I don't know exactly when I came through, but if it was noon as scheduled, there's been about four hours' slippage. It's the right time of year. The leaves are mostly off the trees, but the ones on the ground are still more or less intact, and only about a third of the fields have been plowed under. I won't be able to tell my exact temporal location until I reach the village and can ask someone what day it is. You probably know more about where and when I am than I do, or at least you will after you've done the fix.
But I know I'm in the right century. I can see fields from the little hill I'm on. They're classic mediaeval strip fields, with the rounded ends where the oxen turn. The pastures are bounded with hedges, and about a third of them are Saxon dead hedges, while the rest are Norman hawthorn. Probability put the ratio in 1300 at twenty-five to seventy-five per cent, but that was based on Suffolk, which is farther east.
To the south and west is forest -- Wychwood? -- all deciduous as far as I can tell. To the east I can see the Thames. I can almost see London, even though I know that's impossible. In 1320 it would have been over fifty miles away, wouldn't it, instead of only twenty. I still think I can see it. I can definitely see the city walls of Oxford, and Carfax tower.
It's beautiful here. It doesn't feel as though I were seven hundred years away from you. Oxford is right there, within walking distance, and I cannot get the idea out of my head that if I walked down this hill and into town I would find all of you, still standing there in the lab at Brasenose waiting for the fix, Badri frowning at the displays and Ms. Montoya fretting to get back to her dig, and you, Mr. Dunworthy, clucking like an old mother hen. I don't feel separated from you at all, or even very far away.
CHAPTER FOUR
Badri's hand came away from his forehead as he fell, and his elbow hit the console and broke his fall for a second, and Dunworthy glanced anxiously at the screen, afraid he might have hit one of the keys and scrambled the display. Badri crumpled to the floor.
Latimer and Gilchrist didn't try to grab him either. Latimer didn't even seem to realize anything had gone wrong. Mary grabbed for Badri immediately, but she was standing behind the others and only caught a fold of his sleeve. She was instantly on her knees beside him, straightening him out onto his back and jamming an earphone into her ear.
She rummaged in her shopping bag, came up with a bleeper, and held the call button down for a full five seconds. "Badri?" she said loudly, and it was only then that Dunworthy realized how deathly silent it was in the room. Gilchrist was standing where he had been when Badri fell. He looked furious. I assure you we've considered every possible contingency. He obviously hadn't considered this one.
Mary let go of the bleeper button and shook Badri's shoulders gently. There was no response. She tilted his head far back and bent over his face, her ear practically in his open mouth and her head turned so she could see his chest. He hadn't stopped breathing. Dunworthy could see his chest rising and falling, and Mary obviously could, too. She raised her head immediately, already pressing on the bleeper, and pressed two fingers against the side of his neck, held them there for what seemed an endless time, and then raised the bleeper to her mouth.
"We're at Brasenose. In the history laboratory," she said into the bleeper. "Five-two. Collapse. Syncope. No evidence of seizure." She took her hand off the call button and pulled Badri's eyelids up.
"Syncope?" Gilchrist said. "What's that? What's happened?"
She glanced irritably at him. "He's fainted," she said. "Get me my kit," she said to Dunworthy. "In the shopping bag."
She had knocked the bag over getting the bleeper out. It lay on its side. Dunworthy fumbled through the boxes and parcels, found a hard plastic box that looked the right size, and snapped it open. It was full of red and green foil Christmas crackers. He jammed it back in the bag.
"Come along," Mary said, unbuttoning Badri's lab shirt. "I haven't got all day."
"I can't find -- " Dunworthy began.
She snatched the bag away and upended it. The crackers rolled everywhere. The box with the muffler came open, and the muffler fell out. Mary grabbed up her handbag, zipped it open, and pulled out a large flat wallet. She opened it and took out a tach bracelet. She fastened the bracelet around his wrist and turned to look at the blood pressure reads on the kit's monitor.
