Meridian - A Novel In Time (The Meridian Series) Page 6

  Maeve broke the silence, always the gatekeeper as her instincts prompted her to smooth Paul’s remark over. “You must forgive us,” she said. “It’s been a very long night, what with this news and all. We just can’t imagine what this is going to mean now. But, Mr. Graves, was it? Did you have news for someone here tonight?” She was angling for some understanding of why the man had come, taking refuge and comfort in simple politeness, her thoughts still with her mother.

  “Yes,” the stranger began. “I’m afraid so, and there’s no other way to begin but this: I’ve come for your help. You’ve all heard the news tonight and, now that Mr. Ramer has arrived, I think it’s safe to proceed. I must ask a very great favor.”

  Nordhausen’s eyes narrowed. “Why do I have the odd feeling that you seem to know us, Mr. Graves? You have us at a bit of a disadvantage here.” He was beginning to think the man might work for the government. They had gone to great ends to keep the project privately funded, but government inspectors were always intruding nonetheless, and Nordhausen was concerned that this was just another bureaucratic busybody with some annoying regulation in mind.

  “Know all of you?” The man smiled, his manner still a bit anxious as he pressed on. “Why, I suppose I do, in a way. Yes, we’ve never met, though I had a close brush with Mr. Ramer there earlier this evening. You’re a very impatient driver, if I may say so.” He looked in Kelly’s direction with a wan smile.

  Kelly was completely befuddled now. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “You were near the BART station earlier tonight after you got off the freeway. You always take that exit. I’m afraid I had to delay you for a moment. I suppose I’d have leaned on the car horn as well, but when you hear what I have to say I think you’ll forgive me. I’m only glad you’re safely here.” He looked at his watch again, as if to reassure himself about something. “I think it’s safe now,” he said looking from one to the other. “We’re in a void—a very deep Nexus Point. We don’t have long, but there’s still time.”

  “Time indeed,” said Dorland. His suspicions coalesced into a wry smile and he knew who the man was at last. “What did I tell you, Robert?”

  “What’s that?” The professor was looking from Dorland to the visitor, a moment’s uncertainty tugging at him, even as he, too, came to grips with what was happening.

  “Don’t you see?” Dorland broke into a broad smile. “That was no chance meeting with Kelly near the BART station. You did that deliberately,” he pointed at the visitor. “You needed to delay Kelly somehow—just a gentle nudge, isn’t that so, Mr. Graves?”

  “You are very shrewd, Mr. Dorland. But then, why not? This was all your idea in the first place. Wasn’t it? Well, I was fortunate enough to succeed with Mr. Ramer here, and if the good lady would be so kind as to make us all a cup of that wonderful coffee, I think we should get started.”

  The rain on the roof seemed much louder in the silence that followed. Then Dorland broke out in a laugh, and Nordhausen joined in. Kelly and Maeve were staring at them both like they had suddenly been taken ill.

  “What in God’s name is going on here?” Kelly gave them an exasperated look. “OK, I want to know who the hell you are, and what the hell is so damn funny!”

  Maeve gave him a sharp glance and tugged at his sleeve in spite of her own confusion. But Dorland and Nordhausen just kept laughing and, as she stared at the visitor, she recalled the opening rounds of the running gun battle the two men had fought earlier that evening. “You mean to say that—”

  “Someone’s come to join us for coffee after all!” The professor was beaming as he looked at Dorland, his smile conceding a point of long contention with his friend, and seeming to drain away the stress and tension of the night with his laughter.

  “Then it works, Robert!” Dorland was ecstatic. “It works!”

  “It might work.” The visitor interjected a sobering note. “We hope it will work,” he explained. “In fact, we think it will work, now that we’re on this side of the Shadow, but we’re not quite sure. In any case, we haven’t much time and the situation is desperate. We’re in a void now—a Deep Nexus. We have to get this underway before the tsunami hits the east coast and the event begins to solidify. It’s just a little past eleven. That leaves us another six hours and twenty odd minutes. I’ve saved Kelly, and he has his laptop with him. We need to get started!”

