From the meeting with my tutor I walked straight to my dorm. To my dismay, I found that there were a bunch of cleaning ladies at work on our floor. One of them was busy cleaning the room Natalie and I shared. Making sure that she did not watch me, I opened the closet and retrieved the ansible from where I had hidden it under a heap of underwear. Putting it under my blazer, I went outside and sat down in the park under a big tree. There were still classes being taught at this time of day, so there were only a few other students around.

I activated the ansible by applying my thumbprint to the sensor. With a faint beep, it switched from standby to transmission mode. I punched a sequence of keys and waited.

For a few seconds, all I could hear was static. Then, surprisingly clear, there was Mira's excited voice.

"Cathy! Is that you, Cathy?"

"Yeah, it's me. Come on, who did you think it was?"

"Finally." Mira sounded exasperated. "What were you thinking?"

"I did not get an opportunity to call you any earlier. Is that a problem?"

On the other end of the line, Mira sighed. "Cathy, you know quite well it's standard procedure to make contact via the ansible no less than one hour after arrival in the remote time period. Unless you have a really good excuse."

"Oops." Now that she mentioned it, I remembered that there had been some such clause in the Temporal Exploring Standard Procedures and Best Practices handbook.

"Oops? Is that all that you have to say for yourself?" Mira was sounding even more exasperated than before. "Sara was livid. Just be glad it is just me you are talking to right now. She would chew you out good."

"I can imagine."

"No you can't. At least I don't think you can. But enough of that. What's your current status, concerning the observation of Natalie Fogg? Did you succeed in locating her already?"

"Currently, I am sharing a dorm room with her." It was all I could do to not sound smug about it.

"Great Gauss! You're rooming with her?  How did you make that happen?"

"To be honest, I did not need to do anything," I admitted, in a belated attempt at modesty. "Natalie was the only student left without a roommate when I arrived here. So Headmistress Stuart had to set me up with her. However, I am not at all sure if the girl I share a room with and the author of the Red Notebook are really one and the same person."

"What makes you doubt that, Cathy?"

"For starters, my new roommate is nothing like what our psychologists predicted her to be like. At least she is neither shy nor timid, as far as I can tell. When I first met her, I caught her smoking, which is against the school's rules, and she got all aggressive when I pointed that out."

"Interesting." There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. "Though this wouldn't be the first time that the psychies got it all wrong. Anyhow, Sara will be happy about what you have achieved so far. Also, she will be glad that nothing happened to you. When you failed to make contact for more than twenty-four hours, we feared that we might have lost you."

"Lost me? As in, lost in transit?"

"Nah, not that. We did have the ansible connection, even though it was only on standby. But something could have happened to you in the remote temporal era."

I rolled my eyes at that, though Mira of course could not see it. "Come on, what could possibly have happened to me on my first day at a 1960s' boarding school?"

"Who knows? After all, there have been more than ten failed attempts to send explorers to the 1960s, before you succeeded."

"Ten failed attempts? Great Gauss! How come I was never told about that until now?"

"We wanted you to approach your transit as relaxed and unbiased as possible. Actually, I don't think I have permission to tell you about those failed attempts, even now. So do me a favor and don't mention it to Sara."

"I won't. But what could possibly have caused such a series of fails?"

"Well, there is the obvious cause: lack of temporal consistency. Natty Fogg is a pivotal historical character. It could be that any attempt on our part to interact with her would inevitably have screwed up history. No consistent histories, hence no transit."

"Maybe. But if so, why did I succeed where all the others failed?"

"I don't know. We can merely speculate. But it is possible that the way you are going to interact with her turns out to be the only one so far that is consistent with the established facts."

I made a face. "I hate those temporal consistency arguments. You can explain anything that way, a posteriori."

Mira laughed. "I agree. But as of now, the constraints imposed by the existence of a single consistent global history is all that we have got. Gotta hang up now. I wish you good luck. Bye, Cathy."

"Thanks. Bye, Mira." I terminated the transmission.

It occurred to me that after less than two days spent in the remote temporal era, I was missing Mira and my friends back home already.

********************************************************

A / N :  So Cathy reported back to her supervisors in the 23rd century, finally.

Looks a bit like she is getting homesick already, doesn't it?

If you have any comments, thoughts, remarks, let me know them :-)