Dooms Day Book

by Connie Willis

He opened his mouth, and she put the temp capsule on his tongue. She tipped his head forward so he could drink, her apron crackling.

  “Did you get it down?” she asked, letting him lean back a bit.

  The capsule was lodged halfway down his throat, but he nodded. The effort made his head ache.

  “Good. Then I can remove this.” She stripped something from his upper arm.

  “What time is it?” he asked, trying not to cough up the capsule.

  “Time for you to rest,” she said, peering farsightedly at the screens behind his head.

  “What day is it?” he said, but she had already hobbled out. “What day is it?” he asked Mrs. Gaddson, but she was gone, too.

  He could not have been here long. He still had a headache and a fever, which were Early Symptoms of Influenza. Perhaps he had only been ill a few hours. Perhaps it was still the same afternoon, and he had awakened when they moved him into the room, before they had had time to connect a call button or give him a temp.

  “Time for your temp,” the nurse said. It was a different one, the pretty student nurse who had asked him all the questions about William Gaddson.

  “I’ve already had one.”

  “That was yesterday,” she said. “Come now, let’s have it down.”

  The first year student in Badri’s room had told him she was down with the flu. “I thought you had the flu,” he said.

  “I did, but I’m better, and so shall you be.” She put her hand behind his head and raised him up so he could take a sip of water.

  “What day is it?” he asked.

  “The eleventh,” she said. “I had to think a bit. There at the end things got a bit hectic. Nearly all the staff were down with it, and everyone working double shifts. I quite lost track of the days.” She typed something into the console and looked up at the screens, frowning.

  He had already known it before she told him, before he tried to reach the bell to call for help. The fever had made one endless rainy afternoon out of all the delirious nights and drugged mornings he could not remember, but his body had kept clear track of the time, tolling off the hours, the days, so that he had known even before she’d told him. He had missed the rendezvous.

  There was no rendezvous, he told himself bitterly. Gilchrist shut down the net. It would not have mattered if he had been there, if he had not been ill. The net was closed and there was nothing he could have done.

  January eleventh. How long had Kivrin waited at the drop? A day? Two days? Three before she began to think she had the date wrong, or the place? Had she waited all night by the Oxford-Bath road, huddled in her useless white cloak, afraid to build a fire for fear the light would attract wolves or thieves? Or peasants fleeing from the plague. And when had it come to her finally that no one was coming to get her?

  “Is there anything I can fetch for you?” the nurse asked. She pushed a syringe into the cannula.

  “Is that something to make me sleep?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said and closed his eyes gratefully.

  He slept either a few minutes or a day or a month. The light, the rain, the lack of shadows were the same when he woke. Colin was sitting in the chair beside the bed, reading the book Dunworthy had given him for Christmas and sucking on something. It can’t have been that long, Dunworthy thought wryly, squinting at him, the gobstopper is still with us.

  “Oh, good,” Colin said, shutting the book with a clap. “That horrid sister said I could only stay if I promised not to wake you up, and I didn’t, did I? You’ll tell her you woke all on your own, won’t you?”

  He took the gobstopper out, examined it, and stuck it in his pocket. “Have you seen her? She must have been alive during the Middle Ages. She’s nearly as necrotic as Mrs. Gaddson.”

  Dunworthy squinted at him. The jacket whose pocket he had stuck the gobstopper in was a new one, green, the gray plaid muffler around his neck even deadlier against the verdure, and Colin looked older in it, as if he had grown while Dunworthy was asleep.

  Colin frowned. “It’s me, Colin. Do you know me?”

  “Yes, of course I know you. Why aren’t you wearing your mask?”

  Colin grinned. “I don’t have to. And at any rate you’re not contagious any more. Do you want your spectacles?”

  Dunworthy nodded, carefully, so the aching wouldn’t begin again.

  “When you woke up the other times, you didn’t know me at all.” He rummaged in the drawer of the bedstand and handed Dunworthy his spectacles. “You were awfully bad. I thought you were going to pack it in. You kept calling me Kivrin.”

