Touchstone (Meridian Series) Read online

  LeGrand turned, expectantly, his face still molded in a jovial smile, and then he froze, as though struck by the officer’s riding crop. His eyes widened, bright ovals above the doughy cheeks of his face, and his jaw gaped open with a look of complete astonishment.

  “Mon dieu!” the invocation escaped his lips as he gazed, and Nordhausen hurried forward to see what he was looking at, tripping on a pile of loosened rock. As he rose, Khalid strode boldly forward, a look of great satisfaction blooming on his face when he saw LeGrand’s reaction. He started to laugh, pointing a long thin finger at LeGrand as he spoke.

  “Not what you expected, monsieur?” His eyes glittered. “Something to put a little fire in your next courier dispatch?” Now his laughter could not be restrained.

  Nordhausen gaped at him, struggling to his feet. Maeve came up to lend him a hand, and they started down the gentle incline to approach the dig site. LeGrand had cupped his ears with his palms, as if to shut out the laughter of his adversary, but the gesture seemed more one of amazement. It was then that they saw Khalid turn to look upon the discovery that was obviously the source of his elation.

  “Do I work some mischief for the Sultan, he wonders? More than you could possibly know, my friend.” But then his words were cut short and, like LeGrand before him, his eyes opened with surprise and shock. “Ahliah! He exclaimed, the mirth driven from his face and a look of profound distress in its place.

  Nordhausen ran the last few steps. Pushing his way through the gathering crown until he reached the edge of the site. Maeve called after him the moment he ran forward, obviously perturbed.

  “Come back here, Robert!” She had seen the spark of irrepressible curiosity in his eyes and was worried that he would do something—say something—that would cause some grave complication. There were many French soldiers at the scene now, and she was certain Robert would draw unwanted attention to himself the moment he opened his mouth.

  She looked and saw him come up short at the lip of the dig, then heard him take in a sudden breath, as though startled by what he saw. His hand shot up to the top of his head, an involuntary gesture of bewilderment. She saw him scratch and then, to her great dismay, he pulled off his wig, thoughtlessly, carelessly, as though he was totally unaware of what he had just done.

  She pressed closer, finally reaching the place where the others stood, clearly dumbfounded by the moment of discovery. The soldiers were pointing and speaking rapidly to one another in French. She saw the officer of engineers lean in, eyes squinting at the find now that the dust had settled. What in the world could have caused such commotion?

  Then she saw it, the great black shape jutting from the side of the embankment below the wall, and now she understood, at last, the marvel of all those who looked on. A silence fell on the scene as the French officer of engineers stooped and extended his arm to touch the thing they had unearthed. He reached out, as though afraid that he might be scalded by the stone. She saw his hand play lightly over the smooth, polished surface of the find, one finger tracing a delicate path over the carved lettering. Then the hush resolved into a rush of whispers. People were turning to one another, nodding wide eyed conclusions, and she saw Khalid staring at LeGrand as if he expected to have the same berating laughter thrown at him by the man.

  The look on LeGrand’s face was plain to see, however, and it was clear that neither man could lay claim to any victory in the find.

  Robert turned, remembering her at last, and gestured wildly for her to take the final step forward and look upon the scene. She passed a moment of hesitation and great anxiety. Something was wrong. She could see it on everyone’s face, though many seemed to glow with joy at the find. Yet for LeGrand and Khalid, the discovery seemed to promise great trouble. It was clear to her now that one man or the other expected to come out the better when the shape of the ancient stone was finally unearthed.

  Now she knew that both were secret adversaries in the struggle that had begun on that first stormy night in Berkeley—the night they resolved to spin up the Arch for the very first time and breach the womb of time. She turned her head, slowly, deliberately, and looked upon the shape that had been unearthed.

