Touchstone (Meridian Series) (18 page)

       The
world was spinning out of control. Maeve felt a dizzy sensation of nausea
settle in her stomach. All she could think of was getting back to that first
point of entry on this strange new world. It was the only safe island she could
see, a retreat to the moment when they had first appeared, as though none of
this had even happened. She would stand there, close her eyes, and make it all
go away. But even as she pulled the professor along, she could hear the men
outside drawing ever nearer.

       “Stand
here,” she commanded, her eyes riveting the professor. “And whatever happens
next, don’t you dare move a muscle or say one single thing if those men find us
here—understand?”

       Nordhausen
gave her a breathless look, but nodded his assent. They could hear men below
them in the alleyway beating on a wooden door with the butts of their muskets.
The door gave way with a loud crash and booted feet tramped into the rooms
below them. The sound of their approach drove a rising anxiety through Maeve as
she whispered a silent prayer.

       “Kelly…
Do
something!”

       Nordhausen
took her hand again and the two stood stone still, just as they had been in the
Arch only moments ago. Maeve felt faint as the voices and heavy footfalls grew
louder on the stairs below them. The soldiers were hastening up to the second
floor, kicking open one door after another.

14

“You’d
better hurry
, I’m losing
the particle density.” Paul saw the reading turn yellow, and he knew the
quantum fuel that was keeping the breaching sequence alive was ebbing fast.
Kelly gave him an anguished look, hesitated for one brief moment, and then
toggled a console switch. There was only one thing he could do now, though it
meant he would have to sacrifice one of his emergency pattern signatures. He
crossed his fingers, hoping that he would not have to move the travelers a second
time.

       The
light on the infusion chamber began to blink red, and then went out. Paul
looked over his shoulder with a worried expression. “I hope you have them,
Kelly. The infusion mix is expended and the Arch is out of gas.”

       “Hold
on…” Kelly was watching his chronometer digits settle on a new target date.
“Got them!” he exclaimed.

       “Paul
sighed with relief. “Good, I’ll go down and smooth things out with Maeve while
you re-set things up here.”

       “Umm…
Don’t bother,” said Kelly, and the tone of his voice put Paul on edge.

       “Why
not?”

       “Well,
they’re not in the Arch. I knew we wouldn’t have enough intermix on the
infusion chamber, so I just used my emergency pattern signature to nudge them
forward to the correct target.”

       “You
mean…”

       “Yup.
I moved them to
July 15, 1799
. There was nothing else I could do once the
particle infusion went yellow. There just wasn’t enough particle density for a
retraction. But I took three pattern signatures while they were in the flux
tube before the mission launch, so I just grabbed their pattern and we had just
enough gas to get them where they were supposed to be in the first place.”

       “But
how will we get them back? This was just supposed to be a Spook Job.”

       “We’ve
still got the main mission retraction scheme programmed. When they manifest on
the original target coordinates, and don’t get yanked home, they’ll realize
something went wrong. They’ll just have to start the mission early.”

       “Assuming
the target coordinates were clear,” Paul suggested the one thing that could
pose a real complication for them now. “What if they manifest right in the
middle of a column of Turkish soldiers? I’m still a bit nervous about that
breaching site. These blind jumps could be dangerous. That little coffee spill
sent them back to the very day someone took a pot-shot at Napoleon as he
entered
Alexandria
. Lord, who knows where they landed?” Then
another question took the forefront of his thinking. “Did they shift OK?”

       “Solid
Green.
Readings
were 100%,” Kelly assured him. “I just
patched in the original target vectors and bumped them forward. A little jump
like that has almost no chance of pattern loss on the shift. Let’s just hope
the target was clear.” He looked down at his coffee cup with a frown. “New
rule,” he said with finality as he pointed a finger at his mug. “No coffee at
the workstations during mission time.”

       “Right,”
Paul agreed, but his mind was already centuries away, wondering what was
happening with Robert and Maeve.

~

       And
Robert and Maeve were wondering much the same. They heard heavy booted feet
clomping down the hallway and, just as the door gave way, Robert felt the chill
accompanied by that airy lightness of being that characterized time shift. He
vaguely discerned the shape of a uniformed man bursting through the doorway, but
then the milky green haze of eternity masked his vision, and his stomach rolled
with the shift. This time he closed his eyes, hoping that Maeve had done the
same. A moment later he felt the solidity of soft earth under his feet, and the
travelers appeared in a haze of icy fog.

       Robert
steadied himself, feeling Maeve’s hand tight in his own. When he opened his
eyes the room they were in had vanished. It was dark now but, as his eyes
adjusted, he realized that it was just before dawn. The sky was lightening and
slowly revealing a gray-brown landscape of undulating, sandy ground, with small
stands of date and palm trees scattered here and there. There was a tinge of
salt in the air, and Robert breathed deeply, taking in the fresh breeze that
was coming off the ocean. He could not see the shoreline from the low
depression in the ground where they huddled in the cold, but he could feel it,
and hear the distant roll of wave sets breaking on the shore.

       “Where
are we?” Maeve’s voice was unsteady.

       “I…
Well I think this must be the road to
Alexandria
.” Nordhausen squinted trying to make out
the lay of the land. “Kelly must have moved us back on our original target. I
wonder where we were before?”

       “Thank
God,” said Maeve. “We almost had a nasty encounter there. When will you learn
to keep your hands to yourself, Robert?”

