Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

  Praise for Connie Willis’s

  HUGO AND NEBULA AWARD WINNING DOOMSDAY BOOK:

  “Splendid work—brutal, gripping, and genuinely harrowing, the product of diligent research, fine writing, and well-honed instincts, that should appeal far beyond the usual science-fiction constituency.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “The world of 1348 burns in the mind’s eye, and every character alive in that year is a fully realized being.… It becomes possible to feel … that Connie Willis did, in fact, over the five years DOOMSDAY BOOK took her to write, open a window to another world, and that she saw something there.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “A splendid job … intense and frightening.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “One of the best genre novels of the year … Cannot be too highly recommended or too widely read.”

  —Booklist

  “A leading candidate for science fiction novel of the year … Profoundly tragic, powerfully moving.”

  —Star Tribune, Minneapolis

  “The clarity and consistency of Willis’s writing, as well as her deft storytelling ability, place her among this decade’s most promising writers.… [Doomsday Book] rates special attention.”

  —Library Journal

  “An intelligent and satisfying blend of classic science fiction and historical reconstruction.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An ambitious, finely detailed, and compulsively readable novel.”

  —Locus

  Bantam Books by Connie Willis

  DOOMSDAY BOOK

  FIRE WATCH

  LINCOLN’S DREAMS

  IMPOSSIBLE THINGS

  BELLWETHER

  REMAKE

  UNCHARTED TERRITORY

  TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG

  MIRACLE AND OTHER CHRISTMAS STORIES

  PASSAGE

  BLACKOUT

  This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.

  NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

  DOOMSDAY BOOK

  A Bantam Spectra Book/July 1992

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam paperback edition / September 1993

  Bantam reissue edition/July 1994

  SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1992 by Connie Willis.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78444-5

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books ” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada, Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  DEDICATION

  To Laura and Cordelia—

  my Kivrins

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My special thanks to Head Librarian Jamie LaRue and the rest of the staff of the Greeley Public Library for their endless and invaluable assistance.

  And my undying gratitude to Sheila and Kelly and Frazier and Cee, and especially to Marta—the friends I love.

  “And lest things which should be remembered perish with time and vanish from the memory of those who are to come after us, I, seeing so many evils and the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One, being myself as if among the dead, I, waiting for death, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed.

  And, lest the writing should perish with the writer and the work fail with the laborer, I leave parchment to continue this work, if perchance any man survive and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun …”

  BROTHER JOHN CLYN

  1349

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Book One Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Book Two Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Book Three Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  About the Author

  BOOK

  ONE

  “What a ringer needs most is not strength but the ability to keep time … You must bring these two things together in your mind and let them rest there forever—bells and time, bells and time.”

  RONALD BLYTHE

  Akenfield

  1

  Mr. Dunworthy opened the door to the laboratory and his spectacles promptly steamed up.

  “Am I too late?” he said, yanking them off and squinting at Mary.

  “Shut the door,” she said. “I can’t hear you over the sound of those ghastly carols.”

  Dunworthy closed the door, but it didn’t completely shut out the sound of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” wafting in from the quad. “Am I too late?” he said again.

  Mary shook her head. “All you’ve missed is Gilchrist’s speech.” She leaned back in her chair to let Dunworthy squeeze past her into the narrow observation area. She had taken off her coat and wool hat and set them on the only other chair, along with a large shopping bag full of parcels. Her gray hair was in disarray, as if she had tried to fluff it up after taking her hat off. “A very long speech about Mediaeval’s maiden voyage in time,” she said, “and the college of Brasenose taking its rightful place as the jewel in history’s crown. Is it still raining?”

  “Yes,” he said, wiping his spectacles on his muffler. He hooked the wire rims over his ears and went up to the thin-glass partition to look at the net. In the center of the laboratory was a smashed-up wagon surrounded by overturned trunks and wooden boxes. Above them hung the protective shields of the net, draped like a gauzy parachute.

  Kivrin’s tutor Latimer, looking older and even more infirm than usual, was standing next to one of the trunks. Montoya was standing over by the console wearing jeans and a terrorist jacket and looking impatiently at the digital on her wrist. Badri was sitting in front of the console, typing something in and frowning at the display screens.

  “Where’s Kivrin?” Dunworthy said.

  “I haven’t seen her,” Mary said. “Do come and sit down. The drop isn’t scheduled till noon, and I doubt very much that they’ll get her off by then. Particularly if Gilchrist makes another speech.”

  She draped her coat over the back of her own chair and set the shopping bag full of parcels on the floor by her feet. “I do hope this doesn’t go all day. I must pick up my great-nephew Colin
at the Underground station at three. He’s coming in on the tube.”

