“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?”