Timeline

by Michael Crichton

  “Very funny. You don’t do this alone, Kate.”

  “Well, at least let me get in there first.”

  She flicked on her light, turned on her radio, pulled down her headset so she was breathing through filters, and crawled through the hole, into the blackness beyond.

  :

  The air was surprisingly cool. The yellow beam of her flashlight played on bare stone walls, a stone floor. Chang was right: this was open space beneath the monastery. And it seemed to continue for some distance, before dirt and collapsed rubble blocked the far passage. Somehow this chamber had not been filled with dirt like the others. She shone her light up at the roof, trying to see its condition. She couldn’t really tell. Not great.

  She crept forward on hands and knees, then began to descend, sliding a little, down the dirt toward the ground. Moments later, she was standing inside the catacombs.

  “I’m here.”

  It was dark around her, and the air felt wet. There was a dank odor that was unpleasant, even through the filters. The filters took out bacteria and viruses. At most excavation sites, no one bothered with masks, but they were required here, because plague had come several times in the fourteenth century, killing a third of the population. Although one form of the epidemic was originally transmitted by infected rats, another form was transmitted through the air, through coughs and sneezes, and so anybody who went into an old, sealed space had to worry about—

  She heard a clattering behind her. She saw Marek coming through the hole above. He began to slide, so he jumped to the ground. In the silence afterward, they heard the soft sounds of pebbles and earth, trickling down the mound.

  “You realize,” she said, “we could be buried alive in here.”

  “Always look on the bright side,” Marek said. He moved forward, holding a big fluorescent light with reflectors. It illuminated a whole section of the room. Now that they could see clearly, the room appeared disappointingly bare. To the left was the stone sarcophagus of a knight; he was carved in relief on the lid, which had been removed. When they looked inside the sarcophagus, it was empty. Then there was a rough wooden table leaning against a wall. It was bare. An open corridor going down to their left, ending in a stone staircase, which led upward until it disappeared in a mound of dirt. More mounds of earth in this chamber, over to the right, blocking another passageway, another arch.

  Marek sighed. “All this excitement . . . for nothing.”

  But Kate was still worried about the earth breaking free and coming into the room. It made her look closely at the earth mounds to the right.

  And that was why she saw it.

  “André,” she said. “Come here.”

  :

  It was an earth-colored protrusion, brown against the brown of the mound, but the surface had a faint sheen. She brushed it with her hand. It was oilcloth. She exposed a sharp corner. Oilcloth, wrapping something.

  Marek looked over her shoulder. “Very good, very good.”

  “Did they have oilcloth then?”

  “Oh yes. Oilcloth is a Viking invention, perhaps ninth century. Quite common in Europe by our period. Although I don’t think we have found anything else in the monastery that’s wrapped in oilcloth.”

  He helped her dig. They proceeded cautiously, not wanting the mound to come down on them, but soon they had it exposed. It was a rectangle roughly two feet square, wrapped with oil-soaked string.

  “I am guessing it’s documents,” Marek said. His fingers were twitching in the fluorescent light, he wanted to open it so badly, but he restrained himself. “We’ll take it back with us.”

  He slipped it under his arm and headed back toward the entrance. She gave one last look at the earth mound, wondering if she had missed something. But she hadn’t. She swung her light away and—

  She stopped.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she’d caught a glimpse of something shiny. She turned, looked again. For a moment, she couldn’t find it, but then she did.

  It was a small piece of glass, protruding from the earth.

  “André?” she said. “I think there’s more.”

  :

  The glass was thin, and perfectly clear. The edge was curved and smooth, almost modern in its quality. She brushed the dirt away with her fingertips and exposed one lens of an eyeglass.

  It was a bifocal lens.

  “What is it?” André said, coming back to her.

  “You tell me.”

  He squinted at it, shone his light very near. His face was so close to the glass, his nose almost touched it. “Where did you find this?” He sounded concerned.

  “Right here.”

  “Lying in the open, just like now?” His voice was tense, almost accusing.

  “No, only the edge was exposed. I cleaned it off.”

  “How?”

  “With my finger.”

  “So: you are telling me it was partly buried?” He sounded like he didn’t believe her.

  “Hey, what is this?”

  “Just answer, please.”

  “No, André. It was mostly buried. Everything but that left edge was buried.”

  “I wish you had not touched it.”

  “I do, too, if I’d known you were going to act like—”

  “This must be explained,” he said. “Turn around.”

  “What?”

  “Turn around.” He took her by the shoulder, turned her roughly, so she was facing away from him.

  “Jesus.” She glanced over her shoulder to see what he was doing. He held his light very close to her backpack and moved over the surface slowly, examining it minutely, then down to her shorts. “Uh, are you going to tell me—”

  “Be quiet, please.”

  It was a full minute before he finished. “The lower left zip pocket of your pack is open. Did you open it?”

  “No.”

  “Then it has been open all the time? Ever since you put the pack on?”

  “I guess. . ..”

  “Did you brush against the wall at any time?”

  “I don’t think so.” She had been careful about it, because she hadn’t wanted the wall to break loose.