  She rummaged in her shopping bag. “My niece Deirdre is off to Kent for the holidays and asked me to look after him. I do hope it doesn’t rain the entire time he’s here,” she said, still rummaging. “He’s twelve, a nice boy, very bright, though he has the most wretched vocabulary. Everything is either necrotic or apocalyptic. And Deirdre allows him entirely too many sweets.”

  She continued to dig through the contents of the shopping bag. “I got this for him for Christmas.” She hauled up a narrow red-and-green-striped box. “I’d hoped to get the rest of my shopping done before I came here, but it was pouring rain, and I can only tolerate that ghastly digital carillon music on the High Street for brief intervals.”

  She opened the box and folded back the tissue. “I’ve no idea what twelve-year-old boys are wearing these days, but mufflers are timeless, don’t you think, James? James?”

  He turned from where he had been staring blindly at the display screens. “What?”

  “I said, mufflers are always an appropriate Christmas gift for boys, don’t you think?”

  He looked at the muffler she was holding up for his inspection. It was of dark gray plaid wool. He would not have been caught dead in it when he was a boy, and that had been fifty years ago. “Yes,” he said, and turned back to the thin-glass.

  “What is it, James? Is something wrong?”

  Latimer picked up a small brass-bound casket, and then looked vaguely around, as if he had forgotten what he intended to do with it. Montoya glanced impatiently at her digital.

  “Where’s Gilchrist?” Dunworthy said.

  “He went through there,” Mary said, pointing at a door on the far side of the net. “He orated on Mediaeval’s place in history, talked to Kivrin for a bit, the tech ran some tests, and then Gilchrist and Kivrin went through that door. I assume he’s still in there with her, getting her ready.”

  “Getting her ready,” Dunworthy muttered.

  “James, do come and sit down, and tell me what’s wrong,” she said, jamming the muffler back in its box and stuffing it into the shopping bag, “and where you’ve been? I expected you to be here when I arrived. After all, Kivrin’s your favorite pupil.”

  “I was trying to reach the Head of the History Faculty,” Dunworthy said, looking at the display screens.

  “Basingame? I thought he was off somewhere on Christmas vac.”

  “He is, and Gilchrist maneuvered to be appointed Acting Head in his absence so he could get the Middle Ages opened to time travel. He rescinded the blanket ranking of ten and arbitrarily assigned rankings to each century. Do you know what he assigned the 1300s? A six. A six! If Basingame had been here, he’d never have allowed it. But the man’s nowhere to be found.” He looked hopefully at Mary. “You don’t know where he is, do you?”

  “No,” she said. “Somewhere in Scotland, I think.”

  “Somewhere in Scotland,” he said bitterly. “And meanwhile, Gilchrist is sending Kivrin into a century which is clearly a ten, a century which had scrofula and the plague and burned Joan of Arc at the stake.”

  He looked at Badri, who was speaking into the console’s ear now. “You said Badri ran tests. What were they? A coordinates check? A field projection?”

  “I don’t know.” She waved vaguely at the screens, with their constantly changing matrices and columns of figures. “I’m only a doctor, not a net technician. I thought I recognized the technician. He’s from Balliol, isn’t he?”

  Dunworthy nodded. “He’s the best tech Balliol has,” he said, watching Badri, who was tapping the console’s keys one at a time, his eyes on the changing readouts. “All of New College’s techs were gone for the vac. Gilchrist was planning to use a first-year apprentice who’d never run a manned drop. A first-year apprentice for a remote! I talked him into using Badri. If I can’t stop this drop, at least I can see that it’s run by a competent tech.”

  Badri frowned at the screen, pulled a meter out of his pocket, and started toward the wagon.

  “Badri!” Dunworthy called.

  Badri gave no indication he’d heard. He walked around the perimeter of the boxes and trunks, looking at the meter. He moved one of the boxes slightly to the left.

  “He can’t hear you,” Mary said.

  “Badri!” he shouted. “I need to speak to you.”

  Mary had stood up. “He can’t hear you, James,” she said. “The partition’s soundproofed.”

  Badri said something to Latimer, who was still holding the brass-bound casket. Latimer looked bewildered. Badri took the casket from him and set it down on the chalked mark.

  Dunworthy looked around for a microphone. He couldn’t see one. “How were you able to hear Gilchrist’s speech?” he asked Mary.

  “Gilchrist pressed a button on the inside there,” she said, pointing at a wall panel next to the net.

