6320 Words
Frank 0. Dodge
11056 Airline Highway-30
Gonzales, La. 70737
email: fdodge@eatel.net



                         SECOND OPINION


     The Mediterranean coast of France whimpered under the lash
of the Black Death. Tens of thousands supurated, vomited, and
died faster than the corpses could be hauled away and burned.
Pierre Reynard prodded the ox with his goad, and the sluggish
beast threw its weight into the yoke. The clumsy cart with its
cargo of dead lurched forward. Iron-tired wheels clashed harshly
and struck sparks from the cobblestone roadway. The cart jolted
as one wheel sank into a pothole filled with scummy water, and
the flaccid body of a young woman slid from the pile and fell to
the ground.
     Pierre cursed the dead girl, and looked around. No other
living being stirred in the narrow street. He cursed again. He'd
have to wrestle her back into the cart by himself. There is no
easy way to get a grip on something so maliciously limp as a dead
body.
     He grasped the girl under the armpits and heaved her
upright, stooping to let the corpse fall across his shoulder. For
a moment he felt her weight, then slowly stood erect and flexed
his empty arms. Holy Mother of God! Where had she gone?  He
looked at the vacant eyes and grinning faces of the dead but they
offered no answer.

                                #

     Jake Sloan, Chief of Medicine at University Hospital, stared 
with disbelieving eyes at the filthy, half-naked young woman
lying on his office floor.  Her hair was a matted tangle laced
with straw and offal, her face ashen beneath a coating of grime.
Where in the hell had she come from?  He looked at the office
door.  It was locked.  He'd locked it himself so as not to be
disturbed while trying to puzzle out just what the hell was wrong
with the patient in A-304.
     The girl looked dead.  Sloan got up, walked around his desk,
and peered closely at her.  No, she was breathing.  Faintly,
shallowly, but breathing.  The few grimy tatters she wore
revealed a great deal of dirty skin, most of which was covered
with scrapes and bruises.  Her face was battered and swollen, but
traces of prettiness remained.
     Jake Sloan looked helplessly around his office.  Reason told
him that there was no girl on the floor.  Reason told him that he
was hallucinating.  Reason told him that he had suddenly lost his
mind.  His eyes told him different.  His nose told him different.
The girl on the floor stank.  She smelled of rotten garbage,
excretia, and death.
     Sloan touched her with the toe of one shoe.  He half
expected it to pass right through her, but she was solid enough.  
Which made the impossibility of her presence doubly impossible.  
He rounded his desk and picked up the phone.  "Helen, will you
come in here, please?"
     He hung up the phone, and crossed the room to unlock the
door.  Helen Brady, nurse-receptionist, put the back of one hand
to her mouth and uttered a little gasp. "Eileen!"
     Sloan looked at the nurse. "You know her?"
     Helen nodded, puzzled.  "It's Eileen Howard, Tom Courtney's
assistant."
     "Courtney? You mean that nut who thinks time is a creek, and
all you need is a canoe to paddle up and down it?  That Tom
Courtney?"
     A small smile quirked one corner of Helen's lips. 
"Something like that.  Doctor, don't you think we should do
something about Eileen?"
     Sloan came out of the daze into which he'd been thrown by
the inexplicable appearance of the girl.  "Yes.  Of course.  Call
for a gurney."
     Helen picked up the phone and punched a button.  "Mike,
bring a gurney to Dr. Sloan's office STAT."
     The next half hour was pretty hectic.
     Eileen Howard's limp body was handled gently, despite the
fact that she was so filthy nobody really wanted to touch her.   
She was taken to ER treatment room #3, where two nurses stripped
her of the stinking rags that were all that remained of her 
clothing, and did a reasonably good job of cleaning her up enough
so that she could be examined.
     Jake Sloan took charge of the examination personally.  The
contusions and abrasions were superficial, but there was one deep
laceration of the scalp that would take stitches, and a number of
suppurating sores.  Her vital signs were marginal, but indicated
the possibility of a recovery.  Sloan didn't care too much for
those sores and high fever.  Nor for her general debility.  He
ordered plasma and antibiotics.  The thing that bothered him most
was the swelling of the lymphatic glands.  He didn't want to
think what he was thinking.  If the fever began to alternate with
chills ....
     "Tell the lab I want that bloodwork and cultures STAT, and I
mean STAT!"  He looked around at the personnel assisting him.  
"As soon as I get this scalp wound closed, I want this room
sealed off and sterilized."
     He broke off as there was a stir in the group of curious
staff members outside the treatment room, and Tom Courtney pushed
his way through the curtains.
     "How is she?  My God, what happened to her?  Helen called me
at the lab ...."
     Sloan tied off the last suture, and eyed the agitated young
man.  "She'll live."  He stripped off the thin surgical gloves
and turned to the resident who had assisted.  "I want this
patient placed in quarantine.  Nurse, get the lice and fleas off
her, and get the poor kid cleaned up."  He eyed each in turn. 
"Everyone here is to shower and shampoo thoroughly immediately,
and make sure you're free of fleas.  Then report to me for
inoculation. Get maintenance in here.  I want this room and my
office sprayed for fleas. STAT. Move."
     One of the nurses' aides looked at the flea crawling on her
arm.  She looked at Sloan and asked, round-eyed, "Doctor, why the
concern about the fleas?  What is it?"
     Sloan took a deep breath. "Bubonic Plague is spread by rat
fleas."
     Tom Courtney started. "Bu ....  Good God!"
     "Yes. I hope I'm wrong.  But I'm not."

