Timeline

by Michael Crichton

  Chris looked back at the tournament grounds. And then he said, “Well, it’s about time!”

  Marek turned and saw five liveried pages walking toward them, along with two guards in red-and-black surcoats. “Finally I’m going to get out of this damned metal.”

  Chris and Marek stood as the men came up. One of the guards said, “You have broken the rules of tourney, disgraced the chivalrous knight Guy Malegant, and the good offices of Lord Oliver. You are made arrest, and will come with us.”

  “Wait a minute,” Chris said. “We disgraced him?”

  “You will come with us.”

  “Wait a minute,” Chris said.

  The soldier cuffed him hard on the side of the head, and pushed him forward. Marek fell into step beside him. Surrounded by guards, they headed toward the castle.

  :

  Kate was still at the tournament, looking for Chris and André. At first, she thought to look in the tents ranged beyond the field, but there were only men—knights and squires and pages—in that area, and she decided against it. This was a different world, violence was in the air, and she felt a constant sense of risk. Nearly everyone in this world was young; the knights who swaggered about the field were in their twenties or early thirties, and the squires mere teenagers. She was dressed in ordinary fashion, and clearly not a member of the nobility. She had the feeling that if she were dragged off and raped, no one would take much notice.

  Even though it was midday, she found herself behaving the way she did in New Haven at night. She tried never to be alone, but to move with a group; she skirted around the clusters of males, giving them wide berth.

  She made her way behind the bleachers, hearing the cheers of the crowd as the next pair of knights began to fight. She looked into the area of tents to her left. She did not see Marek or Chris anywhere. Yet they had left the field only minutes before. Were they inside one of the tents? She had heard nothing in her earpiece for the last hour; she assumed it was because Marek and Chris had worn helmets, which blocked transmission. But surely their helmets were off now.

  Then she saw them, a short distance down the hill, sitting by a meandering stream.

  She headed down the hill. Her wig was hot and itchy in the sun. Perhaps she could get rid of the wig and just put her hair up under a cap. Or if she cut her hair a little shorter, she could pass for a young man, even without a cap.

  It might be interesting, she thought, to be a man for a while.

  She was thinking about where to get scissors when she saw the soldiers approaching Marek. She slowed her pace. She still heard nothing in her earpiece, but she was so close, she knew she should.

  Was it turned off? She tapped her ear.

  Immediately, she heard Chris say, “We disgraced him?” and then something garbled. She saw the soldiers push Chris toward the castle. Marek walked alongside him.

  Kate waited a moment, then followed.

  :

  Castelgard was deserted, shops and storefronts locked, its streets echoing and empty. Everyone had gone to the tournament, which made it more difficult for her to follow Marek and Chris and the soldiers. She had to drop farther back, waiting until they had gone out of a street before she could follow them, hurrying ahead at a near run until she caught sight of them again, then duck back around a corner.

  She knew her behavior looked suspicious. But there was no one to see it. High in one window, she saw an old woman sitting in the sun, eyes closed. But she never looked down. Perhaps she was asleep.

  She came to the open field in front of the castle. It, too, was now deserted. The knights on prancing horses, the mock combats, the flying banners were all gone. The soldiers crossed the drawbridge. As she followed after them, she heard the crowd roar from the field beyond the walls. The guards turned and shouted to soldiers on the ramparts, asking what was happening. The soldiers above could see down to the field; they shouted answers. All this was accompanied by much swearing; apparently, bets had been made.

  In all the excitement, she walked through, into the castle.

  :

  She stood in the small courtyard known as the outer bailey. She saw horses there, tied to a post and unattended. But there were no soldiers in the bailey; everyone was up in the ramparts, watching the tournament.

  She looked around for Marek and Chris but did not see them. Not knowing what else to do, she went through the door to the great hall. She heard footsteps echoing in the spiral staircase to her left.

  She started up the stairs, going round and round, but the footsteps diminished.

  They must have gone down, not up.

  Quickly, she retraced her steps. The stairs spiraled downward, ending in a low-ceilinged stone passage, damp and moldy, with cells along one side. The cell doors were open; no one inside. Somewhere ahead, beyond a bend in the corridor, she heard echoing voices, and the clang of metal.

  She moved cautiously forward. She must be beneath the great hall, she thought. In her mind she tried to reconstruct the area, from her memory of the ruined castle she had explored so carefully a few weeks earlier. But she did not remember ever seeing this passageway. Perhaps it had collapsed centuries before.

  Another metal clang, and echoing laughter.

  Then footsteps.

  It took her a moment to realize they were coming toward her.

  :

  Marek fell back into soggy, rotting straw, slippery and stinking. Chris tumbled down alongside him, sliding on the mush. The cell door clanged shut. They were at the end of a corridor, with cells on all three sides. Through the bars, Marek saw the guards leaving, laughing as they went. One said, “Hey, Paolo, where do you think you are going? You stay here and guard them.”

  “Why? They are not going anywhere. I want to see the tourney.”

  “It is your watch. Oliver wants them guarded.”

