Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

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."