  Robert gaped at her, waiting to see the same look of astonishment sweep across her features. Instead he saw the tightening of her jaw, and the tension in her eyes, set tighter now, and reflecting some unalterable inner conclusion as she took in the scene. There was wonder there, to be sure, but it was ruthlessly suppressed. In its place he saw the glimmer of anger kindled like a growing fire, and he knew at last, in the wake of his own confusion and surprise, a moment of great doubt and fear.

  20

  It had taken them the better part of three hours, and nearly fifty men with levers and ropes, but they had it up on the wooden truss now, freed from the long embrace of the dry earthen embankment where it had slept for so many centuries.

  Robert watched them work for a time, his excitement and curiosity keeping him at the edge of the dig site. He could not help himself, and took hold of a rope when the laborers had hitched it about the great carved shape of black basalt. It was Maeve’s insistent tugging at his arm that eventually brought him back to his senses.

  “Robert!” she hissed in his ear, hoping no one else would hear. “The time… we’ve got to get back!”

  The retraction scheme wasn’t scheduled to kick in until tomorrow. What was she worried about? Still, the urgency in her voice finally penetrated the excitement that had possessed him earlier.

  As she pulled him away, he took one last look at it. There it was, the famous stone that had proved a key to an entire culture and history buried in a thousand tombs, hidden away in the barren deserts of Egypt. There it was, a marvelously polished slab of black basalt, looking a bit like finely grained granite, and carved with hundreds of Egyptian glyphs. He had come here to determine its condition, to see if the damage he had discovered in the London Museum was something he might have caused with his own headstrong curiosity. His every hope was to find the stone fully intact, not broken as he had seen it in the dark, dusty cellars of the museum where it was no more than another forgotten curiosity. Now, when he looked upon it one last time, the full implications of what he was seeing finally began to register in his mind.

  Fully intact… The stone was not broken. It bore no sign of damage of any kind, save the inevitable wear of the ages, with intermittent chinks and abrasions marring the smooth, polished surface. It was not broken… no damage at all, but the amazing thing was that this was not the familiar shape of the Rosetta Stone that he had studied all his life! It was fully twice the size of the stone he knew. The stone he was familiar with could have only been the lower portion of this great monolith. If lifted up on its end, this stone would tower over his head. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. This was something altogether different.

  At the very top, the image of a vulture’s wings were extended across the whole of the stone. At the heart of the bird was an image of Ra as the sun, and two cobras dangled down from either side, turning at the bottom and rearing up in a classic pose of regal threat. These carvings arched over a gathering of lords in two columns, facing each other, and marching in from opposite sides of the stone. There were seven lords facing each direction, all wearing regal head gear and bearing scepters of authority and power. The professor recognized the elongated ovals of cartouche symbols above their heads, naming each member of the assemblage as they gathered.

  Directly below this were long rows of hieroglyphics as they appeared on the upper portion of the old stone, but they extended down the whole face of this artifact, even to the base! Where was the Greek Text? Where was the Demotic rendition of the messages carved by the glyphs?

  As Maeve pulled on his arm with increasing urgency, he fixed his last gaze on the writing, realizing he could still read it. His mind immediately translated what he saw: “Through the ages now he comes to a mystery: one death gives birth, a great wind upon the face of the sea, in a place forever hid
den where the lions roar: ‘mine is yesterday, and I know tomorrow.”

  Maeve prevailed at last and managed to pull him away. LeGrand turned as the two travelers started away, but his attention was soon drawn to the stone again, and the growing effort to recover it from the rubble. Khalid saw them leaving as well, Nordhausen pulled along by Maeve as they fled through a low arch in the walls, seeking a way back to the inn where they had spent the night.

  “I can’t believe it!” Nordhausen breathed as they went. “It’s not the stone—but yet it was the stone. It has to be. Yet it was something entirely new! There was no Greek writing on it, and not a single word of Demotic script that I could see. The whole thing was—“

  “Later, Robert. We have to get out of sight! I’m feeling very strange.” She paused briefly, struggling with her skirts and looking about her to see if anyone had noticed them. They had reached the edge of a grove of palms interspersed with a few banana trees cultivated in the fields before a small adobe farmstead. There was no one around, the commotion of the discovery acting like a magnet and pulling in all the locals to the frenzied activity at the dig site.