  “Wait a second…” Kelly was slowly catching up with the men at the table. “What do you mean you saved me? And what was this business about the BART station? You mean you’re the guy I was honking at?”

  “I had to delay you, Mr. Ramer.” The visitor gave him an apologetic glance. “It was only a matter of a few seconds, but it was enough. You were the Primary Lever, you see. We determined that from the tape of the meeting. I must say, I’ve listened to that tape a hundred times. I really feel I do know you, at least the three of you: Mr. Dorland here, and the good Professor, and of course you, my dear Maeve. I know you like we were old friends, and I will be very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Ramer, now that I’ve managed to prevent your untimely death.” He let that statement sink in for a moment.

  Kelly just stood there, his mouth half open, but the light of understanding was gleaming in Maeve’s eyes, and she put her arm around him, whispering something in his right ear.

  “Gentle nudge indeed.” Nordhausen put in.

  “Right in the rib of history!” Dorland smiled.

  “You were taping this?” Maeve gave Paul a disapproving look.

  “For history’s sake. But I think my tape has run out by now.”

  “It stopped at twelve minutes after ten,” said the visitor. “I aimed to arrive here well after that, so as to avoid any… complications.”

  Kelly just stared at them. As the realization of what they were saying swept over him, all he could feel was the pressure of Maeve’s arm around his shoulder, claiming him, welcoming him. He passed a brief moment of light headedness, and a sudden chill shook his frame. The visitor was looking at his watch again.

  “It’s time,” he concluded. “You’re safe now Mr. Ramer, though I see from that cut on your forehead that the world still managed to take a swipe at you.”

  “You’re from the future,” Kelly whispered, “and you’re telling me I was supposed to die tonight? You deliberately stepped in front of my car to delay me?” He kept replaying the close call he had when he stopped at the Seven-Eleven in his mind.

  “As far as we know,” the visitor said in a low, serious tone, “you were killed by an onrushing vehicle as you went to cross the street at the intersection of—”

  “Good God,” Kelly seemed to slump in his chair.

  “It’s eleven-o-five,” said the visitor. “We’re a minute past your official recorded time of death now, so I suppose this is another life for you, Mr. Ramer—perhaps another life for us all. But we haven’t much time. The first wave is due to hit the Grand Banks of Newfoundland at eleven minutes past seven, Eastern Standard Time—just after 4:00 AM locally. After that the situation begins to spiral out of control. In another two hours it hits the Eastern Seaboard, and the damage will be too severe to reverse. The event will solidify. For the moment, however, we still have a chance. We’re in a void, you see. It’s a rare interval of grace; a little null spot, like the eye of a hurricane. The tempest rails all around us, but for the next six hours we have to make the most of it. We’ve only this one chance.”

  Dorland was taking everything in, smiling to think that his theory on the possibility of time travel had been vindicated—proved beyond any doubt even before they had a chance to test it! His dear friend Kelly was to have died tonight, and he passed a moment of profound thanks that the amiable man was still sitting there, albeit a bit flustered, looking from the visitor, to Nordhausen and then Maeve. In the midst of his elation, however, a nagging thought came to him. He had explained it to the others just a few moments ago when Kelly had been arguing about juggling the numbers on the A
rch coordinates.

  “Just a moment,” he interjected. “I’m as amazed as everyone else to hear all of this, but there’s something wrong.” The visitor smiled turning his attention to Dorland as if he expected the comment. “The eruption on Palma…” Paul continued looking from one face to another. “It’s a natural event, not a willful event. If you’re thinking we can somehow use these six hours to change things, I’m afraid you’ve come all this way for nothing. Oh, I assure you, I’m profoundly grateful if what you’ve said about Kelly is true. I don’t know what I’d do without him. But the fact of the matter is this: The Palma eruption is an Imperative—Probably a Grand Imperative, and it can’t be changed.”

  “I’m afraid you are laboring under a misapprehension,” said the visitor. Everyone looked at him, waiting like supplicants at the throne of the Oracle. “The eruption was not a natural event. You’ll learn this momentarily if you keep your shortwave tuned to the BBC, Professor Nordhausen.”

