“I’m afraid you’ll have to take that up with Finch,” Dunworthy said. He stood up, wrapped Colin’s marmaladed toast in a napkin, and put it in his pocket. “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 others’ 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 over-indulgence 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 tall 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 Dierdre down in Kent, and she wasn’t even concerned. ‘Oh, is there a quarantine on?’ she said. ‘I’ve been so rushed I haven’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 Colin’s gifts 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 be someone else.”
She left, and he sat down beside the bed of the woman of the purple 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 connection Mary was looking for, though he had found out that one of them had been to the same dance in Headington as Badri.
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 th
roat.
“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’ 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 parcel 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. Built in 1139 and all just as it was in the Middle Ages, including the heating system.”
“The ecumenical 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 medieval 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.”
“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 jammed.”
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?”
“I intend to,” the vicar said. “Your Scripture comes directly after the bellringers. It’s been changed. Church of the Millennium again. Luke 2:1-19.” He went off to distribute hymnals.
“Where is your pupil, Kivrin Engle?” the priest asked. “I missed her at the Latin mass this afternoon.”
“She’s in 1320, hopefully in the village of Skendgate, hopefully in out of the rain.”
“Oh, good,” the priest said. “She so wanted to go. And how lucky she’s missing all this.”
“Yes,” Dunworthy said. “I suppose I should read through the Scripture at least once.”
He went into the nave. It was even hotter in there, and it smelled strongly of damp wool and damp stone. Laser candles flickered wanly in the windows and on the altar. The bellringers were setting up two large tables in front of the altar and covering them with heavy red wool covers. Dunworthy stepped up into the lectern and opened the Bible to Luke.
“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed,” he read.
Archaic, he thought. And where Kivrin is, it hasn’t been written yet.
He went back out to Colin. People continued to stream in. The priest from Holy Re-Formed and the Muslim imam went across to Oriel for more chairs, and the vicar
fiddled with the thermostat on the furnace.
“I saved us two seats in the second row,” Colin said. “Do you know what Mrs. Gaddson did at tea? She threw my gobstopper away. She said it was covered with germs. I’m glad my mother’s not like that.” He straightened his stack of folded orders of service, which had shrunk considerably. “I think what happened is her presents couldn’t get through because of the quarantine, you know. I mean, they probably had to send provisions and things first.” He straightened the already straight pile again.
“Very likely,” Dunworthy said. “When would you like to open your other gifts? Tonight or in the morning?”
Colin tried to look nonchalant. “Christmas morning, please.” He gave an order of service and a dazzling smile to a lady in a yellow slicker.
“Well,” she snapped, snatching it out of his hand, “I’m glad to see someone’s still got the Christmas spirit, even though there’s a deadly epidemic on.”
Dunworthy went in and sat down. The vicar’s attentions to the furnace didn’t seem to have done any good. He took off his muffler and overcoat and draped them on the chair beside him.
It had been freezing last year. “Extremely authentic,” Kivrin had whispered to him, “and so was the Scripture. ‘Around then the politicos dumped a tax hike on the ratepayers,’” she’d said, quoting from the People’s Common. She’d grinned at him. “The Bible back then was in a language they didn’t understand either.”
Colin came in and sat down on Dunworthy’s coat and muffler. The priest from Holy Re-Formed stood up and wedged himself between the bellringers’ tables and the front of the altar. “Let us pray,” he said.
There was a plump of kneeling pads on the stone floor, and everyone knelt.
“‘O God, who have sent this affliction among us, say to Thy destroying angel, hold Thy hand and let not the land be made desolate, and destroy not every living soul.’”
So much for morale, Dunworthy thought.
“‘As in those days when the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel, and there died of the people from Dan to Bersabee seventy thousand men, so now we are in the midst of affliction and we beseech Thee to take away the scourge of Thy wrath from the faithful.’”
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