To Say Nothing of the Dog (56 page)

“I said, now that you have dismissed me, I am no longer a member of the servant class and am therefore in a position to speak freely,” he said calmly.

“You are not in a position to speak to me at all,” Tossie said, raising her diary like a weapon. “Leave at once.”

“I dared to speak the truth to you because I felt you were deserving of it,” Baine said seriously. “I had only your best interests at heart, as I have always had. You have been blessed with great riches; not only with the riches of wealth, position, and beauty, but with a bright mind and a keen sensibility, as well as with a fine spirit. And yet you squander those riches on croquet and organdies and trumpery works of art. You have at your disposal a library of the great minds of the past, and yet you read the foolish novels of Charlotte Yonge and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Given the opportunity to study science, you converse with conjurors wearing cheesecloth and phosphorescent paint. Confronted by the glories of Gothic architecture, you admire instead a cheap imitation of it, and confronted by the truth, you stamp your foot like a spoilt child and demand to be told fairy stories.”

It was quite a speech, and after it, I fully expected Tossie to hit him over the head with the diary and sweep off in a flurry of ruffles, but instead she said, “You think I have a bright mind?”

“I do. With study and discipline, you would be capable of marvelous things.”

From my mid-lilac vantage point, their faces were hidden from me, and I had a feeling seeing them was important. I moved over to the left to a thinner bush. And ran squarely into Finch. I nearly dropped Princess Arjumand. She yowled, and Finch yelped.

“Shh,”
I said to both of them. “Finch, did you get the message I left at the Chattisbournes’?” I whispered.

“No, I’ve been in Oxford,” Finch said, beaming, “where, I’m delighted to say, my mission was a complete success.”

“Shh,” I whispered. “Keep your voice down. The butler and Tossie are having an argument.”

“An argument?” he said, pursing his lips. “A butler never argues with his employer.”

“Well, this one does,” I said.

Finch was rustling under the lilacs. “I’m glad I ran into you,” he said, coming up with a basket full of cabbages. “Where’s Miss Kindle? I need to speak with both of you.”

“What do you mean, ‘Where’s Miss Kindle?’ I thought you said you just came through from the lab.”

“I did,” he said.

“Then you must have seen her. She just went through.”

“To the laboratory?”

“Of course to the laboratory,” I said. “How long were you there before you came through?”

“An hour and a half,” Finch said. “We were discussing the next phase of my mission, but no one came through during that time.”

“Could she have come through without you noticing?” I said. “While you were having this discussion?”

“No, sir. We were standing in the net area, and Miss Warder has been keeping a very close watch on the console because of Carruthers.” He looked thoughtful. “Had you noticed any problem with the net?”

“Problem?”
I said, forgetting we were supposed to keep our voices down. “We’ve been trying for the last five hours to get the bloody thing to open!”

“Shh,” Finch said, “keep your voice down,” but it scarcely mattered. Baine’s and Tossie’s voices had risen to shouting point.

“And don’t quote Tennyson at me!” Tossie said furiously.

“That was not Tennyson,” Baine shouted. “It was William Shakespeare, who is eminently quotable. ‘Think you a little din can daunt mine ears? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field and heaven’s artillery thunder in the skies?’ ”

“The net wouldn’t open?” Finch said.

“That’s what my message was about,” I said. “It wouldn’t open for either of us. Verity’d been trying since three o’clock this morning.” A thought struck me. “When did you go through from here?”

“At half past two. ”

“That was just before Verity tried,” I said. “How much slippage was there?”

“None,” he said, looking worried. “Oh, dear, Mr. Lewis said something like this might happen.”

“Something like what?”

“Some of his Waterloo models showed aberrations in the net, due to the incongruity.”

“What sort of aberrations?” I said, raising my voice again.

“Failure to open, destination malfunction.”

“What do you mean, ‘destination malfunction’?”

“In two of the simulations, the historian was sent to some other destination on the return drop. Not just locational slippage, but an entirely different space-time location. Mexico in 1872, in one instance.”

“I’ve got to go tell Mr. Dunworthy,” I said, starting for the drop. “How long ago did you come through?”

“At twenty till ten,” he said, scurrying after me, taking out his pocket watch. “Twelve minutes ago.”

Good. That meant only four minutes till the next one. I reached the gazebo and went over to the spot where Verity had gone through.

“Do you think this is a good idea, sir?” Finch said worriedly. “If the net’s not working properly—”

“Verity might be in Mexico or God knows where else,” I said.

“But she’d have come back, sir, wouldn’t she, as soon as she realized it was the wrong destination?”

“Not if the net wouldn’t open,” I said, trying to find the spot where Verity had stood.

“You’re right,” Finch said. “What can I do, sir? I’m expected back from Little Rushlade,” he indicated the basket, “but I could—”

“You’d better take your cabbages to the Chattisbournes’ and then meet me back here. If I’m not here, you go through and tell Mr. Dunworthy what’s happened.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “What if the net won’t open, sir?”

“It’ll open,” I said grimly.

“Yes, sir,” he said and hurried off with his basket.

I looked hard at the grass, willing the shimmer to start. I was still holding the cat, and I couldn’t just put her down. She was liable to walk into the net at the last minute, and another incongruity was the last thing we needed.

