I went back over to the computers. The middle monitor was blinking, “Push ‘reset.’ ”
I did, and the veils above the net descended with a thunk. They weren’t transparent, they were dusty dark-red velvet that looked like they belonged in amateur theatricals.
“Destination?” the screen was blinking now. I had no idea what system of coordinates they’d used in the Twenties. Mr. Dunworthy had told me stories about the point-and-shoot time travel they’d done in the early days, without Pulhaski coordinates, without safeguards or parameter checks or any idea of where they were going or whether they’d get back. The good old days.
But at least the computer spoke English and not some primitive code. I typed in, “Current location?”
The screen went blank and then began blinking, “Error.”
I thought a minute and then typed in, “Help screen.”
The screen went blank again and stayed blank. Wonderful.
I began punching function keys. The screen began blinking, “Destination?”
There was a sound at the door. I looked round wildly for someplace to hide. There wasn’t any. Except the net, which was no place at all. I dived into the red velvet curtains and yanked them together.
Whoever was at the door was having difficulty getting in. There was a good deal of rattling and jimmying before the door opened.
I retreated to the center of the net and stood very still. There was the sound of the door’s closing, and then silence.
I stood there, listening. Nothing. Had whoever it was changed their mind and gone out again? I took a careful step toward the edge and pulled the curtains a millimeter apart. A beautiful young woman was standing by the door, biting her lip and looking straight at me.
I fought the impulse to jerk back. She hadn’t seen me. I wasn’t sure she was seeing the net either. She seemed lost in some inner vision of her own.
She was wearing a calf-length white dress that could have been from any decade from the 1930s on. Her red hair was long and looped up in the knotted ponytail of the Millennium era, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Historians in the Fifties wore them, too, along with braids and snoods and coronets, anything to keep the long hair they had to have for their drops out of the way.
The young woman looked younger than Tossie, but probably wasn’t. She was wearing a wedding ring. She vaguely reminded me of someone. It wasn’t Verity, though her determined expression made me think of Verity. And not Lady Schrapnell or any of her ancestors. Somebody I’d met at one of my jumble sales?
I squinted at her, trying to get a fix. Her hair was wrong. Should it be lighter? Reddish-blonde, perhaps?
She stood there a long minute with the look Verity had had-frightened, angry, determined — and then walked rapidly in the direction of the computers and out of my line of sight.
Silence again. I listened for the quiet click of keys, hoping she wasn’t setting up a drop. Or typing in directions for the veils to rise.
I couldn’t see from this angle. I moved carefully to the next break in the curtain and peered through. She was standing in front of the comps, staring at them, or, rather, past them, through them, with that same look of determination.
And something else I’d never seen on Verity’s face, not even when Terence had told us he and Tossie were engaged, an edge of reckless desperation.
There was a sound at the door. She turned and immediately started toward the door. And out of range again. And the person at the door obviously had a key. By the time I’d moved back to my original vantage point, he was standing in the open door, looking at her.
He was wearing jeans and a ragged sweater and spectacles. His hair was light brown and the longish indeterminate cut historians adopt because it can be maneuvered into almost any era’s style, and he looked familiar, too, though it was probably just the expression on his face, which I would have known anywhere. I should. It was the expression I had every time I looked at Verity.
He was holding a fat stack of papers and folders, and he still had the key to the lab in his hand.
“Hullo, Jim,” she said, her back to me, and I wished I could see her face, too.
“What are you doing here?” he said in a voice I knew as well as my own. Good Lord! I was looking at Mr. Dunworthy.
Mr. Dunworthy! He’d told me stories about the infancy of time travel, but I had always thought of him as, you know, Mr. Dunworthy. I hadn’t imagined him as skinny or awkward. Or young. Or in love with somebody he couldn’t have.
“I came to talk to you,” she said. “And to Shoji. Where is he?”
“Meeting with the head,” Mr. Dunwor-Jim said. “Again.” He went over to the table and dumped his load of papers and folders on the end of it.
I switched peepholes, wishing they’d stay put.
“Is this a bad time?” she said.
“The worst of times,” he said, looking through the stack for something. “We’ve got a new head of the history faculty since you left to marry Bitty. Mr. Arnold P. Lassiter. “P” for Prudence. He’s so cautious we haven’t done a drop in three months. ‘Time travel is an endeavor that should not be undertaken without a complete knowledge of how it works.’ Which means filling up forms and more forms. He wants complete analyses on every drop — the ones he’s willing to authorize, that is, which are few and far between — parameter checks, slippage graphs, impact probability stats, security checks—” He stopped rummaging. “How did you get into the lab?”
“It was unlocked,” she said, which was a lie. I twisted my head around, trying to find an angle from which I could see her face.
“Wonderful,” Jim said. “If Prudence finds out, he’ll have a fit.” He found the folder he wanted and pulled it out of the stack. “Why isn’t Bitty the Bishop with you?” he said, almost belligerently.
“He’s in London, appealing the C of E’s ruling.”
Jim’s face changed. “I heard about Coventry’s being declared nonessential,” he said. “I’m sorry, Lizzie.”
Coventry. Lizzie. This was Elizabeth Bittner he was talking to, the wife of the last bishop of Coventry. The frail, white-haired lady I’d interviewed in Coventry. No wonder I’d thought her hair should be lighter.
“Nonessential,” she said. “A cathedral nonessential. Religion will be ruled nonessential next, and then Art and Truth. Not to mention History.” She walked toward the blacked-out windows and out of range.
Will you stand still? I thought.
“It’s so unfair,” she said. “They kept Bristol, you know. Bristol!”
“Why didn’t Coventry make the cut?” Jim said, moving so I couldn’t see him either.
“The C of E ruled that all churches and cathedrals have to be seventy-five percent self-supporting, which means tourists. And the tourists only come to see tombs and treasures. Canterbury’s got Becket, Winchester’s got Jane Austen and a black Tournai marble font, and St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields is in London, which has the Tower and Madame Tussaud’s. We used to have treasures. Unfortunately, they were all destroyed by the Luftwaffe in 1940,” she said bitterly.
“There’s the baptistry window of the new cathedral,” Jim said.
“Yes. Unfortunately there’s also a church that looks like a factory warehouse and stained-glass windows that face the wrong way and the ugliest tapestry in existence. Mid-Nineteenth Century was not a good period in art. Or architecture.”
“They come to see the ruins of the old cathedral, don’t they?”
“Some of them. Not enough. Bitty tried to convince the Appropriations Committee that Coventry’s a special case, that it has historical importance, but it didn’t work. World War II was a long time ago. Scarcely anybody remembers it.” She sighed. “The appeal’s not going to work either.”
“What happens then? Will you have to close?”
She must have shaken her head. “We can’t afford to close. The diocese is too far in debt. We’ll have to sell.” She abruptly moved back into my line of sight, her face set. “The Church of the Hereafter made an offer. It’s a New Age sect. Ouija boards, manifestations, conversations with the dead. It’ll kill him, you know.”