                                  #

     Sloan took young Courtney, and hustled him along to the male
doctors' locker room and showers.  "Strip, kid. You were close
enough to her to get a flea or two.  I want to try to nip this
thing quick.  I know we have antibiotics to treat bubonic, but
even a small epidemic can kill a lot of people.  And you know how
fast it can spread.  God knows there are enough rats in this
city, and the way people are packed into the slums it could be a
disaster I don't even want to think about."
     The Chief of Medicine stepped out of the shower and toweled
off.  He took two sets of scrubs from the shelf, and tossed one
set to Courtney.  "Okay, Kid," he said, "explain."
     "I don't know what you mean."
     "The hell you don't.  There's only one way that girl could
have gotten into my office through a locked door.  She didn't
come in by any of the three dimensions, length, breadth, or
height, so she came in by the fourth dimension, time.  Time, my
young genius.  Time. You remember your cockamamie theories on the
subject.  Talk."
     Tom Courtney chewed his underlip, and eyed the older man
warily.  "You don't believe that."
     "You know damned well I do.  I didn't, but I do now.  What
have you been up to?  How far along have you gotten with your
experiments?  What did you do to that poor girl?  Where did you
send her?"
     Courtney wet his lips.  "It was an accident.  A fluke.  She
wasn't supposed to have been caught up in the time-field.  She
was well out of the critical area.  We were only going to send
back a rabbit ... just one day into the past ...."  The young
physicist shook his head.  "Doctor, time is ... strange ... we'd
planned the experiment.  We planned to send the rabbit back
yesterday, Tuesday, to arrive the day before, Monday. 
Consequently, Monday we watched the temporal-extension area
between the impulse electrodes pretty much excited, and were
delighted beyond our expectations, when the rabbit materialized
on schedule ... the same rabbit that also sat in its cage across
the laboratory.  We checked the metal tag clipped to its ear to
verify, but we had no doubts ...."
     "You mean you now had two of the same rabbit?"
     Courtney grinned. "Confusin' ain't it?  We still haven't
figured out how to deal with that aspect of the project."
     "Go on."
     "Well, we waited until the proper time yesterday, positioned
one of the rabbits in the displacement area, and prepared to send
him back.  I don't know what happened.  Eileen slipped ...
stumbled ... fell ... tripped ... I don't know ... but she took a
step onto the timegrid just as I closed the switch.  Both she and
the rabbit disappeared.
     "It took a moment for the full horror of it to sink in.  The 
rabbit had come back to us yesterday, but Eileen hadn't!  She was
lost somewhere ... somewhere in the past."
     "Oh, My God."
     "Yes.  Doctor, there is no way I can even begin to explain
what happened, without taking you over to the lab and showing you
the equipment."
     "Let's go."