  “How is this supposed to work?” asked Maeve. She pulled hard on Robert’s arm when he did not answer her, shaking him from his reverie.

  “What?”

  “How does it work, Robert? Do we have to get back to the breaching point? Do we have to go all that way? When will it happen? How much time do you think we have left?”

  Robert realized she was talking about the retraction. “How much time? The retraction is scheduled for tomorrow morning!”

  “Perhaps so…but I’m feeling…quite odd just now. I think my integrity is slipping.”

  “Really? Well its probably just the sun, and all this excitement, and the dust. But, to answer your other question, I don’t think we need be anywhere close to the breaching point. Paul and I wandered very far during that first mission, and I took the train from London to—well, never mind that. The point is: it could happen anywhere… at any moment, I suppose.” Now he was looking around, realizing that it would be best to find some secluded spot where they could wait out the remaining hours.

  “Over there,” he pointed to a cart path that led along the fringes of the thick palm grove. “That way looks promising.”

  As they started toward it they heard a voice calling after them and turned about. Khalid was rushing over the parched ground, his lavender fringed robes flowing behind him.

  “That’s done it,” Robert exclaimed. “Come on, we’ve got to give him the slip!” But Khalid was fast upon them, hastening up and calling for them to wait.

  “It’s no use,” said Maeve. “He’s seen us, and he can follow us easily from this point if we make a run for it. Besides, the heat is appalling, and these skirts are a nuisance.”

  “Friends, wait!” Khalid came up, breathless, but smiling with relief. “Oh, what a day!” He beamed at them. “Did you see it? Did you see it?” His hands trembled as he spoke, and he seemed to gaze at the sky as he praised Allah aloud, tears watering the corners of his eyes.

  Robert did not know what to make of him, or his reaction, but Khalid was quick to explain. “It is wondrous, a miracle beyond my wildest hopes! We thought to find it broken—that is the middle way, the path of struggle and many hard years of strife and woe. Yes, I know you had hopes here as well. You came for the discovery, of course, for the stone. Forgive my deception earlier, but we all walk behind a veil, do we not? Believe me now when I tell you that there is sorrow in my heart at what you have witnessed. Forgive me—forgive us all, but there was no other way. We worked it, day and night, and the best we could achieve was a hundred years of enmity. But something has changed! Yes! A great transformation has occurred. It is all made new again, even as it was on the day our sword was first drawn in anger. Imagine my surprise! I was sent to keep watch, and now I must go to bring this news to my people. Oh, day of days! Allah be praised. We worked it, and now we may walk this world redeemed, with shining eyes and heads held high.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?“ said Robert.

  “Of what do I speak? Of a great day… but yet, more of a little thing that works the miracle. A’athreh ib dafra.”

  “Look here, you have been very gracious, but we simply must be on our way.”

  “Forgive me,” Khalid held up a hand. “A’athreh ib dafra. It is a saying among Arabs. It means: with a stumble and a kick. Such is the way of it. Small things, a stumble and a kick, but the harvest is great. Still, I am sorry for you, I will weep for you—you must believe me. Tonight I will pray to Allah that he will take you in the palm of his hand, and preserve your lives. Yes, you must go now. No one will be the wiser. Take that trail and you will find a barn behind this farm. There you may rest until the time of recovery. And may Allah go with you through all the days that remain.”

  What was he talking about? Nordhausen kept running Khalid’s words over and over in his mind. He seemed possessed, like a man enraptured, but buoyant, alive, exhilarated by the discovery that so baffled the professor now. The lines of the script still burned in his recollection. What did they mean?

