title: Navigator: Time's Tapestry, Book Three
author:  Stephen Baxter 
description: The engrossing third Time's Tapestry novel (after <i>Emperor</i> and <i>Conqueror</i>) from Philip K. Dick Awardwinner Baxter focuses on Christianity's reconquest of Spain from the Moors between A.D. 1070 and 1492. This conflict is reflected in the struggle between the English and Spanish branches of a family, both of which have received mysterious prophecies and coded instructions containing designs for weapons that could give one side power to annihilate the other. The characters' beliefs and passions shape events, but they don't know how much they have been manipulated by competing tempters from the future. By book's end, two forces emerge to debate whether Christopher Columbus will be given ships to sail west or an army to lead east in an apocalyptic war against Islam. Baxter understands how a craving for beauty and knowledge can become ghastly fanaticism, and he's also very good at showing his characters thinking within the limitations of their time. <i>(Jan.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: **IN THE ABYSS OF TIME** by STEPHEN BAXTER
  
  
  Stephen Baxter’s fourth Destiny’s Children novel, _Resplendent_ , will be out
  soon from Gollancz. It tells the wider story of the Destiny universe, and will
  include, among others, such Silver Ghost tales from _Asimov’s_ as “On the
  Orion Line”
  
  
  (October/November 2000) and “Ghost Wars” (January 2006). The author is
  currently at work on a new time-paradox series called Time’s Tapestry. The
  first book, _Emperor_ , should appear from Ace in January. Stephen certainly
  plunges us into time’s breathtaking depths in his newest tale for _Asimov’s_.
  
  
  * * * *
  
  
  St. John Elstead’s cosmological time machine was a hole in the ground.
  
  
  I was choppered in from L.A. We flew maybe sixty kilometers north, skimmed
  across the Mojave, and descended close to the town of Edwards. From the air,
  Elstead’s facility was a ring of blocky white buildings that might have
  spanned a couple of kilometers, set out over the desert. The hub of the
  facility was a huddle of bui