  There was some protesting and swearing. More laughing, and footsteps going away. Then one heavyset guard came back, peered in through the bars at them, and swore. He wasn’t happy; they were the reason he was missing the show. He spat on the floor of their cell, then walked a short distance away, to a wooden stool. Marek could not see him anymore, but he saw his shadow on the opposite wall.

  It looked as though he was picking his teeth.

  Marek walked up to the bars, trying to see into the other cells. He could not really see into the cell to the right, but directly across from them he saw a figure back against the wall, seated in the darkness.

  As his eyes adjusted, he saw it was the Professor.

  30:51:09

  Stern sat in the private dining room of ITC. It was a small room with a single table, white tablecloth, set for four. Gordon sat opposite him, eating hungrily, scrambled eggs and bacon. Stern watched the top of Gordon’s crew-cut head bob up and down as he scooped the eggs with his fork. The man ate fast.

  Outside, the sun was already climbing in the sky, above the mesas to the east. Stern glanced at his watch; it was six o’clock in the morning. The ITC technicians were releasing another weather balloon from the parking lot; he remembered that Gordon had told them they did it every hour. The balloon rose quickly into the sky, then disappeared into high clouds. The men who had released it didn’t bother to watch it go, but walked back to a nearby laboratory building.

  “How’s your French toast?” Gordon said, looking up. “Rather have something else?”

  “No, it’s good,” Stern said. “I’m just not very hungry.”

  “Take some advice from an old military man,” Gordon said. “Always eat at a meal. Because you never know when your next one will be.”

  “I’m sure that’s right,” Stern said. “I’m just not hungry.”

  Gordon shrugged and resumed eating.

  A man in a starched waiter’s jacket came into the room. Gordon said, “Oh, Harold. Do you have coffee ready?”

  The man in the jacket said, “I do, sir. Cappuccino if you prefer.”

  “I’ll have it black.”

  “Certainly
, sir.”

  “How about you, David?” Gordon said. “Coffee?”

  “Nonfat latte, if you have it,” Stern said.

  “Certainly, sir.” Harold went away.

  Stern stared out the window. He listened to Gordon eat, listened to his fork scrape across the plate. Finally, he said, “Let me see if I understand this. At the moment, they can’t come back, is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Because there is no landing site.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Because debris blocks it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And how long until they can come back?”

  Gordon sighed. He pushed away from the table. “It’s going to be all right, David,” he said. “Things are going to turn out fine.”

  “Just tell me. How long?”

  “Well, let’s count it off. Another three hours to clear the air in the cave. Add an hour for good measure. Four hours. Then two hours to clear the debris. Six hours. Then you have to rebuild the water shields.”

  “Rebuild the water shields?” Stern said.

  “The three rings of water. They’re absolutely essential.”

  “Why?”

  “To minimize transcription errors.”

  Stern said, “And what exactly are transcription errors?”

  “Errors on the rebuild. When the person is reconstructed by the machine.”

  “You told me there weren’t any errors. That you could rebuild exactly.”

  “For all intents and purposes, we can, yes. As long as we’re shielded.”

  “And if we’re not shielded?”

  Gordon sighed. “But we will be shielded, David.” He glanced at his watch. “I wish you’d stop worrying. There’s several hours more before we can fix the transit site. You’re upsetting yourself needlessly.”

  “It’s just that I keep thinking,” Stern said, “that there must be something we can do. Send a message, make some kind of contact. . ..”

  Gordon shook his head. “No. No message, no contact. It’s just not possible. For the moment, they’re entirely cut off from us. And there’s not a thing we can do about it.”

  30:40:39

  Kate Erickson flattened herself against the wall, feeling damp stone on her back. She had ducked inside one of the cells in the corridor, and now she waited, holding her breath, while the guards who had locked up Marek and Chris walked back past her. The guards were laughing, and they seemed in good humor. She heard one of them say, “Sir Oliver was sore displeased with that Hainauter, to make a fool of his lieutenant.”

  “And the other one was worse! He rides like a flopping rag, and yet he breaks two lances with Tête Noire!” General laughter.

  “Sooth, he made a fool of Tête Noire. For that, Lord Oliver will take their heads before nightfall.”

  “Else I miss my guess, he will chop their heads before supper.”

  “No, after. The crowd will be larger.” More laughter.

  They moved down the corridor, their voices fading. Soon she could hardly hear them. Now there was a short silence—had they started back up the stairs? No, not yet. She heard them laughing once again. And the laughter continued. It had an odd, forced quality.

  Something was wrong.

  She listened intently. They were saying something about Sir Guy and Lady Claire. She couldn’t really make it out. She heard “. . . much vexed by our Lady . . .” and more laughter.

  Kate frowned.

  Their voices were no longer quite so faint.

  Not good. They were coming back.

  Why? she thought. What happened?

  She glanced toward the door. And there, on the stone floor, she saw her own wet footprints, going into the cell.

  Her shoes had been soaked from the grass near the stream. So had the shoes of everyone else, and the center of the stone corridor was a wet, muddy track of many footprints. But one set of footprints veered off, toward her cell.

  And somehow they had noticed.