  “What did I tell you!” Nordhausen was up and reaching for the radio, intending to tune in the British news station again as he wagged a finger at Kelly.

  “Not a natural event?” Now it was Dorland’s turn to swim in the eddies of confusion that seemed to pervade the room.

  “I’m afraid not. Oh, it was probably going to erupt one day on its own, but this time it had a little help.” The visitor looked at his watch. “Let me be brief: The BBC is about to announce that there has been evidence of an unnatural explosive event at the time of the eruption. In point of fact, it was a twenty kiloton nuclear device that was smuggled on to the island by Islamic radicals over a year ago. The plan was in the works for some time, you see. They rented a small villa on the western slopes of the mountain—very secluded. After the World Trade Center incident, and all the talk about an Islamic bomb in Iraq, everyone was so concerned about security in the major cities that they never thought to look in a place like the Canary Islands. To make matters brief, they did their research and managed to get a device onto the island by helicopter. They were months drilling through the cellar level of the villa to get a pipe deep enough to plant the device where the blast would do them some good. We’ve got this first hand from…reliable sources. The recent upwelling of the magma dome on Cumbre Vieja was coincidental, of course, but it led them to believe they could trigger a major eruption with a device of sufficient strength. It so happened the volcano was amenable to their little plan, and the rest, as they say, is history. At least it was history. I’m hoping we can change that.”

  “Listen,” said Nordhausen. “BBC is reading a statement that was supposedly sent by a group of the terrorists!” He adjusted the volume on his shortwave and they all leaned in to hear the news.

  ‘…We are patient, forgiving. We are seekers only of peace, but as Allah chooses, then the command is given for the seas to rise and pound the shore. We are but an instrument, to that power. As the oceans are made up of an uncountable number of individual drops of serene waters, when Allah commands, those drops come together to form the most powerful force on earth, the ocean of Believers, who's waves of faith become the hammer upon which justice is delivered to all followers of Satan.’

  “Then it was a willful event after all!” Dorland’s was breathing quickly as he spoke. “The Palma event was the work of a Free Radical.”

  “Precisely,” said Graves. “It was the brain child of one Ra’id Husan al Din—Oh you’ll learn about him soon enough. If you thought Bin Ladin was a Free Radical, then just you wait. Well, as you know from your own time theory, Mr. Dorland, the work of a Free Radical can give rise to significant variations in all the time lines they cross. Sometimes these variations can be quite profound, as in the case of the Bin Ladin nine-eleven attack back in the year 2001. But this, ladies and gentlemen, takes the prize. The Holy Fighters of Husan al Din, as they came to be called in the West, came up with this little gem and set the whole world off its kilter. His name means the ‘Sword of the Faith,’ and appropriately so. He cuts the fabric of the time continuum so badly that chaos ensues.”

  He looked at them, eyes flashing under his cinder brows. “The Palma Event was not a Grand Imperative, as you first concluded, Mr. Dorland. It was, however, a Radical Transformation: a catastrophic alteration of the time continuum due to the influence of a profound Free Radical. You said it yourself on the tape I’ve listened to so many times: hundreds of thousands of people are going to die when the sun comes up on the east coast tomorrow. All those time lines are going to be changed forever—unless we do something about it in the next six hours.”

  A stunned silence fell on them all. Nordhausen was fiddling with the shortwave and a glint of satisfaction sparked in his eye. “He’s right!” He nearly shouted at them. “BBC is announcing evidence of unusually high radiation levels. The Brits sent a Canberra out of Gibraltar to over-fly the island.”

  “It will be confirmed shortly by American Satellite Intelligence,” said Graves. “They picked up the initial explosion on their early detection system. By now the President is in an airplane heading west with a fighter escort, Section ‘R’ of the emergency government has been activated, and there’s quite a panic underway on your Eastern Seaboard. It’s just after two in the morning back there, and it’s going to be a long, terrible night.”

  “No shit…” Kelly’s eloquence seemed to sum things up.