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  “For Christ’s sake. No, André, I’m not sure.”

  “All right. Now you check me.” He handed her his light, and turned his back to her.

  “Check you how?” she said.

  “That glass is contamination,” he said. “We have to explain how it got here. Look to see if any part of my pack is open.”

  She looked. Nothing was.

  “Did you look carefully?”

  “Yes, I looked carefully,” she said, annoyed.

  “I think you didn’t take enough time.”

  “André. I did.”

  Marek stared at the earthen mound in front of them. Small pebbles trickled down as he watched. “It could have fallen from one of our packs and then been covered. . ..”

  “Yes, I guess it could.”

  “If you could clean it with a fingertip, it was not tightly buried. . ..”

  “No, no. Very loose.”

  “All right. Then somehow, that is the explanation.”

  “What is?”

  “Somehow, we brought this lens in with us, and while we were working on the oilskin documents, it fell from the pack, and was covered by dirt. Then you saw it, and cleaned it. It is the only explanation.”

  “Okay. . ..”

  He took out a camera, photographed the glass several times from different distances—very close, then progressively farther back. Only then did he bring out a plastic baggie, lift the glass carefully with tweezers, and drop it into the bag. He brought out a small roll of bubble wrap, encased the bag, sealed it all with tape, and handed the bundle to her. “You bring it out. Please be careful.” He seemed more relaxed. He was being nicer to her.

  “Okay,” she said. They climbed the dirt slope again, heading back outside.

  :

  They were greeted
by cheers from the undergraduates, and the oilskin package was handed over to Elsie, who quickly took it back to the farmhouse. Everyone was laughing and smiling, except Chang and Chris Hughes. They were wearing headsets, and had heard everything inside the cave. They looked gloomy and upset.

  Site contamination was extremely serious, and they all knew it. Because it implied sloppy excavation technique, it called into question any other, legitimate discoveries made by the team. A typical instance was a minor scandal at Les Eyzies the year before.

  Les Eyzies was a Paleolithic site, a habitation of early man beneath a cliff ledge. The archaeologists had been digging at a level that dated to 320,000 B.P., when one of them found a half-buried condom. It was still in its metallic wrapper, and nobody thought for a moment that it belonged at that level. But the fact that it had been found there—half-buried—suggested that they were not being careful in their technique. It caused a near panic among the team, which persisted even after a graduate student was sent back to Paris in disgrace.

  “Where is this glass lens?” Chris said to Marek.

  “Kate has it.”

  She gave it to Chris. While everyone else was cheering, he turned away, unwrapped the package, and held the baggie up to the light.

  “Definitely modern,” he said. He shook his head unhappily. “I’ll check it out. Just make sure you include it in the site report.”

  Marek said he would.

  Then Rick Chang turned away and clapped his hands. “All right, everybody. Excitement’s over. Back to work!”

  In the afternoon, Marek scheduled archery practice. The undergraduates were amused by it, and they never missed a session; recently Kate had taken it up, as well. The target today was a straw-filled scarecrow, set about fifty yards away. The kids were all lined up, holding their bows, and Marek strode down behind them.

  “To kill a man,” he said, “you have to remember: he is almost certainly wearing plate armor on his chest. He’s less likely to have armor on his head and neck, or on his legs. So to kill him, you must shoot him in the head, or on the side of his torso, where the plates don’t cover.”

  Kate listened to Marek, amused. André took everything so seriously. To kill a man. As if he really meant it. Standing in the yellow afternoon sunlight of southern France, hearing the distant honk of cars on the road, the idea seemed slightly absurd.

  “But if you want to stop a man,” Marek continued, “then shoot him in the leg. He’ll go right down. Today we’ll use the fifty-pound bows.”

  Fifty pounds referred to the draw weight, what was needed to pull the string back. The bows were certainly heavy, and difficult to draw. The arrows were almost three feet long. Many of the kids had trouble with it, especially at first. Marek usually finished each practice session with some weight lifting, to build up their muscles.

  Marek himself could draw a hundred-pound bow. Although it was difficult to believe, he insisted that this was the size of actual fourteenth-century weapons—far beyond what any of them could use.

  “All right,” Marek said, “nock your arrows, aim, and loose them, please.” Arrows flew through the air. “No, no, no, David, don’t pull until you tremble. Maintain control. Carl, look at your stance. Bob, too high. Deanna, remember your fingers. Rick, that was much better. All right, here we go again, nock your arrows, aim, and . . . loose them!”

  :

  It was late in the afternoon when Stern called Marek on the radio, and asked him to come to the farmhouse. He said he had good news. Marek found him at the microscope, examining the lens.

  “What is it?”

  “Here. Look for yourself.” He stepped aside, and Marek looked. He saw the lens, and the sharp line of the bifocal cut. Here and there, the lens was lightly spotted with white circles, as if from bacteria.

  “What am I supposed to see?” Marek said.

  “Left edge.”

  He moved the stage, bringing the left edge into view. Refracted in the light, the edge looked very white. Then he noticed that the whiteness spilled over the edge, onto the surface of the lens itself.

