“And you?”
Taleghani shook his head. “No. I have no family.”
“What about the T-span operator?” asked Gordon.
“His name is Mehmet Abdel Hashim—a former student of mine. He’s been in it with me from the beginning. Mehmet wants to touch the past and fortunately he does have family. His father is on the board of the International Temporal Span Authority.”
“Does Mehmet’s father know about the trip you’re planning?”
“Not all the details.” Dr. Taleghani studied Gordon’s face for a moment and asked, “Do you have family?”
Gordon paused, wrestling with an answer that revealed more about himself than he wanted. “No one,” he said at last, his gaze on the tip of the escarpment. There had been an insane mother, a father who stuck around only long enough to make a joke, the wise man who taught him as much as Gordon had been willing to learn, and the spotter during the war who he learned to love as a brother. All dead now. There had been the Dinéback in the pueblo, but he and his mother had never really been welcomed as a part of that.
The archeologist dismissed the subject with a quick wave of his hand. “The departure window all our planning depends on opens here late this evening,” he said. “It was cutting it very close waiting for Dr. Hussein’s findings, and now Harith and his back ... We cannot keep the timespanner waiting for Harith’s back to mend. We must leave tonight.”
“Weapons?”
“Harith has arranged for protection, including some weapons. The matter of defending us is ultimately up to you, though.”
“How big is the expedition?”
“You, me, and the T-span operator, although Mehmet goes back with the unit.”
“Goes back?” Gordon inquired with an arched eyebrow.
“Yes. He drops us off on top of a hill outside the village—right beneath where we are sitting, in fact. Then he returns here to the present and returns for us at the next window.”
“This tale gets better with each telling, Doctor.” Gordon fixed his gaze on the archeologist’s eyes. “How long?”
“That depends on exactly when the meteor hits and what local departure windows are connectable to present time arrival windows. There are several sets of theoretical windows we’ve tentatively incorporated into our planning ranging in time from twenty-one to twenty-five days. We won’t be able to set our times and locations exactly until we get there. No one before has ever timespanned this far back.” He examined Gordon’s face. “Three weeks in prehistory, Mr. Redcliff. Aren’t you excited?”
“Positively giddy.” Gordon frowned as he turned a few considerations over in his mind. “In Iran, Doctor, what did you do in the war?”
Taleghani held out his hands at the seemingly irrelevant question. “Why?”
Gordon smiled. “Indulge me, sir. I’m lashing up a small but carefree band of brothers in preparation for a possible upcoming fracas. If you’ll pardon the expression, I need to pick chiefs and Indians.”
“I was an intelligence officer attached to Egypt’s Third Field Army Headquarters. My principle duties involved interpretation of satellite surveillance imagery.”
“In officer’s training, did they teach you any hand-to-hand combat? Basic infantry skills?”
“No. I didn’t go to officer’s school. I received my commission directly when I was called.”
Gordon’s eyebrows went up.
“Unless they had already gone to officers’ school, few of us called up for staff support positions had time to train. Bloody shock and awe. It was pretty much get my uniform issue, one boot on, one arm in a sleeve, and report for duty. There wasn’t time for any niceties such as combat training. There was a pistol range qualification,” said Dr. Taleghani. He looked away from Gordon’s face. “Are you thinking this expedition itself is one of those stupid things you warned me against doing?”
Gordon held up a finger. “Risky, perhaps. Going without any weapons and with flowers in our hair, that would be stupid. Your pistol qualification, Doctor: how did you do?”
“I was afraid you were going to ask.” Taleghani looked down at his lap. “My pistol instructor told me to keep an electric shaver in my holster and not to charge the batteries except under expert supervision.”
“You’re not joking.”
The archeologist looked up at Gordon. “I was an officer—a major. No matter how abominable I was with a pistol, that was quite disrespectful for a sergeant, I thought.” He shook his head apologetically. “He was quite justified in his assessment, however. I am afraid I’m a scientist, not a warrior, Mr. Redcliff. Do you still want to be my bodyguard?”
“I’ve already taken on the job, Doctor, although you do seem to stack the challenges rather precariously. Can you run?”
“Run?”
“Are your legs in good shape? You look healthy. Running may be our best defense.”
“Well, sir, I run two miles every morning,” the archeologist said proudly. “Even in the sand. When I was nineteen I earned a position on my country’s team in the Orlando Olympics.”
“When you were nineteen.”
Dr. Taleghani frowned. “I received a bronze in the eight-hundred-meter event. How did you do?”
“When the Olympics were held in Orlando, I got suspended from summer school for punching Tommy Wilson in the nose.” Gordon smiled wryly. “I was nine years old. Tell me, what changed from when you were fourteen and swearing to kill Americans and when you were nineteen and running in Orlando?”
“I discovered Egyptology.” Dr. Taleghani grinned. “Egyptian universities have the best field trips and museums in the world, but no one goes after Egyptology like American academics—and I will never admit I ever said this,” he added. “While I was studying in the US, I also tried out for Egypt’s track-and-field team. Wonderful years.”
“Doctor, have you given any thought to what you’re going to face once we return to Site Safar?”
“When we return?”
Gordon nodded. “I don’t care what kind of song and dance your operator Mehmet has memorized to lay on the media and the powers that be, and I don’t care who his father is. As soon as Mehmet comes back with that T-span can empty, everybody from the T-span czar and the secretary general of the UN to those antiquities caliphs in Cairo, not to mention a few governments around the world, and every priest, monk, rabbi, mullah, shaman, and witch doctor are going into vapor lock. I expect us to be met by something resembling a firing squad.”
“Do you want out?” asked the archeologist.
“I can always plead I was following orders, Doctor. But if they come at you with the police or the army, I can’t do anything about that. Can you have the arrival take place somewhere else? Somewhere unannounced?”
“A slight problem with that.” The archeologist gave Gordon a wan smile. “The nearest alternate window is just outside Tripoli nine days ago.”
Gordon smiled. “I doubt you could move that quickly even when you were nineteen, Doctor. When’s the next window here?”
“Four hours after we leave there’s a return window within meters of where we are right now. That’s one of the advantages to doing this on site. Mehmet will bring the vehicle back through that window while we’re investigating the village. The next window here is thirty-one days later, local time.”
“After that?” asked Gordon.
“Here at the site a window will open approximately eight months from now, but I’m fairly certain the departure window for it won’t open until after it’s probably a hundred meters beneath that debris flood. Other locations are inaccessible for one reason or another.”
“For instance.”
“Well, countless windows are available in space. Unfortunately we do not have that kind of recovery system, not to mention transportation. Eighteen minutes before the window is available here at the site there is one available quite near the bottom of the Marianas Trench southwest of Guam.”