Connie Willis: Dooms Day Book

“Then why is your historian injured before she’s even left?”

“Oh, Mr. Dunworthy, I’m so glad you came,” Kivrin said, coming up to the glass. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to you. Isn’t this exciting?”

Exciting. “You’re bleeding,” Dunworthy said. “What’s gone wrong?”

“Nothing,” Kivrin said, touching her temple gingerly and then looking at her fingers. “It’s part of the costume.” She looked past him at Mary. “Dr. Ahrens, you came, too. I’m so glad.”

Mary had stood up, still holding her shopping bag. “I want to see your antiviral inoculation,” she said. “Have you had any other reaction besides the swelling? Any itching?”

“It’s all right, Dr. Ahrens,” Kivrin said. She held the sleeve back and then let it fall again before Mary could possibly have had a good look at the underside of her arm. There was another reddish bruise on Kivrin’s forearm, already beginning to turn black and blue.

“It would seem to be more to the point to ask her why she’s bleeding,” Dunworthy said.

“It’s part of the costume. I told you, I’m Isabel de Beauvrier, and I’m supposed to have been waylaid by robbers while travelling,” Kivrin said. She turned and gestured at the boxes and smashed wagon. “My things were stolen, and I was left for dead. I got the idea from you, Mr. Dunworthy,” she said reproachfully.

“I certainly never suggested that you start out bloody and beaten,” Dunworthy said.

“Stage blood was impractical,” Gilchrist said. “Probability couldn’t give us statistically significant odds that no one would tend her wound.”

“And it never occurred to you to dupe a realistic wound? You knocked her on the head instead?” Dunworthy said angrily.

“Mr. Dunworthy, may I remind you—”

“That this is Brasenose’s project, not Balliol’s? You’re bloody right it isn’t. If it were Twentieth Century’s, we’d be trying to protect the historian from injury, not inflicting it on her ourselves. I want to speak to Badri. I want to know if he’s rechecked the apprentice’s calculations.”

Gilchrist’s lips pursed. “Mr. Dunworthy, Mr. Chaudhuri may be your net technician, but this is my drop. I assure you we have considered every possible contingency—”

“It’s just a nick,” Kivrin said. “It doesn’t even hurt. I’m all right, really. Please don’t get upset, Mr. Dunworthy. The idea of being injured was mine. I remembered what you said about how a woman in the Middle Ages was so vulnerable, and I thought it would be a good idea if I looked more vulnerable than I was.”

It would be impossible for you to look more vulnerable than you are, Dunworthy thought.

“If I pretend to be unconscious, then I can overhear what people are saying about me, and they won’t ask a lot of questions about who I am, because it will be obvious that—”

“It’s time for you to get into position,” Gilchrist said, moving threateningly over to the wall panel.

“I’m coming,” Kivrin said, not budging.

“We’re ready to set the net.”

“I know,” she said firmly. “I’ll be along as soon as I’ve told Mr. Dunworthy and Dr. Ahrens goodbye.”

Gilchrist nodded curtly and walked back into the debris. Latimer asked him something, and he snapped an answer.

“What does getting into position entail?” Dunworthy asked. “Having him take a cosh to you because Probability’s told him there’s a statistical possibility someone won’t believe you’re truly unconscious?”

“It involves lying down and closing my eyes,” Kivrin said, grinning. “Don’t worry .

“There’s no reason you can’t wait until tomorrow and at least give Badri time to run a parameter check,” Dunworthy said.

“I want to see that inoculation again,” Mary said.

“Will you two stop fretting?” Kivrin said. “My inoculation doesn’t itch, the cut doesn’t hurt, Badri’s spent all morning running checks. I know you’re worried about me, but please don’t be. The drop’s on the main road from Oxford to Bath about two miles from Skendgate. If no one comes along, I’ll walk into the village and tell them I’ve been attacked by robbers. After I’ve determined my location so I can find the drop again.” She put her hand up to the glass. “I just want to thank you both for everything you’ve done. I’ve wanted to go to the Middle Ages more than anything, and now I’m actually going.”

“You’re likely to experience headache and fatigue after the drop,” Mary said. “They’re a normal side-effect of the time lag.”

Gilchrist came back over to the thin-glass. “It’s time for you to get into position,” he said.

“I’ve got to go,” she said, gathering up her heavy skirts. “Thank you both so much. I wouldn’t be going if it weren’t for you two helping me.”

“Goodbye,” Mary said.

“Be careful,” Dunworthy said.

“I will,” Kivrin said, but Gilchrist had already pressed the wall panel, and Dunworthy couldn’t hear her. She smiled, held up her hand in a little wave, and went over to the smashed wagon.

Mary sat back down and began rummaging through the shopping bag for a handkerchief. Gilchrist was reading off items from the carryboard. Kivrin nodded at each one, and he ticked them off with the light pen.

“What if she gets blood poisoning from that cut on her temple?” Dunworthy said, still standing at the glass.

“She won’t get blood poisoning,” Mary said. “I enhanced her immune system.” She blew her nose.

Kivrin was arguing with Gilchrist about something. The white lines along his nose were sharply defined. She shook her head, and after a minute he checked off the next item with an abrupt, angry motion.

Gilchrist and the rest of Mediaeval might be incompetent, but she wasn’t. She had learned Middle English and Church Latin and Anglo-Saxon. She had memorized the Latin masses and taught herself to embroider and milk a cow. She had come up with an identity and a rationale for being alone on the road between Oxford and Bath, and she had the interpreter and augmented stem cells and no appendix.

“She’ll do swimmingly,” Dunworthy said, “which will only serve to convince Gilchrist Mediaeval’s methods aren’t slipshod and dangerous.”

Gilchrist walked over to the console and handed the carryboard to Badri. Kivrin folded her hands again, closer to her face this time, her mouth nearly touching them, and began to speak into them.

Mary came closer and stood beside Dunworthy, clutching her handkerchief. “When I was nineteen—which was, oh, Lord, forty years ago, it doesn’t seem that long—my sister and I travelled all over Egypt,” she said. “It was during the Pandemic. Quarantines were being slapped on all about us, and the Israelis were shooting Americans on sight, but we didn’t care. I don’t think it even occurred to us that we might be in danger, that we might catch it or be mistaken for Americans. We wanted to see the Pyramids.”

Kivrin had stopped praying. Badri left his console and came over to where she was standing. He spoke to her for several minutes, the frown never leaving his face. She knelt and then lay down on her side next to the wagon, turning so she was on her back with one arm flung over her head and her skirts tangled about her legs. The tech arranged her skirts, pulled out the light measure, and paced around her, walked back to the console and spoke into the ear. Kivrin lay quite still, the blood on her forehead almost black under the light.

“Oh, dear, she looks so young,” Mary said.

Badri spoke into the ear, glared at the results on the screen, went back to Kivrin. He stepped over her, straddling her legs, and bent down to adjust her sleeve. He took a measurement, moved her arm so it was across her face as if warding off a blow from her attackers, measured again.