  “There’s still something troubling me,” said Dorland. “We would have heard this news in time. The professor there is already piecing it together. Are you saying we found out about the terrorist attack and failed to act in time?”

  “You failed to act at all.” The visitor looked at Kelly. “It was Mr. Kelly’s fate that preoccupied you this night, not the fate of the Eastern Seaboard. In the midst of the greatest tragedy in modern times, the simplicity of one man’s death had a profound effect on all three of you. Your telephone was supposed to ring about the same time I arrived at your doorstep. It was supposed to be the hospital, of course, with news of Mr. Ramer’s accident. I made sure nothing like that could happen by cutting the line an hour ago. It was just a backup plan in case my intervention failed to prevent the accident. In the history I know, however, the call came in and the three of you rushed across town in the midst of all this rain and growing alarm. We don’t really know why you never tried to use the Arch. There’s been a great deal of speculation, of course. Some think that Kelly’s computer savvy was the key to getting the right calculations in order; others attribute the failure to the deep depression that seemed to settle over Mr. Dorland there after the death of his friend. And you, my dear Maeve, were quite shaken by the events of this night. Still others felt that it was your input on Outcomes and Consequences that was most needed, and with the death of both your mother and your emerging…” He seemed to catch himself, pausing for a moment. “…The suffering of your new-found friends here,” he corrected himself. “It was all very traumatic.”

  Maeve heard his comment about her mother, and her eyes hazed over with pain. The visitor continued, very intent on what he was trying to say.

  “I could go on and on about this forever, and we haven’t the time. I didn’t come here to point history’s finger at any of you. We came to our own conclusions about why you never tried. The research was shunted aside, and not discovered again until…much later. The point is, we now think everything turned on the death of Mr. Ramer. The accident at the Seven-Eleven was a Primary Lever on all of you. I argued the point most eloquently, and the council finally acceded. There were many who saw the Palma Event as a Finality—so rooted in the stream of the continuum that it could not be altered. I had to quote them chapter and verse from your papers on the theory, Mr. Dorland. Eventually I convinced them that if they were correct in that assumption, there was one chance of altering the Radical Transformation. One slim chance.”

  “Pushpoint…” Dorland spoke the words with an almost reverent whisper. “Every Finality creates one moment in time where the possibility of reversal blooms in
a brief interval at one given point on the continuum. The two opposites arise mutually. Then, the event solidifies and the shadow it casts on the continuum becomes impenetrable.”

  “I could not have said it better, Mr. Dorland.” The visitor took a deep breath, the lines of his face long and drawn, his eyes almost pleading. He was sweating profusely now as he spoke. “Dear me…I may have already said too much here…” The wind was still howling at the night outside, and the visitor eyed the windows with a glimmer of fear, harried a bit by the sound. He seemed to pause at the edge of a precipice in his thinking, and then leapt over.

  “It’s too late for us—In the time of my natural life. We can’t see through the Penumbra, through the shadow cast on the time line by the Palma Event and all it gives rise to. We’ve tried to reason it out—we’ve thrown enormous computing resources at the problem, such as we had available in our time. It was leading us nowhere. Every attempt we made at opening up the continuum failed. Every time we tried to go back to the crucial moment we were stopped by the Penumbra of Palma. It acted as a great barrier. Then I came up with this little idea. We were trying to get back too far, I told them.” His thin hands waved about to add emphasis. “If we could focus all our resources on sending one man through; and if we could just reach any time at all close to the onset of the event, then there would be a chance to prompt action from here, from this side of the shadow—before the wave-front strikes the coast. We made six attempts. They all died in the Arch. The shadow was just too formidable for us. We made… adjustments. We tried something new, and I volunteered for the seventh attempt. Thank God, I made it through.”

  “When did you arrive?” Dorland was spellbound.

  “Seven years ago. We missed our mark, you see. Bit of a bumpy ride getting through the Penumbra. It’s a miracle I got through at all.”

  “Seven years? Why, you had all that time to plan alternative action and you waited until the night of the event to do anything?”