night again. Could he have passed out from the noxious fumes and then wandered all day in a half-daze until he found this place?

  The singing of the metal rail line tugged at his attention and he struggled up onto unsteady feet, looking for some source of the sound. Off to his right he immediately saw the strange light again, closer now, and brighter. He knew at once that a train was coming, and some guarded corner of his mind whispered a warning to him. He began to move, stumbling over the rail lines and making his way along the tracks. Dizziness returned in waves, then receded. The sound of the train changed in tempo, and he heard a hissing release of pent up steam. He dimly perceived the sooty, black billow of smoke bloom from the bulk of a massive shape lit by a single eye of yellow light.

  The churning sound slowed and the intervals that spaced its chugging rhythm grew ever longer. He heard the squeal of metal on metal and a last hiss of steam. The train was stopping. The voice in his mind began to clamor at him now, urging him to move, to get off the rail bed and hide. He tried to obey, nearly tripping over a large rock at the side of the rail line. As he struggled to keep his footing, the ground seemed to vanish beneath him and he fell, rolling down the side of a short, sandy embankment. His vision danced again, the dizziness returning as he groped the damp earth for some sense of perspective in the inky darkness. He was soon able to pull himself up onto his feet again, and began stumbling away in into the desert.

  Voices came to him, faint and far away.
He remembered Nordhausen, wondering what had become of his friend. The voices grew louder, more insistent, though he did not know what they were saying. Formless shapes seemed to materialize before him as his head lightened again and he swayed, faint and cold.

  The next thing he remembered was the sound of another voice braying at him in an unfamiliar tongue. Hands were on him now, hard and cruel as they gripped his arms and shoulders, dragging him along. His feet struggled to move in a half-hearted, instinctive effort but, more often than not, his leather boots scuffed on the sand and gravel beneath him as he was pulled along. The hissing sound grew near and he was thrust hard against the flat, regular surface of something like a wall. His sensibilities were stirred by the jolt and he realized he had been pushed against the side of a train car, propped up by two rough looking men with dark beards and foul breath. Another man was peering at him, his fat lips moving as he spoke in an unintelligible voice.

  The man reached out and took hold of his chin, squeezing his cheeks as he shook his head slightly. Then he seemed to come to some conclusion and strode away into the dark. A few moments later, Paul was dragged off again in the iron grip of his bearded captors. For the first time Paul realized these men must be soldiers. His mind was sluggish and late in sorting out the clues: they were dressed in uniform, and carried rifles slung over their backs above bandoliers of ammunition.

  He knew what was happening to him now. This was the rail line in the Hejaz. Kelly had found a way to move them back on the target. This must be one of the trains manned by Turkish soldiers. But which train? What day was it? The warning voice in his mind began to nag at him again, and a flutter of anxiety stirred in his chest.

  He felt himself being lifted, dragged up a short flight of steps, and pushed through a narrow door. It was a train coach that had been cleared of its normal seating and furnished with a few simple desks and chairs, probably an officer’s coach, he thought. The relative warmth of the room was a scant comfort to him, and his eyes adjusted to the light of a single oil lamp guttering on a flat wooden desk to one side of the coach. There was a man seated there, dark and stiff in bearing. The light gleamed on his sleek black hair and he stared at Paul with a contemptuous look. His lips seemed to smirk below the dark stain of a thin mustache. Paul could see that the man wore insignia of rank, possibly a Captain, or most likely a Colonel in charge of this troop train.

  The man looked away for a moment turning his attention to a sheaf of paperwork on the desk. He dipped his ink pen into a shallow well and traced a few tentative strokes on a register with a dispassionate look on his face. As one hand pressed a stiff finger down the long list of names on his register, the other casually flicked off a checkmark here and there. The ink pen hovered over the paper briefly, and then he started to write. When no mark appeared on the paper he looked and saw that his pen was out of ink. He reached to dip it again in the ever diminishing pool of black ink, but then thought the better of it. With a sigh he put the pen down and turned his attention to the guards.

  He spoke to the men in a hard edged voice. Though Paul could not understand anything that was said, it was clear that the Colonel was not pleased with this interruption. The man’s eyes shifted to Paul again, narrowing with curiosity. He pursed his lips, deciding something, and gestured at the overhead rail that ran along the edge of the roof to provide a hand hold while the train was moving.

  There was no doubt in Paul’s mind now. He had stumbled onto the railway, and now he was taken by the Turks. Lord, help me, he thought. What day is it? Where exactly am I? Is this one of the trains Nordhausen had talked about? A thousand questions began to prey upon him now, and each one added to the queasy sense of alarm and fear in his chest.

  Paul felt the guards tighten their grip on him, stretching his arms up overhead and binding his wrists to a cold metal rail near the roof. The leather ties were pulled tight and bit at his hands when the guards released him. Paul struggled to gain his footing, letting his legs take the weight of his body to ease the strain. He was able to stand, though his legs felt tired and weak.

  The man at the desk waved at the guards again and they snapped off a crisp salute before tramping out through the narrow doorway, which closed in a creaking thump behind them. Paul’s eyes began to focus on the other man, noting his clean, well kept uniform and the polished leather of his belt and boots. But his vision was still a bit blurry; his thinking hazy in the unfamiliar setting.

