To Say Nothing of the Dog (5 page)

“And calves’ foot jelly,” I said.

“Calves’ foot jelly?” he said, looking at me curiously.

“For the sick,” I said. “Only I don’t think the sick eat it. I wouldn’t eat it. I think they give it to the next jumble sale. It makes the rounds from year to year. Like fruitcake.”

“Yes, well,” he said, frowning. “So now a stone
has
been turned, and she’s created a serious problem, which is what I wanted to see you about. Sit down, sit down,” he said, motioning me toward a leather armchair.

Finch got there first with a fax-mag, murmuring, “So difficult to get soot out of leather.”

“And take off your hat. Good Lord,” Mr. Dunworthy said, adjusting his spectacles, “you look dreadful. Where have you been?”

“The soccer field,” I said.

“I gather it was a somewhat rough game.”

“I found him in the pedestrian gate by Merton’s playing fields,” Finch explained.

“I thought he was in Infirmary.”

“He climbed out the window.”

“Ah,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “But how did he get in this condition?”

“I was looking for the bishop’s bird stump,” I said.

“On Merton’s playing fields?”

“In the cathedral ruins just before he was brought to Infirmary,” Finch said helpfully.

“Did you find it?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“No,” I said, “and that’s the reason I came to see you. I wasn’t able to finish searching the ruins, and Lady Schrapnell—”

“—is the least of our worries. Which is something I never thought I’d find myself saying,” he said ruefully. “I gather Mr. Finch has explained the situation?”

“Yes. No,” I said. “Perhaps you’d better review it for me.”

“A crisis has developed regarding the net. I’ve notified Time Travel and—Finch did Chiswick say when he’d be here?”

“I’ll check on it, sir,” he said, and went out.

“A very serious situation,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “One of our historians—”

Finch came back in. “He’s on his way over,” he said.

“Good,” Dunworthy said. “Before he gets here, the situation is this: One of our historians stole a fan and brought it back through the net with her.”

A fan. Well, that made a good deal more sense than a rat. Or a cab. And it explained the pinching part. “Like Lady Windermere’s mother,” I said.

“Lady Windermere’s mother?” Mr. Dunworthy said, looking sharply at Finch.

“Advanced time-lag, sir,” Finch said. “Disorientation, difficulty in distinguishing sounds, tendency to sentimentalize, impaired ability to
reason logically,”
he said, emphasizing the last two words.

“Advanced?” Dunworthy said. “How many drops have you made?”

“Fourteen this week. Ten jumble sales and six bishops’ wives. No, thirteen. I keep forgetting Mrs. Bittner. She was in Coventry. Not the Coventry I was in just now. Coventry today.”

“Bittner,” Mr. Dunworthy said curiously. “This wasn’t Elizabeth Bittner, was it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “The widow of the last bishop of Coventry Cathedral.”

“Good Lord, I haven’t seen her in years,” he said. “I knew her back in the early days when we were first experimenting with the net. Wonderful girl. The first time I saw her I thought she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. Too bad she had to fall in love with Bitty Bittner. She was absolutely devoted to him. How did she look?”

Hardly like a girl, I thought. She’d been a frail, white-haired old lady who had seemed ill-at-ease through the whole interview. She had probably thought Lady Schrapnell was going to recruit her and send her off to the Middle Ages. “She looked very well,” I said. “She said she had some difficulty with arthritis.”

“Arthritis,” he said, shaking his head. “Hard to imagine Lizzie Bittner with arthritis. What did you go and see her for? She wasn’t even born when the old Coventry Cathedral burned down.”

“Lady Schrapnell thought the bishop’s bird stump might have been stored in the crypt of the new cathedral and that since Mrs. Bittner was there when the cathedral was sold, she might have supervised the cleaning out of the crypt and have seen it.”

“And had she?”

“No, sir. She said it had been destroyed in the fire.”

“I remember when they had to sell Coventry Cathedral,” he said. “People had lost interest in religion, attendance was down at the services . . . Lizzie Bittner,” he said fondly. “Arthritis. I suppose her hair’s not red anymore either?”

“Preoccupation with irrelevancies,” Finch said loudly. “Miss Jenkins said Mr. Henry had a severe case of time-lag.”

“Miss Jenkins?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“The nurse who examined Mr. Henry at Infirmary.”