The wave form didn't tell Dunworthy anything and he couldn't tell from Mary's reaction what she thought it meant. Badri hadn't stopped breathing, his heart hadn't stopped beating, and he wasn't bleeding anywhere that Dunworthy could see. Perhaps he had only fainted. But people didn't simply fall over, except in books or the vids. He must be injured or ill. He had seemed to be almost in shock when he came into the pub. Could he have been struck by a bicycle like the one that had just missed hitting Dunworthy, and not realized at first that he was injured? That would account for his disconnected manner, his peculiar agitation.
But not for the fact that he had come away without his coat, that he had said, "I need you to come," that he had said, "There's something wrong."
Dunworthy turned and looked at the console screen. It still showed the matrices it had when the tech collapsed. He couldn't read them, but it looked like a normal fix, and Badri had said Kivrin had gone through all right. There's something wrong.
With her hands flat, Mary was patting Badri's arms, the sides of his chest, down his legs. Badri's eyelids fluttered, and then his eyes closed again.
"Do you know if Badri had any health problems?"
"He's Mr. Dunworthy's tech," Gilchrist said accusingly. "From Balliol. He was on loan to us," he added, making it sound like Dunworthy was somehow responsible for this, had arranged the tech's collapse to sabotage the project.
"I don't know of any health problems," Dunworthy said. "He'd have had a full screen and seasonals at the start of term."
Mary looked dissatisfied. She put on her stethoscope and listened to his heart for a long minute, rechecked the blood pressure reads, took his pulse again. "And you don't know anything of a history of epilepsy? Diabetes?"
"No," Dunworthy said.
"Has he ever used drugs or illegal endorphins?" She didn't wait for him to answer. She pressed the button on her bleeper again. "Ahrens here. Pulse one ten. BP one hundred over sixty. I'm doing a blood screen." She tore open a gauze wipe, swabbed at the arm without the bracelet, tore open another packet.
Drugs or illegal endorphins. That would account for his agitated manner, his disconnected speech. But if he used, it would have shown up on the beginning-of-term screen, and he couldn't possibly have worked the elaborate calculations of the net if he was using. There's something wrong.
Mary swabbed at the arm again and slid a cannula under the skin. Badri's eyelids fluttered open.
"Badri," Mary said. "Can you hear me?" She reached in her coat pocket and produced a bright red capsule. "I need to give you your temp," she said and held it to his lips, but he didn't give any indication he'd heard.
She put the capsule back in her pocket and began rummaging in the kit. "Tell me when the reads come up on that cannula," she said to Dunworthy, taking everything out of the wallet and then putting it back in. She laid the kit down and started through her handbag. "I thought I had a skin-temp thermometer with me," she said.
"The reads are up," Dunworthy said.
Mary picked her bleeper up and began reading the numbers into it.
Badri opened his eyes. "You have to ... " he said, and closed them again. "So cold," he murmured.
Dunworthy took off his overcoat, but it was too wet to lay over him. He looked helplessly around the room for something to cover him with. If this had happened before Kivrin left they could have used that blanket of a cloak she'd been wearing. Badri's jacket was wadded underneath the console. He laid it sideways over him.
"Freezing," Badri murmured, and began to shiver.
Mary, still reciting reads into the bleeper, looked sharply across at him. "What did he say?"
Badri murmured something else and then said cle
arly, "Headache."
"Headache," Mary said. "Do you feel nauseated?"
He moved his head a little to indicate no. "When was -- " he said and clutched at her arm.
She put her hand over his, frowned, and pressed her other hand to his forehead.
"He's got a fever," she said.
"There's something wrong," Badri said, and closed his eyes. His hand let go of her arm and dropped back to the floor.
Mary picked his limp arm up, looked at the reads, and felt his forehead again. "Where is that damned skin-temp?" she said, and began rummaging through the wallet again.
The bleeper chimed. "They're here," she said. "Somebody go show them the way in." She patted Badri's chest. "Just lie still."
They were already at the door when Dunworthy opened it. Two medics from Infirmary pushed through carrying kits the size of steamer trunks.
"Immediate transport," Mary said before they could get the trunks open. She got up off her knees. "Fetch the stretcher," she said to the female medic. "And get me a skin-temp and a sucrose drip."