                                #

     Sloan inoculated Courtney, Helen Brady, and himself, and 
left orders for the treatment of all who had come in contact with
Eileen Howard.  He told Helen where he was going, and gave strict
instructions that he was to be beeped immediately should there be
any change in Eileen's condition.
     He accompanied Courtney across the street to his lab in the
Physics Building.  Sloan inspected the laboratory with intense
interest.  Courtney started to explain some of the myriad panels,
switchboards, dynamos, bewildering coils and helices that crammed
almost every square foot of space, but Sloan waved him to
silence. 
     "Forget it," he laughed, "just give me the kindergarten 
version."
     Courtney pointed to a small panel with several switches and
dials, and to an open area on the floor about four feet in
diameter, with thick copper bars embedded in the perimeter.  "It
all boils down to these.  This is the power board, and that's the
time grid.  I won't even try to go into the math, but what it
does ..."  He waved an arm at all the complex paraphernalia. 
"... is create a magnetic field so strong that it warps the very
structure of space and time, and creates an opening from one
level to another.  These various levels are subject to
calibration in space-time secants that transect the temporal tan-
gents where they intersect with the spatial continuum.... "
     "Whoa! What the flaming hell are you talking about?"
     Courtney laughed. "In plain language, it's possible to
project a controlled transfer from one space and time, to another
space and time."
     "You mean you can send someone or something from here to
there, and from now to then, and put 'em down where you want 'em? 
And bring 'em back?"
     "Yes."
     "Then why didn't you say so?"
     "I did."
     "But in what language?  No, don't tell me.  Show me."
     Courtney indicated several dials on the control panel.  "By
setting these verniers we pinpoint a time and an area anywhere
and anywhen on earth. The transfer is instantaneous ...."
     Sloan interrupted excitedly.  "Don't you realize that you've
also solved the problem of interplanetary, maybe even
intergalactic space travel?  Migod, man!  Instantaneous
teleportation to... ."
     "No, no, Doctor.  You misunderstood.  I said anywhere on
earth.  The effect is damped by the earth's gravitational pull,
but with more research, who knows?"  Courtney turned back to his
dials.  "Eileen and I set these coordinates to send the rabbit
back twenty four hours.  When I realized what had happened, my
first reaction, naturally, was to check the board."  The young
physicist ran his fingers through his hair.  "The needles were
occilating wildly.  There must have been a power surge ...  I
don't know how it could have happened.  We have fuses and dampers
... a dozen safeguards ....  still the extra, unprovided for,
mass of Elaine's body threw the computations completely off.  At
any rate when the verniers settled down and gave me a reading, it
took me eighteen hours to correlate with the temporal retractor. 
I went over and over the math to make sure.
     "Sending someone back in time is the easy part.  Getting him
back is a little more tricky.  But we had that worked out.  To be
more accurate, Eileen had worked it out."  Courtney's eyes took
on a warm glow.  "Doctor, that woman is phenomenal.  Not only
does she have one of the finest scientific minds since Einstein,
but she's pretty, too!"
     Sloan chuckled.
     Courtney grinned.  "Not very professional of me but, Doctor,
you haven't seen her looking her best.  Anyway, Eileen worked out
the formulae.  In layman's terms, intruding an anomaly like
someone from the future causes ... ripples ... vibrations ... in
the continuum, that can be vectored in on ... sort of like a
multi-dimensional radar."  Courtney patted a square steel box
with more coils and dials.  "That's this baby here.  The
Retractor."  He indicated the dials.  "As I said, without
specific information, it took me eighteen hours to run her down."
     Sloan bent, and studied the panel.  One dial read 'May 14,
1348'. Another 'Marseilles, France'.  Still others fine-tuned
latitude and longitude to micro-seconds of micro-degrees.
     Sloan whistled.  "It's this accurate?"
     Courtney nodded.  "Pinpointed to within milli-fractions of
an inch, and nano-seconds of time."
     "Okay, so you found her.  How'd you bring her back?"
     "The temporal probe not only locates the traveler but acts
as a ... tractor beam ...?  A tweezers...?  Doctor, there are no
words for this branch of physics yet.  The probe vectors in and
... retracts ... the traveler, returning him to the here and
now.... "
     Sloan snorted.  "To the 'now' perhaps, but not to the
'here'.  She landed in my office, remember?"
     "Yes, and I don't fully understand it.  Doctor, there are so
many things about this new physics remaining to be understood!"
     Sloan snorted again.  "Doctor," he said a little
acidulously, "aren't you sort of firing a shotgun in the dark? 
Have you any idea of just how dangerous a toy you're playing
with?"
     Courtney ran his hands through his hair, and looked at the
older man. "Playing?  My God, Doctor, do you think I'm playing?
This was a very carefully controlled experiment.  We took every
precaution.  This is an entirely new branch of science, with
unknown parameters.  Dr. Sloan, we tried to foresee, tried to
prepare for every contingency, every step calculated, and fail-
safes provided.  Yes, Doctor, we were aware of the danger.  What
happened to Eileen wasn't supposed to happen.  She stepped on the
grid.  I don't know why."
     "All right. Shelve that for the moment.  How the hell did
she wind up in my office?"
     "Fluke.  One of the unknowns...  I have a theory ...."
     "I'd like to hear it."
     Courtney looked out the window to the hospital across the
street from his lab in the Physics Building.  "We're on the same
level here as your office over there.  I estimate the distance as
forty to forty five meters.  The lateral difference could be
accounted for by the earth's position in its orbit today being
that much ahead or behind its orbital position six hundred and
fifty years ago ...."  The young scientist shook his head. 
"That's one of the unknown parameters we'll have to take into
consideration before we try again."
     Sloan nodded. "All right.  I buy it.  It makes sense ...
that is, if anything makes sense in this Alice In Wonderland of
yours."
     "Dr. Sloan, what do you think happened to her?"
     "That's something only she can tell us.  We'll just have to
wait until she regains consciousness.  That is if the poor kid
does regain consciousness.  One thing's for sure.  She spent one
hell of a lot longer than eighteen hours back there in that hell
that was Europe during the Black Death."