“Lovely creature,” I said. “A ministering angel, whose gentle hands have soothed many a fevered brow.”

Finch and Mr. Dunworthy exchanged looks.

“She said it was the worst case of time-lag she’d ever seen,” Finch said.

“Which is why I came to see you,” I said. “She’s prescribed two weeks of uninterrupted bed rest, and Lady Schrapnell—”

“Will never allow that,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “The cathedral’s consecration is only seventeen days away.”

“I tried to tell the nurse that, sir, but she wouldn’t listen. She told me to go to my rooms and go to bed.”

“No, no, first place Lady Schrapnell would look. Finch, where is she?”

“In London. She just phoned from the Royal Free.”

I started up out of the chair.

“I told her there’d been a mistake in communications,” Finch said, “that Mr. Henry’d been taken to the Royal Masonic.”

“Good. Ring up the Royal Masonic and tell them to keep her there.”

“I’ve already done so,” Finch said.

“Excellent,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Sit down, Ned. Where was I?”

“Lady Windermere’s fan,” Finch said.

“Only it wasn’t a fan the historian brought through the net,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “It was—”

“Did you say brought through the net?” I said. “You can’t bring anything through the net from the past. It’s impossible, isn’t it?”

“Apparently not,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

There was a scuffling sound in the outer office. “I thought you said she was at the Royal Free,” Mr. Dunworthy said to Finch, and a short, harried-looking man burst in. He was wearing a lab coat and carrying a bleeping handheld, and I recognized him as the head of Time Travel.

“Oh, good, you’re here, Mr. Chiswick,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “I want to talk to you about an incident concerning—”

“And I want to talk to you about Lady Schrapnell,” Chiswick said. “The woman’s completely out of control. She pages me night and day, wanting to know why we can’t send people more than once to the same time and place, why we can’t process more drops per hour
even though
she has systematically stripped me of my research staff
and
my net staff and sent them running all over the past looking at almsboxes and analyzing flying buttresses.” He waved the bleeping handheld. “That’s her now. She’s paged me six times in the last hour, demanding to know where one of her missing historians is! Time Travel agreed to this project because of the opportunity the money afforded us to advance our research into temporal theory, but that research has come to a complete stop. She’s appropriated half my labs for her artisans, and tied up every computer in the science area.”

He stopped to punch keys on the still bleeping handheld, and Mr. Dunworthy took the opportunity to say, “The theory of time travel is what I wanted to discuss with you. One of my historians—”

Chiswick wasn’t listening. The handheld had stopped bleeping, and now it was spitting out inch upon inch of paper. “Look at this!” he said, tearing off a foot and brandishing it before Mr. Dunworthy. “She wants me to have one of my staff telephone every hospital in the greater London area and find this missing historian of hers. Henry, his name is, Ned Henry. One of my staff. I don’t
have
any staff! She’s taken every single one of them except Lewis, and she tried to take him! Luckily, he—”

Mr. Dunworthy broke in. “What would happen if an historian brought something from the past forward through the net?”

“Did she ask you that?” he said. “Of course she did. She’s gotten it into her head to have this bishop’s bird stump she’s so obsessed with if she has to go back in time and steal it. I’ve told her and told her, bringing anything from the past to the present would violate the laws of the space-time continuum, and do you know what she said? ‘Laws are made to be broken.’ ”

He swept on, unchecked, and Mr. Dunworthy leaned back in his desk chair, took off his spectacles, and examined them thoughtfully.

“I tried to explain to her,” Chiswick said, “that the laws of physics aren’t mere rules or regulations, that they’re
laws,
and that the breaking of them would result in disastrous consequences.”

“What sort of disastrous consequences?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“That is impossible to predict. The space-time continuum is a chaotic system, in which every event is connected to every other in elaborate, nonlinear ways that make prediction impossible. Bringing an object forward through time would create a parachronistic incongruity. At best, the incongruity might result in increased slippage. At worst, it might make time travel impossible. Or alter the course of history. Or destroy the universe. Which is why such an incongruity is not possible, as I
tried
to tell Lady Schrapnell!”

“Increased slippage,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “An incongruity would cause an increase in slippage?”

