Timeline - Michael Crichton [165]
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.
:
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