                                #

     A continuous twenty four hour watch was kept on Eileen
Howard.  For days the girl bravely held her own.  The
antibiotics, at least, seemed to be doing their job.  The running
sores cleared up.  On the sixth day the fever broke, and her
vitals strengthened.  She continued to improve, and on the eighth
day, regained consciousness.  But it was three more days before
Eileen could tell them what had happened.
     She was still weak, and her face thin and pale, but the
prettiness was coming back, and she looked like a fragile child
lying propped up on her pillows.  The hair that had been such a
matted filthy mess, now formed a soft golden-brown halo around a
pixyish face that wore an expression of little-girl guilt.  She
held the sheet up under her chin and gave Courtney a tentative
smile.
     "I'm really sorry, Tom. Are you very mad at me?"
     "Mad at you? Whatever for?"
     "Mucking up the experiment."
     "You stepped on the grid on purpose?"
     She gave a little nod. "I wanted to go back a day and
surprise you."
     Courtney's stare became bewildered. "But darling, you knew
only the rabbit came back."
     The girl made a little face. "I remembered that a split
second too late."

                                   #

     The countdown had nearly reached zero when the mischievous
urge to join the rabbit on its twenty four hour journey gripped
Eileen.  It would be a lark to surprise Tom by popping up
yesterday. It would have come as a shock to Tom Courtney, to know
that the 'finest scientific mind since Einstein' had an un-

expected, impulsively school-girlish side.  That the brilliant
Ms. Howard could occasionally behave in a remarkably juvenile
manner.  And Eileen had acted on her impulse unthinkingly, cold
reason dousing her like a bucket of ice water a nano-second too
late.  Too late she remembered the unaccompanied rabbit.
     She experienced a momentary disorientation, during which it
seemed lightning flashed around her.  There was a strong odor of
ozone, and the distinctly unpleasant sensation of electricity
running through her body.  'Power surge', she thought.  The
rational, reasoning portion of her mind had taken back charge. 
Of course.  The transporter had been calibrated only for the rab-

