Touchstone (Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  Nordhausen began to get a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. He began to look at every single item around him. Nothing was dated, nothing was identified. He could read a number of royal cartouches on various objects, and recognized Rameses, Thuthmose and one or two vaguely familiar others, on various statues, but none of them was named on the placards.

  Something was very wrong. It was nearly a hundred years after the discovery of these objects by Napoleon during his expedition to Egypt in 1799. By now several scholars should have worked out the details of the hieroglyphics: Ackerbad and Silvestre de Sacy in 1802, and the initial work of Thomas Young on the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone itself. It was Young who proved that the proper names in the hieroglyphics section of the stone did, in fact, have phonetic values, and were not merely symbols, as had been hypothesized earlier. He then introduced the idea of the proper names being inscribed with ovals around them, known as cartouches.

  Nordhausen didn’t expect the testy governess to know such things, but surely the Curator of the museum should know all this by now. Young’s main contribution to Egyptology was published in the 1824 Encyclopedia Britannica. The work of the French scholar Champollion would follow up on this thesis and do much in the way of explicating the hieroglyphics. But nothing was named here.

  He stood in the middle of the empty hall, surrounded by huge, mute stone gods and kings, dully lit in the gray afternoon light that streamed in from the high windows. He heard the rushing of his blood, the loudest sound in this vacant room.

  Recrimination vexed him, and the awful thought that he was somehow responsible for the unexpected change preyed upon him. But what could he have done to accomplish this? Surely not his innocent spat with the governess just now. He hadn’t done anything…partied with a bunch of swells last night, but that couldn’t have done this. What was going on?

  Suddenly he became aware of a great absence. The most famous, the most important Egyptian relic in the world, was nowhere to be seen. He took a deep breath, made a quick circuit of the room, and then did it again making certain he missed nothing. He then made his way, in short, reluctant steps, toward a docent who sat reading in a chair. The docent, in a navy blue uniform with shiny brass buttons, looked up at the distraught Nordhausen, and immediately adopted a concerned expression.

  “Sir, how can I help you?”

  “Where,” his voice broke. “Where is the Rosetta Stone?” he finally rasped out.

  “The Rosetta Stone, sir? I don’t believe I know that item. Can you be more specific?” He looked puzzled.

  “The Rosetta Stone,” Nordhausen croaked, “Black basalt panel about so by so,” he gestured, “Same message in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek…”

  The man gave him an odd look, noticing his dress and immediately sizing him up as a foreigner. “No, sir, doesn’t ring a bell for me. Perhaps you were misinformed. We’ve nothing meeting that description here.”

  Nordhausen could feel the blood draining from his face. “Kindly direct me to the Egyptian Curator,” he said.

  “Certainly, sir, though I’m certain you’ll get much the same answer from him. Just go through this corridor, up the stairs, and it’s the fourth office on the left. Says ‘Curator of Egyptian Antiquities’ right on the door.”

  Numbly, Nordhausen followed the directions, and was soon rapping on a heavy oak door, in an oak paneled hallway.

  It was opened by a middle aged gentleman, with white hair and luxuriant, flowing mutton chop whiskers. His upper lip and chin were shaven, but huge sideburns erupted from his cheeks.

  “Yes, sir, can I help you?”

  “I am looking for the Egyptian Curator?”

  “You have found him. I am Wilbert Wilberforce, himself, at your service. How can I assist you?”

  “I was hoping to find the Rosetta Stone on display here, can you tell me where it is, sir?” Nordhausen almost pleaded.

  “The Rosetta Stone? Which Rosetta Stone? There is a whole collection of artifacts that came in from Rosetta—”

  Nordhausen cut in. “Black basalt slab, about so big, in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek.”

  The Curator’s eyes narrowed with a hint of recognition. “Oh, let me see, I may know what you mean,” Mr. Wilberforce mulled. “It is not on display, sir, it is in storage, downstairs. May I ask your name, sir, and your interest?”