"I assumed Twentieth Century's personnel had been screened for dorphs and drugs," Gilchrist said.
One of the medics knocked past him with a pump feed.
"Mediaeval would never allow -- " He stepped out of the way as the other one came in with the stretcher.
"Is this a drugover?" the male medic said, glancing at Gilchrist.
"No," Mary said. "Did you bring the skin-temp?"
"We don't have one," he said, plugging the feed into the shunt. "Just a thermistor and temps. We'll have to wait till we get him in." He held the plastic bag over his head for a minute till the grav feed kicked the motor on and then taped the bag to Badri's chest.
The female medic took the jacket of Badri and covered him with a gray blanket. "Cold," Badri said. "You have to -- "
"What do I have to do?" Dunworthy said.
"The fix -- "
"One, two," the medics said in unison, and rolled him onto the stretcher.
"James, Mr. Gilchrist, I'll need you to come to hospital with me to fill out his admission forms," Mary said. "And I'll need his medical history. One of you can come in the ambulance, and the other follow."
Dunworthy didn't wait to argue with Gilchrist over which of them should ride in the ambulance. He clambered in and up next to Badri, who was breathing hard, as if being carried on the stretcher had been too much exertion.
"Badri," he said urgently, "you said something was wrong. Did you mean something went wrong with the fix?"
"I got the fix," Badri said, frowning.
The male medic, attaching Badri to a daunting array of displays, looked irritated.
"Did the apprentice get the coordinates wrong? It's important, Badri. Did he make an error in the remote coordinates?"
Mary climbed into the ambulance.
"As Acting Head, I feel I should be the one to accompany the patient in the ambulance," Dunworthy heard Gilchrist say.
"Meet us in Casualties at Infirmary," Mary said and pulled the doors to. "Have you gotten a temp yet?" she asked the medic.
"Yes," he said. "39.5 C. BP 90 over 55, pulse 115."
"Was there an error in the coordinates?" Dunworthy said to Badri.
"Are you set back there?" the driver said over the intercom.
"Yes," Mary said. "Code one."
"Did Puhalski make an error in the locational coordinates for the remote?"
"No," Badri said. He grabbed at the lapel of Dunworthy's coat.
"Is it the slippage then?"
"I must have -- " Badri said. "So worried."
The sirens blared, drowning out the rest of what he said. "You must have what?" Dunworthy shouted over their up and down klaxon.
"Something wrong," Badri said, and fainted again.
Something wrong. It had to be the slippage. Except for the coordinates, it was the only thing that could go wrong with a drop that wouldn't abort it, and he had said the locational coordinates were right. How much slippage, though? Badri had told him it might be as much as two weeks, and he wouldn't have run all the way to the pub in the pouring rain without his coat unless it were much more than that. How much more? A month? Three months? But he'd told Gilchrist the preliminaries showed minimal slippage.
Mary elbowed past him and put her hand on Badri's forehead again. "Add sodium thiosalicylate to the drip," she said. "And start a WBC screen. James, get out of the way."
Dunworthy edged past Mary and sat down on the bench, near the back of the ambulance.
Mary picked up her bleeper again. "Stand by for a full CBC and serotyping."
"Pyelonephritis?" the medic said, watching the reads change. BP 96 over 60, pulse 120, temp 39.5.
"I don't think so," Mary said. "There's no apparent abdominal pain, but it's obviously an infection of some sort, with that temp."
The sirens dived suddenly down in frequency and stopped. The medic began pulling wires out of the wall hookups.
"We're here, Badri," Mary said, patting his chest again. "We'll soon have you right as rain."
He gave no indication he had heard. Mary pulled the blanket up to his neck and arranged the dangling wires on top of it. The driver yanked the door open, and they slid the stretcher out. "I want a full blood workup," Mary said, holding onto the door as she climbed down. "CF, HI and antigenic ID." Dunworthy clambered down after her and followed her into the casualties department.
"I need a med hist," she was already telling the registrar. "On Badri -- what's his last name, James?"
"Chaudhuri," he said.
"National Health Service number?"