bit.  Her additional mass had thrown the verniers out of
temporal-spatial synchronization.  The sensations lasted for only
a moment then she blacked out.
     Even before she opened her eyes, she recognized the language
being spoken around her as French.  It wasn't anything like the
French she'd studied in college, but she could understand most of
it.   The second thing that smote her senses was the stench.  A
powerful effluvium compounded of excrement, garbage, and rotting
flesh.  Then came the sounds.  The harsh clash of iron-shod
hooves and wagon wheels on stone.  The clangor of continuously
tolling church-bells.  Cries, shouts, yells, bursts of drunken
laughter, and piteous moans that tore at her nerves. Above the
cacophony an uncaring voice sing-songing, "Bring out your dead. 
Bring out your dead."  Something with sharp claws squeaked, and
skittered across her face.
     She opened her eyes.  The first thing to meet her gaze was a
heap of corpses lying a few yards away and the horde of rats that
burrowed into the pile of bodies, eating.  Coarse, brutal looking
men smashed at the rats with cudgels, and heaved the dead, like
sacks of grain, into a large cart.
    The girl sat up, terrified.  Where was she?  When was she? The
pock-marked villain who'd been on the point of picking her up
grinned, showing broken teeth.  "I'd not nap in such a place at
such a time, little one," he said with unexpected gentleness.
"You're apt to wake to find yourself in the burning pits."
     The face into which Eileen looked was deeply pitted with old
smallpox scars, one nostril partly eaten away by the disease, but
the hideous features were overlaid with an expression of real
compassion and concern.  The man extended one callused hand, and
helped Eileen to her feet.  He glanced at the girl's long white
lab coat, and equated it with the white habit worn by one order
of the Sisters of Mercy.
     "How came you here, Sister?"
     Eileen looked at the ruined face.  "I ... I'm not quite sure
..."  She swayed dizzily.  The heat, the sights, the stomach-
wrenching stench, all combined to make her feel faint.
     The man put an arm around her shoulders, and led her to a
shaded bench along a stone wall.  "Sit here, Sister. I'll fetch
you a sip of wine."
     He disappeared into a noisy tavern, and reappeared a few
moments later with a leather jack of sour wine.  "Drink this,
Sister.  'Tis none the best, but will put a bit of strength into
you."
     Eileen gagged a little on the bitter brew, but the man was
right.  She began to feel better.  She wiped her lips with the
back of one hand, and smiled at her benefactor.  "I thank you
sir, but you are mistaken.  I'm not a nun."
     A grin split the scarred face, but it no longer looked
frightening to her.  "'Tis of no matter, little one."  A look of
sadness crossed his features.  "You've the look of my Jolie
before the Death took her ...."  His smile returned.  "...without
the marks of the pox, of course."
     Eileen felt a quick sympathy.  "Your wife?"
     "Nay child, my daughter.  The pox took my wife three years
ago along with my infant son."
     "I'm so sorry. You're all alone?"
     "Aye."
     The girl looked around.  The dead-cart, with its grisly
cargo, had departed.  The people on the street seemed to be
divided into two classes.  Those who walked woodenly, stiff-
legged, stunned, horror-stricken ... and those who roistered
noisily, feverishly driven by a desperate gaiety that sought to
deny reality.  She shuddered.  "So am I," she said in a small,
frightened voice, "alone, I mean."
     The man patted her shoulder. "Nay, child.  Not so long as
Andre Pasteur continues to draw breath ... if you'll have my
friendship."
     The girl clasped the big scarred hand.  "I'm Eileen Howard.
And I thank you, M'sieur Pasteur.   I...  I'm far from home, and
afraid."
     Andre looked at her. "Howard?  You're English, then?"
     Without thinking, Eileen responded, "No, I'm American."
     The man's eyebrows shot up. "American?"  He switched from
French to English.  "Holy Cow!"  He looked at Eileen more
closely. He shook his head. "I've been here too long!  I've
started to think like one of them.  Hell's bells! I should have
recognized a lab coat ... but who'd expect to see one here?  And
nylons!  What happened to your shoes?  What happened to you? Time
experiment backfire?"
     Eileen goggled at him.
     Andre laughed.  "Thirty years!  I've been here thirty years! 
I've almost become the dull-witted peasant I've had to mimic in
order not to be burned at the stake as a witch!"
