Timeline. Part 38

She glanced back at the third man, who tripped and fell as he sprinted for the walkway. He landed with a crack crack, and Kate saw his frightened face as he lay there, feeling the stones beneath his body slowly give way, one after another. And then he disappeared, with a long cry of fear.

And suddenly, she was alone.

She was standing on the ceiling, with the birds shrieking around her. Too frightened to move, she just stood there, trying to slow her breathing. But she was okay.

She was okay.

Everything was okay.

She heard a single crack crack.

Then nothing. She waited.

Another crack crack. And this one she felt, directly beneath her feet. The stones were moving. Looking down, she saw the mortar cracking in several directions, streaking away from her. She quickly stepped to her left, heading for the safety of the ribline, but it was too late.

One stone fell, and her foot crashed through the hole. She fell to the level of her waist, then threw her body flat, flinging her hands wide, spreading the weight. She lay there for several seconds, gasping. She thought, I told him it was bad construction I told him it was bad construction.

She waited, trying to figure out how to get out of this hole. She tried to wriggle her body- C rack.

Directly in front of her, the mortar opened in a line, and several stones broke loose. And then she felt more give way beneath her; she knew in a moment of horrible certainty that she, too, was going to fall through.

In the plush red room in the tower, Chris was not sure what he had heard through his earpiece. It sounded like Kate had said, "They're coming to kill you." And then something else, which he didn't catch, before the static became constant.

Marek had opened the wooden chest near the little altar, and he rummaged through it hurriedly. "Come on, help!"

"What?" Chris said.

"Oliver keeps his mistress in this room," Marek said. "I'll bet he keeps a weapon here, too."

Chris went to a second chest, at the foot of the bed, and threw it open. This chest seemed to be filled with linens, dresses, silk garments. He flung them in the air as he searched; they fluttered to the floor around him.

He found no weapon.

Nothing.

He looked at Marek. He was standing amid a pile of dresses, shaking his head.

No weapon.

In the hallway outside, Chris heard running soldiers, coming toward them. And through the door, he heard the metallic zing zing as they drew their swords from their scabbards. as they drew their swords from their scabbards.

29:10:24.

"I can offer you c.o.ke, Diet c.o.ke, Fanta or Sprite," Gordon said. They were standing by a dispensing machine in the hallway of the ITC labs.

"I'll take a c.o.ke," Stern said.

The can clunked to the bottom of the machine. Stern took it, pulled the tab. Gordon got a Sprite. "It's important to stay hydrated in the desert," he said. "We have humidifiers in the building, but they don't work well enough."

They continued on down the corridor to the next doorway.

"I thought you might want to see this," Gordon said, taking Stern into another lab. "If only as a matter of historical interest. This was the lab where we first demonstrated the technology." He flicked on the lights.

The lab was a large and untidy room. The floor was covered with gray antistatic tiles; the ceiling above was open, showing shielded lights and metal trays holding thick cables that ran down like umbilicus lines to computers on tables. On one table, there were two tiny cagelike devices, each about a foot high. They were about four feet apart on the table, and connected by a cable.

"This is Alice," Gordon said proudly, pointing to the first cage. "And this is Bob."

Stern knew that by long-standing convention, quantum transmission devices were labeled "Alice" and "Bob," or "A" and "B." He looked at the little cages. One held a child's plastic doll, a girl in a pioneer-style gingham dress.

"The very first transmission occurred here," Gordon said. "We successfully moved that doll between the cages. That was four years ago."

Stern picked up the doll. It was just a cheap figurine; he saw plastic seams running down the side of the face and body. The eyes closed and opened as he tipped it in his hand.

"You see," Gordon said, "our original intention was to perfect three-dimensional object transmission. Three-dimensional faxing. You may know there has been a lot of interest in that."

Stern nodded; he'd heard about the research work.

