“He was just here,” Finch said, peering over the heads of the women, but Dunworthy had already spotted him. He was standing at the end of the table where the bell ringers were sitting, buttering several pieces of toast.
Dunworthy made his way to him. “When Ms. Montoya telephoned, did she tell you where she might be reached?”
“The one with the bicycle?” Colin said, smearing marmalade on the buttered toast.
“Yes.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Will you have breakfast, sir?” Finch said. “I’m afraid there aren’t any bacon and eggs, and we’re getting very low on marmalade”—he glared at Colin—“but there’s oatmeal and—”
“Just tea,” Dunworthy said. “She didn’t mention where she was phoning from?”
“Do sit down,” Ms. Taylor said. “I’ve been wanting to speak to you about our Chicago Surprise.”
“What exactly did Ms. Montoya say?” Dunworthy said to Colin.
“That nobody cared that her dig was being ruined and an invaluable link with the past was being lost, and what sort of person went fishing in the middle of winter anyway,” Colin said, scraping marmalade off the sides of the bowl.
“We’re nearly out of tea,” Finch said, pouring Dunworthy a very pale cup.
Dunworthy sat down. “Would you like some cocoa, Colin? Or a glass of milk?” Dunworthy asked.
“We’re nearly out of milk,” Finch said.
“I don’t need anything, thanks,” Colin said, slapping the slices of toast jam-sides together, “I’m just going to take these with me out to the gate so I can wait for the post.”
“The vicar telephoned,” Finch said. “He said to tell you you needn’t be there to go over the order of worship until half past six.”
“Are they still holding the Christmas Eve service?” Dunworthy said. “I shouldn’t think anyone would come under the circumstances.”
“He said the Interchurch Committee had voted to hold it regardless,” Finch said, pouring a quarter teaspoon of milk in the pallid tea and handing it to him. “He said they felt carrying on as usual will help keep up morale.”
“We’re going to perform several pieces on the handbells,” Ms. Taylor said. “It’s hardly a substitute for a peal, of course, but it’s something. The priest from Holy Re-Formed is going to read from the Mass in Time of Pestilence.”
“Ah,” Dunworthy said. “That should help in keeping up morale.”
“Do I have to go?” Colin said.
“He has no business going out in this weather,” Mrs. Gaddson said, appearing like a harpy with a large bowl of gray oatmeal. She set it in front of Colin. “And no business being exposed to germs in a drafty church. He can stay here with me during the church service.” She pushed a chair up behind him. “Sit down and eat your oatmeal.”
Colin looked beseechingly at Dunworthy.
“Colin, I left Ms. Montoya’s telephone number in my rooms,” Dunworthy said. “Would you fetch it for me?”
“Yes!” Colin said, and was out of his chair like a shot.
“When that child comes down with the Indian flu,” Mrs. Gaddson said, “I hope you will remember that you were the one who encouraged him in his poor eating habits. It is clear to me what led to this epidemic. Poor nutrition and a complete lack of discipline. It’s disgraceful, the way this college is run. I asked to be put in with my son William, but instead I’ve been assigned a room in another building altogether, and—”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to take that up with Finch,” Dunworthy said. He stood up and wrapped Colin’s marmaladed toast in a napkin. “I’m needed at the Infirmary,” he said and escaped before Mrs. Gaddson could start off again.
He went back to his rooms and rang up Andrews. The line was engaged. He rang up the dig, on the off-chance that Montoya had obtained her quarantine waiver, but there was no answer. He rang up Andrews again. Amazingly enough, the line was free. It rang three times and then switched to a message service.
“This is Mr. Dunworthy,” he said. He hesitated and then gave the number of his rooms. “I need to speak with you immediately. It’s important.”
He rang off, pocketed the disk, picked up his umbrella and Colin’s toast, and walked out through the quad.
Colin was huddling under the shelter of the gate, looking anxiously down the street toward Carfax.
“I’m going to the Infirmary to see my tech and your great-aunt,” Dunworthy said, handing him the napkin-wrapped toast. “Would you like to go with me?”