     The girl's mouth opened and closed.  She squeaked.
     Andre chuckled.  "Well, well.  A fellow time-traveler.  Come
on, kid, let's blow this pop stand!  What year you from?"
     Eileen continued to goggle at her companion, her mind a
swirling chaotic mass of confusion.
     He helped her up, and led her down the street.  He turned
into a narrow alley-way and indicated a door.  "I've got a pad up
here.  Come on."
     Andre opened the door to a neat, small room.  There was a
low cot along the far wall with a straw-filled mattress, a small
table and three stools.  Against a second wall was a wooden
chest, and the third held a stone ledge with the ashes of past
fires.  Two swiveled iron arms projected from the wall above,
suspending iron cookpots.  The room was tidy and the first clean
place she'd seen since opening her eyes.
     Andre motioned.  "Sit on the cot.  It's the only comfortable
seat in the place."  He brought out a straw-covered wine bottle
and two earthen mugs. "This," he said, waving the bottle, "is a
little better than the muck they serve in the grog shops.  If you
feel anywhere near as screwed up as I did when I landed here, you
need a drink.  But watch it.  This stuff isn't the wine you're
used to back in....  Say, what year are you from, anyway?"
     Still in a state of shock Eileen, mumbled, "Nineteen ninety
eight."
     "Nineteen sixty two.  U.S.C. at Berkley.  How about you?"
     Eileen took a sip of the strong sweet wine.  She couldn't
seem to take her eyes from Andre Pasteur's ruined, pockmarked
face.  She started to speak, swallowed, and wet dry lips. 
"Gainsberg University in Ohio."  She took another sip of the
wine.  It was beginning to thaw some of the ice in her brain. 
"Sixty two?  You were working on time travel way back then?"
     Andre pulled up a stool and sat down.  He chuckled. "We
didn't get much publicity.  Even the high muck-a-mucks in the
University didn't know for sure what we were doing.  'Controlled
Time Research' is what we called it, and sort of let the idea get
around that we were working on a project to develop a chronometer
even more accurate than the atomic clock.  That had a good solid
scientific sound to it.  You can imagine about how much we'd have
gotten in grants if the money boys knew we were attempting time
travel!
     "How about you?  Time travel pick up respectability in the
nineties?"
     By this time Eileen was adjusting to the bizarre
coincidence.  "Some. Most people thought Tom and I were mental
basket cases, but there were a few with vision ... enough to get
us funding to advance the project."
     "Advance it how far?  Do you have a method for returning to
your own time?  Or are you as foolish as we were, and jumped the
gun in girlish enthusiasm?"
     Eileen blushed.  "A little of both."  She described the
infantile impulse that had gotten her into her present
predicament.  "I know Tom's working on vectoring in on me with
the retractor, but there's no way of knowing how long it will
take.  That was to be our next experiment."  She looked at Andre. 
"It's just as possible that your people are busting their behinds
to locate you ....  My God .... "
     "What?"
     "What if it takes thirty years for Tom to find me? Or
rather, what if thirty years passes here before he does?"  Eileen
shuddered.  "I could return twenty four hours after I left ...
thirty years older...."
     Andre gave her a sympathetic smile.  "I take it you have
romantic designs on this 'Tom' guy."
     Eileen managed a small smile of her own.  "Let's just say I
wouldn't be too thrilled to go back to him an old hag."
     An undulating wail of grief came from a nearby apartment.  A
sudden spasm of terror contorted the girl's face.  "Oh, Andre, do
we have any chance at all of surviving the plague?"
     The man lifted her to her feet and held her in a comforting
embrace. "Easy, child.  We've a better chance than the rest of
them.  At least we know what causes it."
     Eileen looked at Andre's ravaged face.  "We know what causes
smallpox, too, but that didn't help."
     Andre smiled encouragingly.  "True.  There is, at least, one
thing we can do, and I was on the point of doing it when we met. 
Get out of the city. There are villages where we can be safe for
a while ... we can keep moving ...." He broke off.  "But will
that affect your Tom's efforts to locate you?"
     Eileen bit her lip. "I don't know.  I don't think so,
according to my figures, but we've never tested it."  She
shivered.  "But it won't be any good if he finds me, and I'm
dead.  Oh Andre, get me out of here? Please?"

