Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

Badri was not there. Dunworthy squinted nearsightedly at where the console had been. They were in a forest, surrounded by trees. There was snow on the ground, and the air sparkled with crystals.

"If you go alone, who'll take care of you?" Colin said. "What if you have a relapse?" He looked past Dunworthy, and his mouth fell open. "Are we there?"

Dunworthy let go of Colin's arm and grabbed in his jerkin for his spectacles.

"Badri!" he shouted. "Open the drop!" He put on his spectacles. They were covered with frost. He yanked them off again and scraped at the lenses. "Badri!"

"Where are we?" Colin asked.

Dunworthy hooked his spectacles over his ears and looked around at the trees. They were ancient, the ivy twining their trunks silver with frost. There was no sign of Kivrin.

He had expected her to be here, which was ridiculous. They had already opened the drop and not found her, but he had hoped that when she realized where she was, she would come back to the drop and wait. But she wasn't here, and there was no sign she had ever been.

The snow they were standing in was smooth and free of footprints. It was deep enough to hide any she might have left before it fell, but it wasn't deep enough to hide the smashed cart and the scattered boxes. And there was no sign of the Oxford-Bath road.

"I don't know where we are," he said.

"Well, I know it's not Oxford," Colin said, stamping through the snow. "Because it's not raining."

Dunworthy looked up through the trees at the pale, clear sky. If there had been the same amount of slippage as in Kivrin's drop, it would be midmorning.

Colin darted off through the snow toward a thicket of reddish willows.

"Where are you going?" Dunworthy said.

"To find a road. The drop's supposed to be near a road, isn't it?" He plunged into the thicket and disappeared.

"Colin!" he shouted, starting after him. "Come back here."

"Here it is!" Colin called from somewhere beyond the willows. "The road's here!"

"Come back here!" Dunworthy shouted.

Colin reappeared, holding the willows apart.

"Come here," he said more calmly.

"It goes up a hill," he said, squeezing through the willows into the clearing. "We can climb it and see where we are."

He was already wet, his brown coat covered with snow from the willows, and he looked wary, braced for bad news.

"You're sending me back, aren't you?"

"I must," Dunworthy said, but his heart sank at the prospect. Badri would not have the drop open for at least two hours, and he was not certain how long it would stay open. He didn't have two hours to spare, waiting here to send Colin through, and he couldn't leave him behind. "You're my responsibility."

"And you're mine," Colin said stubbornly. "Aunt Mary told me to take care of you. What if you have a relapse?"

"You don't understand. The Black Death — "

"It's all right. Really. I've had the streptomycin and all that. I made William have his nurse give them to me. You can't send me back now, the drop isn't open, and it's too cold to just stay here and wait for an hour. If we go look for Kivrin now, we might have found her by then."

He was right about their not being able to remain here. The cold was already seeping through the outlandish Victorian cape, and Colin's burlap coat was even less protection than his old jacket and as wet.

"We'll go to the top of the hill," he said, "but first we must mark the clearing so we can find it again. And you can't go running off like that. I want you in sight at all times. I don't have time to go looking for you as well."

"I won't get lost," Colin said, rummaging in his pack. He held up a flat rectangle. "I brought a locator. It's already set to home in on the clearing."

He held the willows apart for Dunworthy, and they went out to the road. It was scarcely a cowpath and covered with snow unmarked except by the tracks of squirrels and a dog or possibly a wolf. Colin walked obediently at Dunworthy's side till they were halfway up the hill and then couldn't restrain himself and took off running.

Dunworthy trudged after him, fighting the tightness already in his chest. The trees stopped halfway up the hill, and the wind began where they left off. It was bitingly cold.

"I can see the village," Colin shouted down to him.

He came up beside Colin. The wind was worse here, cutting straight through the cape, lining or no lining, and pushing long streamers of cloud across the pale sky. Far off to the south a plume of smoke climbed straight into the sky, and then, caught by the wind, veered off sharply to the east.

"See?" Colin said, pointing.

A rolling plain lay below them, covered in snow almost too bright to look at. The bare trees and the roads stood out darkly against it, like markings on a map. The Oxford-Bath road was a straight black line, bisecting the snowy plain, and Oxford a pencil drawing. He could see the snowy roofs and the square tower of St. Michael's above the dark walls.

"It doesn't look like the Black Death is here yet, does it?" Colin said.

Colin was right. It looked serene, untouched, the ancient Oxford of legend. It was impossible to imagine it overrun with the plague, the dead carts full of bodies being pulled through the narrow streets, the colleges boarded up and abandoned, and everywhere the dying and the already dead. Impossible to imagine Kivrin out there somewhere, in one of those villages he could not see.

"Can't you see it?" Colin said, pointing south. "Behind those trees."

He squinted, trying to make out buildings among the cluster of trees. He could see a darker shape among the gray branches, the tower of a church, perhaps, or the angle of a manor house.

"There's the road that leads to it," Colin said, pointing to a narrow gray line that began somewhere below them.

Dunworthy examined the map Montoya had given him. There was no way to tell which village it was even with her notes without knowing how far they were from the intended drop site. If they were directly south of it, the village was too far east to be Skendgate, but where he thought it should be there were no trees, nothing, only a flat field of snow.

"Well?" Colin said. "Are we going to it?"

It was the only village visible, if it was a village, and it looked to be no more than a kilometer away. If it was not Skendgate, it was at least in the proper direction, and if it had one of Montoya's "distinguishing characteristics," they could use it to get their bearings.

"You must keep with me at all times and speak to no one, do you understand?"

Colin nodded, clearly not listening. "I think the road is this way," he said and ran down the far side of the hill.

Dunworthy followed, trying not to think how many villages there were, how little time there was, how tired he was after only one hill.

"How did you talk William into the streptomycin inoculations?" he asked when he caught up to Colin.

"He wanted Great-Aunt Mary's med number so he could forge the authorizations. It was in the kit in her shopping bag."

"And you refused to give it to him unless he agreed?"

"Yes, and I told him I'd tell his mother about all his girls," he said and ran off ahead again.

The road he'd seen was a hedge. Dunworthy refused to set off through the field it bordered. "We must keep to the roads," he said.

"This is quicker," Colin protested. "It isn't as if we can get lost. We've got the locator."

Dunworthy refused to argue. He continued on, looking for a turning. The narrow fields gave way to woods and the road turned back to the north.

"What if there isn't a road?" Colin said after half a kilometer, but at the next turning there was one.

It was narrower than the one past the drop, and no one had travelled along it since the snow. They waded into it, their feet breaking through the frozen crust at every step. Dunworthy looked anxiously ahead for a glimpse of the village, but the woods were too thick to see through.