And yet she did not feel alone. She had the strong sense of something else here — a presence in the valley.
And then she heard a growling sound from inside the chapel: a guttural, animal sound.
She stood, and moved cautiously along the stone path toward the weapons. She picked up a sword and gripped the handle in both hands, even though she felt foolish; the sword was heavy, and she knew she had neither the strength nor the skill to use it. She was now close to the chapel door, and she smelled a strong odor of decay from inside. The growling came again.
And suddenly, an armored knight stepped forward, blocking the doorway. He was a huge man, nearly seven feet tall, and his armor was smeared with green mold. He wore a heavy helmet, so she could not see his face. He carried a heavy double-bladed ax, like an executioner’s.
The ax swung back and forth as the knight advanced toward her.
:
Instinctively, she backed away, her eyes on the ax. Her first thought was to run, but the knight had jumped out at her quickly; she suspected he might be able to catch her. Anyway, she didn’t want to turn her back on him. But she couldn’t attack; he seemed to be twice her size. He never spoke; she heard only grunting and snarling from inside the helmet — animal sounds, demented sounds. He must be insane, she thought.
The knight came quickly closer, forcing her to act. She swung her sword with all her strength; he raised his ax to block and metal clanged against metal; her sword vibrated so strongly, she nearly lost her grip. She swung again, low, trying to cut his legs, but he easily blocked again, and with a quick twist of his ax, the blade flew out of her hands, landing on the grass beyond.
She turned and ran. Snarling, the knight raced forward and grabbed a fistful of her short hair. He dragged her, screaming, around to the side of the chapel. Her scalp burned; ahead, she saw a curved block of wood on the ground, showing the marks of many deep cuts. She knew what it was: a beheading block.
She was powerless to oppose him. The knight pushed her down roughly, forcing her neck onto the block. He stood with his foot in the middle of her back, to hold her in position. She flailed her arms helplessly.
She saw a shadow move across the grass as he raised his ax into the air.
* * *
06:40:27
The telephone rang insistently, loudly. David Stern yawned, flicked on the bedside lamp, picked up the receiver. “Hello,” he said, his voice groggy.
“David, it’s John Gordon. You’d better come down to the transit room.”
Stern fumbled for his glasses, looked at his watch. It was 6:20 a.m. He had slept for three hours.
“There’s a decision to make,” Gordon said. “I’ll be up to get you in five minutes.”
“Okay,” Stern said, and hung up. He got out of bed and opened the blinds at the window; bright sunlight shone in, so bright that it made him squint. He headed for the bathroom to take a shower.
He was in one of three rooms that ITC maintained in their laboratory building for researchers who had to work through the night. It was equipped like a hotel room, even down to the little bottles of shampoo and moisturizing cream by the sink. Stern shaved and dressed, then stepped out into the hallway. He didn’t see Gordon anywhere, but he heard voices from the far end of the corridor. He walked down the hall, looking through the glass doors into the various labs. They were all deserted at this hour.
But at the end of the corridor, he found a lab with its door open. A workman with a yellow tape was measuring the height and width of the doorway. Inside, four technicians were all standing around a large table, looking down at it. On the table was a large scale model built of pale wood, showing the fortress of La Roque and the surrounding area. The men were murmuring to one another, and one was tentatively lifting the edge of the table. It seemed they were trying to figure out how to move it.
“Doniger says he has to have it,” the technician said, “as an exhibit after the presentation.”
“I don’t see how we get it out of the room,” another said. “How’d they get it in?”
“They built it in place.”
“It’ll just make it,” said the man at the door, snapping his tape measure shut.
Curious, Stern walked into the room, looked more closely at the model. It showed the castle, recognizable and accurate, in the center of a much larger complex. Beyond the castle was a ring of foliage, and outside that a complex of blocky buildings and a network of roads. Yet none of that existed. In medieval times, the castle had stood alone on a plain.
Stern said, “What model is this?”
“La Roque,” a technician said.
“But this model isn’t accurate.”
“Oh yes,” the technician said, “it’s entirely accurate. At least according to the latest architectural drawings they’ve given us.”
“What architectural drawings?” Stern said.
At that, the technicians fell silent, worried looks on their faces. Now Stern saw there were other scale models: of Castelgard, and of the Monastery of Sainte-Mère. He saw large drawings on the walls. It was like an architect’s office, he thought.
At that moment, Gordon stuck his head in the door. “David? Let’s go.”
:
He walked down the corridor with Gordon. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the technicians had turned the model on end and were carrying it through the door.
“What’s that all about?” Stern said.
“Site-development study,” Gordon said. “We do them for every project site. The idea is to define the immediate environment around the historical monument, so that the site itself is preserved for tourists and scholars. They study view lines, things like that.”
“But why is that any of your business?” Stern said.
“It’s absolutely our business,” Gordon said. “We’re going to spend millions before a site is fully restored. And we don’t want it junked up with a shopping mall and a bunch of high-rise hotels. So we try to do larger site planning, see if we can get the local government to set guidelines.” He looked at Stern. “Frankly, I never thought it was particularly interesting.”
“And what about the transit room? What’s going on there?”
“I’ll show you.”
:
The rubber floor of the transit site had been cleared of debris and cleaned. In the places where acid had eaten through the rubber, the flooring was being replaced by workmen on their hands and knees. Two of the glass shields were in place, and one was being inspected closely by a man wearing thick goggles and carrying an odd hooded light. But Stern was looking upward as the next big glass panels were swung in on overhead cranes from the second transit site, still being built.
“It’s lucky we had that other transit site under construction,” Gordon said to him. “Otherwise, it’d take us a week to get these glass panels down here. But panels were already here. All we have to do is move them over. Very lucky.”
Stern still stared upward. He hadn’t realized how large the shielding panels were. Suspended above him, the curved glass panels were easily ten feet high and fifteen feet wide, and almost two feet deep. They were carried in padded slings toward special mounting brackets in the floor below. “But,” Gordon said, “we have no spares. We just have one full set.”
“So?”
Gordon walked over to one of the glass panels, already standing in place. “Basically, you can think of these things as big glass hip flasks,” Gordon said. “They’re curved containers that fill from a hole at the top. And once we fill them with water, they’re very heavy. About five tons each. The curve actually improves the strength. But it’s the strength I’m worried about.”
“Why?” Stern said.
“Come closer.” Gordon ran his fingers over the surface of the glass. “See these little pits? These little grayish spots? They’re small, so you’d never notice them unless you looked carefully. But they’re flaws that weren’t there before. I think the explosion blew tiny drops of hydrofluoric acid into the other room.”
“And now the glass has been etched.”
“Yes. Slightly. But if these pits have weakened the glass, then the shields may crack when they are filled with water and the glass is put under pressure. Or worse, the entire glass shield may shatter.”
“And if it does?”
“Then we won’t have full shielding around the site,” Gordon said, looking directly at Stern. “In which case, we can’t safely bring your friends back. They’d risk too many transcription errors.”
Stern frowned. “Do you have a way to test the panels? See if they’ll hold up?”