There were still three minutes left. I pushed back through the lilacs to where Tossie and Baine had been, intending to put the cat down where they could see her.

Things had apparently not improved. “How
dare
you!” Tossie said.

“ ‘Nay, come, Kate, come!’ ” Baine said. “ ‘You must not look so sour.’ ”

“How dare you call me Kate, as if I were a common servant like you!”

I squatted down and tipped Princess Arjumand out of my hands. She sauntered off through the bushes toward Tossie, and I sprinted back to the drop.

“I intend to tell my fiancé how insolently you spoke to me,” Tossie shouted. Apparently she hadn’t noticed Princess Arjumand. “When Mr. St. Trewes and I are married, I intend to make him run for Parliament and pass a law making it a crime for servants to read books and have ideas.”

There was a faint hum, and the air began to shimmer. I stepped into the center of it.

“And I intend to write down everything you said to me in my diary,” she said, “so that my children and my children’s children shall know what a rude, insolent, barbaric, common—what are you
doing?”

The net began to shimmer in earnest, and I didn’t dare step out of it. I craned my neck, trying to see over the lilacs.

“What are you doing?” Tossie cried. “Put me down!” A string of screamlets. “Put me down this instant!”

“I have only your best interests at heart,” Baine said.

I looked at the growing light, trying to gauge how long I had. Not long enough, and I couldn’t risk waiting for the next drop, not with Verity God-knew-where. Mexico had had a revolution in the 1870s, hadn’t it?

“I shall have you arrested for this!” A series of thumps, as of someone beating on someone’s chest. “You arrogant, horrid, uncivilized bully!”

“ ‘And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humour,’ ” Baine said. “ ‘He that knows better how to tame a shrew, now let him speak.’ ”

The air around me filled with light. “Not yet,” I said, and, as if in response, it dimmed a little. “No!” I said, not knowing whether I wanted the net to open or not.

“Put
me
down!”
Tossie demanded.

“As you wish, miss!” Baine said.

The light from the net flared and enfolded me. “Wait!” I said as it closed, and thought I heard a splash.

“Can you row?” the Sheep asked, handing her a pair of knitting-needles as she spoke.

“Yes, a little—but not on land—and not with needles—” Alice was beginning to say, when suddenly the needles turned into oars in her hands, and she found they were in a little boat, gliding along between banks: so there was nothing for it but to do her best.

Lewis Carroll

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T H R E E

Arrival—In the Lab—I Attempt to Ascertain My Space-Time Location—I Hide—Zuleika Dobson—Eavesdropping—Treasures of Various Cathedrals—In a Bookstore—Timelessness of Men’s Clothing—Timelessness of Books—More Eavesdropping—Spoiling the Ends of Mysteries—In a Dungeon—Bats—I Attempt to Use the Little Gray Cells—I Fall Asleep—Yet Another Conversation with a Workman—Origin of Ghost Legend in Coventry Cathedral—Arrival

Wherever I was, it wasn’t the lab. The room looked like one of Balliol’s old lecture rooms. There was a blackboard on one wall and, above it, the mounting for an old-fashioned pull-down map, and on the door were a number of taped-up notices.

But it was obviously being used as a lab. On a long metal table was a row of primitive digital-processor computers and monitors, all linked together with gray and yellow and orange cords and a clutch of adaptors.

I looked back at the net I had just come through. It was nothing but a chalked circle, with a large masking-tape “X” in the center. Behind it, and attached to it by an even more dangerous-looking tangle of cords and copper wires, was a frightening assortment of capacitors, metal boxes studded with dials and knobs, lengths of PVC pipe, thick cables, jacks, and resistors, all taped together with wads of wide silver tape, which had to be the mechanism of the net, though I could not have imagined trying to cross the street in such a contraption, let alone going back in time.

A horrible thought struck me. What if this was the lab after all? What if the incongruity had altered more than Terence and Maud’s marriage and the bombing of Berlin?

I strode over to the door, hoping against hope the printed notices didn’t say 2057. And weren’t in German.

They weren’t. The top one said, “Parking is forbidden on the Broad, Parks Road, and in the Naffield College car park. Violators will be towed,” which sounded fascist, but then the Parking Authority always sounded fascist. And there were no swastikas on it, or on the railway schedule beside it. A large notice on pink paper read, “Fees for Hilary term are now past due. If you have not paid, please see the bursar immediately.”

And, inevitably, below it, “Orphans of the Pandemic Jumble Sale and St. Michael’s at the North Gate Charity Drive. April fifth, 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. Bargains. White elephants. Treasures.”

Well, it definitely wasn’t Nazi England. And the Pandemic had still happened.

I examined the notices. Not a sign of a year on any of them, no dates at all, except for the upcoming jumble sale at St. Michael’s at the North Gate, and even that wasn’t certain. I’d seen notices over a year old on the notice board at Balliol.

I went over to the windows, pried the tape off one corner, and pulled the paper aside. I was looking out at Balliol’s front quad at a beautiful spring day. The lilacs outside the chapel were in bloom, and in the center of the quad a huge beech tree was just leafing out.

There was a chestnut tree in the center of the quad now, and it was at least thirty years old. Before 2020, then, but after the Pandemic, and the railway schedule meant it was before the Underground had reached Oxford. And after the invention of time travel. Between 2013 and 2020.

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.