  Damn.

  A voice: “When does the tourney draw closed?”

  “By high nones.”

  “Faith, then it is nigh finished.”

  “Lord Oliver will haste to sup, and prepare for the Archpriest.”

  She listened, trying to count the different voices. How many guards had there been? She tried to remember. At least three. Maybe five. She hadn’t paid attention at the time.

  Damn.

  “They say the Archpriest brings a thousand men-at-arms. . ..”

  A shadow crossed the floor, outside her door. That meant they were now on both sides of the cell door.

  What could she do? All she knew was that she couldn’t let herself be captured. She was a woman; she had no business here; they would rape her and kill her.

  But, she reflected, they didn’t know she was a woman. Not yet. There was silence outside the door, then a scuffling of feet. What would they do next? Probably send one man into the cell while the others waited outside. And meanwhile the others would get set, draw their swords, and raise them high—

  She couldn’t wait. Crouching low, she bolted.

  She banged into a guard as he came through the door, hitting him at knee level from the side, and with a howl of pain and surprise, he fell backward. There were shouts from the other guards, but then she was through the door, a sword clanged down against stone behind her, spitting sparks, and she was running up the corridor.

  “A woman! A woman!”

  They ran after her.

  She was in the spiral staircase now, going up fast. From somewhere below, she heard the clank of their armor as they started up after her. But then she had reached the ground floor, and without thinking, she did the immediate thing: she ran straight into the great hall.

  It was deserted, the tables set for a feast, the food not yet laid out. She ran past the tables, looking for a place to hide. Behind the tapestries? No, they were flat to the wall. Under the tablecloths? No, they would look there and find her. Where? Where? She saw the huge fireplace, the fire still burning high. Wasn’t there a secret passage out of the dining room? Was that passage here in Castelgard, or was it in La Roque? She couldn’t remember. She should have paid more attention.

  In her mind’s eye she saw herself, wearing khaki shorts and a Polo T-shirt and Nike sneakers, moving lazily through the ruins, taking notes on her pad. Her concerns—to the extent she’d had any at all—had been to satisfy her scholarly peers.

  She should have paid more attention!

  She heard the men approaching. There was no more time. She ran toward the nine-foot-high fireplace and stepped behind the huge gilded circular screen. The fire was blazing hot, waves of heat radiating against her body. She heard the men coming into the room, shouting, running, looking. She crouched behind the screen, held her breath and waited.

  :

  She heard kicking and banging, the clatter of dishes on tables as they searched. She could not make out their voices clearly; they merged with the roar of the flames behind her. There was a metal clang as something fell over; it sounded like a torch stand, something big.

  She waited.

  One man barked a question, and she heard no reply. Another shouted a question, and this time she heard a soft answer. It didn’t sound like a man. Who were they talking to? It sounded like a woman. Kate listened: Yes, it was a woman’s voice. She was sure of it.

  Another exchange, and then the sound of clanking armor as the men ran from the room. Peering around the edge of the gilded screen, she saw them vanish through the doorway.

  She waited a moment, then stepped from behind the screen.

  She saw a young girl of ten or eleven. She wore a white cloth that wrapped over her head, so only her face showed. She had a loose sort of dress, rose-colored, that came almost to the floor. She carried a gold pitcher, and was pouring water into goblets at the tables.

  The girl met her eyes and just stared.

  Kate waited for her to cry out, but
she did not. She just stared curiously at Kate for a moment and then said, “They went upstairs.”

  Kate turned and ran.

  :

  Inside the cell, Marek heard the blare of trumpets, and the distant roar of the tournament crowds, drifting in from one of the high windows. The guard looked up unhappily, swore at Marek and the Professor, and then walked back to his stool.

  The Professor said quietly, “Do you still have a marker?”

  “Yes,” Marek said. “I do. Do you have yours?”

  “No, I lost it. About three minutes after I got here.”

  The Professor had landed, he said, in the forested flatlands near the monastery and the river. ITC had assured him this would be a deserted spot, but ideally situated. Without going far from the machine, he could see all the principal sites of his dig.

  What happened was pure bad luck: the Professor landed just as a party of woodcutters was heading into the forest to work for the day, their axes over their shoulders.

  “They saw the flashes of light, and then they saw me, and they all fell to their knees, praying. They thought they had seen a miracle. Then they decided they hadn’t, and the axes came off their shoulders,” the Professor said. “I thought they were going to kill me, but fortunately I knew Occitan. I convinced them to take me to the monastery. Let the monks settle it.”

  The monks took him away from the woodcutters, stripped him, and searched his body for stigmata. “They were looking in rather unusual places,” the Professor said. “That’s when I demanded to see the Abbot. The Abbot wanted to know the location of the passage in La Roque. I suspect he’s promised it to Arnaut. Anyway, I suggested it might be in the monastic documents.” The Professor grinned. “I was willing to go through his parchments for him.”

  “Yes?”

  “And I think I have found it.”

  “The passage?”

  “I think so. It follows an underground river, so it is probably quite extensive. It starts in a place called the green chapel. And there is a key to finding the entrance.”