"Stanford had the earliest project," Gordon said. "And there was a lot of work in Silicon Valley. The idea was that in the last twenty years, all doc.u.ment transmission has become electronic-either fax or e-mail. You don't need to send paper physically anymore; you just send electronic signals. Many people felt that sooner or later, all objects would be sent the same way. You wouldn't have to ship furniture, for example, you could just transmit it between stations. That kind of thing."

"If you could do it," Stern said.

"Yes. And so long as we were working with simple objects, we could. We were encouraged. But, of course, it isn't sufficient to transmit between two stations connected by cables. We needed to transmit at a distance, over airwaves, so to speak. So we tried that. Here."

He crossed the room, and came to two more cages, somewhat larger and more elaborate. They were beginning to resemble the cages Stern had seen in the cave. These cages had no connecting cables between them.

"Alice and Bob, part two," Gordon said. "Or as we called them, Allie and Bobbie. This was our testbed for remote transmission."

"And?"

"Didn't work," Gordon said. "We transmitted from Allie but never got to Bob. Ever."

Stern nodded slowly. "Because the object from Allie went to another universe."

"Yes. Of course, we didn't know that right away," Gordon said. "I mean, that was the theoretical explanation, but who would suspect it was actually happening? It took us a h.e.l.l of a long time to work it out. Finally, we built a homing machine-one that would go out, and come back automatically. The team called it 'Allie-Allie-in-come-free.' It's over here."

Another cage, still larger, perhaps three feet high, and recognizably like the cages that were now used. The same three bars, the same laser arrangement.

"And?" Stern said.

"We verified that the object went out and back," Gordon said. "So we sent more elaborate objects. Pretty soon we succeeded in sending a camera, and got back a picture."

"Yes?"

"It was a picture of the desert. Actually, this exact site. But before any buildings were here."

Stern nodded. "And you could date it?"

"Not immediately," Gordon said. "We kept sending the camera out, again and again, but all we got was the desert. Sometimes in rain, sometimes in snow, but always desert. Clearly, we were going out to different times-but what times? Dating the image was quite tricky. I mean, how would you use a camera to date an image of a landscape like that?"

Stern frowned. He saw the problem. Most old photographs were dated from the human artifacts in the image-a building, or a car, or clothing, or ruins. But an uninhabited desert in New Mexico would hardly change appearance over thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of years.

Gordon smiled. "We turned the camera vertically, used a fish-eye lens, and shot the sky at night."

"Ah."

"Of course it doesn't always work-it has to be night, and the sky has to be clear of clouds-but if you have enough planets in your image, you can identify the sky quite exactly. To the year, the day and the hour. And that's how we began to develop our navigation technology."

"So the whole project changed...."

"Yes. We knew what we had, of course. We weren't doing object transmission anymore-there wasn't any point in trying. We were doing transportation between universes."

"And when did you start to send people?"

"Not for some time."

Gordon led him around a wall of electronic equipment, into another part of the lab. And there, Stern saw huge hanging plastic sheets filled with water, like water beds turned on end. And in the center, a full-size machine cage, not as refined as the ones he had seen in the transit room, but clearly the same technology.

"This was our first real machine," Gordon said proudly.

"Wait a minute," Stern said. "Does this thing work?"

"Yes, of course."

"Does it work now?"

"It hasn't been used for some time," Gordon said. "But I imagine it does. Why?"

"So if I wanted to go back and help them," Stern said, "then I could-in this machine. Is that right?"

"Yes," Gordon said, nodding slowly. "You could go back in this machine, but-"

"Look, I think they're in trouble back there-or worse."

"Probably. Yes."

"And you're telling me we have a machine that works," Stern said, "right now."

Gordon sighed. "I'm afraid it's a little more complicated than that, David."

29:10:00.

Kate fell in slow motion as the ceiling stones gave way. As she descended, her fingers closed on the ragged mortared edge, and with the practice of many years, she gripped it, and it held. She hung by one hand, looking down as the falling stones tumbled in a cloud of dust onto the floor of the chapel. She didn't see what had happened to the soldiers.

