“Yes, he was the guy the FBI picked up before the event. I remember the trial now.” Dorland was reaching for details in his mind. “But I thought that name was spelled differently.”
The clock on the mantle chimed, as if it signaled their time was up and the mystery would escape them, but Nordhausen’s eyes narrowed with thought. He put the armload of books he was carrying on the table, and reached out to take the note. Maeve released it to him, but kept her eyes glued to the paper. Kelly had gone around behind her and was poking about in the outer pockets of the coat.
“What did you say about this interval, Paul. This Nexus Point business, and all.” Nordhausen was pulling on a thread of some recollection, staring at the note and scratching the back of his neck.
“What?”
“You said time was dreaming—that we were the dreamers; that we were the most dangerous people on earth right now. Damn!” He rushed back to his bookcase, his finger tracing over the third shelf. “Now don’t tell me I left that book in my office library. No, here it is!” He had a thick volume out of the shelves and was flipping through the pages, a broad smile on his face. The others hurried over, but Maeve snatched up the trench coat, afraid to let it out from under her nose. Nordhausen read from his book.
“All men dream,” he began, “but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” He smiled at them, snapping the book closed with an almost jubilant air. “T. E. Lawrence,” he said to them. “You know—Lawrence of Arabia! It’s one of his most famous quotes. This is the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He spent years dawdling over it. Had the whole thing in manuscript and then lost it on a train ride. Can you imagine that? Well, he set about to re-write the damn thing from memory! A dangerous man indeed, that one.”
“Very poetic,” said Kelly. “But we’re running out of time, professor. I’ve got to get to U.C. Berkeley and fire up that Arion system. What in blazes does it mean?”
“It means our visitor inadvertently left us a little clue. Oh, he probably only meant to reinforce his memory. Look here, he wrote down the address, then your name, Kelly, then the name Lawrence.”
“So you just thought you’d offer us all a nice quotation.” Kelly was getting frustrated. “This isn’t a word association game!”
“Well don’t be a dolt, man. Everything on this page is significant. He wrote the place he had to be, and the person he had to save. And look here, he’s given us these other names as well, along with a date.”
“A date?” Paul’s eyes widened.
“Yes, it’s right here,” said Nordhausen. “The first part of this number: 11101917. That would be November ten, nineteen seventeen. It so happens, my dear friends, that a certain Lawrence of Arabia was in the desert that very year, helping the British in their campaign against the Ottoman Turks in the First World War. He was campaigning in the region of Hejaz. That’s on the paper as well. This other name must be a person of some importance from that time, or perhaps a place. Here, let me see if I can find a reference.” He flipped through the index, but was frustrated. The name was not there. “That’s odd,” he muttered. “I was certain I’d find it… Perhaps in my other volumes…”
“You won’t,” said Paul. “If what you say is true that last name is the needle in the haystack. See how its been underlined?”
“Then it should be easy enough to track him down.” Nordhausen was nosing at his bookshelf again.
“Just the opposite,” said Dorland. “He won’t be in any of your books because he’s a person of absolutely no significance whatsoever—at least to the time and place he lived in. Lawrence, there, is our light post. He’s the great romantic hero of the tale—at least for us in the West. Lawrence was certainly a Prime Mover, but the real mover and shaker of the world is this other fellow: Masaui, and he’s not the 20th hijacker. I’m certain of it.”
“You’re on to something there.” Nordhausen was still flipping through his volume of the Seven Pillars. “It’s perfect! This was the time and place where the Arab people first rose up in rebellion for their independence against foreign colonial powers. The long conflict with the modern West was just getting started. The First World War just got in the way, and the British, true to form, made the Arabs promises they could not keep while they used them to master the Turks. Lawrence was a bridge between both worlds. He was a British serving officer, but in his heart he had come to know and love the Arabs and he was helping them win their freedom, or at least he thought he was.”
“Yes,” said Dorland. “And the British used Lawrence, even as they used the Arabs. Then they went and made a hero out of him to sweep it all under the rug.” He took a deep breath. “You were right, Robert: we could have never completed the research for a mission in the few hours remaining to us. They had to know that as well. They were trying to reach us here because we have a viable Arch in place on this side of the Palma Shadow. The minute I suspected who our visitor really was I knew he must be here with vital information. Our visitor has given us a nudge in the right direction after all. We’ve got our clue! Bring that book, professor. We’ll need it. Come on, let’s get over to U.C. Berkeley. Something tells me this Masaui has something to do with this. We find him, and we become the dreamers of the day. Let’s move!”
5
They gathered their things and were soon huddling in Kelly’s Subaru Forester, shivering with the cold yet fired by the urgency of their mission. Kelly started the vehicle and backed it off the curb where it had come to an abrupt halt when he rushed to the scene with his news. The vehicle jolted off the pavement, and Nordhausen complained from the back seat where he sat with Dorland.
“Now have a care, mister, no need to get us all killed along the way.”
“Relax,” said Kelly. “I’ve been living up here for over 30 years. I know just the route to take, panic or no panic. Besides, it seems to be settling down out here. People have gone indoors to get out of this rain. I’ll bet everyone is huddling around their TV sets or trying to call friends and relatives back east.”
Nordhausen folded his arms, and Dorland noted that he gave Kelly a strange look, as if he expected trouble from some quarter. It occurred to him that the professor might be afraid Kelly would suddenly vanish, leaving them all in a driverless vehicle, careening along some rain swept street to their doom.
“I wouldn’t worry,” he leaned over to Nordhausen with a whisper.
“What?”
“He’s a Prime Lever; possibly even a Free Radical now. Didn’t you hear what the visitor said? I don’t think we have anything to fear just yet.”
“Well what if…” Nordhausen lowered his voice. “What if time tries to undo our visitor’s intervention and there’s an accident waiting for us out there? And what happened to Mr. Graves? How can you be sure that time won’t find some way to make amends for his mischief? Perhaps she already has. The man just disappeared!”
“What are you two talking about back there?” Maeve leaned around, her arm draped over the back of the front seat.
“Nothing,” said Nordhausen. “Just running through the history in my mind again, that’s all. How much time will you need to program the temporal locus, Kelly?”
“If that date is good, not much time at all—twenty minutes. I’ll need time for the Arch configuration, however. Perhaps half an hour.”