  “What day is it?” Dunworthy asked.

  “The twelfth,” Colin said impatiently. “You asked me that this morning. Don’t you remember?”

  Dunworthy put on his spectacles. “No.”

  “Don’t you remember anything that’s happened?”

  I remember how I failed Kivrin, he thought. I remember leaving her in 1348.

  Colin scooted the chair closer and laid the book on the bed. “The sister told me you wouldn’t because of the fever,” he said, but he sounded faintly angry at Dunworthy, as if it were his fault. “She wouldn’t let me in to see you and she wouldn’t tell me anything. I think that’s completely unfair. They make you sit in a waiting room, and they keep telling you to go home, there’s nothing you can do here, and when you ask questions, they say, ‘The doctor will be with you in a moment,’ and won’t tell you anything. They treat you like a child. I mean, you have to find out sometime, don’t you? Do you know what Sister did this morning? She chucked me out. She said, ‘Mr. Dunworthy’s been very ill. I don’t want you to upset him.’ As if I would.”

  He looked indignant, but at the same time tired, worried. Dunworthy thought of him haunting the corridors and sitting in the waiting room, waiting for news. No wonder he looked older.

  “And just now Mrs. Gaddson said I was only to tell you good news because bad news would very likely make you have a relapse and die and it would be my fault.”

  “Mrs. Gaddson’s still keeping up morale, I see,” Dunworthy said. He smiled at Colin. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of her coming down with the virus?”

  Colin looked astonished. “The epidemic’s stopped,” he said. “They’re lifting the quarantine next week.”

  The analogue had arrived, then, after all Mary’s pleading. He wondered if it had come in time to help Badri, and then wondered if that was the bad news Mrs. Gaddson didn’t want told. I have already been told the bad news, he thought. The fix is lost, and Kivrin is in 1348.

  “Tell me some good news,” he said.

  “Well, nobody’s fallen ill for two days,” Colin said, “and the supplies finally came through, so we’ve something decent to eat.”

  “You’ve got some new clothes as well, I see.”

  Colin glanced down at the green jacket. “This is one of the Christmas presents from my mother. She sent them after—” He stopped and frowned. “She sent me some vids, and a set of face plasters as well.”

  Dunworthy wondered if she had waited till after the epidemic was effectively over before bothering to ship Colin’s gifts, and what Mary had had to say about it.

  “See,” Colin said, standing up. “The jacket strips up automatically. You just touch the button, like this. You won’t have to tell me to strip it up anymore.”

  The sister came rustling in. “Did he wake you up?” she demanded.

  “I told you so,” Colin muttered. “I didn’t, Sister. I was so quiet you couldn’t even hear me turn the pages.”

  “He didn’t wake me up, and he’s not bothering me,” Dunworthy said before she could ask her next question. “He’s telling me only good news.”

  “You shouldn’t be telling Mr. Dunworthy anything. He must rest,” she said and hung a bag of clear liquid on the drip. “Mr. Dunworthy is still too ill to be bothered with visitors.” She hustled Colin out of the room.

  “If you’re so worried over visitors, why
don’t you stop Mrs. Gaddson reading Scripture to him?” Colin protested. “She’d make anybody ill.” He stopped short at the door, glaring at the sister. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Is there anything you’d like?”

  “How is Badri?” Dunworthy asked and braced himself for the answer.

  “Better,” Colin said. “He was almost well, but he had a relapse. He’s a good deal better now, though. He wants to see you.”

  “No,” Dunworthy said, but the sister had already shut the door.

  “It’s not Badri’s fault,” Mary had said, and of course it wasn’t. Disorientation was one of the Early Symptoms. He thought of himself, unable to punch in Andrews’ number, of Ms. Piantini making mistake after mistake on the handbells, murmuring, “Sorry,” over and over.

