Timeline - Michael Crichton [64]
Marek looked surprised. “No,” he said seriously. “But if you stay with me, I will take care of you.”
Something about his earnestness reassured her. He was such a straight arrow. She thought, He probably will take care of me. She felt herself relaxing.
Soon after, they were all fitted with flesh-colored plastic earpieces. “They’re turned off now,” Gordon said. “To turn them on, just tap your ear with your finger. Now, if you’ll come over here . . .”
:
Gordon handed them each a small leather pouch. “We’ve been working on a first-aid kit; these are the prototypes. You’re the first to enter the world, so you may have a use for them. You can keep them out of sight, under your clothing.”
He opened one pouch and brought out a small aluminum canister about four inches high and an inch in diameter. It looked like a little shaving cream can. “This is the only defense we can provide you. It contains twelve doses of ethylene dihydride with a protein substrate. We can demonstrate for you with the cat, H.G. Where are you, H.G?”
A black cat jumped onto the table. Gordon stroked it, and then shot a burst of gas at its nose. The cat blinked, made a snuffling sound, and fell over on its side.
“Unconsciousness within six seconds,” Gordon said, “and it leaves a retroactive amnesia. But bear in mind that it’s short acting. And you must fire right in the person’s face to ensure any effect.”
The cat was already starting to twitch and revive as Gordon turned back to the pouch and held up three red paper cubes, roughly the size of sugar cubes, each covered in a layer of pale wax. They looked like fireworks.
“If you need to start a fire,” he said, “these will do it. Pull the little string, and they catch fire. They’re marked fifteen, thirty, sixty—the number of seconds before the fire starts. Wax, so they’re waterproof. A word of warning: sometimes they don’t work.”
Chris Hughes said, “What’s wrong with a Bic?”
“Not correct for the period. You can’t take plastic back there.” Gordon returned to the kit. “Then we have basic first aid, nothing fancy. Anti-inflammatory, antidiarrhea, antispasmodic, antipain. You don’t want to be vomiting in a castle,” he said. “And we can’t give you pills for the water.”
Stern took all this in with a sense of unreality. Vomiting in a castle? he thought. “Listen, uh—”
“And finally, an all-purpose pocket tool, including knife and picklock.” It looked like a steel Swiss army knife. Gordon put everything back in the kit. “You’ll probably never use any of this stuff, but you’ve got it anyway. Now let’s get you dressed.”
:
Stern could not shake off his persistent sense of unease. A kindly, grandmotherly woman had gotten up from her sewing machine and was handing them all clothing: first, white linen undershorts—sort of boxer shorts, but without elastic—then a leather belt, and then black woolen leggings.
“What’re these?” Stern said. “Tights?”
“They’re called hose, dear.”
There was no elastic on them, either. “How do they stay up?”
“You slip them under your belt, beneath the doublet. Or tie them to the points of your doublet.”
“Points?”
“That’s right, dear. Of your doublet.”
Stern glanced at the others. They were calmly collecting the clothes in a pile as each article was given to them. They seemed to know what everything was for; they were as calm as if they were in a department store. But Stern was lost, and he felt panicky. Now he was given a white linen shirt that came to his upper thigh, and a larger overshirt, called a doublet, made of quilted felt. And finally a dagger on a steel chain. He looked at it askance.
“Everyone carries one. You’ll need it for eating, if nothing else.”
He put it absently on top of the pile, and poked through the clothing, still trying to find the “points.”
Gordon said, “These clothes are intended to be status-neutral, neither expensive nor poor. We want them to approximate the dress of a