“I need you to come up to Oxford,” Dunworthy cut in. “I need you to read a fix.”
“Of course, sir,” Andrews said promptly. “When?”
“As soon as possible. This evening?”
“Oh,” he said, less promptly. “Would tomorrow do? My livein won’t get in till late tonight, so we’d planned on having our Christmas tomorrow, but I could get a train up in the afternoon or evening. Will that do, or is there a limit on taking the fix?”
“The fix is already taken, but the tech’s come down with a virus, and I need someone to read it,” Dunworthy said. There was a sudden burst of laughter from Andrews’s end. Dunworthy raised his voice. “What time do you think you can be here?”
“I’m not certain. Can I ring you back tomorrow and tell you when I’ll be coming in on the tube?”
“Yes, but you can only take the tube as far as Barton. You’ll need to take a taxi from there to the perimeter. I’ll arrange for you to be let through. All right, Andrews?”
He didn’t answer, though Dunworthy could still hear the music. “Andrews?” Dunworthy said. “Are you still there?” It was maddening not to be able to see.
“Yes, sir,” Andrews said, but warily. “What was it you said you wanted me to do?”
“Read a fix. It’s already been taken, but the tech—”
“No, the other bit. About taking the train to Barton.”
“Take the train to Barton,” Dunworthy said loudly and carefully. “That’s as far as it goes. From there, you’ll have to get a taxi to the quarantine perimeter.”
“Quarantine?”
“Yes,” Dunworthy said, irritated. “I’ll arrange for you to be allowed into the quarantine area.”
“What sort of quarantine?”
“A virus,” he said. “You haven’t heard about it?”
“No, sir. I was running an on-site in Florence. I only arrived back this afternoon. Is it serious?” He did not sound frightened, only interested.
“Eighty-one cases so far,” Dunworthy said.
“Eighty-two,” Colin said from the window seat.
“But they’ve identified it, and the vaccine’s on the way. There haven’t been any fatalities.”
“But a lot of unhappy people who wanted to be home for Christmas, I’ll wager,” he said. “I’ll call you in the morning, then, as soon as I know what time I’ll arrive.”
“Yes,” Dunworthy shouted to make sure Andrews could hear over the background noise. “I’ll be here.”
“Right,” Andrews said. There was another burst of laughter and then silence as he rang off.
“Is he coming?” Colin asked.
“Yes. Tomorrow.” He punched in Gilchrist’s number.
Gilchrist appeared, sitting at his desk and looking belligerent. “Mr. Dunworthy, if this is about pulling Ms. Engle out—”
I would if I could, Dunworthy thought, and wondered if Gilchrist truly didn’t realize Kivrin had already left the drop site and wouldn’t be there if they did open the net.
“No,” he said. “I’ve located a tech who can come read the fix.”
“Mr. Dunworthy, may I remind you—”
“I am fully aware that you are in charge of this drop,” Dunworthy said, trying to keep his temper. “I was merely trying to help. Knowing the difficulty of finding techs over vac, I telephoned one in Reading. He can be here tomorrow.”
Gilchrist pursed his lips disapprovingly. “None of this would be necessary if your tech hadn’t fallen ill, but as he has, I suppose this will have to do. Have him report to me as soon as he arrives.”
Dunworthy managed to say good-bye civilly, but as soon as the screen went blank he slammed the receiver down, yanked it up again, and began stabbing numbers. He would find Basingame if it took all afternoon.
But the computer came on and informed him all lines were engaged again. He laid the receiver down and stared at the blank screen.
“Are you waiting for another call?” Colin asked.
“No.”
“Then can we walk over to Infirmary? I’ve a present for great-aunt Mary.”
And I can see about getting Andrews into the quarantine area, he thought. “Excellent idea. You can wear your new muffler.”
Colin stuffed it in his jacket pocket. “I’ll put it on when we get there,” he said, grinning. “I don’t want anyone to see me on the way.”