  He looked at Maeve, hoping to find support for his confused state of mind in her unshakable logic. If anyone would know what to make of this, it would be Maeve. She was watching Khalid go now, hastening away, back toward the site of the discovery. Already the word had begun to spread that something extraordinary had been unearthed at the base of the wall. The French soldiers could be heard shouting in the distance, and Nordhausen, with the history in mind, knew that they would be dragging the Rosetta Stone to the tent of General Menou, where the slab would be carefully cleaned and examined before being transported, by river barge, to Cairo.

  He remembered how Maeve first wagered that, if the stone were intact, the trip from Rosetta to Cairo would have been the ideal time for someone to inflict the damage. But that whole line of argument was meaningless now. The original Rosetta Stone inscribed the same message in each of three different languages. This stone held only one language—it was completely covered by the ancient hieroglyphics…no Demotic… No Greek… It was completely useless as a key to translating the glyphs… completely useless…

  His attention was shaken when Maeve suddenly swayed, as though overcome by the heat, and fell. Robert stooped to help but, as he did so, an unaccountable chill shook his frame. He knew at once why he was becoming so light headed. Maeve looked at him, her features frozen with an expression of panic. He reached for her hand as the haze of a blue frost materialized about them, transforming into the shimmer of a multi-colored aurora. There was a sensation of falling, and he felt Maeve’s hand tighten. The retraction scheme was kicking in! Kelly and Paul were pulling them back through the Arch at Lawrence Berkeley Labs. But why now? They still had a hours to wait—unless something had moved his friends to retrieve them at once, with an untimely urgency that added yet another chill to the moment at hand.

  21

  “I just don’t see how this could be possible,” said Paul. “The haze in trying to alter the stone prior to its discovery would be intense. How would they know where to look for the damn thing?”

  It was four o’clock on a gray September afternoon in Berkeley, and the growl of the generator turbines had finally subsided as the system reduced power. Paul was still keeping the Arch active on standby, with the generators running at 70% until the retraction was complete. Then he would take them down to 50%, just enough to maintain the electromagnetic field the Arch would create—enough to sustain the thin, protective boundaries of the Nexus Point it welled in the flow of Time.

  The four primary team members were assembled in the lab. Nordhausen had taken off his wig and was still scratching the back of his head. Maeve had recovered from the retraction shift, a bit nauseous and disoriented, but feeling better by the minute. Kelly had a pot of hot coffee at the ready, and he was stirring a bit of cream into Maeve’s cup, hovering over her where she sat by the history consol
e looking pale and tired.

  After the elation of their safe return, and hugs all around, Robert was quick to break the news. He began talking about the discovery of the stone, trying to describe the new artifact that had been unearthed as best he could. He soon found words inadequate to the task and dragged Paul over to the Touchstone RAM bank where he retrieved an image of the stone from the data files and printed it out. Then he began to draw, carefully sketching from the his memory of the new find.

  He presented Paul the drawing. “There,” he said, “Except all the Demotic and Greek in the image was covered with ancient hieroglyphics!” The two men hunched over the drawing, as if the answer to the dilemma might be found in the picture.

  “You’re certain it looked like this?”

  “Absolutely! Maeve will vouch for that.”

  “How could this be?” Paul was still trying to see a clear line of reasoning to explain the change. “They would have to go back to the time the stone was originally made and then convince the makers to alter it by leaving out the Demotic and Greek script. Do you realize how difficult that intervention would be?”

  “Yes,” said Nordhausen. “It was an established convention to display these proclamations in all three languages. The discovery of similar stones at Bubastis confirmed that in 2004. Perhaps they replaced the stone with another,” he suggested. “They knew exactly where to find it. Suppose they simply went back on some lonesome night and dug the original stone up.”

  “You say it was twice the size of the original? That would mean they had to bring in an artifact weighing fifteen hundred kilos! I don’t think so. And what would they do with the original? You can’t transport an object of that size easily in the physical world, let alone through Time.”

  ”Why not? I went back and retrieved Lawrence’s manuscript of the Seven Pillars.” Robert caught himself too late. Paul looked at him, a dumbfounded expression on his face.