“He said that,” said Nordhausen. “Those were his exact words!”
“No,” Paul corrected him, “he said we had to stick the needle in. It’s like acupuncture.” The image was clear in his mind. “The Palma Event was so traumatic to the continuum that it needed intervention at more than one point on the Time Meridian. Mr. Graves stuck the first needle in when he stepped in front of Kelly’s car and prevented the accident that was supposed to take his life. The rest is up to us. The coat and the note were very odd. Without Maeve’s polite manner we might never have had those clues. This may seem strange, but I’m beginning to think time is on our side in this one. The horrible violence of the Palma Event has somehow been such a violation that she may just be smiling on us now. Yes, some sort of complication may have snatched away our visitor, but at least we all saw the note—right? We all remember it.”
“Then what was that last number?” Nordhausen reiterated his quest. “If Kelly’s right then it must be the last coordinate—the spatial coordinate we need for the Arch.”
No one could remember the number. They had been so taken by the rush of the moment that it just didn’t have time to register in anyone’s head. “I know it was K17 something,” Maeve repeated.
Nordhausen had a small pocket flashlight out and was squinting at his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He was certain there would be some reference in the book to the number—but what? The thing to do was to find Lawrence’s diaries for the month of November, 1917. What exactly was he up to that month? He renewed his search with dogged determination, certain he could unravel the last clue.
“Let me think,” he spoke aloud. “They had already taken Akaba that summer by mounting a raid from the landward side. After Lawrence crossed the Sinai to bring news of the raid to Cairo, he eventually rejoined his Arab cohorts. Now what was he up to in November? Ah! Here it is.”
“What is it?” Dorland leaned over trying to see where the professor’s finger pressed against a line of text in a circle of wan yellow light from the flashlight. The light fluttered and grew weaker.
“November, nineteen seventeen…” Nordhausen read aloud. “I have rejoined Auda and his followers with the aim of causing some mischief along the route of the Hejaz…” The flashlight suddenly went out.
“Damn!” Nordhausen shook the light, and it fluttered on briefly before failing again. “Of all the time for the batteries to fail! Has someone got a match?”
“Does that help?” Kelly switched on a small ceiling light.
“Good man, Kelly” The professor bent over his volume again, angling the book to cast as much light as possible on the page of interest. “Yes, it’s right here. Lawrence was asked to put pressure on the Hejaz Railway. He made raids against the line at numerous points in October and November; the first at Kilometer 587, then at Kilometer 489 and later at 172.”
“That’s it!” Maeve was certain of the last number on the note now. “It was K172. What an elegant way to note the exact spatial location! We have to be at Kilometer 172 on the Hejaz Railway when Lawrence makes his raid. You were correct, Robert. Everything on that note was of great significance. Our visitor managed to deliver his message, in a way he never intended, but deliver it he has.”
Nordhausen snapped the book shut. “Great!” He was relieved to have the burden of making the exact call on the spatial coordinates removed from his shoulders. “You know it could have taken us months to discover that. Oh, we could have just picked a time and place in November of that year, but then we’d be right back in the same situation as with the Crusades. Where do we go? What do we do? Now we at least have a good fix on the where.” He came up short, meeting another obstacle in his thinking. “Lord, how are we going to manage this? We can’t just appear in the middle of the attack—or worse yet, on a moving train.”
“Train? Why would we want to be on the train?”
“Because that’s where Masaui is likely to be. It’s his fate that matters most here.”
Paul agreed with him at once. “Yes, then we have to board the train before it starts off on its journey. When we get to the Computer Library focus your research on finding us a good boarding point. We’ll need to configure the Arch to open a breaching point at a place where we won’t be noticed by the locals. Then we get on the train and it takes us out to Kilometer 172 for the raid.” He smiled. All we have to do is discover who this Masaui is and what we have to do about him.”
“That may be trickier than you think,” said Maeve. “You say this train is operated by the Ottoman Turks? Well, what would four English speaking passengers be doing aboard? We’ll need much more than appropriate clothing. We’ll need some sort of documentation to justify our presence on the train. For that matter, what about effects? We’ll need period specific money and who knows what else. The devil is in the details, you know. We could run into trouble right from the beginning if we don’t plan this correctly. Suppose we have trouble boarding the train?”
“We’ll have to work something out.”
“I’ll dig up everything I possibly can on the incident. But Maeve makes a good point. Suppose we do manage to slip onto the train unnoticed. Suppose we even manage to make the ride out to Kilometer 172 without any undue attention being paid to us. There’s still the matter of the raid.”
“Yes,” Kelly piped up from the driver’s seat. “I saw the damn movie! They weren’t taking prisoners on those raids.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Nordhausen chided him. “You can’t base your history on the dramatic portrayal of the movie.”
“Well he still makes a good point,” said Maeve. “It’s going to be dangerous. We’ll be riding on a train that will come under attack, and who knows what could happen.”
“I said it was going to be dangerous,” said Paul. “A far cry from sitting quietly in the Globe and watching Shakespeare. But whatever the risk, we have to try. The consequences of failing are just too great.”
“Outcomes and Consequences,” said Maeve, lapsing into thought for a moment. “God only knows what happens if the water hits the east coast in the morning. Whatever it was, it was enough to send them back here on a very risky mission. Perhaps it cost Graves his life. Are we prepared to risk the same?”
She let that sink in for a moment, and they all sat in silence. Kelly shifted the gears as they rounded the bend and entered the U.C. Berkeley campus. He was soon speeding toward the library and, as he drove, a thought suddenly occurred to him. He, of all people, wasn’t supposed to be here.
“Do we all have to take the risk?” His thought emerged.
“What?” Nordhausen looked up from his book.
“I mean… why do we all have to go? Doesn’t that just complicate matters for us on that end?”
“Well,” said Nordhausen, “I suppose there’s no reason for you and Maeve to come along. I’ll be needed for the history, of course, and if Paul would be so bold as to accompany me, then perhaps the two of us could handle it. Then Kelly could run numbers and work the Arch from this end, and Maeve could watch the variance factors and help program the retraction.”
“You can count on me, Robert.” Paul assured his friend he was willing to go.