Nordhausen gave him a blank stare. “Are you trying to tell me that you think—”
“Kelly’s alive,” said Paul. “He’s alive, damnit, and by God, I have an idea.”
Chapter 3
Nordhausen had an incredulous look on his face. “An idea? Don’t tell me you’re planning another time jump. How in the world are we going to get the Arch operating without Kelly? Look at it out there, listen to the city! There’s a quiet panic underway, and it’s only going to get worse. We’re lucky things haven’t completely fallen apart by now, but I assure you, they will fall apart. Look at the bill for this meal. It’s going to get very uncomfortable when people start going hungry.”
“Staying fed is the least of my worries now,” said Paul.
“That’s an understatement,” said Nordhausen. “I’ll be glad if we make it over the Bay Bridge and get back to Berkley in one piece. It was a crazy to come over here to the City. Damn expensive as well. How much fuel is left in the tank? We’ve barely got enough to get us out of the Bay Area. Let’s get out of here, Paul. Go somewhere safe while we still have some mobility and the roads are open.”
“Somewhere safe?”
“How about your place down in Carmel? It’s a perfect refuge, tucked away on a peninsula with only a few roads leading in or out, all easily blocked and defended. There’s a lot of agriculture close by and lots of local growers in the area.”
“Forget it, Robert. You think we can just retire with the old folks in Pacific Grove and just ride this thing out? Hell, we have to do something. We’ve still got the Arch complex intact at Lawrence Labs in Berkeley. And I didn’t come into the City here for a hundred dollar meal in Chinatown, we’re heading over to the University of San Francisco. They’ve got an Arion system at the Harney Science Center there, and I still have 5 hours booked. I doubt anyone’s using it now.”
“Five hours? The University is closed, Paul.” What are you going to do, break into the building?”
“I have a key,” Paul said firmly. “We’ll just let ourselves in.”
“Oh yes, excuse us sir, we’re time travelers and we need as few hours on your machine here…” Nordhausen was trying to be sarcastic but Paul just fixed him with a determined stare and he relented. “You mean to say you have a mission planned? Is that why you’ve been carrying Kelly’s laptop around the last three days? You’ve got research? You think you can send us off to some desert again and reverse all this—prevent the Palma event from happening? In this mess?“ He jabbed a thumb at the open door where the City noise seemed louder, more cacophonous, with a tinge of uncertain anxiety in the normal backwash of cars and people. There were more horns, people shouting, car alarms going off, emergency service sirens, all adding a sense of urgency to the moment.
“I have an idea about that too,” Paul said again, “but we’ll need Kelly, so getting him back is the first order of business. He’s the only one who can handle the programming for a new mission.”
Nordhausen blinked. He started to say something then stopped and took a last swig of his now warm Tsing Tao beer, setting the bottle down on the table with a hard thud.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. You think Kelly’s alive, god only knows why, but you do. And I know you’re stubborn enough to hold to that, his obvious absence aside. But it’s just denial, Paul. You’ll have to admit it eventually. You’re just making it harder on yourself with this.”
Paul said nothing, folding his arms defensively and pursing his lips. The professor gave in and gestured to him with an open hand. “OK, OK, I’ll go along with this for the moment. But what makes you think he’s alive? At least tell me that.”
“Why should he be dead?” Paul started. “It’s not denial, Robert, just positive thinking. Why should I assume he’s dead just because we couldn’t hold the quantum fuel together for a safe retraction? My bet is that he is still safe at his mission location.”
“What, having tea with the Assassins, like you were in Masyaf when you fell through the Well of Souls? That’s a stretch, Paul, not to mention that his mission location is over ten thousand years in the past. You explained it all to me yourself—he’s likely to have wandered off his initial manifestation point, and he could be anywhere in the area now. He could be kidnapped and hustled away to some stronghold like you were. Hell, these people are smart. They managed to stop Kelly, foil our intervention and reverse Palma all in one throw of the dice. They obviously know who Kelly is, and how important he is to the success of our endeavor here. Don’t you think they’d make damn sure he was well away from his manifestation point so we’d be unable to pull him out? Better yet, they could end the whole affair by simply cutting off his head!”
“They didn’t cut off my head,” said Paul.
“Well they should have.”
“When you were captured by Rasid and his men at Wadi Rumm they didn’t cut off your head.”
“Well they should have,” Nordhausen remained adamant.
Paul smiled, reaching for Kelly’s laptop where it sat on the unused chair at one corner of the table. “I need to show you something,” he said quietly. “I’ve been doing some digging around in the history.”
Nordhausen tapped his fingernail on the table top impatiently. He watched as Paul opened the laptop and poked at the touchpad to call up a file.
“OK,” said Paul. “You did your thing with the Rosetta stone and you claim you can read hieroglyphics, right?” The professor gave him a suspicious look. “Then read this…” Paul swiveled the laptop around so Nordhausen could get a look at the screen. The professor leaned in, squinting at the image there, suddenly curious. There were two symbols in a characteristic oval cartouche. One was a circle with a dot or another smaller circle in the center. The second looked a bit like a styled letter A, three strokes, with the left vertical side extended and curved below the horizontal stroke.
“That’s Ra,” the professor said at once as he pointed to the circular character. “It’s the symbol for the sun.”
“Right,” said Paul. “And the other one?”
Nordhausen thought for a moment. “That would be the symbol used to indicate a pyramid, a burial chamber, as they were all basically tombs.”
“What could it mean?” Paul urged him on. “What do those two symbols in tandem spell out? Sunset? The sun dying and going to its tomb in the underworld?”
“No, no, no,” Nordhausen pointed at the circular cartouche surrounding the two symbols, and noted that they were stacked one above another. “The cartouche was used to isolate characters and indicate a name. It’s someone’s name, probably an important figure that the rest of the glyphs are talking about. Where did you find this? I’ll need to see it in context to tell you what it means.”
“Exactly!” Paul clasped his palms together as he spoke. “Now… You said that first symbol was Ra, Atum-Ra, the Egyptian god of the sun. What’s the second symbol called, the one describing a pyramid?”
“Well the ancient Egyptian name for pyramid is Mer in some translations. It means tomb: pa mer. Others think the Greeks got involved in the etymology, by describing the pointed tops of ancient wheat cakes with the word ‘pyramis.’ But remember, the Greeks weren’t even around when the Egyptians started with all of this. So the prevailing wisdom is that the word has other origins. It’s all related to the sun cult one way or another—to Ra. Some even interpret the word to mean ‘fire in the middle’ and claim the notion of a pyramid arose from ancient volcanoes, the fire in the middle being obvious in that image.”