       “The
damn musket wouldn’t have gone off in the first place if you would mind your
own rules!” The professor was still rubbing his right earlobe where Maeve had
given him a hard pinch. He stood upright, composing himself and straightening
his white wig. There was a tinge of hesitation to his movements now, as if he
expected another time shift at any moment. “At least the target vectors are
clear. When the retraction kicks in, keep your eyes closed. In fact, close them
now. We’ll need our wits about us for the real shift. I’ll give Kelly the
thumbs up and he can drop us back here when the Arch is ready—unless you have
an hour’s meeting in mind for debriefing on that little mishap we just went
through.”

       “Mishap?
What’s got into you, Robert? You knew something was amiss and yet you went
wandering off to gawk out the window. That bit with the rifle serves you
right.”

       “It
was a musket, and I was only looking at it—until you tried to rip my ear off. I
hope no one was injured when the damn thing fired. Do you have any idea who was
out there? Napoleon! Yes, he was riding behind a column of French Guardsmen,
and I have little doubt that those soldiers thought we were shooting at them.
If someone was hit, it could have caused a major transformation. Let
that
be a lesson to you, my dear miss outcomes and consequences.”

      
Maeve just folded her arms and gave him a
smoldering look. Then it occurred to her that they were still there. They
weren’t being pulled back to the Arch complex in
Berkeley
. Whatever had caused
the brief misfire was still plaguing the mission.

       Nordhausen’s next remark seemed to vocalize her
own thoughts. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Spook Job thing has a limited
duration, right?” He fidgeted, looking around as if he was waiting for an
overdue train. “Well,” he breathed heavily, “we’re here for good, I think.”

       “Right,” Maeve agreed. “Something went wrong.
We’re here for good.” There was very little enthusiasm in her tone, and the
thought of what she was saying suddenly struck her. What if something really
did
go wrong and they could no longer get home? Where were they, exactly? Was
Nordhausen correct in assuming they were back on the original target date?

       At that moment the landscape about them was bathed
in the bright yellow light of a rising sun. Brilliant shades of ochre and
orange chased long shadows from the trees, and the sky took on a wonderful
shade of azure blue. Sea birds wheeled above them, calling through the light
morning mist.

       “Dawn,” said Robert. “That’s a good sign. We were
supposed to arrive just a few minutes before sunrise on the 14
^th
. “

       “So it seems,” said Maeve.

       They stood in silence, taking in their
surroundings. They were standing in the lee of a sandy dune, and Maeve saw that
a thin track led away in both directions, just a few yards off. “The road to
Alexandria
?” she looked to the
professor for confirmation and he nodded his agreement.

       Maeve waited, looking this way and that, while the
professor watched her with a half amused expression on his face. He looked like
an English barrister who had caught a serving wench pilfering something in the
streets.

       “Well?” he asked, eyebrows raising in a smug
expression.

       “Well what?”

       “Do we just stand here and wait for Kelly to pull
us out, or does my lady give her leave for a bit of a stroll?” He pointed
toward the sound of  the ocean. “That would be north, I suppose. So, if we head
east we should come up on the outskirts of Rosetta in no time at all.” He made
a grand gesture, infusing the movement with all the politeness he could muster,
but it was clear that he was enjoying Maeve’s discomfiture. “Unless of course
you wish to insist we stay put. In that case we can just stand here for another
forty-eight hours until the final retraction scheme kicks in.”

       “Oh, don’t be silly,” Maeve flashed him a look
that made it evident she was on to his little game. “Very well,” she took a
deep breath and looked past Nordhausen’s grin to the east. At that moment she
seemed to pale with fright, and pointed down the winding road with an unsteady
hand.

       The professor looked to see the source of her
anxiety. A group of horsemen were riding hard, the dull thump of the horse’s
hooves on the earth now apparent. “Oh my,” he said. “Unexpected company.”

       “What do we do?” Maeve gave him a wide eyed look.

       Nordhausen scratched the side of his ear, still
feeling the twinge where Maeve had pinched him a moment ago, a year ago…

       “Well we certainly can’t outrun them—not with you
in those skirts and all. Besides. They look French. I say we stand where we
are. Running would only arouse undue suspicion.”

       “Damn,” Maeve cursed. “I’m… I’m not ready yet,
Robert. What if—“

       “Nonsense,” Robert cut in. “You say you can manage
a bit of French, eh? Just stick to your story. We’re Americans… Off that damned
ship—what was it?”

       “The
Perla,”
said Maeve.

       “Right. Well stick to your story and everything
should be fine.”

       “Oh, they don’t look friendly…” The riders were
coming too fast, with an urgency that seemed  out of place. One man, a heavy
set figure in the lead, was pointing at them now. The morning breeze lifted his
long gray cape behind him as he rode. Then Maeve heard him shout, and point
directly at them.

      
“Voila!”
The riders wheeled and reined in
hard. There were two French cavalrymen in dark blue uniforms, and the man in
gray, who gave them both an odd, expectant look.
“
Bonjour, Monsieur…Madame
.”
He nodded his head in a polite bow.

       One of the soldiers spoke to the man in gray, his
voice stern and demanding. Maeve listened, mentally translating as best she
could. ‘These are the people you seek?’

      
“Certainement! Mercí, Capitain.”
The man in
gray smiled broadly, the early morning light highlighting the rouge of his full
cheeks, his dark eyes glinting with excitement.
“Mercí.”
He was nodding
his thanks to the two French soldiers, and speaking to them now, in a lowered
tone of voice.

      
“Très bien.”
The soldiers steadied their
mounts, and one gave Robert and Maeve a long stare, somewhat suspicious from
the look in his eye.
“Américain, e?”

       Maeve realized he was speaking to them, but the
nature of the question took her by surprise. How could this man know they were
Americans? A gentle nudge by Nordhausen prompted her to speak.