  Badri had sat down in front of the console again and was speaking into the ear. The net shields began to lower into place. Badri said something else, and they rose to where they’d been.

  “I told Badri to recheck everything, the net, the apprentice’s calculations, everything,” he said, “and to abort the drop immediately if he found any errors, no matter what Gilchrist said.”

  “But surely Gilchrist wouldn’t jeopardize Kivrin’s safety,” Mary protested. “He told me he’d taken every precaution—”

  “Every precaution! He hasn’t run recon tests or parameter checks. We did two years of unmanneds in Twentieth Century before we sent anyone through. He hasn’t done any. Badri told him he should delay the drop until he could do at least one, and instead he moved the drop up two days. The man’s a complete incompetent.”

  “But he explained why the drop had to be today,” Mary said. “In his speech. He said the contemps in the 1300s paid no attention to dates, except planting and harvesting times and church holy days. He said the concentration of holy days was greatest around Christmas, and that was why Mediaeval had decided to send Kivrin now, so she could use the Advent holy days to determine her temporal location and ensure her being at the drop site on the twenty-eighth of December.”

  “His sending her now has nothing to do with Advent or holy days,” he said, watching Badri. He was back to tapping one key at a time and frowning. “He could send her next week and use Epiphany for the rendezvous date. He could run unmanneds for six months and then send her lapse-time. Gilchrist is sending her now because Basingame’s off on holiday and isn’t here to stop him.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mary said. “I rather thought he was rushing it myself. When I told him how long I needed Kivrin in Infirmary, he tried to talk me out of it. I had to explain that her inoculations needed time to take effect.”

  “A rendezvous on the twenty-eighth of December,” Dunworthy said bitterly. “Do you realize what holy day that is? The Feast of the Slaughter of the Innocents. Which, in light of how this drop is being run, may be entirely appropriate.”

  “Why can’t you stop it?” Mary said. “You can forbid Kivrin to go, can’t you? You’re her tutor.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not. She’s a student at Brasenose. Latimer’s her tutor.” He waved his hand in the direction of Latimer, who had picked up the brass-bound casket again and was peering absentmindedly into it. “She came to Balliol and asked me to tutor her unofficially.”

  He turned and stared blindly at the thin-glass. “I told her then that she couldn’t go.”

  Kivrin had come to see him when she was a first-year student. “I want to go to the Middle Ages,” she had said. She wasn’t even a meter and a half tall, and her fair hair was in braids. She hadn’t looked old enough to cross the street by herself.

  “You can’t,” he had said, his first mistake. He should have sent her back to Mediaeval, told her she would have to take the matter up with her tutor. “The Middle Ages are closed. They have a ranking of ten.”

  “A blanket ten,” Kivrin said, “which Mr. Gilchrist says they don
’t deserve. He says that ranking would never hold up under a year-by-year analysis. It’s based on the contemps’ mortality rate, which was largely due to bad nutrition and no med support. The ranking wouldn’t be nearly as high for an historian who’d been inoculated against disease. Mr. Gilchrist plans to ask the History Faculty to reevaluate the ranking and open part of the fourteenth century.”

  “I cannot conceive of the History Faculty opening a century that had not only the Black Death and cholera, but the Hundred Years War,” Dunworthy said.

  “But they might, and if they do, I want to go.”

  “It’s impossible,” he said. “Even if it were opened, Mediaeval wouldn’t send a woman. An unaccompanied woman was unheard of in the fourteenth century. Only women of the lowest class went about alone, and they were fair game for any man or beast who happened along. Women of the nobility and even the emerging middle class were constantly attended by their fathers or their husbands or their servants, usually all three, and even if you weren’t a woman, you’re an undergraduate. The fourteenth century is far too dangerous for Mediaeval to consider sending an undergraduate. They would send an experienced historian.”

  “It’s no more dangerous than the twentieth century,” Kivrin said. “Mustard gas and automobile crashes and pinpoints. At least no one’s going to drop a bomb on me. And who’s an experienced mediaeval historian? Nobody has on-site experience, and your twentieth-century historians here at Balliol don’t know anything about the Middle Ages. Nobody knows anything. There are scarcely any records, except for parish registers and tax rolls, and nobody knows what their lives were like at all. That’s why I want to go. I want to find out about them, how they lived, what they were like. Won’t you please help me?”

  He finally said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to speak with Mediaeval about that,” but it was too late.

  “I’ve already talked to them,” she said. “They don’t know anything about the Middle Ages either. I mean, anything practical. Mr. Latimer’s teaching me Middle English, but it’s all pronomial inflections and vowel shifts. He hasn’t taught me to say anything.