Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

No one came in all evening. The sister hobbled in to check his tach bracelet and give him his temp at eight o'clock, and she entered them in the console but didn't appear to notice anything. At ten a second nurse, also pretty, came in, repeated the streptomycin infection, and gave him one of gamma globulin.

She left the screen on, and Dunworthy lay down so he could see Mary's name. He didn't think he would be able to sleep, but he did. He dreamed of Egypt and the Valley of the Kings.

"Mr. Dunworthy, wake up," Colin whispered. He was shining a pocket torch in his face.

"What is it?" Dunworthy said, blinking against the light. He groped for his spectacles. "What's happened?"

"It's me, Colin," he whispered. He turned the torch on himself. He was wearing, for some unknown reason, a large white lab coat, and his face looked strained, sinister in the upturned light of the torch.

"What's wrong?" Dunworthy asked.

"Nothing," Colin whispered. "You're being discharged."

Dunworthy hooked his spectacles over his ears. He still couldn't see anything. "What time is it?" he whispered.

"Four o'clock." He thrust his slippers at him and turned the torch on the closet. "Do hurry." He took Dunworthy's robe off the hook and handed it to him. "She's likely to come back any moment."

Dunworthy fumbled with the robe and slippers, trying to wake up, wondering why they were being discharged at this odd hour and where the sister was.

Colin went to the door and peeked out. He switched the torch off, stuck it in the pocket of the too-large lab coat, and eased the door shut. After a long, breath-holding moment, he opened it a crack and looked out. "All clear," he said, motioning to Dunworthy. "William's taken her into the linen room."

"Who, the nurse?" Dunworthy asked, still groggy. "Why is she on duty?"

"Not the nurse . The sister . William's keeping her in there till we're gone."

"What about Mrs. Gaddson?"

Colin looked sheepish. "She's reading to Mr. Latimer," he said defensively. "I had to do something with her, and Mr. Latimer can't hear her." He opened the door all the way. There was a wheelchair just outside. He took hold of the handles.

"I can walk," Dunworthy said.

"There isn't time," Colin whispered. "And if anyone sees us I can tell them I'm taking you up to Scanning."

Dunworthy sat down and let Colin push him down the corridor and past the linen room and Latimer's room. He could hear Mrs. Gaddson's voice dimly through the door, reading from Exodus.

Colin continued on tiptoe to the end of the corridor and then took off at a rate that could not possibly be mistaken for taking a patient to Scanning, down another corridor, around a corner, and out the side door where they had been accosted by the "The End of Time Is Near" sandwich board.

It was pitch black in the alley and raining hard. He could only dimly make out the ambulance parked at the street end. Colin knocked on the back of it with his fist, and an ambulance attendant jumped down. It was the medic who had helped bring Badri in. And had picketed Brasenose. "Can you climb up?" she asked, blushing.

Dunworthy nodded and stood up.

"Pull the doors to," she told Colin and went round to get in the front.

"Don't tell me, she's a friend of William's," Dunworthy said, looking after her.

"Of course," Colin said. "She asked me what sort of mother- in-law I thought Mrs. Gaddson would be." He helped him up the step and into the ambulance.

"Where's Badri?" Dunworthy asked, wiping the rain off his spectacles.

Colin pulled the doors to. "At Balliol. We took him first, so he could set up the net." He looked anxiously out the back window. "I do hope Sister doesn't sound the alarm before we're gone."

"I shouldn't worry about it," Dunworthy said. He had clearly underestimated William's powers. The sister was probably on Willam's lap in the linen room, embroidering their intertwined initials on the towels.

Colin switched on the torch and shone it on the stretcher. "I brought your costume," he said, handing Dunworthy the black doublet.

Dunworthy took off his robe and put it on. The ambulance started up, nearly knocking him over. He sat down on the side bench, bracing himself against the swaying side, and pulled on the black tights.

William's medic had not switched on the siren, but she was going at such a rate she should have. Dunworthy clung to the strap with one hand and pulled on the breeches with the other, and Colin, reaching for the boots, nearly went over on his head.

"We found you a cloak," Colin said. "Mr. Finch borrowed it of the Classical Theatre Society." He shook it out. It was Victorian, black and lined in red silk. He draped it over Dunworthy's shoulders.

"What production did they put on? Dracula ?"

The ambulance lurched to a stop, and the medic yanked open the doors. Colin helped Dunworthy down, holding up the train of the voluminous cloak like a pageboy. They ducked in under the gate. The rain pattered loudly on the stone overhead and under it was a clanging sound.

"What's that?" Dunworthy asked, peering out into the dark quad.

"'When At Last My Savior Cometh,'" Colin said. "The Americans are practicing it for some church thing. Necrotic, isn't it?"

"Mrs. Gaddson said they were practicing at all hours, but I'd no idea she meant five in the morning."

"The concert's tonight," Colin said.

"Tonight?" Dunworthy said, and realized it was the fifteenth. The sixth on the Julian calendar. Epiphany, the Arrival of the Wise Men.

Finch hurried toward them with an umbrella. "Sorry I'm late," he said, holding it over Dunworthy, "but I couldn't find an umbrella. You've no idea how many of the detainees go off and forget them. Especially the Americans — "

Dunworthy started across the quad. "Is everything ready?"

"The med support's not here yet," Finch said, attempting to keep the umbrella over Dunworthy's head, "but William Gaddson just telephoned to say it was all arranged and she'd be here shortly."

Dunworthy would not have been surprised if he had said the sister had volunteered for the job. "I do hope William never decides to take to a life of crime," he said.

"Oh, I don't think he would, sir. His mother would never allow it." He ran a few steps, trying to keep up. "Mr. Chaudhuri's running the preliminary coordinates. And Ms. Montoya's here."

He stopped. "Montoya? What is it?"

"I don't know, sir. She said she had information for you."

Not now, he thought. Not when we're this close.

He went in the laboratory. Badri was at the console, and Montoya, wearing her terrorist shirt and muddy jeans, was leaning over him, watching the screen. Badri said something to her, and she shook her head and looked at her digital. She glanced up and saw Dunworthy, and an expression of compassion came into her face. She stood up and reached in the pocket of her shirt.

No, Dunworthy thought.

She walked over to him. "I didn't know you were planning this," she said, pulling out a folded sheet of paper. "I want to help." She handed him the paper. "This is what information Kivrin had to work with when she went through."

He looked at the paper in his hand. It was a map.

"This is the drop." She pointed to a cross on a black line. "And this is Skendgate. You'll recognize it by the church. It's Norman, with murals above the rood screen and a statue of St. Anthony." She smiled at him. "The patron saint of lost objects. I found it yesterday."

She pointed to several other crosses. "If by some chance she didn't go to Skendgate, the most likely villages are Esthcote, Henefelde, and Shrivendun. I've listed their distinguishing landmarks on the back."

Badri stood up and came over. He looked even frailer than he had in the ward, if that were possible, and he moved slowly, like the old man he had become. "I'm still getting minimal slippage, no matter what variables I feed in," he said. He put his hand under his ribs. "I'm running an intermittent, opening for five minutes at two-hour intervals. That way we can hold the net open for up to twenty-four hours, thirty-six if we're lucky."