“Traveling in time is not like taking the tube, Mr. Bartholomew,” the esteemed Dunworthy had said, blinking at me through those antique spectacles of his. “Either you report on the twentieth or you don’t go at all.”

“But I’m not ready,” I’d said. “Look, it took me four years to get ready to travel with St. Paul. St. Paul. Not St. Paul’s. You can’t expect me to get ready for London in the Blitz in two days.”

“Yes,” Dunworthy had said. “We can.” End of conversation.

“Two days!” I had shouted at my roommate Kivrin. “All because some computer adds an ’s. And the esteemed Dunworthy doesn’t even bat an eye when I tell him. ‘Time travel is not like taking the tube, young man,’ he says. ‘I’d suggest you get ready. You’re leaving day after tomorrow.’ The man’s a total incompetent.”

“No,” she said. “He isn’t. He’s the best there is. He wrote the book on St. Paul’s. Maybe you should listen to what he says.”

I had expected Kivrin to be at least a little sympathetic. She had been practically hysterical when she got her practicum changed from fifteenth-to fourteenth-century England, and how did either century qualify as a practicum? Even counting infectious diseases they couldn’t have been more than a five. The Blitz is an eight, and St. Paul’s itself is, with my luck, a ten.

“You think I should go see Dunworthy again?” I said.

“Yes.”

“And then what? I’ve got two days. I don’t know the money, the language, the history. Nothing.”

“He’s a good man,” Kivrin said. “I think you’d better listen to him while you can.” Good old Kivrin. Always the sympathetic ear.

The good man was responsible for my standing just inside the propped-open west doors, gawking like the country boy I was supposed to be, looking for a stone that wasn’t there. Thanks to the good man, I was about as unprepared for my practicum as it was possible for him to make me.