  The man spoke to him in a foreign tongue that he knew must be Turkish. He had no comprehension of what the officer was saying, but if his tone was any indication, the man was making some derisive remark, his eyes replete with accusation as he spoke. The officer stood up suddenly and stepped closer, staring at him with curious regard. He looked him up and down, then his hand began feeling at Paul’s robes, groping the loose folds of his soiled clothing. His disgust seemed to redouble, and he reached out, rudely snatching Paul’s headdress away and throwing it to the ground.

  The officer shouted something at him, and when Paul did not answer he was struck a sharp blow on the side of his face. The slap from the officer’s open palm was just enough to shake Paul’s senses from the doldrums that had fogged them. His eyes rolled, then grew more focused. The officer slapped him again.

  “Damn!” the invective slipped from Paul’s lips before he realized what he was saying. He wanted to remain mute, to endure the interrogation as though deaf and dumb, but he did not yet have the presence of mind to control himself. The officer’s eyes widened at the remark, and he seemed to immediately come to a new assessment of his captive.

  “Ah, English,” he said with a satisfied grin, though his lips hardened to a half smile that bore no good will. “English!” The officer’s hands were on him now, tugging at his Arabian garb until he had torn the robes open and exposed the khaki tunic and trousers that Paul wore beneath them. As he did so, the mess kit and a small cloth bag with the remnant of the coffee Maeve had given to Nordhausen, spilled to the floor. The officer knelt briefly to retrieve them. He set the miss kit on the wooden desk and slowly raised the cloth bag to his nose, snuffing the contents with a pleased look on his face.

  “You are far from home, English.” The man’s speech had a thick middle-eastern accent, but Paul understood him. “Now what are you doing here wandering about in the desert a hundred miles from British lines?”

  The officer was still holding the coffee bag at his lips, savoring the rich aroma of the beans. “This is very good, English. How could you know I was needing coffee tonight?”

  The man set the coffee bag aside, his face hardening as he studied Paul more carefully. Light gleamed from a medallion pinned on his chest, and Paul’s eye was drawn to a silver star, the center finished in a thin, red enamel with a crescent moon superimposed upon it. The pointed arcs reached up around an emblem in the center. His long study of military history recognized it as the badge of honor that some came to call the Iron Crescent. He looked for other insignia, noting the braided shoulder pauldrons that designated this man’s rank. Yes, he was a Colonel, just as Paul had guessed. But Paul’s gaze was soon drawn to the man’s hand where he was drawing a long, sharp field knife from a leather scabbard at his side. His heart pulsed with a beat of fear.

  “You will curse at me, but yet not speak?” The Colonel hefted the knife in his hand, approaching Paul with bad intent. The blade was at his cheek, cold and sharp, and all vestiges of the fog that had bedeviled him soon fled. Paul’s heart thumped in his chest as the Turkish officer moved the knife slowly along the side of his face, resting the blade on his slender neck.

  “You shave well, English.” The colonel smirked as he spoke, “but you miss a spot or two under your chin.” His features hardened as he used the knife to slowly force Paul’s chin up, looking him full in the face. “Now you will answer me, or I will finish the job for you, but I assure you, I am no barber.”

  Paul felt the edge of the knife at his throat, and his breath came faster with the anxiety of the
moment. His mind was beset with the arguments he had made to Nordhausen over their camp fire earlier. The risk of contamination was very real. If he said anything to this man he might alter the time line, change things in some unperceived way that no one would ever realize until the damage was done. The only moral thing to do would be to remain silent. Wasn’t he the one who had argued about committing suicide to avoid contamination? He remembered the conversation well, but here, with the cold edge of a knife at his throat, he was not so brave or righteous as he once thought. He felt his body tense up, instinctively squirming away from the edge of the blade, his neck tense, wrists straining at the leather cords that bound his arms overhead.

  “Why do I find you here in the desert, English? I ask you one last time.” The knife twisted and he felt a sharp prick under his chin.

  Paul knew that to be caught in British kit, behind enemy lines, was a quick ticket to torture and possibly death. What should he say? “Not English…” The words slipped out again, tumbling into the tense stillness of the room. The Colonel’s dark eyes were alight with the flickering flame of the oil lamp on the desk. He removed the knife, a pleased smile on his face.

  “Not English? You wear English trousers, an English soldier’s shirt, though you hide them badly.” The Colonel’s hands groped along his sides, making their way down to his waist with hard searching fingers squeezing at his body as they went. “You are an English spy,” he breathed as he continued his search, forcing his hands into every pocket. He found Nordhausen’s lighter where Paul had tucked it away in his trouser pocket after they lit the fire.

  “Another gift,” he grinned as he fished it out. Then, satisfied that Paul harbored no weapons, he stepped back, slipping the knife into its leather scabbard. His attention was momentarily drawn to the lighter, and he flicked it open, turning to retrieve a rolled cigarette from the desk behind him. The lighter sparked and flamed to life. Paul was grateful to have the man away from him, and the Colonel seemed somewhat mollified as he lit his cigarette.