"I don't know," he said. "He works at Balliol."
"Would you be so good as to spell the name for me, please?"
"C-H-A-" he said. Mary was disappearing into the Accident Ward. He started after her.
"I'm sorry, sir," the registrar said, darting up from her console to block his way. "If you'll just be seated -- "
"I must talk to the patient you just admitted," he said.
"Are you a relative?"
"No," he said. "I'm his employer. It's very important."
"He's in an examining cubicle just now," she said. "I'll ask for permission for you to see him as soon as the examination is completed." She sat gingerly back down at the console, as if ready to leap up again at the slightest movement on his part.
Dunworthy thought of simply barging in on the examination, but he didn't want to risk being barred from hospital altogether, and at any rate, Badri was in no condition to talk. He had been clearly unconscious when they took him out of the ambulance. Unconscious and with a fever of 39.5. Something wrong.
The registrar was looking suspiciously up at him. "Would you mind terribly giving me that spelling again?"
He spelled Chaudhuri for her and then asked where he could find a telephone.
"Just down the corridor," she said. "Age?"
"I don't know," he said. "Twenty-five? He's been at Balliol for four years."
He answered the rest of her questions as best he could and then looked out the door to see if Gilchrist had come and went down the corridor to the telephones and rang up Brasenose. He got the porter, who was decorating an artificial Christmas tree that stood on the lodge counter.
"I need to speak to Puhalski," Dunworthy said, hoping that was the name of the first-year tech.
"He's not here," the porter said, draping a silver garland over the branches with his free hand.
"Well, as soon as he returns, please tell him I need to speak with him. It's very important. I need him to read a fix for me. I'm at -- " Dunworthy waited pointedly for the porter to finish arranging the garland and write the number of the call box down, which he finally did, scribbling it on the lid of a box of ornaments. "If he can't reach me at this number, have him ring the casualties department at Infirmary. How soon will he return, do you think?"
"That's difficult to say," the porter said, unwrapping an angel. "Some of them come back a few days early, but mo
st of them don't show up until the first day of term."
"What do you mean? Isn't he staying in college?"
"He was. He was going to run the net for Mediaeval, but when he found he wasn't needed, he went for home."
"I need his home address then and his telephone number."
"It's somewhere in Wales, I believe, but you'd have to talk to the college secretary for that, and she's not here just now either."
"When will she be back?"
"I can't say, sir. She went to London to do a bit of Christmas shopping."
Dunworthy gave another message while the porter straightened the angel's wings, and then rang off and tried to think if there were any other techs in Oxford for Christmas. Clearly not, or Gilchrist wouldn't have used a first-year student in the first place.
He put a call through to Magdalen anyway, but got no answer. He hung up, thought a minute, and then rang up Balliol. There was no answer there either. Finch must still be out showing the American bellringers the bells at Great Tom. He looked at his digital. It was only half-past two. It seemed much later. They might only be at lunch.
He rang up the phone in Balliol's hall, but still got no answer. He went back into the waiting area, expecting Gilchrist to be there. He wasn't but the two medics were, talking to a staff nurse. Gilchrist had probably gone back to Brasenose to plot his next drop or the one after that. Perhaps he'd send Kivrin straight into the Black Death the third time round for direct observation.
"There you are," the staff nurse said. "I was afraid you'd left. If you'll just come with me."
Dunworthy had assumed she was speaking to him, but the medics followed her out the door, too, and down a corridor.
"Here we are, then," she said, holding a door open for them. The medics filed through. "There's tea on the trolley, and a WC just through there."
"When will I be able to see Badri Chaudhuri?" Dunworthy asked, holding the door so she couldn't shut it.
"Dr. Ahrens will be with you directly," she said and shut the door in spite of him.
The female medic had already slouched down in a chair, her hands in her pockets. The man was over by the tea trolley, plugging in the electric kettle. Neither of them had asked the registrar any questions on the way down the corridor, so perhaps this was routine, though Dunworthy couldn't imagine why they would want to see Badri. Or why they had all been brought here.
Willis, Connie - Doomsday Book (v2.1) Page 6