There was no one to see them. The streets were completely deserted, not even any bicycles or taxis. Dunworthy thought of the vicar’s remark that when the epidemic took hold people would hole up in their houses. Either that, or they had been driven inside by the sound of the Carfax carillon, which was not only still banging away at “The Carol of the Bells” but seemed louder, echoing through the empty streets. Or they were napping after too much Christmas dinner. Or they knew enough to keep in out of the rain.
They saw no one at all until they got to Infirmary. A woman in a Burberry stood in front of the Casualties Ward holding a picket sign that said “Ban Foreign Diseases.” A man wearing a regulation face mask opened the door for them and handed Dunworthy a very damp flyer.
Dunworthy asked at the admissions desk for Mary and then read the flyer. In boldface type it said “FIGHT INFLUENZA, VOTE TO SECEDE FROM THE EC.” Underneath was a paragraph: “Why will you be separated from your loved ones this Christmas? Why are you forced to stay in Oxford? Why are you in danger of getting ill and dying? Because the EC allows infected foreigners to enter England, and England doesn’t have a thing to say about it. An Indian immigrant carrying a deadly virus—”
Dunworthy didn’t read the rest. He turned it over. It read, “A Vote for Secession is a Vote for Health. Committee for an Independent Great Britain.”
Mary came in, and Colin grabbed his muffler out of his pocket and wrapped it hastily around his neck. “Happy Christmas,” he said. “Thank you for the muffler. Shall I open your cracker for you?”
“Yes, please,” Mary said. She looked tired. She was wearing the same lab coat she had had on two days ago. Someone had pinned a cluster of holly to the lapel.
Colin snapped the cracker.
“Put your hat on,” he said, unfolding a blue paper crown.
“Have you managed to get any rest at all?” Dunworthy asked.
“A bit,” she said, putting the crown on over her untidy gray hair. “We’ve had thirty new cases since noon, and I’ve spent most of the day trying to get the sequencing from the WIC, but the lines are jammed.”
“I know,” Dunworthy said. “Can I see Badri?”
“Only for a minute or two.” She frowned. “He’s not responding at all to the synthamycin, and neither are the two students from the dance in Headington. Beverly Breen is a bit improved.” She frowned. “It worries me. Have you had your enhancement?”
“Not yet. Colin’s had his.”
“And it hurt like blood,” Colin said, unfolding the slip of paper inside the cracker. “Shall I read your motto for you?” She nodded.
“I need to bring a tech into the quarantine area tomorrow to read Kivrin’s fix,” Dunworthy said. “What must I do to arrange it?”
“Nothing, so far as I know. They’re trying to keep people in, not out.”
The registrar took Mary aside, and spoke softly and urgently to her.
“I must go,” she said. “I don’t want you to leave till you’ve had your enchancement. Come back down here when you’ve seen Badri. Colin, you wait here for Mr. Dunworthy.”
Dunworthy went up to Isolation. There was no one at the desk, so he wrestled his way into a set of SPG’s, remembering to put the gloves on last, and went inside.
The pretty nurse who had been so interested in William was taking Badri’s pulse, her eyes on the screens. Dunworthy stopped at the foot of the bed.
Mary had said Badri wasn’t responding, but Dunworthy was still shocked by the sight of him. His face was dark with fever again, and his eyes looked bruised, as if someone had hit him. His right arm was hooked to an elabor
ate shunt. It was bruised a purple-blue on the inside of the elbow. The other arm was worse, black all along the forearm.
“Badri?” he said, and the nurse shook her head.
“You can only stay a moment,” she said.
Dunworthy nodded.
She laid Badri’s unresisting hand down at his side, typed something on the console, and went out.
Dunworthy sat down beside the bed and looked up at the screens. They looked the same, still indecipherable, the graphs and jags and generating numbers telling him nothing. He looked at Badri, who lay there looking battered, beaten. He patted his hand gently and stood up to go.
“It was the rats,” Badri murmured.
“Badri?” Dunworthy said gently. “It’s Mr. Dunworthy.”
