Connie Willis: Dooms Day Book

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 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 Dierdre 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 Dierdre 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 thirteen-year-old boys are wearing these days, but mufflers are timeless, don’t you think, James? James?”

He turned from where 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 1300’s? 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.