                                #

     It was three months before the Black Death came to the
village.  Eileen had learned to eat the rotten meat without
throwing up.  She had learned to survive in a society without
any conveniences.  Of course she missed gas and electricity.  Of
course she missed stores, and cars, and air conditioning.  And
refrigeration.  And running water, and indoor plumbing.  And the
hundred other things she'd always taken for granted.  Those were
minor annoyances.
     What had been hard to accept was the abysmal ignorance, the
lack of sanitation, the utter filth.  The babies that died of a
hundred causes that could be avoided, even with the facilities
available.  Children who were adults at twelve.  Old at thirty. 
Senile at forty.  Dead at forty five, if they lived that long. 
The bigotry.  The religious intolerance ... the domination by the
Church.  The class distinction that allowed the 'nobility' to own
the peasantry as chattel.  The lack of human dignity.
     Wells so close to the jakes, that the ground water tasted of
human excrement.  Water that had to be boiled, and mixed with
wine to kill some of the germs, and disguise the flavor, before
it could be safely drunk.  Facing the ridicule of villagers who
believed that frequent bathing was injurious to the health.  Who
bathed once a year, and wore the same garment until it rotted.
Peasants ranging from dull-witted to idiotic, due to brain damage
from lack of nutrition.  Peasants with teeth rotted, and coated
with green tartar, and who accepted lice and fleas and ticks as
part of every day living.  Slaving in the fields of the Siegneur
from before dawn until after dark and retaining only enough of
the fruits of their labor to not quite keep body and soul
together.  But she learned to live with all this, survival being
the prime directive.
     She also learned about 'Le Droit de Siegneur'.  The right
that nobility had arrogated unto itself to bed the bride of any
of his serfs ... thralls ... vassals ... the word 'slave' was
generally eschewed ... on her wedding night.  Many 'lords'
extended this right to include any peasant girl who caught his
fancy.
     Eileen caught the fancy of the noble on whose domain the
village stood. He fancied her for a full week.  The girl endured
the rape stoically as a matter of survival.  She was restrained
from gutting the odiferous 'lord' with his own poniard only by
the knowledge that such action would earn her an agonizing death
at the hands of his lordship's torturer.
     Eileen's own knowledge of medicine, and the village
midwife's herbal lore, prevented her from conceiving from the
dehumanizing experience.
     The girl learned the infinite gentleness and tenderness of
the man with the smallpox-ravaged face, and of the depth of his
grief over the deaths of his wife and their two children.  She
learned why he had volunteered as guinea pig for the Berkley
experiment. She also learned to love him, despite the fact that
he was twice her age.

                                   #

     Inevitably, the Death came to the village.  Their first
reaction had been to remain, and do what they could for the poor
souls who had been their friends.  But cold common sense told
them that it was a no-win situation, and that to stay would only
be to throw away their own lives.  Even had they had the
facilities to back up their medical knowledge, they would have
been flying in the face of the Church, which had proclaimed the
plague as God's punishment on the people for their sins ... and
contradicting the Church was a certain way to charges of heresy,
and burning at the stake.
     Eileen, for all her sweetness, felt satisfaction that one of
the first to fall victim to the plague was the 'lord' who had
ravished her. 
     Andre and the girl moved off to the north, putting many
leagues between themselves and the forefront of the devastation. 
By this time Eileen was no longer consciously aware of her
companion's pox-raddled face, seeing only the goodness of the
man.  His strength.  His dream.  For Andre had confided in her.
     "Come on, kid," he'd said.  "With a name like 'Pasteur' I
was damn near obligated to nose into the old family tree.
     "I traced it back to the Crusades. I found that one branch
of the family had died off during the plague.  The records are
fuzzy as hell about that period.  Totally understandable, but
even so, there were contradictions that made no sense whatever.
     The more I dug into it, the more I became convinced that the
line that ran out during the Black Death should have continued. 
I had no evidence.  Just a conviction that it was important to
the world as we know it, that that line should have continued."
     "Okay Andre, I'm not stupid," Eileen had responded.  "You're
saying that you believe Louis Pasteur descended from that branch,
and that unless you could save it, much of modern medicine would
still be in the dark ages."
     Andre had blushed. "Well, yeah."  He looked embarrassed. 
"Go ahead, tell me I'm putting too much importance on myself. 
Call me an egotistical jerk.  You're probably right."  A spasm of
pain crossed the pox-pitted face.  "The son I thought would carry
on the line, died in the same epidemic that left me looking like
the Phantom of the Opera...."
     Eileen had uttered a little cry of denial and stroked the
scarred face with a soft palm.  "No, Andre, no."  She crept into
his arms and held him tightly.  "There will be a son to carry on
your dream."