  “Sorry,” he murmured. It had not been Badri’s fault. It was his. He had been so worried about the apprentice’s calculations that he had infected Badri with his fears, so worried that Badri had decided to refeed the coordinates.

  Colin had left his book lying on the bed. Dunworthy pulled it toward him. It seemed impossibly heavy, so heavy his arm shook with the effort of holding it open, but he propped that side against the rail and turned the pages, almost unreadable from the angle he was lying at, till he found what he was looking for.

  The Black Death had hit Oxford at Christmas, shutting down the universities and causing those who were able to flee to the surrounding villages, carrying the plague with them. Those who couldn’t died in the thousands, so many there were “none left to keep possession or make up a competent number to bury the dead.” And the few who were left barricaded themselves inside the colleges, hiding, and looking for someone to blame.

  He fell asleep with his spectacles on, but when the nurse removed them, he woke. It was William’s nurse, and she smiled at him.

  “Sorry,” she said, putting them in the drawer. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Dunworthy squinted at her. “Colin says the epidemic’s over.”

  “Yes,” she said, looking at the screens behind him. “They found the source of the virus and got the analogue all at the same time, and only just in time. Probability was projecting an 85 per cent morbidity rate with 32 per cent mortality even with antibiotics and T-cell enhancement, and that was without adding in the supply shortages and so many of the staff being down. As it was, we had nearly 19 per cent mortality and a good number of the cases are still critical.”

  She picked up his wrist and looked at the screen behind his head. “Your fever’s down a bit,” she said. “You’re very lucky, you know. The analogue didn’t work on anyone already infected. Dr. Ahrens—” she said, and then stopped. He wondered what Mary had said. That he would pack it in. “You’re very lucky,” she said again. “Now try to sleep.”

  He slept, and when he woke again, Mrs. Gaddson was standing over him, poised for attack with her Bible.

  “‘He will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt,’” she said as soon as he had opened his eyes. “‘Also every sickness and every plague, until thou be destroyed.’”

  “‘And ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy,’” Dunworthy murmured.

  “What?” Mrs. Gaddson demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  She had lost her place. She flipped back and forth through the pages, searching for pestilences, and began reading. “‘…Because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world.”

  God would never have sent him if He’d known what would happen, Dunworthy thought. Herod and the slaughter of the innocents and Gethsemane.

  “Read to me from Matthew,” he said. “Chapter 26, verse 39.”

  Mrs. Gaddson stopped, looking irritated, and then leafed through the pages to Matthew. “‘And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.’”

  God didn’t know where he was, Dunworthy thought. He had sent his only begotten Son into the world, and something had gone wrong with the fix, someone had turned off the net, so that He couldn’t get to him, and they had arrested him and put a crown of thorns on his head and nailed him to a cross.

  “Chapter 27,” he said. “Verse 46.”

  She pursed her lips and turned the page. “I really do not feel these are appropriate Scriptures for—”

  “Read it,” he said.

  “‘And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’”

  Kivrin would have no idea what had happened. She would think she had the wrong place or the wrong time, that she had lost count of the days somehow during the plague, that something had gone wrong with the drop. She would think they had forsaken her.

  “Well?” Mrs. Gaddson said. “Any other requests?”

  “No.”

  Mrs. Gaddson flipped back to the Old Testament. “‘For they shall fall by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence,’” she read. “‘He that is far off shall die of the pestilence.’”

  In spite of everything, he slept, waking finally to something that was not endless afternoon. It was still raining, but there were shadows in the room and the bells were chiming four o’clock. William’s nurse helped him to the lavatory. The book had gone, and he wondered if Colin had come back without his remembering, but when the nurse opened the door of the bedstand for his slippers, he saw it lying there. He asked the nurse to crank his bed to sitting, and when she had gone he put on his spectacles and took the book out again.

  The plague had spread so randomly, so viciously, the contemps had been unable to believe it was a natural disease. They had accused lepers and Jews and the mentally impaired of poisoning wells and putting curses on them. Anyone strange, anyone foreign was immediately suspected. In Sussex they had stoned two travellers to death. In Yorkshire they had burnt a young woman at the stake.