“Mr. Dunworthy …” Badri said, but he didn’t open his eyes. “I’m dying, aren’t I?”
He felt a twinge of fear. “No, of course not,” he said heartily. “Where did you get that idea?”
“It’s always fatal,” Badri said. “What is?”
Badri didn’t answer. Dunworthy sat with him until the nurse came in, but he didn’t say anything else.
“Mr. Dunworthy?” she said. “He needs to rest.”
“I know.” He walked to the door and then looked back at Badri, lying in the bed. He opened the door.
“It killed them all,” Badri said. “Half of Europe.”
Colin was standing at the registrar’s desk when he came back down, telling her about his Christmas gifts. “My mother’s gifts didn’t arrive because of the quarantine. The postman wouldn’t let them through.”
Dunworthy told the registrar about the T-cell enhancement and she nodded and said, “It will just be a moment.”
They sat down to wait. It killed them all, Dunworthy thought. Half of Europe.
“I didn’t get to read her her motto,” Colin said. “Would you like to hear it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Where was Father Christmas when the lights went out?” He waited expectantly.
Dunworthy shook his head.
“In the dark.”
He took his gobstopper out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and stuck it in his mouth. “You’re worried about your girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
He folded up the gobstopper wrapper into a tiny packet. “What I don’t understand is, why can’t you go get her?”
“She isn’t there. We must wait for the rendezvous.”
“No, I mean why can’t you go back to the same time you sent her through and get her while she was still there? Before anything happened? I mean you can go to any time you want, can’t you?”
“No,” he said. “You can send an historian to any time, but once she’s there, the net can only operate in real time. Did you study the paradoxes at school?”
“Yes,” Colin said, but he sounded uncertain. “They’re like time-travel rules?”
“The space-time continuum doesn’t allow paradoxes,” Dunworthy said. “It would be a paradox if Kivrin made something happen that hadn’t happened, or if she caused an anachronism.”
Colin was still looking uncertain.
“One of the paradoxes is that no one can be in two places at the same time. She’s already been in the past for four days. There’s nothing we can do to change that. It’s already happened.”
“Then how does she get back?”
“When she went through, the tech took what’s called a fix. It tells the tech exactly where she is, and it acts as a … um …”he groped for an understandable word. “A tether. It ties the two times together so the net can be reopened at a certain time, and she can be picked up.”
“Like, ‘I’ll meet you at the church at half past six’?”
“Exactly. It’s called a rendezvous. Kivrin’s is in two weeks. The twenty-eighth of December. On that day the tech will open the net, and Kivrin will come back through.”
“I thought you said it was the same time there. How can the twenty-eighth be two weeks from now?”
“They used a different calendar in the Middle Ages. It’s December the seventeenth there. Our rendezvous date is the sixth of January.” If she’s there. If I can find a tech to open the net.
Colin pulled out his gobstopper and looked at it thoughtfully. It was a mottled bluish-white and looked rather like a map of the moon. He stuck it back in his mouth.
“So, if I went to 1320 on the twenty-sixth of December, I could have Christmas twice.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Apocalyptic,” he said. He unfolded the gobstopper wrapper and folded it into an even tinier packet. “I think they’ve forgotten about you, don’t you?”
“It’s beginning to look that way,” Dunworthy said. The next time a house officer came through, Dunworthy stopped him and told him he was waiting for T-cell enhancement.
“Oh?” he said, looking surprised. “I’ll try to find out about it.” He disappeared into Casualties.
They waited some more. “It was the rats,” Badri had said. And that first night he had asked Dunworthy, “What year is it?” But he had said there was minimal slippage. He had said the apprentice’s calculations were correct.
Colin took his gobstopper out and examined it several times for change in color. “If something terrible happened, couldn’t you break the rules?” he said, squinting at it. “If she got her arm cut off or she died or a bomb blew her up or something?”
“They’re not rules, Colin. They’re scientific laws. We couldn’t break them if we tried. If we attempted to reverse events that had already happened, the net wouldn’t open.”
