Timeline

"And to top it all off," Kramer said triumphantly, "the French reporter, Louise Delvert, has agreed to come tour our facility."

"Finally! When?"

"Next week. We’ll give her the usual bullshit tour."

"This is starting to be an ultragood day," Doniger said. "You know, we might actually get this thing back in the bottle. Is that it?"

"The media people are coming at noon."

"That belongs under bad news," Doniger said.

"And Stern has found the old prototype machine. He wants to go back. Gordon said absolutely not, but Stern wants you to confirm that he can’t go."

Doniger paused. "I say let him go."

"Bob. . . ."

"Why shouldn’t he go?" Doniger said.

"Because it’s unsafe as hell. That machine has minimal shielding. It hasn’t been used in years, and it’s got a history of causing big transcription errors on the people who did use it. He might not even come back at all."

"I know that." Doniger waved his hand. "None of that’s core."

"What’s core?" she said, confused.

"Baretto."

"Baretto?"

"Do I hear an echo? Diane, think, for Christ’s sake."

Kramer frowned, shook her head.

"Put it together. Baretto died in the first minute or two of the trip back. Isn’t that right? Someone shot him full of arrows, right at the beginning of the trip."

"Yes. . . ."

"The first few minutes," Doniger said, "is the time when everybody is still standing around the machines, together, as a group. Right? So what reason do we have to think that Baretto got killed but nobody else?"

Kramer said nothing.

"What’s reasonable is that whoever killed Baretto probably killed them all. Killed the whole bunch."

"Okay. . . ."

"That means they probably aren’t coming back. The Professor isn’t coming back. The whole group is gone. Now, it’s unfortunate, but we can handle a group of missing people: a tragic lab accident where all the bodies were incinerated, or a plane crash, nobody would really be the wiser. . . ."

There was a pause.

"Except there’s Stern," Kramer said. "He knows the whole story."

"That’s right."

"So you want to send him back, too. Get rid of him as well. Clean sweep."

"Not at all," Doniger said promptly. "Hey, I’m opposed to it. But the guy’s volunteering. He wants to help his friends. It’d be wrong for me to stand in the way."

"Bob," she said, "there are times when you are a real asshole."

Doniger suddenly started to laugh. He had a high-pitched, whooping, hysterical laugh, like a little kid. It was the way a lot of the scientists laughed, but it always reminded Kramer of a hyena.

"If you allow Stern to go back, I quit."

This made Doniger laugh even harder. Sitting in his chair, he threw back his head. It made her angry.

"I mean it, Bob."

He finally stopped giggling, wiped the tears from his eyes. "Diane, come on," he said. "I’m kidding. Of course Stern can’t go back. Where’s your sense of humor?"

Kramer turned to go. "I’ll tell Stern that he can’t go back," she said. "But you weren’t kidding."

Doniger started laughing all over again. Hyena giggles filled the room. Kramer slammed the door angrily as she left.

27:27:22

For the last forty minutes, they had been scrambling up through the forest northeast of Castelgard. At last, they came to the top of the hill, the highest point in the area, and they could pause to catch their breath and look down.

"Oh my God," Kate said, staring.

They looked down on the river, and the monastery on the opposite side. But their attention was drawn to the forbidding castle high above the monastery: the fortress of La Roque. It was enormous! In the deepening blue of evening, the castle glowed with light from a hundred windows and from torches along the battlements. But despite the glowing lights, the fortress was ominous. The outer walls were black above the still waters of the moat. Inside was another complete set of walls, with many round towers, and at the center of the complex, the actual castle, with its own great hall, and a dark rectangular tower, rising more than a hundred feet into the air.

Marek said to Kate, "Does it look like modern La Roque?"

"Not at all," she said, shaking her head. "This thing is gigantic. The modern castle has only one outer wall. This one has two: an additional ring wall that is no longer there."

"So far as I know," Marek said, "nobody ever captured it by force."

"You can see why," Chris said. "Look how it’s sited."

On the east and south side, the fortress was built atop a limestone cliff, a sheer drop of five hundred feet to the Dordogne below. On the west, where the cliff was less vertical, the stone houses of the town climbed up toward the castle, but anyone following the road through the town would end up facing a broad moat and several drawbridges. On the north, the land sloped more gently away, but all the trees on the north had been cut down, leaving an exposed plain without cover  –  a suicidal approach for any army.

Marek pointed. "Look there," he said.

Chapter 11

In the twilight, a party of soldiers approached the castle on a dirt road from the west. Two knights in the lead held torches, and by that light they could just barely discern Sir Oliver, Sir Guy, the Professor, and the rest of Oliver’s knights bringing up the rear, in two columns. The figures were so far away that they really recognized them by body shape and posture. But Chris, at least, had no doubt what he was seeing.