"That's right. Holding up your shorts. Next, put on your hose." Marek began to pull on his black wool tights. The hose had feet at the bottom, like a child's pajamas. "They have these strings at the top, you see?"

"My hose is baggy," Stern said, tugging them up, poking at the knees.

"That's fine. These aren't dress hose, so they aren't skintight. Next, your linen overshirt. Just pull it over your head and let it hang down. No, no, David. The slit at the neck goes in the front."

Stern pulled his arms out and twisted the shirt around, fumbling.

"And finally," Marek said, picking up a felt outershirt, "you put on your doublet. Combination suit coat and windbreaker. You wear it indoors and out, never take it off except when it is very hot. See the points? They're the laces, under the felt. Now, tie your hose to the points of the doublet, through the slits in your overshirt."

Marek managed this in only a few moments; it was as if he'd done it every day of his life. It took Chris much longer, Stern noted with satisfaction. Stern himself struggled to twist his torso, to tie the knots at his backside.

"You call this simple?" he said, grunting.

"You just haven't looked at your own clothes lately," Marek said. "The average Westerner in the twentieth century wears nine to twelve items of daily clothing. Here, there are only six."

Stern pulled on his doublet, tugging it down over his waist, so it came to his thighs. In doing so, he wrinkled his undershirt, and eventually Marek had to help him straighten it all out, as well as lace his hose tighter.

Finally, Marek looped the dagger and the chain loosely around Stern's waist, and stood back to admire him.

"There," Marek said, nodding. "How do you feel?"

Stern wriggled his shoulders uncomfortably. "I feel like a trussed chicken."

Marek laughed. "You'll get used to it."

Kate was finishing dressing when Susan Gomez, the young woman who had taken the trip back, came in. Gomez was wearing period clothes and a wig. She tossed another wig to Kate.

Kate made a face.

"You have to wear it," Gomez said. "Short hair on a woman is a sign of disgrace, or heresy. Don't ever let anyone back there see your true hair length."

Kate pulled on the wig, which brought dark blond hair to her shoulders. She turned to look in the mirror, and saw the face of a stranger. She looked younger, softer. Weaker.

"It's either that," Gomez said, "or cut your hair really short, like a man. Your call."

"I'll wear the wig," Kate said.

Diane Kramer looked at Victor Baretto and said, "But this has always been a rule, Victor. You know that."

"Yes, but the problem," Baretto said, "is that you're giving us a new mission." Baretto was a lean, tough-looking man in his thirties, an ex-ranger who had been with the company for two years. During that time, he had acquired a reputation as a competent security man, but a bit of a prima donna. "Now, you're asking us to go into the world, but you won't let us take weapons."

"That's right, Victor. No anachronisms. No modern artifacts going back. That's been our rule from the beginning." Kramer tried to conceal her frustration. These military types were difficult, particularly the men. The women, like Gomez, were okay. But the men kept trying to, as they put it, "apply their training" to the ITC trips back, and it never really worked. Privately, Kramer thought it was just a way for the men to conceal their anxiety, but of course she could never say that. It was difficult enough for them to take orders from a woman like her in the first place.

The men also had more trouble keeping their work secret. It was easier for women, but the men all wanted to brag about going back to the past. Of course, they were forbidden by all sorts of contractual arrangements, but contracts could be forgotten after a few drinks in a bar. That was why Kramer had informed them all about the existence of several specially burned nav wafers. These wafers had entered the mythology of the company, including their names: Tunguska, Vesuvius, Tokyo. The Vesuvius wafer put you on the Bay of Naples at 7:00 a.m. on August 24, A.D. 79, just before burning ash killed everyone. Tunguska left you in Siberia in 1908, just before the giant meteor struck, causing a shock wave that killed every living thing for hundreds of miles. Tokyo put you in that city in 1923, just before the earthquake flattened it. The idea was if word of the project became public, you might end up with the wrong wafer on your next trip out. None of the military types were quite sure whether any of this was true, or just company mythology.

Which was just how Kramer liked it.

"This is a new mission," Baretto said again, as if she hadn't heard him before. "You're asking us to go into the world - to go behind enemy lines, so to speak - without weapons."

"But you're all trained in hand-to-hand. You, Gomez, all of you."

"I don't think that's sufficient."

"Victor-"

"With all due respect, Ms. Kramer, you're not facing up to the situation here," Baretto said stubbornly. "You've already lost two people. Three, if you count Traub."

"No, Victor. We've never lost anybody."

"You certainly lost Traub."

"We didn't lose Dr. Traub," she said. "Traub volunteered, and Traub was depressed."

"You assume he was depressed."

"We know he was, Victor. After his wife died, he was severely depressed, and suicidal. Even though he had passed his trip limit, he wanted to go back, to see if he could improve the technology. He had an idea that he could modify the machines to have fewer transcription errors. But apparently, his idea was wrong. That's why he ended up in the Arizona desert. Personally, I don't think he ever really intended to come back at all. I think it was suicide."

"And you lost Rob," Baretto said. "He wasn't any damn suicide."

Kramer sighed. Rob Deckard was one of the first of the observers to go back, almost two years earlier. And he was one of the first to show transcription errors. "That was much earlier in the project, Victor. The technology was less refined. And you know what happened. After he'd made several trips, Rob began to show minor effects. He insisted on continuing. But we didn't lose him."

"He went out, and he never came back," Baretto said. "That's the bottom line."

"Rob knew exactly what he was doing."

"And now the Professor."

"We haven't lost the Professor," she said. "He's still alive."

"You hope. And you don't know why he didn't come back in the first place."

"Victor-"

"I'm just saying," Baretto said, "in this case the logistics logistics don't fit the mission profile. You're asking us to take an unnecessary risk."

"You don't have to go," Kramer said mildly.

"No, hell. I never said that."

"You don't have to."

"No. I'm going."

"Well, then, those are the rules. No modern technology goes into the world. Understood?"

"Understood."

"And none of this gets mentioned to the academics."

"No, no. Hell no. I'm professional."

"Okay," Kramer said.

She watched him leave. He was sulking, but he was going to go along with it. They always did, in the end. And the rule was important, she thought. Even though Doniger liked to give a little speech about how you couldn't change history, the fact was, nobody really knew - and nobody wanted to risk it. They didn't want modern weapons, or artifacts, or plastic to go back.

And they never had.

Stern sat with the others on hard-backed chairs in a room with maps. Susan Gomez, the woman who had just returned in the machine, spoke in a crisp, quick manner that Stern found rushed.

"We are going," she said, "to the Monastery of Sainte-Mere, on the Dordogne River, in southwestern France. We will arrive at 8:04 a.m. on the morning of Thursday, April 7, 1357 - that's the day of the Professor's message. It's fortunate for us, because there's a tournament that day in Castelgard, and the spectacle will draw large crowds from the surrounding countryside, so we won't be noticed."