Colin spit his gobstopper into the wrapper and folded the wrinkled paper carefully around it. “I’m sure your girl’s all right,” he said.
He jammed the wrapped gobstopper in his jacket pocket and pulled out a lumpy parcel. “I forgot to give great-aunt Mary her Christmas present,” he said.
He jumped up and started into Casualties before Dunworthy could caution him to wait, got opposite the door, and came tearing back.
“Blood! The Gallstone’s here!” he said. “She’s coming this way.”
Dunworthy stood up. “That’s all that’s needed.”
“This way,” Colin said. “I came in the back door the night I got here.” He sprinted off in the other direction. “Come on!”
Dunworthy could not manage a sprint, but he walked quickly down the labyrinth of corridors Colin indicated and out a service entrance into a side street. A man in a sandwich board was standing outside the door in the rain. The sandwich board said, “The doom we feared is upon us,” which seemed oddly fitting.
“I’ll make certain she didn’t see us,” Colin said, and dashed around to the front.
The man handed Dunworthy a flyer, “THE END OF TIME IS NEAR!” it said in fiery capital letters. “ ‘Fear God, for the hour of His judgment is come.’ Revelations 14:7.”
Colin waved to Dunworthy from the corner. “It’s all right,” Colin said, slightly out of breath. “She’s inside shouting at the registrar.”
Dunworthy handed the flyer back to the man and followed Colin. He led the way along the side street to Woodstock Road. Dunworthy looked anxiously toward the door of Casualties, but he couldn’t see anyone, not even the anti-EC picketers.
Colin sprinted another block, and then slowed to a walk. He pulled the packet of soap tablets out of his pocket and offered Dunworthy one.
He declined.
Colin popped a pink one in his mouth and said, none too clearly, “This is the best Christmas I’ve ever had.”
Dunworthy pondered that sentiment for several blocks. The carillon was massacring “In the Bleak Midwinter,” which also seemed fitting, and the streets were still deserted, but as they turned down the Broad, a familiar figure hurried toward them, hunched against the rain.
“It’s Mr. Finch,” Colin said.
“Good Lord,” Dunworthy said. “What do you suppose we’ve run out of now?”
“I hope it’s Brussels sprouts.”
/>
Finch had looked up at the sound of their voices. “There you are, Mr. Dunworthy. Thank goodness. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“What is it?” Dunworthy said. “I told Ms. Taylor I’d see about a practice room.”
“It isn’t that, sir. It’s the detainees. Two of them are down with the virus.”
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK
(032631–034122)
21 December 1320 (Old Style). Father Roche doesn’t know where the drop is. I made him take me to the place where Gawyn met him, but even standing in the clearing didn’t jog my memory. It’s obvious Gawyn didn’t happen upon him until he was a long way from the drop, and by that time I was completely delirious.
And I realized today I’ll never be able to find the drop on my own. The woods are too big, and they’re full of clearings and oak trees and willow thickets that all look alike now that it’s snowed. I should have marked the drop with something besides the casket.
Gawyn will have to show me where the drop is, and he’s not back yet. Rosemund told me it’s only a half day’s ride to Courcy, but that he will probably spend the night there because of the rain.
It’s been raining hard since we got back, and I suppose I should be happy since it may melt the snow, but it makes it impossible for me to go out and look for the drop, and it’s freezing in the manor house. Everyone’s wearing their cloaks and huddling next to the fire.
What do the villagers do? Their huts can’t even keep the wind out, and the one I was in had no sign of a blanket. They must be literally freezing, and Rosemund said the steward said it was going to rain till Christmas Eve.
Rosemund apologized for her ill-tempered behavior in the woods and told me, “I was wroth with my sister.”
Agnes had nothing to do with it—what upset her was obviously the news that her fiancé had been invited for Christmas, and when I had a chance with Rosemund alone, I asked her if she was worried over her marriage.
“My father has arranged it,” she said, threading her needle. “We were betrothed at Martinmas. We are to be wed at Easter.”