  “Not on display?” Nordhausen was immediately relieved. The great void in his mind was at least filled with the certainty that the stone was here, but why would they have it in the warehouse?

  “Forgive me,” he said quickly. “My name is Robert Nordhausen, I have heard of this stone, and have come all the way from San Francisco, in the United States, to make a study of it.”

  “Well, sir, you are in luck. I am unoccupied today and I would be happy to accommodate you. Let us go see if we can find this stone of yours. Follow me.”

  Nordhausen was delighted. “You are too kind, sir. I was afraid, for a moment, that something was amiss.”

  “Excuse me, sir?” The Curator gave him a sidelong glance.

  “Well it’s just that none of the displays have any clear identifying labels. I suppose you’ve just not come round to detailing the history yet, is that it?”

  “Detailing the history?” The Curator scratched his head. “Well, we’ve got what we can out on the main floor, but there’s simply not enough room for everything else. You’ll see.”

  Wilberforce led Nordhausen down to the end of the corridor, and through a service door which opened into a plain dark stairwell, lighted by a skylight high above. The upper floors of museum were illuminated only by natural light.

  Wilberforce went on, as they descended the stairs into the gloom. “I have not looked at this one for years,” he shrugged. “It is certainly a curiosity. Perhaps I should consider displaying it. Although, I don’t believe it is as large as you indicated. Ah, here we are.” He opened the door into a dark room, fumbled about until he found a match, and lighted a gas lamp on the wall.

  Rows of rough shelving were revealed, running the length of the basement room. They were stacked with Egyptian artifacts, of all shapes and kinds, from statues, to domestic articles, to funerary gear, to odd lumps of stone with remains of paint or carving.

  They walked deep into the room, Wilberforce stopping once to light another lamp. They reached the end of the storage room, where a number of stone tablets leaned against the wall.

  “Oh, my,” said Mr. Wilberforce. “I should have brought a couple students to assist us.”

  “That’s fine,” Nordhausen said, and walked up to the pile. “If it’s here, I will recognize it.”

  “Indeed?” said Mr. Wilberforce. “May I ask how you know about this stone, sir? I am sure nothing much at all has been published.”

  Nordhausen gave the Curator a dark look, his misgivings churning up again. “Nothing published you say? Why, what about the work of Champollion, and that of your own Dr. Young before him?” He manhandled the first tablet out of the way, walking it on its corners with the help of the Curator. They did the same with the next, which was quite heavy, and stopped to catch their breath. The dim gas light cast long shadows.

  “I—I—read about it in a French encyclopedia entry,” Nordhausen continued.

  “French?”

  “Why certainly. Champollion wrote about it all in a letter to a Mr. Dacier, revealing what his many years of research had come to. Why, he worked it all out from this very stone and published a book in 1824 detailing his work on the alphabet.”

  “Forgive me, sir, but I’ve heard nothing about it.”

  Nordhausen shrugged his shoulders and set to moving the next stone. Little grains of fine sandstone grated off the panel as he rocked it away and against the first two. Mr. Wilberforce didn’t seem to care, which was another thing that rankled in the back of Nordhausen’s mind. These slabs would get prime display in any museum in the world. The Rosetta stone was perhaps the most famous artifact ever recovered in Egypt—y
et it was, stored away in the dingy cellar of the museum like so much trash. His eyes widened when he caught sight of the next slab.

  There it was, hidden behind the stone he had just moved, dwarfed by the slab behind it. The thick black stone from Rosetta, but as the Curator had intimated, it was considerably smaller than it was supposed to be!

  He stared at it, unwilling to believe what he was seeing for a moment. Then strained to push it closer to the light, almost afraid to set his hands upon it. This was it. There was no mistaking the characteristic basalt, with the demotic and Greek text laid out in neat lines etched into the stone. He swallowed hard. Where was the top third? Where were the hieroglyphics?

  The stone was broken entirely across the top. There were only a few lines of hieroglyphics remaining, the last few lines of the text, and those were the very words that were missing from a chipped area at the bottom of the slab.