                                  #

     Eileen looked at Courtney.  There was pleading in her eyes. 
Pleading for understanding and acceptance.  There was love, and
hope, and wanting.  But there was no sign of regret or shame.
     "I bore him that son, Tom.  A beautiful sturdy son.  To the
man who had saved my life, and my sanity, in a world of death and
madness. I bore him that son out of love."
     Tom Courtney took the pale hand that lay passively on the
cover, and said the one thing guaranteed to insure him a life of
happiness.  "God bless the man for caring for you, and God bless
you for loving him for it.  What of the boy?  It couldn't have
been easy for you to leave him."
     Eileen laid her fingers on Courtney's cheek, and the light
in her eyes would have caused flowers to bloom out of a block of
solid ice.  "I love you."
     Sloan cleared his throat noisily.  "All very sweet and
touching, I'm sure," he said gruffly.  "But, young lady, just how
the hell did you get back here?"

                                   #

     Eileen had an easy delivery.  The midwife knew her craft,
and had an extensive knowledge of pain-dulling herbs.  Andre saw
to it that strict observance of sanitary conditions prevailed,
forestalling the possibility of 'childbed fever' carrying off
both mother and child, as happened all too frequently in that age
of ignorance.  He had a stormy time convincing the midwife to
scrub her hands, and rinse them in strong wine before touching
the girl, but the woman reluctantly complied after Andre
threatened to beat her with a stick of firewood.
     It was a boy, and a lusty, squalling young pagan he was. 
Opinionated and demanding from his first breath.  Both his
scarfaced father, and his dainty mother, were delighted with him.
     They were to have three blissful months before the times
caught up with them again.  The Black Death gained momentum,
spreading from the seaports of the Mediterranean coast, inland,
with increasing rapidity.  Andre Pasteur was among the first to
fall when the plague struck the village.
     When he felt the first symptoms of the disease, he ordered
Eileen to take the boy and go, to leave him and insure the
child's survival.  The girl did not argue with her husband.  The
love between them was such that no protestations were needed. 
Each understood what was in the other's heart.  Eileen silently
packed what few things she could carry, kissed Andre, and took
their son to safety.
     She took the boy up into the mountains to the Sisters of
Mercy at the convent of Ste. Agnes, and placed him in the care of
the gentle nuns.  Then, following a vague inner compulsion, she
returned to Marseilles.
     Andre had furnished her with enough funds to provide lodging
and food, and she lived quietly for several weeks.  Eileen
gradually became aware of a vague unrest within.  The unfocused
urgency became more and more acute.
     She had been so long in the stultifying miasma of the Dark
Ages that it took some time before she realized that the
unsettling inner turmoil was due to the probing of the retractor
searching the time-lines for her.
     She was at a loss as to how to aid Tom Courtney in his
quest, but figured that it might be helpful if she lingered in
the vicinity where she had first appeared in this age.  The
probings became stronger and she could begin to hope that rescue
was at hand, when she fell victim to the plague.
     The villainous landlord from whom she rented her tiny room
was aware that the girl had money, so he didn't wait until she
was dead before carrying her, semi-conscious, to one of the
public burial pits and casting her onto the heap of half-rotted
corpses waiting to be covered.
     Eileen regained her senses in the night, and dragged herself
from the pit of death.  She made her way, stumbling and crawling
in the filth and offal of the city's streets, until she collapsed
finally and dropped into the velvet blackness of near death.  She
knew nothing more until she awakened in the safety and blessed
cleanliness of a hospital bed.
                                 #
     Had the genealogical line which produced the nineteenth
century genius to whom modern medicine owes so much, been
preserved?  Or had Andre Pasteur been mistaken?
     Jake Sloan, Chief of Medicine at University Hospital,
doesn't know.  But he bends all his considerable talent for fund-
raising to garnering big bucks to further the research of Tom
Courtney and his wife, who are devoting their lives to finding
out.
                            * * * * *