“Theoretically,” Mr. Chiswick said. “Incongruities were one of the areas Lady Schrapnell’s money was to enable us to research, research which now has gone completely by the wayside in favor of this idiotic cathedral! The woman’s impossible! Last week she ordered me to decrease the amount of slippage per drop. Ordered me! She doesn’t understand slippage either.”

Mr. Dunworthy leaned forward and put his spectacles on. “Has there been an increase in slippage?”

“No. Lady Schrapnell simply has no concept of the workings of time travel. She—”

“The field of marrows,” I said.

“What?” Mr. Chiswick turned and glared at me.

“The farmer’s wife thought he was a German paratrooper.”

“Paratrooper?” Chiswick said, and his eyes narrowed. “You’re not the missing historian, are you? What’s your name?”

“John Bartholomew,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“Whom, I see from his condition, Lady Schrapnell has recruited. She must be stopped, Dunworthy.” The handheld began bleeping and spitting again. He read aloud.” ‘No info yet on Henry’s whereabouts. Why not? Send location immediately. Need two more people to go to Great Exhibition, 1850, check on possible origins of bishop’s bird stump.’ ” He crumpled the readout and threw it on Mr. Dunworthy’s desk. “You’ve got to do something about her now! Before she destroys the university!” he said, and swept out.

“Or the known universe,” Mr. Dunworthy murmured.

“Should I go after him?” Finch asked.

“No,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Try to get in touch with Andrews, and call up the Bodleian’s files on parachronistic incongruities.”

Finch went out. Mr. Dunworthy took off his spectacles and peered through them, frowning.

“I know this is a bad time,” I said, “but I wondered if you had any idea where I might be able to go to convalesce. Away from Oxford.”

“Meddling,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Meddling got us into this, and more meddling will only make it worse.” He put his spectacles back on and stood up. “Clearly the best thing to do is wait and see what happens, if anything,” he said, pacing. “The chances that its disappearance would affect history are statistically insignificant, particularly from that era. Whole batches of them were routinely thrown in rivers to keep the numbers down.”

The number of fans? I thought.

“And the fact that it came through the net is in itself a proof that it didn’t create an incongruity, or the net wouldn’t have opened.” He wiped his spectacles on the tail of his jacket and held them up to the light. “It’s been over a hundred and fifty years. If it were going to destroy the universe, it would very likely have done so by now.”

He exhaled onto the lenses and wiped them again. “And I refuse to believe that there are two courses of history in which Lady Schrapnell and her project to rebuild Coventry Cathedral could exist.”

Lady Schrapnell. She’d be back from the Royal Masonic any time now. I leaned forward in the chair. “Mr. Dunworthy,” I said, “I was hoping you could think of somewhere where I could recover from the time-lag.”

“On the other hand, there’s a good chance that the reason there wasn’t an incongruity is that it was returned before there could be any consequences, disastrous or otherwise.”

“The nurse said two weeks’ bed rest, but if I could just get three or four days—”

“But even if that is the case,” he stood up and began pacing, “there’s still no reason not to wait. That’s the beauty of time travel. One can wait three or four days, or two weeks, or a year, and still return it immediately.”

“If Lady Schrapnell finds me—”

He stopped pacing and stared at me. “I hadn’t thought about that. Oh, Lord, if Lady Schrapnell were to find out about it—”

“If you could just suggest somewhere quiet and out of the way—”

“Finch!” Mr. Dunworthy shouted, and Finch came in from the outer office, carrying a readout.

“Here’s the bibliography on parachronistic incongruities,” he said. “There wasn’t much. Mr. Andrews is in 1560. Lady Schrapnell sent him there to examine the clerestory arches. Should I try to get Mr. Chiswick back here?”

“First things first,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “We need to find Ned here a place where he can rest and recuperate from his time-lag without interruption.”

“Lady Schrapnell—” I said.

“Exactly,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “It can’t be anywhere in this century. Or the Twentieth Century. And it needs to be somewhere peaceful and out of the way, a country house, perhaps, on a river. The Thames.”

“You’re not thinking of—” Finch said.

“He needs to leave immediately,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Before Lady Schrapnell finds out about it.”

“Oh!” Finch gasped. “Yes, I see. But Mr. Henry’s in no condition to—” Finch said, but Mr. Dunworthy cut him off.

“Ned,” he said to me, “how would you like to go to the Victorian era?”