“No, thanks,” Colin said. “I don’t want to miss the post.”
“Well, for goodness’ sake, go and fetch your jacket so Mrs. Gaddson doesn’t come out and begin haranguing you.”
“The Gallstone’s already been,” Colin said. “She tried to make me put on a muffler. A muffler!” He gave another anxious look down the street. “I ignored her.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Dunworthy said. “I should be home in time for lunch. If you need anything, ask Finch.”
“Umm,” Colin said, obviously not listening. Dunworthy wondered what his mother was sending that merited such devotion. Obviously not a muffler.
He pulled his own muffler up round his neck and set off for Infirmary through the rain. There were only a few people in the streets, and they kept out of each other’s way, one woman stepping off the pavement altogether to avoid meeting Dunworthy.
Without the carillon banging away at “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” one would have had no idea at all that it was Christmas Eve. No one carried gifts or holly, no one carried parcels at all. It was as if the quarantine had knocked the memory of Christmas out of their heads completely.
Well, and hadn’t it? He hadn’t given a thought to shopping for gifts or a tree. He thought of Colin huddled at Balliol’s gate and hoped his mother at least hadn’t forgotten to send his gifts. On the way home he’d stop and get Colin a small present, a toy or a vid or something, something besides a muffler.
At the Infirmary, he was hustled immediately into Isolation and taken off to question the new cases. “It’s essential we establish an American connection,” Mary said. “There’s been a snag at the WIC. There’s no one on duty who can run a sequencing because of the holidays. They’re supposed to be at full readiness at all times, of course, but apparently it’s after Christmas that they usually get problems—food poisonings and overindulgence masquerading as viruses—so they give time off before. At any rate, the CDC in Atlanta agreed to send the vaccine prototype to the WIC without a positive S-ident, but they can’t begin manufacturing without a definite connection.”
She led him down a cordoned-off corridor. “The cases are all following the profile of the South Carolina virus—high fever, body aches, secondary pulmonary complication, but unfortunately that’s not proof.” She stopped outside a ward. “You didn’t find any American connections for Badri, did you?”
“No, but there are still a good many gaps. Do you want me to question him, as well?”
She hesitated.
“He’s worse,” Dunworthy said.
“He’s developed pneumonia. I don’t know if he’ll be able to tell you anything. His fever is still very high, which follows the profile. We have him on the antimicrobials and adjuvants which the South Carolina virus responded to.” She opened the door to the ward. “The chart lists all the cases which have come in. Ask the nurse on duty which bed they’re in.” She typed something into the console by the first bed. It lit up a chart as branching and intertwined as the big beech in the quad. “You don’t mind having Colin with you for another night, do you?”
“I don’t mind in the slightest.”
“Oh, good. I doubt very much I’ll be able to get home before tomorrow, and I do worry about him staying alone in the flat. I’m apparently the only one who does, however,” she said angrily. “I finally got through to Deirdre down in Kent, and she wasn’t even concerned. ‘Oh, is there a quarantine on?’ she said. ‘I’ve been so rushed I hav
en’t had time to catch the news,’ and then she proceeded to tell me all about her and her livein’s plans, with the clear implication that she’d have had no time at all for Colin and was glad she was rid of him. There are times when I’m convinced she’s not my niece.”
“Did she send Colin’s Christmas presents, do you know? He said she planned to send them by post.”
“I’m certain she’s been far too rushed to remember to buy them, let alone send them. The last time Colin was with me for Christmas, his gifts didn’t arrive till Epiphany. Oh, which reminds me, do you know what’s become of my shopping bag? It had my gifts for Colin in it.”
“I’ve got it at Balliol,” he said.
“Oh, good. I didn’t finish my shopping, but if you’d wrap up the muffler and the other things, he’ll have something under the tree, won’t he?” She stood up. “If you find any possible connection, come tell me immediately. As you can see, we’ve already traced several of the secondaries to Badri, but those may only be cross-connections, and the real connection could be someone else.”
