Touchstone (Meridian Series) by John Schettler, Mark Prost Read Free Book Online

Nordhausen continued.
    “French?”
    “Why certainly. Champollion
wrote about it all in a letter to a Mr. Dacier, revealing what his many years
of research had come to. Why, he worked it all out from this very stone and
published a book in 1824 detailing his work on the alphabet.”
    “Forgive me, sir, but I’ve heard
nothing about it.”
    Nordhausen shrugged his
shoulders and set to moving the next stone. Little grains of fine sandstone
grated off the panel as he rocked it away and against the first two. Mr. Wilberforce
didn’t seem to care, which was another thing that rankled in the back of
Nordhausen’s mind. These slabs would get prime display in any museum in the
world. The Rosetta stone was perhaps the most famous artifact ever recovered in Egypt —yet it was, stored away in the
dingy cellar of the museum like so much trash. His eyes widened when he caught
sight of the next slab.
    There it was, hidden behind the
stone he had just moved, dwarfed by the slab behind it. The thick black stone
from Rosetta, but as the Curator had intimated, it was considerably smaller
than it was supposed to be!
    He stared at it, unwilling to
believe what he was seeing for a moment. Then strained to push it closer to the
light, almost afraid to set his hands upon it. This was it. There was no
mistaking the characteristic basalt, with the demotic and Greek text laid out
in neat lines etched into the stone. He swallowed hard. Where was the top
third? Where were the hieroglyphics?
    The stone was broken entirely
across the top. There were only a few lines of hieroglyphics  remaining, the last
few lines of the text, and those were the very words that were missing from a
chipped area at the bottom of the slab.
    Nordhausen stood frozen. What
had he done? It was not possible that he had done this, was it? What did this
mean?
    “Good lord,” he breathed. “It’s
broken!”
    “Just as it always was,” said
Wilberforce.
    “Always was? Are you saying
there was nothing more of the hieroglyphics than this single line at the top?”
Nordhausen looked aghast at the man, who now began to purse his lips with a
hint of indignation.
    “We take very good care of
everything we receive, sir,” the Curator said a bit defensively. “I can assure
you that these stones are in the very same condition they were received in—if
not better.” He folded his arms, a bit perturbed by this strangely dressed
visitor.
    “Of course,” said Nordhausen,
remembering to watch what he said just now. Still, his mind was racing
feverishly ahead. If something as significant at this was altered, what else was different? Oh lord, what would he find when he got back?
    Nordhausen took a deep breath.
    Mr. Wilberforce was politely
waiting for him to say something.
    “Thank you, sir,” he said with a
deflated tone. “It is not how I imagined it to be. It is useless for my studies.
Please excuse me, I am very tired.”
    Without waiting for reply, or
even escort, Nordhausen wheeled about, and walked rapidly out of the cellar,
out of the museum, and dully made his way back to his hotel.
    What else was different?
    The thought gouged him with
every step he took. He raked through each moment of his time jaunt, wondering
where the fatal blow had been struck. Was it the flagrant contact with Prime
Movers he had the night before? He kept replaying the scene in his mind, trying
to root out what he could have done to cause this catastrophe—for a catastrophe
it was. The Rosetta Stone—a touchstone that had been the key to unraveling the
mysteries of Ancient Egypt, was now nothing more than a useless slab of black
basalt. How, how, how could this be?
    Paul’s voice returned to him,
“somewhere, lost on a single wayward thread of time, a moment exists that is
mated to every great event on the continuum, a whisper of inconsequential
absurdity that is forever paired to the great moments of history…” He called
them Pushpoints, thought Nordhausen, and I’ve gone and pushed