  Nordhausen stood frozen. What had he done? It was not possible that he had done this, was it? What did this mean?

  “Good lord,” he breathed. “It’s broken!”

  “Just as it always was,” said Wilberforce.

  “Always was? Are you saying there was nothing more of the hieroglyphics than this single line at the top?” Nordhausen looked aghast at the man, who now began to purse his lips with a hint of indignation.

  “We take very good care of everything we receive, sir,” the Curator said a bit defensively. “I can assure you that these stones are in the very same condition they were received in—if not better.” He folded his arms, a bit perturbed by this strangely dressed visitor.

  “Of course,” said Nordhausen, remembering to watch what he said just now. Still, his mind was racing feverishly ahead. If something as significant at this was altered, what else was different? Oh lord, what would he find when he got back?

  Nordhausen took a deep breath.

  Mr. Wilberforce was politely waiting for him to say something.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said with a deflated tone. “It is not how I imagined it to be. It is useless for my studies. Please excuse me, I am very tired.”

  Without waiting for reply, or even escort, Nordhausen wheeled about, and walked rapidly out of the cellar, out of the museum, and dully made his way back to his hotel.

  What else was different?

  The thought gouged him with every step he took. He raked through each moment of his time jaunt, wondering where the fatal blow had been struck. Was it the flagrant contact with Prime Movers he had the night before? He kept replaying the scene in his mind, trying to root out what he could have done to cause this catastrophe—for a catastrophe it was. The Rosetta Stone—a touchstone that had been the key to unraveling the mysteries of Ancient Egypt, was now nothing more than a useless slab of black basalt. How, how, how could this be?

  Paul’s voice returned to him, “somewhere, lost on a single wayward thread of time, a moment exists that is mated to every great event on the continuum, a whisper of inconsequential absurdity that is forever paired to the great moments of history…” He called them Pushpoints, thought Nordhausen, and I’ve gone and pushed one—that much is certain.

  The thought of Paul seemed to give him a moment of solace. He had to get back! He had to get to Paul and tell him about this. If there was anyone else in the world that could help him figure this out, it would be Paul. After all, he was the one who dreamt all this time business up in the first place.

  He hurried along, as if the quickening of his footsteps would somehow hasten his return to his own time again. But he suddenly realized he was still stuck here. The retraction sequence would not kick in for hours—at least in this time. Barely twenty minutes had passed back in the Berkeley labs. He had timed his jump to finish before Paul came on duty tonight to relieve him of his shift, but at least he would be the only other team member at the facility when Nordhausen completed his return… If there still was a facility, a Paul Dorland, a world he could yet make any sense of.

  Maeve’s warnings were a cruel crown of thorns for him now. He resolved to lock himself away in his hotel room, where he waited miserably for the Arch to pluck him back to whatever horror might await him in San Francisco, in the twenty first century.

  5

  The retraction sequence kicked in like clockwork and snatched the professor away in a haze of icy fog. This time he made a point of keeping his eyes tightly closed, so he could think things through with a clear head when he returned. He was already wondering how he would explain all this to the other project team members. Kelly’s Golems were sure to key in on the altered Meridian. He had little doubt that cell phones were ringing and people were hurtling toward the lab facility to check on the alert. In a way, that might help him, he thought. The Arch was set to activate itself in the event of an alert. If anyone showed up and found the turbines running the alert would provide a nice cover story. He could say he was the first on the scene and…

  No… That just would not do. He knew that Kelly would certainly be able to home in on the exact moment the equipment was activated. He’d retrieve the exact coordinates, just like he uncovered the trip to Reading Station when Nordhausen went after Lawrence’s lost manuscript. Besides, these were his friends, and he had given his word and… What should he do?