She left, and he sat down beside the bed of the woman of the lavender umbrella.
“Ms. Breen?” he said. “I’m afraid I must ask you some questions.”
Her face was very red, and her breathing sounded like Badri’s, but she answered his questions promptly and clearly. No, she hadn’t been to America in the past month. No, she didn’t know any Americans or anyone who’d been to America. But she had taken the tube up from London to shop for the day. “At Blackwell’s, you know,” and she had been all over Oxford shopping and then at the tube station, and there were at least five hundred people she had had contact with who might be the connection Mary was looking for.
It took him till past two to finish questioning the primaries and adding the contacts to the chart, none of which were the American connection, though he had found out that two more of them had been to the dance in Headington.
He went up to Isolation, though he didn’t have much hope of Badri’s being able to answer his questions, but Badri seemed improved. He was sleeping when Dunworthy came in, but when Dunworthy touched his hand, his eyes opened and focused on him.
“Mr. Dunworthy,” he said. His voice was weak and hoarse. “What are you doing here?”
Dunworthy sat down. “How are you feeling?”
“It’s odd, the things one dreams. I thought … I had such a headache.…”
“I need to ask you some questions, Badri. Do you remember who you saw at the dance you went to in Headington?”
“There were so many people,” he said, and swallowed as if his throat hurt. “I didn’t know most of them.”
“Do you remember who you danced with?”
“Elizabeth—” he said, and it came out a croak. “Sisu somebody, I don’t know her last name,” he whispered. “And Elizabeth Yakamoto.”
The grim-looking ward sister came in. “Time for your X ray,” she said without looking at Badri. “You’ll have to leave, Mr. Dunworthy.”
“Could I have just a few more minutes? It’s important,” he asked, but she was already tapping keys on the console.
He leaned over the bed. “Badri, when you got the fix, how much slippage was there?”
“Mr. Dunworthy,” the sister said insistently.
Dunworthy ignored her. “Was there more slippage than you expected?”
“No,” Badri said huskily. He put his hand to his throat.
“How much slippage was there?”
“Four hours,” Badri whispered, and Dunworthy let himself be ushered out.
Four hours. Kivrin had gone through at half past twelve. That would have put her there at half past four, nearly sunset, but still enough light left to see where she was, enough time to have walked to Skendgate if necessary.
He went to find Mary and give her the two names of the girls Badri had danced with. Mary checked them against the list of new admissions. Neither of them were on it, and Mary told him he could go home and took his temp and bloods so he wouldn’t have to come back. He was about to start home when they brought Sisu Fairchild in. He didn’t make it home till nearly teatime.
Colin wasn’t at the gate nor in hall, where Finch was nearly out of sugar and butter. “Where’s Dr. Ahrens’s nephew?” Dunworthy asked him.
“He waited by the gate all morning,” Finch said, anxiously counting over sugar cubes. “The post didn’t come till past one, and then he went over to his great-aunt’s flat to see if the parcels had been sent there. I gather they hadn’t. He came back looking very glum, and then about half an hour ago, he said suddenly, ‘I’ve just thought of something,’ and shot out. Perhaps he’d thought of some other place the parcels might have been sent to.”
But weren’t, Dunworthy thought. “What time do the shops close today?” he asked Finch.
“Christmas Eve? Oh, they’re already closed, sir. They always close early on Christmas Eve, and some of them closed at noon due to the lack of trade. I’ve a number of messages, sir—”
“They’ll have to wait,” Dunworthy said, snatched up his umbrella, and went out again. Finch was right. The shops were all closed. He went down to Blackwell’s, thinking they had surely stayed open, but they were shut up tight. They had already taken advantage of the selling points of the situation, though. In the window, arranged amid the snow-covered houses of the toy Victorian village, were self-help medical books, drug compendia, and a brightly colored paperback entitled Laughing Your Way to Perfect Health.
