“You didn’t do anything?” Paul just stared at him. “Robert, you shouldn’t have been there in the first place!”
“Yes, I know, I know…” Nordhausen covered his face in his palms again, wanting to hide from his own foolishness. “But I just don’t see the connection,” he muttered.
“What connection?”
“Between Wilde and the stone. How could an innocent session in a bar cause damage to the Rosetta Stone? I can’t see it.”
“What are you talking about?”
‘That’s the problem, Paul. It’s the stone. It’s broken, but I can’t figure how. I went there to look at the carvings, and I saw it… but it was wrong! The Rosetta Stone. Our whole understanding of the hieroglyphics was based upon that one object—but now it’s changed. What does it mean? How could it have happened?”
The recital had left Nordhausen drained, and he sat slumped in his desk chair, waiting now for Dorland to say something.
“I don’t know what to make of this, Robert. I have never even heard of this thing—what did you call it? The Rosetta Stone? And what’s all this about understanding the hieroglyphics? No one has ever translated ancient Egyptian writing. Yes, there are pyramid freaks, and conspiracy theorists and other cranks who claim to be able to read them, but they’ve remained a mystery for thousands of years.”
“No, no, no,” Nordhausen protested, waving his hand. “That’s just what I mean! Someone did translate the hieroglyphics. I was looking up the references only a moment ago. Champollion, a French scholar, identified the phonetic connection in the glyphs centuries ago, but none of that work is published now. Oh, God, what have I done?”
Paul put his clip board down and folded his arms. “This is too much for me to swallow at this point,” he said. “I’m still not sure what you’re driving at. You just told me that this guy’s work was never published. Do you realized how crazy that sounds? How could you know about something that was never—” Paul caught himself, and a squall of concern swept over his features.
Nordhausen’s empty emotions were suddenly filled with a backlash of anger. “Well I am not insane, if that’s what you’re thinking. I planned this very carefully. I told you I was going to check on the writing. It was a legitimate mission, though I know I should have cleared it with the rest of the team. In any case, what’s done is done. Yes, I had my toast with Wilde and Gilbert in the bar, and I went to the museum the very next day. It was well thought out. How long have you known me, Paul? Since high school! Maybe I shouldn’t have gone back, but that’s not the issue here. Something bigger is going on now. We’ve got to find out what happened to the Rosetta Stone!”
6
“Rosetta Stone!” Dorland shot back. “There you go again. What are you talking about? Look, I’m trying to be sympathetic here, but you’re not making any sense. What’s this stone you keep rambling on about?”
Nordhausen sighed heavily. “It was discovered in 1799, during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. They were trying to improve an old fort near the town of Rosetta and uncovered a huge slab of black basalt with inscriptions in three languages.”
“Wait a second,” Paul interrupted. “I’ve read that history many times. Sure, Napoleon invaded Egypt, and was stranded by the British Fleet. He fought a few battles, tried to march off to Palestine, then got tired of the whole campaign and escaped to leave all his men to fend for themselves. That’s all in the history, but I’ve never heard of this Rosetta thing.”
“Well he brought teams of savants with him. Do you remember that? They carried back all their records and artifacts and published volumes about them.”
“Yes, but there was nothing with a clue to translating hieroglyphics.”
“Don’t you see?” Nordhausen was getting frustrated now. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! There was an artifact. It was called the Rosetta Stone—perhaps the most significant find of the whole expedition! There were three languages: Demotic, Greek and the Hieroglyphics, and they all said the same thing. That was how Champollion made the connection between them. It was a touchstone, a key reference point that opened everything up.” He gave Paul a wild look, then changed his tack, hitting on some new thought. “Paul, I can read them,” Nordhausen insisted.
“Read what?”
“The hieroglyphics! I know what they mean—I’ve known about them for over thirty years. Hell, I’ve got old notebooks in my study—We’ve got to get over there!”
“Notebooks? Hold on now, Robert.” Nordhausen was up off his seat and looking about him, as though searching for something.
“Yes, notebooks. Good lord, what if they’re gone too?”
“Sit down, Robert. You’re getting weird on me now.”
“Sit down? Is that all you have to say about this? I thought you were the time theoretician here. Think man! I just came through the Arch, only minutes ago in fact. No, I wasn’t in the bathroom. I lied about that, but you’ve got to believe me on this point. I was back in Old London, just like I said, and I’ve done something to change the Meridian. But I remember the world I came from, Paul, and it had the Rosetta Stone, the hieroglyphics and all. I remember how to read the glyphs, and I can prove it to you. Hell, that’s why I went on the mission in the first place—to read samples of the hieroglyphics that might have been lost to our time. I figured they might still be intact in an earlier time, and what better place to look than the British Museum? So I went back, damnit. Yes, I screwed up again, and I’m the first to admit that. But I know I’m right about the stone, the glyphs, and all the rest.”
Paul gave him a long, searching look. He scratched the back of his head and started to say something, then caught himself, the change in his thinking obvious on his face. Robert’s jibe about the time theory had pricked his attention. If it was true, and the alert had been called because of his friend’s use of the Arch, then Robert would have been in a Nexus Point, a protected bubble in the stream of time. He would know things, aspects and elements of his original Meridian, while everyone outside the Nexus would remain oblivious. “Alright,” he began. “Let’s slow down here and take this one step at a time. You say you used the Arch.”
“Yes.”
“And you went to London and had a drink with Oscar Wilde and company—just like you, Robert. What were you thinking? You don’t get involved with Primes! How many times do we have to tell you these things?”
“Well it wasn’t my fault. I was just sitting there, trying to mind my own business and they latched on to me. The next thing I know I was judging a poetry contest. I had no intention—”
“Yes you did, my friend. You went to the opera, right? No fault in that. We were going to watch Shakespeare when this whole thing started. But, just like Maeve warned, you can’t resist the urge to start poking around in the history. I’ll bet you loved every minute of that little encounter in the nightclub. What did you say you were drinking?”
“Oh, come now. I was in complete control of my faculties at all times. Yes, I conversed with them, Wilde and Gilbert both. But it was just happenstance. I never had any intention of tampering with a Prime Mover, and I tried to extricate myself from the situation as soon as I could.”
“Happenstance? That’s the point Robert—that’s exactly what a Pushpoint is—something completely innocuous in the immediate milieu that has enormous power to catalyze the future.”
“Do you think that’s where the damage occurred?”