  “So that’s where it got to,” Colin said, coming into the room. “I thought I’d lost it.”

  He was wearing his green jacket and was very wet. “I had to carry the handbell cases over to Holy Re-formed for Ms. Taylor, and it’s absolutely pouring.”

  Relief washed over him at the mention of Ms. Taylor’s name, and he realized he had not asked after any of the detainees for fear it would be bad news.

  “Is Ms. Taylor all right then?”

  Colin touched the bottom of his jacket, and it sprang open, spraying water everywhere. “Yes. They’re doing some bell thing at Holy Re-Formed on the fifteenth.” He leaned around so he could see what Dunworthy was reading.

  Dunworthy shut the book and handed it to him. “And the rest of the bellringers? Ms. Piantini?”

  Colin nodded. “She’s still in hospital. She’s so thin you wouldn’t know her.” He opened the book. “You were reading about the Black Death, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Dunworthy said. “Mr. Finch didn’t come down with the virus, did he?”

  “No. He’s been filling in as tenor for Ms. Piantini. He’s very upset. We didn’t get any lavatory paper in the shipment from London, and he says we’re nearly out. He had a fight with The Gallstone over it.” He laid the book back on the bed. “What’s going to happen to your girl?”

  “I don’t know,” Dunworthy said.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do to get her out?”

  “No.”

  “The Black Death was terrible,” Colin said. “So many people died they didn’t even bury them. They just left them lying in big heaps.”

  “I can’t get to her, Colin. We lost the fix when Gilchrist shut the net down.”

  “I know, but isn’t there something we can do?”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “I intend to speak to your doctor about restricting your visitors,” the sister said sternly, removing Colin by the collar of his jacket.

  “Then begin by restricting Mrs. Gaddson,” Dunworthy said. “and tell Mary I want to see her.”

  Mary d
id not come, but Montoya did, obviously fresh from the dig. She was mud to the knees, and her curly hair was gray with it. Colin came with her, and his green jacket was thoroughly bespattered.

  “We had to sneak in when she wasn’t looking,” Colin said.

  Montoya had lost a good deal of weight. Her hands on the bed rail were very thin, and the digital on her wrist was loose.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Better,” he lied, looking at her hands. There was mud under her fingernails. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better,” she said.

  She must have gone directly to the dig to look for the corder as soon as they released her from hospital. And now she had come directly here.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” he said.

  Her hands took hold of the rail, let go of it. “Yes.”

  Kivrin had been in the right place, after all. The locationals had been shifted by only a few kilometers, a few meters, and she had managed to find the Oxford-Bath road, she had found Skendgate. And died in it, a victim of the influenza she had caught before she went. Or of starvation after the plague, or of despair. She had been dead seven hundred years.

  “You found it then,” he said, and it was not a question.

  “Found what?” Colin said.

  “Kivrin’s corder.”

  “No,” Montoya said.

  He felt no relief. “But you will,” he said.

  Her hands shook a little, holding the rail. “She asked me to,” she said. “The day of the drop. She was the one who suggested the corder look like a bone spur, so the record would survive even if she didn’t. ‘Mr. Dunworthy’s worried over nothing,’ she said, ‘but if something should go wrong, I’ll try to be buried in the churchyard so you,’” her voice faltered, “‘so you won’t have to dig up half of England.’”

  Dunworthy closed his eyes.

  “But you don’t know that she’s dead, if you haven’t found the corder,” Colin burst out. “You said you didn’t even know where she was. How can you be sure she’s dead?”

  “We’ve been conducting experiments with laboratory rats at the dig. Only a quarter of an hour’s exposure to the virus is required for infection. Kivrin was directly exposed to the tomb for over three hours. There’s a 75 per cent chance she contracted the virus, and with the limited med support available in the fourteenth century, she’s almost certain to have developed complications.”