ITC?"

"Three o'clock."

"I'm ready to leave now."

He pushed his chair away from the table.

"But I'm going to New York."

"Then I think you'd better change your plans and go to New Mexico."

"You'll want to see Bob Doniger, and I don't know his schedule…"

"Ms. Kramer." He leaned across the table. "Fix it."

As the Professor left, Marek said, "I pray God look with favor upon your journey and deliver you safe back." That was what he always said to departing friends. It had been a favorite phrase of the Count Geoffrey de la Tour, six hundred years before.

Some thought Marek carried his fascination with the past to the point of obsession. But in fact it was natural to him: even as a child, Marek had been strongly drawn to the medieval period, and in many ways he now seemed to inhabit it. In a restaurant, he once told a friend he would not grow a beard because it was not fashionable at the time. Astonished, the friend protested, "Of course it's fashionable, just look at all the beards around you." To which Marek replied, "No, no, I mean it is not fashionable in my time." By which he meant the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Many medieval scholars could read old languages, but Marek could speak them: Middle English, Old French, Occitan, and Latin. He was expert in the fine points of period dress and manners. And with his size and athletic prowess, he set out to master the martial skills of the period. After all, he said, it was a time of perpetual war. Already he could ride the huge Percherons that had been used as destriers, or warhorses. And he was reasonably skilled at jousting, having spent hours practicing with the spinning tournament dummy called the quintain. Marek was so good with a longbow that he had begun to teach the skill to the others. And now he was learning to fight with a broadsword.

But his detailed knowledge of the past put him oddly out of touch with the present. The Professor's sudden departure left everyone on the project feeling bereft and uneasy; wild rumors flew, especially among the undergraduates: ITC was pulling its funding. ITC was turning the project into Medieval Land. ITC had killed somebody in the desert and was in trouble. Work stopped; people just stood around talking.

Marek finally decided he'd better hold a meeting to squelch the rumors, so in the early afternoon, he called everyone together under the big green tent outside the storehouse. Marek explained that a dispute had arisen between the Professor and ITC, and the Professor had gone back to ITC headquarters to clear it up. Marek said it was just a misunderstanding, which would be resolved in a few days. He said they would be in constant touch with the Professor, who had arranged to call them every twelve hours; and that he expected the Professor to return soon, and things to be normal once again.

It didn't help. The deep sense of unease remained. Several of the undergraduates suggested the afternoon was really too hot to work, and better suited for kayaking on the river; Marek, finally sensing the mood, said they might as well go.

One by one, the graduate students decided to take the rest of the day off, too. Kate appeared, with several pounds of metal clanking around her waist, and announced she was going to climb the cliff behind Gageac. She asked Chris if he wanted to come with her (to hold her ropes - she knew he would never climb), but he said he was going to the riding stables with Marek. Stern declared he was driving to Toulouse for dinner. Rick Chang headed off to Les Eyzies to visit a colleague at a Paleolithic site. Only Elsie Kastner, the graphologist, remained behind in the storehouse, patiently going over documents. Marek asked if she wanted to come with him. But she told him, "Don't be silly, André," and kept working.

The Equestrian Center outside Souillac was four miles away, and it was here that Marek trained twice a week. In the far corner of a little-used field, he had set up an odd T-shaped bar on a revolving stand. At one end of the T-bar was a padded square; at the other end, a leather teardrop that looked like a punching bag.

This was a quintain, a device so ancient that it had been drawn by monks at the edges of illuminated manuscripts a thousand years earlier. Indeed, it was from just such drawings that Marek had fashioned his own version.

Making the quintain had been simple enough; it was much more difficult to get a decent lance. This was the kind of problem Marek faced again and again in experimental history. Even the simplest and most common items from the past were impossible to reproduce in the modern world. Even when money was no object, thanks to the ITC research fund.

In medieval times, tournament lances were turned on wood lathes more than eleven feet long, which was the standard length of a jousting lance. But wood lathes of that size hardly existed anymore. After much searching, Marek located a specialty woodworking plant in northern Italy, near the Austrian border. They were able to turn out lances of pine to the dimensions he specified, but were astonished to hear he wanted an initial order of twenty. "Lances break," he told them. "I'll need a lot of them." To deal with splinters, he fitted a piece of screening to the faceplate of a football helmet. When he wore this helmet riding, he drew considerable attention. He looked like a demented beekeeper.

Eventually, Marek succumbed to modern technology, and he had his lances turned in aluminum, by a company that made baseball bats. The aluminum lances had better balance and felt more authentic to him, even though they were wrong for the period. And since splintering was no longer a problem, he could just wear a standard riding helmet.

Which was what he was wearing now.

Standing at the end of the field, he waved to Chris, who was over by the quintain. "Chris? Ready?"

Chris nodded and set the T-bar at right angles to Marek. He waved. Marek lowered his lance, and spurred his horse forward.

Training with the quintain was deceptively simple. The rider galloped toward the T-bar, attempting to strike the padded square with the tip of his lance. If he succeeded, he set the T-bar spinning, obliging him to spur his mount past before the leather bag swung around and hit him in the head. In the old days, Marek knew, the bag had been heavy enough to knock a young rider from his mount. But Marek made it just heavy enough to deliver a stinging rebuke.

On his first run, he hit the pad squarely, but he was not quick enough to avoid the bag, which boxed him on the left ear. He reined up, and trotted back. "Why don't you try one, Chris?"

"Maybe later," Chris said, repositioning the T-bar for the next run.

Once or twice in recent days, Marek had gotten Chris to try a run at the quintain. But he suspected that was only because of Chris's sudden recent interest in all aspects of horsemanship.

Marek turned his charger, reared, and charged again. When he first began, galloping full tilt toward a foot-square target had seemed absurdly difficult. Now he was getting the hang of it. He generally hit the target four out of five times.

The horse thundered ahead. He lowered his lance.

"Chris! Hallo!"

Chris turned, and waved to the girl riding up on horseback. At that moment, Marek's lance hit the pad, and the leather bag swung around, knocking Chris flat on his face.

Chris lay there, stunned, hearing peals of girlish laughter. But she quickly dismounted and helped him to his feet again. "Oh Chris, I'm sorry to laugh," she said in her elegant British accent. "It was all my fault, in any case. I oughtn't to have distracted you."

"I'm all right," he said, a little sulky. He brushed dirt from his chin and faced her, managing to smile.

As always, he was struck by her beauty, especially at this moment, her blond hair backlit in the afternoon sun so her perfect complexion seemed to glow, setting off her deep violet eyes. Sophie Rhys-Hampton was the most beautiful woman he had ever met in his life. And the most intelligent. And the most accomplished. And the most seductive.