  To his great surprise, there was no one waiting for him at the Arch when he returned. Excellent! The access corridor was empty when the great locks separated. He rushed up the ramp to the elevator, and was bouncing on his toes impatiently while it glided up 50 meters of rock. The tunnel leading out of the hill to the lab was vacant. When he reached the heavy automatic doors leading into the lab, he pressed his face to the small glass window and peeked through. No one was there.

  He punched the button on the wall that opened the doors, and they parted. The lab was empty, though the consoles were lit up and a bright red emergency light was flashing on the alert panel. He quickly glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. He had been gone about 30 minutes… unless it was 12 hours and 30 minutes… or 25 years and 30 minutes… no, there was no use getting lost in that! He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

  Be here now. Be here now.

  First things first. He had to get out of these silly clothes and see what he could find out from the RAM bank report. He hurried to his office, and doffed his Victorian outfit, his mind churning. Even as he reflexively stuffed the clothing away in a laundry sack, he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was already working his cover-up. Then the urgency of his discovery seized him again. What was going on? Was the world the same one he had left, or was it radically changed now? Kelly’s RAM bank should be noting the differences and spitting out references by now. He hurried back to the lab, almost afraid to see reams of computer paper littering the floor from an overworked printer.

  To his great relief however, there was no data waiting for him in the report tray when he settled into a chair by the desk. He tapped his finger on the desk, wondering what to do. Then it occurred to him that he should initiate a search, starting with the very date he had targeted and running in keywords that he was certain of… The Rosetta Stone!

  In the London he had just left, the Rosetta Stone was no more than an anonymous slab of basalt, but he had seen the stone several times in his Meridian of Origin, in London, in the British Museum. Was it still there?

  He swiveled over to his computer, called up the search engine, and nervously typed in: ROSETTA STONE. He paused an instant and hit Enter. There were approximately 137,000 hits. He exhaled, noticing that he was holding his breath, and began to review the data.

  Nathaniel MULLIKEN / Rosetta STONE

  Nathaniel MULLIKEN / Rosetta STONE. Husband: Nathaniel MULLIKEN. Born: at: Married: at: Died: at: Father: John MULLIKEN. Mother: Mary POOR. Spouses: Rosetta STONE.

  Rosetta Stone - Melvin Stone ... 69121 individuals, 24883 families from file 20020823.ged (23 AUG 2002) Rosetta Stone (ABT 1799 - ____) Rosetta Stone (13 JUN 1811 - ____) Manasseh Stone (CHR 23 ...

  Bun Bus
ters Series 07 - Starring Rosetta Stone, Rodney Moore, Tammi ... Bun Busters Series 07. Company: VCR PRODUCTIONS. Length: 82 mins.

  This was not good. All he was getting was genealogical data and junk references. He needed to refine his search a bit, and decided to focus on one of the scholars who had done the key work in deciphering the stone. He typed in: FRANCOIS CHAMPOLLION and immediately received about 1500 hits. The man existed!

  He opened the first page, an encyclopedia article:

  Champollion was a French Egyptologist, who is acknowledged as the father of modern Egyptology. He achieved many things during his short career that laid the foundations for Egyptian archaeology.

  He was born in 1790….

  Yes, yes, thought Nordhausen. Get to the point. The man deciphered the hieroglyphics!

  … While he was at the Lyceum, he presented a paper in which he argued that the language of the Copts in contemporary Egypt was, in essence, the same as that used by the Egyptians of antiquity.

  His education continued at the College de France, where he specialized in languages of the Orient. He knew bits and pieces of many languages, and was fluent in several others. A partial listing of the languages he was familiar with is astounding: Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean, Chinese, Coptic, Ethiopic, Sanskrit, Pahlevi, and Persian.

  But nothing whatsoever about the hieroglyphics! Nordhausen swallowed hard. Of course… It made perfect sense now. He had seen it with his own eyes. The stone was broken, and the entire body of knowledge surrounding the ancient Egyptian writing was broken with it. He scanned the rest of the article, hoping to find some hint or clue that would lead him to believe that things were all right, but there was nothing; nothing about his greatest achievement: the reading of the stone.