Maeve rushed into a side room, her arms expanded around an immense bundled laundry bag. Jennifer instinctively went to help her but was intercepted by Paul. “Now Jen,” he tugged on her arm to emphasize his point. “We need the power ramped up ASAP.”
“Now? But—”
“Take it to 80% immediately. Is there anyone else on site?”
“Just Tom, down in the generator room. The storm has been causing a few problems and—”
“Tell Tom to turn that baby over right away. I want 80% power inside half an hour.”
“But, sir…”
The look Dorland gave her was enough to quell her protest. His dark eyes had a determined fire in them, and she surrendered with a confused nod, running off to the far alcove where the intercom enabled quick communication with the generator room. Dorland allowed himself a fleeting glance at her as she went, noting how the swathe of her amber hair caught the light. He always had a fond spot for Jen, and was not surprised to find her on duty tonight with the prep-team, or what was left of it. He knew the others were not due to check in for hours, and there would be no time to get anyone on the phone, particularly on night like this. No, they were going to have to manage with Jen and Tom, and this thought led him to revisit the discussion about who would be going through the Arch on the mission.
He looked around the room, noting how Nordhausen was already hunched at a desk, his nose buried in his weathered volume of the Seven Pillars. Kelly had the laptop interfaced, working with uncanny reflexive efficiency as he began to fire up the main system monitors. Maeve was in the anteroom, sorting all the clothing they had gathered from the theater wardrobes into neat piles. They had decided to give themselves as many options as possible, finding traditional British Army uniforms that they could wear beneath the more voluminous outer robes and headdress that would be typical of the Arab peoples of the time. This way, their obvious handicap in only speaking English, might be explained if they should run into trouble.
“What if we run into Lawrence’s men?” Maeve had argued on the way to the facility. “We’ll have to get very close to the place where they will be lying in wait if we are to have any hope of preventing their charge from going off. Has anyone even thought about this? These men were a bit wild and headstrong, weren’t they?”
“We’ll just have to risk it,” Dorland had said. “The British garb will be our ace in the hole in that event. God help us if we run afoul of the Turks, however.”
Now, as Paul considered the matter again, he was wondering who should take that risk. There was no question in his mind that he should go. It was his theory, and his project. Even though it was an awful risk, he felt the burden of responsibility sitting squarely on his shoulders now, and an uneasy sensation began to thrum in his chest as the realization of what they were about to do finally settled in on him. They might get through, he thought. The visitor from the future gave him every indication that they would get through if they tried. But there were still a hundred questions clamoring in his mind, and the greatest of these was the prospect of getting back. Would the retraction algorithm work? How should they set the variables? How much time would they allow? There were so many things they did not know yet.
He tried to visualize the team of future researchers who had labored to reach them here with their urgent call for help. It took everything they could do, all of their resources, to get a single man back to this time with a message. Imagine the computers they must have used to coordinate things; the power generation capabilities, the general understanding they had of the whole process. Yet, they had missed their target by a full seven years, forcing the intrepid Mr. Graves to wait out the days in a monastery to reach a single, critical moment in time on a rain-slick street corner by the BART station. True, there had been profound interference generated by the Palma Shadow, and they would not have that obstacle to contend with on this side of the event. Yet the Shadow was building itself up even now, gathering strength and shape from each life the tsunami sequence was extinguishing, a great overspreading darkness that promised to swallow them all in time. There might be some interference, even if the way to the past was still open.
The last words of the visitor replayed themselves in his mind with a growing sense of unease. “A moment exists somewhere in time that can undo the catastrophe that is about to change the entire world. We must find it, and that quickly. We are in the eye of the tempest now. We have less than six hours before the wave-front is scheduled to make first landfall. You have a fully operational Arch ready here, and you must use it tonight.”
It was almost half past one, and they had less than three hours left to them now. What if something went wrong? What if there was interference from the emerging Shadow of the catastrophe and they ended up in the wrong day, in the wrong month, the wrong year? If they fell short of the target date, they would have to live out the time just as patiently as Mr. Graves had, assuming that was possible. What if they missed the mark by twenty years, thirty years? Paul was in his later forties, reasonably fit, and with good genes. He might live to be eighty or even ninety under normal conditions in the comfort of contemporary American culture. The other team members were close to his same age as well. If they missed the mark by too many years they would be forced to simply live out their lives as best they could in a distant past, with the hope of making it intact to the month of November, 1917. If they missed by fifty years? The prospect of missing on the other side of the target was something he did not even wish to consider.
He knew they would have to arrive somewhere prior to 1965, for they were all born in the last five years of that decade. If they did miss, or if the retraction algorithms failed, for any reason, they would be doomed. He imagined walking through the Arch and emerging some forty years beyond the target date, in the year 1957 instead of 1917. What would happen to them as they approached their birthdays in the late 1960s? According to his theory, they would have to die in some way, before the date of their actual birth. It was an uncomfortable prospect to consider—all too much to ruminate on now. The variables fought with one another in his mind, confusing him and throwing fuel on the fire of anticipation that was building in his stomach. They had to make the attempt, no matter what the outcome. Someone had to go, and he knew he would be the first to step through the Arch, come what may. Could he do it by himself? Was it necessary to risk the lives of any of the others?
Nordhausen was up from his reading and rapidly keying something on a computer terminal. Kelly was just completing the data download, feeding the precious Arion calculations into the Arch control unit. Maeve, God bless her, was trying to discretely slip out of her clothing in the ante-room to get into her costume. Lord, could he ever let any of them go? There would be quite an argument if he tried to prevent them. If he somehow prevailed and stepped through the Arch alone, would he ever see any of them again?