Timeline by Michael Crichton

UV. I have no idea how they made these discoveries.”
    :
    They were galloping full tilt along a grassy ridge overlooking the river. At least, Sophie was galloping; Chris bounced and jolted, hanging on for dear life. Ordinarily, she never galloped on their outings together, in deference to his lesser ability, but today she was shrieking with delight as she raced headlong across the fields.
    Chris tried to stay with her, praying she would stop soon, and finally she did, reining up her snorting and sweaty black stallion, patting it on the neck, waiting for him to catch up.
    “Wasn’t that exciting?” she said.
    “It was,” he said, gasping for breath. “It certainly was that.”
    “You did very well, Chris, I must say. Your seat is improving.”
    All he could do was nod. His seat was painful after all the bouncing, and his thighs ached from squeezing so hard.
    “It’s beautiful here,” she said, pointing to the river, the dark castles on the far cliffs. “Isn’t it glorious?”
    And then she glanced at her watch, which annoyed him. But walking turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. She rode very close to him, the horses almost touching, and she leaned over to whisper in his ear; once she threw her arm around his shoulder and kissed him on the mouth, before glancing away, apparently embarrassed by her moment of boldness.
    From their present position, they overlooked the entire site: the ruins of Castelgard, the monastery, and on the far hill, La Roque. Clouds raced overhead, moving shadows across the landscape. The air was warm and soft, and it was quiet, except for the distant rumble of an automobile.
    “Oh, Chris,” she said, and kissed him again. When they broke, she looked away in the distance, and suddenly waved.
    A yellow convertible was winding up the road toward them. It was some sort of racing car, low-slung, its engine growling. A short distance away, it stopped, and the driver stood up behind the wheel, sitting on the back of the seat.
    “Nigel!” she cried happily.
    The man in the car waved back lazily, his hand tracing a slow arc.
    “Oh Chris, would you be a dear?” Sophie handed Chris the reins of her horse, dismounted, and ran down the hill to the car, where she embraced the driver. The two of them got in the car. As they drove off, she looked back at Chris and blew him a kiss.
    The restored medieval town of Sarlat was particularly charming at night, when its cramped buildings and narrow alleys were lit softly by gas lamps. On the rue Tourny, Marek and the graduate students sat in an outdoor restaurant under white umbrellas, drinking the dark red wine of Cahors into the night.
    Usually, Chris Hughes enjoyed these evenings, but tonight nothing seemed right to him. The evening was too warm; his metal chair uncomfortable. He had ordered his favorite dish, pintade aux cèpes, but the guinea hen tasted dry, and the mushrooms were bland. Even the conversation irritated him: usually, the graduate students talked over the day’s work, but tonight their young architect, Kate Erickson, had met some friends from New York, two American couples in their late twenties — stock traders with their girlfriends. He disliked them almost immediately.
    The men were constantly getting up from the table to talk on cell phones. The women were both publicists in the same PR firm; they had just finished a very big party for Martha Stewart’s new book. The group’s bustling sense of their own self-importance quickly got on Chris’s nerves; and, like many successful business people, they tended to treat academics as if they were slightly retarded, unable to function in the real world, to play the real games. Or perhaps, he thought, they just found it inexplicable that anyone would choose an occupation that wouldn’t make them a millionaire by age twenty-four.
    Yet he had to admit they were perfectly pleasant; they were drinking a lot of wine, and asking a lot of questions about the project. Unfortunately, they were