Timeline - Crichton Michael - Страница 57

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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.

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."

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 Tete Noire!" General laughter.

"Sooth, he made a fool of Tete 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?"

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