Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

"Mr. Basingame," he said, peering at the already-blotted signature. "I'll find the keys," he said.

He went back in the lodge, taking the paper with him. Dunworthy huddled against the gate, trying to keep out of the freezing rain and shivering.

He had been worried about Kivrin sleeping on the cold ground, and she was in the middle of a holocaust, where people froze to death because no one was left on their feet to chop wood and the animals died in the fields because no one was left alive to bring them in. Eighty thousand dead in Siena, three hundred thousand in Rome, more than a hundred thousand in Florence. One half of Europe.

The porter finally emerged with a large ring of keys and came over to the gate. "I'll have it open in a moment, sir," he said, sorting through the keys.

Kivrin would surely have gone back to the drop as soon as she realized it was 1348. She would have been there all this time, waiting for the net to open, frantic that they hadn't come to get her.

If she had realized. She would have no way of knowing she was in 1348. Badri had told her the slippage would be several days. She would have checked the date against the Advent holy days and thought she was exactly where she was supposed to be. It would never have occurred to her to ask the year. She would think she was in 1320, and all the time the plague would be sweeping toward her.

The gate's lock clicked free, and Dunworthy pushed it together far enough to squeeze through. "Bring your keys," he said. "I need you to unlock the laboratory."

"That key's not on here," the porter said, and disappeared into the lodge again.

It was icy in the passage, and the rain came slanting in, colder still. Dunworthy huddled next to the door of the lodge, trying to catch some of the heat from inside and jammed his hands hard against the bottoms of his jacket pockets to stop the shivering.

He had been worried about cutthroats and thieves, and all this time she had been in 1348, where they had piled the dead in the streets, where they had burned Jews and strangers at the stake in their panic.

He had been worried about Gilchrist not doing parameter checks, so worried that he had infected Badri with his anxiety, and Badri, already feverish, had refed the coordinates. So worried.

He realized suddenly that the porter had been gone too long, that he must be warning Gilchrist.

He moved toward the door, and as he did, the porter emerged, carrying an umbrella and exclaiming over the cold. He offered half the umbrella to Dunworthy.

"I'm already wet through," Dunworthy said and strode off ahead of him through the quad.

The door of the laboratory had a yellow plastic banner stretched across it. Dunworthy tore it off while the porter searched through his pockets for the key to the alarm, switching the umbrella from hand to hand.

Dunworthy glanced up behind him at Gilchrist's rooms. They overlooked the laboratory, and there was a light on in the sitting room, but Dunworthy couldn't detect any movement.

The porter found the flat cardkey that switched off the alarm. He switched it off and began looking for the key to the door. "I'm still not certain I should unlock the laboratory without Mr. Gilchrist's authorization," he said.

"Mr. Dunworthy!" Colin shouted from halfway across the quad. They both looked up. Colin came racing up, drenched to the skin with the book under his arm, wrapped in the muffler. "It — didn't — hit-parts of Oxfordshire-till-March," he said, stopping between words to catch his breath. "Sorry. I — ran-all the way."

"What parts?" Dunworthy asked.

Colin handed the book to him and bent over, his hands on his knees, taking deep noisy breaths. "It — doesn't-say."

Dunworthy unwound the muffler and opened the book to the page Colin had turned down, but his spectacles were too spattered with rain to read it, and the open pages were promptly soaked.

"It says it started in Melcombe and moved north to Bath and east. It says it was in Oxford at Christmas and London the next October, but that parts of Oxfordshire didn't get it till late spring, and that a few individual villages were missed until July."

Dunworthy stared blindly at the unreadable pages. "That doesn't tell us anything," he said.

"I know," Colin said. He straightened up, still breathing hard, "but at least it doesn't say the plague was all through Oxfordshire by Christmas. Perhaps she's in one of those villages it didn't come to till March."

Dunworthy wiped the wet pages with the dangling muffler and shut the book. "It moved east from Bath," he said softly. "Skendgate's just south of the Oxford-Bath road."

The porter had finally decided on a key. He pushed it into the lock.

"I rang up Andrews again, but there was still no answer."

The porter opened the door.

"How are you going to run the net without a tech?" Colin said.

"Run the net?" the porter said, the key still in his hand. "I understood that you wished to obtain data from the computer. Mr. Gilchrist won't allow you to run the net without authorization." He took out Basingame's authorization and looked at it.

"I'm authorizing it," Dunworthy said and swept past him into the lab.

The porter started in, caught his open umbrella on the doorframe, and fumbled on the handle for the catch.

Colin ducked under the umbrella and in after Dunworthy.

Gilchrist must have turned the heat off. The laboratory was scarcely warmer than the outside, but Dunworthy's spectacles, wet as they were, steamed up. He took them off and tried to wipe them dry on his wet suit jacket.

"Here," Colin said and handed him a wadded length of paper tissue. "It's lavatory paper. I've been collecting it for Mr. Finch. The thing is, it's going to be difficult enough to find her if we land in the proper place, and you said yourself that getting the exact time and place are awfully complicated."

"We already have the exact time and place," Dunworthy said, wiping his spectacles on the lavatory paper. He put them on again. They were still blurred.

"I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to leave," the porter said. 'I cannot allow you in here without Mr. Gilchrist's — " He stopped.

"Oh, blood," Colin muttered. "It's Mr. Gilchrist."

"What's the meaning of this?" Gilchrist said. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm going to bring Kivrin through," Dunworthy said.

"On whose authority?" Gilchrist said. "This is Brasenose's net, and you are guilty of unlawful entry." He turned on the porter. "I gave you orders that Mr. Dunworthy was not to be allowed on the premises."

"Mr. Basingame authorized it," he said. He held the damp paper out.

Gilchrist snatched it from him. "Basingame!" He stared down at it. "This isn't Basingame's signature," he said furiously. "Unlawful entry and now forgery. Mr. Dunworthy, I intend to file charges. And when Mr. Basingame returns, I intend to inform him of your — "

Dunworthy took a step toward him. "And I intend to inform Mr. Basingame how his Acting Head of Faculty refused to abort a drop, how he intentionally endangered an historian, how he refused to allow access to this laboratory and how as a result the historian's temporal location could not be determined." He waved his arm at the console. "Do you know what this fix says? This fix that you wouldn't let my tech read for ten days because of a lot of imbeciles who don't understand time travel, including you? Do you know what it says? Kivrin's not in 1320. She's in 1348, in the middle of the Black Death." He turned and gestured toward the screen. "And she's been there two weeks. Because of your stupidity. Because of — " He stopped.

"You have no right to speak to me that way," Gilchrist said. "And no right to be in this laboratory. I demand that you leave immediately."

Dunworthy didn't answer. He took a step toward the console.