Benedict swiftly reached the conclusion that he had only one option. He knelt down and gathered up the ends of the papyrus, carefully folding them back into their original shape and retying the red band. Then, tucking the packet into his shirt, he turned and stepped to the centre of the Avenue of Sphinxes outside the half-finished temple. He walked to the fifth sphinx from the end, stopped, cast a last look around at the unforgiving desert, and, with the even, measured pace his father had taught him, began making his long way home.
CHAPTER 25
Brendan proved himself an able and erudite guide to the attractions of Damascus. He led his willing charge on a leisurely tour of the Old City, visiting the Great Umayyad Mosque with its golden domes and shrine to John the Baptist; the Pasha’s Palace with its serene palm-shaded fountains and room after room of ornate tile and scrollwork screens; the Chapel of Saint Paul on the very spot where he escaped the city in a basket from the city wall in the dead of night; Bab Faradis, or Gate of Paradise; the Great Souq al-Hamidiyya, with its miles of aisles and dizzying myriad of shops; Straight Street and its marble columns and Roman arches. And while they strolled and took in the sights, they talked, and Cass got a better grasp on the nature of ley travel, to be sure, as well as the work and philosophy of the society, which, she learned, had all started with a man named Arthur Flinders-Petrie.
“An extraordinary fellow-inquisitive, resourceful, fearless as the day is long-an explorer of the highest order.” They were sitting at a tiny round table under a striped awning sipping sweet, fragrant hibiscus tea from glasses in silver holders as the day faded around them. “Ever come across that name at all?” asked Brendan.
“No, never,” said Cass.
“Pity. But I’m not surprised. That he is not now remembered in the annals of human achievement is due to the fact that his work was largely clandestine and confined almost exclusively to exploration of the lines of telluric energy-ley lines, in other words. That alone, I suppose, would be reason enough to found a society in which to carry on his work. But there is more.” Brendan paused and regarded her closely, as if gauging her readiness to hear.
Cass felt her pulse quicken. “I’m listening.”
“Arthur discovered something,” Brendan said, lowering his voice. “On one of his many journeys he discovered something of such unimaginable magnitude that it changed the course of his life. Though he continued his travels, he held his discovery a close-guarded secret, refusing to speak of it to anyone.”
“What did he discover?”
Brendan leaned back, frowning. “The truth is, we do not know.”
“That’s it?” blurted Cass, exasperation pinching her voice. “Since we’re speaking frankly, I don’t mind saying that, frankly, I expected more.”
“And I truly wish I could tell you more. Members of our society have been working over many lifetimes to answer the riddle of what it was that Arthur discovered and did not feel he could share with the rest of the world. We have sworn life and blood to this quest, and some have died in pursuit of it. We trust their lives have not been given in vain.”
Cass leaned back in her chair and stared at the gentleman across the table, fighting down her frustration and disappointment. “But you must have some idea what you are searching for?”
“We have no end of ideas, theories, notions, suppositions, and so forth,” Brendan replied with a rueful laugh. “Too many, in fact. But the very best theory-and this is not mine alone, others share it-is that Arthur Flinders-Petrie discovered nothing less than the means to alter reality.”
“Excuse me?” said Cass, disbelief edging into her tone once more. Scientific training and her own native scepticism-honed by years in academia fighting from her corner against considerable odds-made her wary of anything that sounded even remotely oddball. “For a moment I thought you said alter reality — what does that even mean?”
Brendan nodded. “I don’t blame you for being dubious. It took me years to accept it myself. Even now I’m not sure I fully grasp all the implications, but it would seem to be bound up in the ordinary mystery of time. Arthur may have found a way to manipulate time itself.”
“That would be the greatest discovery in human history,“ Cass observed dryly. “Your man Flinders-Petrie must have been one heck of a discoverer.”
“Oh, he was,” agreed Brendan. “Of course, that is only a theorybut it is the best one we have so far. Consider,” he said. “What if, just for example, you possessed the ability to change the past-”
“Then instead of a dirt-sucking PhD grunt, I would be fabulously wealthy and living on a tropical island paradise, and we would not be having this conversation-that is, if I could change the past.”
“I’m afraid I’ve presented you with too much, and all at once,” Brendan sympathised. He drew a deep breath and gazed at a sky fading from gold to violet as evening came on. “We should get back. Rosemary will wonder what has become of us.”
He laid a few coins on the table, and they resumed their walk through the Old Quarter’s rabbit warren of streets. After a moment he said, “Here in Syria, the grand panoply of the past is all around us-everything from pre-historic to Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Roman, Byzantine-you name it-every epoch of human existence has left its mark on the land. Here, it is easy to imagine travelling to the past because the past is never far away.”
“You are talking to a palaeontologist,” Cass said. “I spend a lot of time with my head in the past.”
“Then you should have a good feel for the mystery that lies at the heart of time itself. We live and move in time, but none of us really knows much about it. For example, in normal experience time flows in only one direction-from past to present. We can visit the past, at least vicariously, through photographs, the written word, our memories, the fossils you find, and such like. The past is always with us; we carry it around with us in the form of memories, we live in a world shaped entirely by it, and it continually exerts a direct influence on the present, yes? The choices you made yesterday affect what happens to you today, and the choices you make today will affect what happens to you tomorrow. We all reach the future at the same rate, and we have to live with what we find when we get there.”
“In large part because of the choices we’ve made,” said Cass. “We shape our reality through the exercise of intention, through the application of our free will as conscious beings.”
“Correct,” agreed Brendan. “With ley travel, however, the experience of time and reality is somewhat more fluid.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“Indeed, ley journeys normally involve visits to a particular version of the past-a past where many things will be the same as we remember them, but other things are different. People, events, and, in some cases, even places will differ from those we recognise from our personal experience.” He paused and raised his eyes to take in her expression. “But what if the past was fully as malleable, as ripe with potential, as the future seems to be?”
“Then, by changing the past, we might make a better future than we might otherwise have had,” Cass suggested.
“That is why you get to be fabulously wealthy and live on your island in tropical splendour-because of the changes you made to your past reality.” Brendan regarded Cass with a knowing look. “In short, by changing the past one also creates a future that might not have existed if things had stayed the way they were.”