  “That’s bacteria growing on the lens,” Stern said. “It’s like rock varnish.”

  Rock varnish was the term for the patina of bacteria and mold that grew on the underside of rocks. Because it was organic, rock varnish could be dated.

  “Can this be dated?” Marek said.

  “It could,” Stern said, “if there was enough of it for a C-14 run. But I can tell you now, there isn’t. You can’t get a decent date from that amount. There isn’t any use trying.”

  “So?”

  “The point is, that was the exposed edge of the lens, right? The edge that Kate said was sticking out of the earth?”

  “Right. . ..”

  “So it’s old, André. I don’t know how old, but it’s not site contamination. Rick is looking at all the bones that were exposed today, and he thinks some of them are later than our period, eighteenth century, maybe even nineteenth century. Which means one of them could have been wearing bifocals.”

  “I don’t know. This lens looks pretty sharply done. . ..”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s new,” Stern said. “They’ve had good grinding techniques for two hundred years. I’m arranging for this lens to be checked by an optics guy back in New Haven. I’ve asked Elsie to jump ahead and do the oilskin documents, just to see if there’s anything unusual there. In the meantime, I think we can all ease up.”

  “That’s good news,” Marek said, grinning.

  “I thought you’d want to know. See you at dinner.”

  They had arranged to have dinner in the old town square of Domme, a village on top of a cliff a few miles from their site. By nightfall, Chris, grumpy all day, had recovered from his bad mood and was looking forward to dinner. He wondered if Marek had heard from the Professor, and if not, what they were going to do about it. He had a sense of expectancy.

  His good mood vanished when he arrived to find the stockbroker couples again, sitting at their table. Apparently they’d been invited for a second night. Chris was about to turn around and leave, but Kate got up and quickly put her arm around his waist, and steered him toward the table.

  “I’d rather not,” he said in a low voice. “I can’t stand these people.” But then she gave him a little hug, and eased him into a chair. He saw that the stockbrokers must be buying the wine tonight—Château Lafite-Rothschild ‘95, easily two thousand francs a bottle.

  And he thought, What the hell.

  “Well, this is a charming town,” one of the women was saying. “We went and saw the walls around the outside. They go on for quite a distance. High, too. And that very pretty gate coming into town, you know, with the two round towers on either side.”

  Kate nodded. “It’s sort of ironic,” she said, “that a lot of the villages that we find so charming now were actually the shopping malls of the fourteenth century.”

  “Shopping malls? How do you mean?” the woman asked.

  At that moment, Marek’s radio, clipped to his belt, crackled with static.

  “André? Are you there?”

  It was Elsie. She never came to dinner with the others, but worked late on her cataloging. Marek held up the radio. “Yes, Elsie.”

  “I just found something very weird, here.”

  “Yes. . ..”

  “Would you ask David to come over? I need his help testing. But I’m telling you guys—if this is a joke, I don’t appreciate it.”

  With a click, the radio went dead.

  “Elsie?”

  No answer.

  Marek looked around the table. “Anybody play a joke on her?”

  They all shook their heads no.

  Chris Hughes said, “Maybe she’s cracking up. It wouldn’t surprise me, all those hours staring at parchment.”

  “I’ll see what she wants,” David Stern said, getting up from the table. He headed off into the darkness.

  Chris thought of going with him, but Kate looked at him quickly, and
gave him a smile. So he eased back in his seat and reached for his wine.

  :

  “You were saying—these towns were like shopping malls?”

  “A lot of them were, yes,” Kate Erickson said. “These towns were speculative ventures to make money for land developers. Just like shopping malls today. And like malls, they were all built on a similar pattern.”

  She turned in her chair and pointed to the Domme town square behind them. “See the covered wooden market in the center of the town square? You’ll find similar covered markets in lots of towns around here. It means the town is a bastide, a new, fortified village. Nearly a thousand bastide towns were built in France during the fourteenth century. Some of them were built to hold territory. But many of them were built simply to make money.”

  That got the attention of the stock pickers.

  One of the men looked up sharply and said, “Wait a minute. How does building a village make anybody money?”

  Kate smiled. “Fourteenth-century economics,” she said. “It worked like this. Let’s say you’re a nobleman who owns a lot of land. Fourteenth-century France is mostly forest, which means that your land is mostly forest, inhabited by wolves. Maybe you have a few farmers here and there who pay you some measly rents. But that’s no way to get rich. And because you’re a nobleman, you’re always desperately in need of money, to fight wars and to entertain in the lavish style that’s expected of you.

  “So what can you do to increase the income from your lands? You build a new town. You attract people to live in your new town by offering them special tax breaks, special liberties spelled out in the town charter. Basically, you free the townspeople from feudal obligations.”

  “Why do you give them these breaks?” one of the men said.

  “Because pretty soon you’ll have merchants and markets in the town, and the taxes and fees generate much more money for you. You charge for everything. For the use of the road to come to the town. For the right to enter the town walls. For the right to set up a stall in the market. For the cost of soldiers to keep order. For providing moneylenders to the market.”