She raised her other hand, grabbing the stone edge. The other stones would break away any minute, she knew. The whole ceiling was crumbling. Structurally, the greatest strength was near the reinforced line of the groin, where the arches met. There, or at the side wall of the chapel, which was vertical stone.

She decided to try and get to the side wall.

The stone broke away; she dangled from her left hand. She crossed one hand over the other, reaching as far as she could manage, trying again to spread the weight of her body.

The stone in her left hand broke loose, falling to the floor. Again she swung in the air, and found another handhold. She was now only three feet from the side wall, and the stone was noticeably thicker as it swelled to meet the wall. The edge she was holding felt more stable.

She heard soldiers below, shouting and running into the chapel. It would not be long before they were shooting arrows at her.

She tried to swing her left leg up. The more she could distribute her weight, the better off she would be. She got the leg up; the ceiling held. Twisting her torso, she pulled her body up onto the shelf, then brought her second leg up. The first of the arrows whistled past her; others thunked against the stone, raising little white puffs. She was lying flat on top of the roof.

But she could not stay here. She rolled away from the edge, toward the groin line. As she did, more stones broke away and fell.

The soldiers stopped shouting. Maybe the falling stones had hit one of them, she thought. But no: she heard them running hastily out of the church. She heard men outside, shouting, and horses whinnying.

What was going on?

Inside the tower room, Chris heard the sc.r.a.pe of the key in the lock. Then the soldiers outside paused and shouted through the door-calling to the guard inside the room.

Meanwhile, Marek was searching like a madman. He was on his knees, looking under the bed. "Got it!" he cried. He scrambled to his feet, holding a broadsword and a long dagger. He tossed the dagger to Chris.

Outside, the soldiers were again shouting to the guard inside. Marek moved toward the door and gestured for Chris to step to the other side.

Chris pressed back flat against the wall by the door. He heard the voices of the men outside-many voices. His heart began to pound. He had been shocked by the way Marek killed the guard.

They're coming to kill you.

He heard the words repeated over and over in his head, with a sense of unreality. It didn't seem possible that armed men were coming to kill him.

In the comfort of the library, he had read accounts of past violent acts, murder and slaughter. He had read descriptions of streets slippery with blood, soldiers soaked in red from head to foot, women and children eviscerated despite their piteous pleas. But somehow, Chris had always a.s.sumed these stories were exaggerated, overstated. Within the university, it was the fashion to interpret doc.u.ments ironically, to talk about the naivete of narrative, the context of text, the privileging of power.... Such theoretical posturing turned history into a clever intellectual game. Chris was good at the game, but playing it, he had somehow lost track of a more straightforward reality-that the old texts recounted horrific stories and violent episodes that were all too often true. He had lost track of the fact that he was reading history.

Until now, when it was forcibly brought to his attention.

The key turned in the lock.

On the other side of the door, Marek's face was fixed in a snarl, his lips drawn back, showing teeth clenched. He was like an animal, Chris thought. Marek's body was taut as he gripped his sword, ready to swing. Ready to kill.

The door pushed open, momentarily blocking Chris's view. But he saw Marek swing high, and he heard a scream, and a huge gush of blood splashed onto the floor, and a body fell soon after.

The door banged against his body, stopping its full swing and pinning Chris behind it. On the other side a man slammed against it, then gasped as a sword splintered wood. Chris tried to get out from behind the door but another body fell, blocking his way.

He stepped over the body, and the door thunked flat against the wall as Marek swung at another attacker, and a third soldier staggered away with the impact and fell to the floor at Chris's feet. The soldier's torso was drenched in blood; blood gurgled out of his chest like a flowing spring. Chris bent down to take the sword still in the man's hand. As he pulled at the sword, the man gripped it tightly, grimacing at Chris. Abruptly, the soldier weakened and released the sword, so that Chris staggered back against the wall.

The man continued to stare at him from the floor. His face contorted in a grimace of fury-and then it froze.

Jesus, he thought, he's dead he's dead.