He finally found an open post office off the High, but it had only cigarettes, cheap sweets, and a rack of greeting cards, nothing in the way of suitable gifts for twelve-year-old boys. He went out without buying anything and then went back and purchased a pound’s worth of toffee, a gobstopper the size of a small asteroid, and several packets of a sweet that looked like soap tablets. It wasn’t much, but Mary had said she’d bought some other things.
The other things turned out to be a pair of gray woolen socks, even grimmer than the muffler, and a vocabulary improvement vid. There were crackers, at least, and sheets of wrapping paper, but a pair of socks and some toffee hardly made a Christmas. He looked around the study, trying to think what he had that might do.
Colin had said, “Apocalyptic!” when Dunworthy had told him Kivrin was in the Middle Ages. He pulled down The Age of Chivalry. It only had illustrations, no holos, but it was the best he could do on short notice. He wrapped it and the rest of the presents hastily, changed his clothes, and hurried over to St. Mary the Virgin’s in a downpour, ducking across the deserted courtyard of the Bodleian and trying to avoid the spilling gutters.
No one in their right mind would come out in this. Last year the weather had been dry, and the church was still only half-full. Kivrin had gone with him. She had stayed up for the vac to study, and he had found her in the Bodleian and insisted on her coming to his sherry party and then to church.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” she’d said on the way to the church. “I should be doing research.”
“You can do it at St. Mary the Virgin’s. Built in 1139 and all just as it was in the Middle Ages, including the heating system.”
“The interchurch service is authentic, too, I suppose,” she’d said.
“I have no doubt that in spirit it is as well meant and as fraught with foolishness as any mediaeval mass,” he had said.
He hurried down the narrow path next to Brasenose and opened the door of St. Mary’s to a blast of hot air. His spectacles steamed up. He stopped in the narthex and wiped them on the tail of his muffler, but they clouded up again immediately.
“The vicar’s looking for you,” Colin said. He was wearing a jacket and shirt, and his hair was combed. He handed Dunworthy an order of service from a large stack he was holding.
“I thought you were going to stay at home,” Dunworthy said.
“With Mrs. Gaddson? What a necrotic idea! Even church is better than that, so I told Ms. Taylor I’d help carry the bells over.”
r /> “And the vicar put you to work,” Dunworthy said, still trying to get his spectacles clear. “Have you had any business?”
“Are you joking? The church is crammed.”
Dunworthy peered into the nave. The pews were already full, and folding chairs were being set up at the back.
“Oh, good, you’re here,” the vicar said, bustling over with an armful of hymnals. “Sorry about the heat. It’s the furnace. The National Trust won’t let us put in a new fused-air, but it’s nearly impossible to get parts for a fossil-fuel. At the moment it’s the thermostat that’s gone wrong. The heat’s either on or off.” He fished two slips of paper out of his cassock pocket and looked at them. “You haven’t seen Mr. Latimer yet, have you? He’s supposed to read the benediction.”
“No,” Dunworthy said. “I reminded him of the time.”
“Yes, well, last year he muddled things and arrived an hour early.” He handed Dunworthy one of the slips of paper. “Here’s your Scripture. It’s from the King James this year. The Church of the Millennium insisted on it, but at least it’s not the People’s Common like last year. The King James may be archaic, but at least it’s not criminal.”
The outside door opened and a knot of people, all taking down umbrellas and shaking out hats, came in, were order-of-serviced by Colin, and went into the nave.
“I knew we should have used Christ Church,” the vicar said.
“What are they all doing here?” Dunworthy said. “Don’t they realize we’re in the midst of an epidemic?”
“It’s always this way,” the vicar said. “I remember the beginning of the Pandemic. Largest collections ever taken. Later on you won’t be able to get them out of their houses, but just now they want to huddle together for comfort.”
“And it’s exciting,” the priest from Holy Re-Formed said. He was wearing a black turtleneck, bags, and a red and green plaid alb. “One sees the same sort of thing during wartime. They come for the drama of the thing.”
“And spread the infection twice as fast, I should think,” Dunworthy said. “Hasn’t anyone told them the virus is contagious?”