Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

"Were to go wrong?" Dunworthy said, disbelievingly. "It's already gone wrong. Badri is lying in hospital unconscious and we don't have any idea if Kivrin is when or where she's supposed to be. You heard Badri. He said something was wrong with the fix. We've got to get a tech here to find out what it is."

"I should hardly put any credence in what someone says under the influence of drugs or dorphs or whatever it is he's been taking," Gilchrist said. "And may I remind you, Mr. Dunworthy, that the only thing to have gone wrong on this drop is Twentieth Century's part in it. Mr. Puhalski was doing a perfectly adequate job. However, at your insistence, I allowed your tech to replace him. It's obvious I shouldn't have."

The door opened, and they all turned and looked at it. The sister brought in a portable telephone, handed it to Dunworthy, and ducked out again.

"I must ring up Brasenose and tell them where I am," Gilchrist said.

Dunworthy ignored him, flipped up the phone's visual screen, and rang up Jesus. "I need the names and home telephone numbers of your techs," he told the Acting Principal's secretary when she appeared on the screen. "None of them are here over vac, are they?"

None of them were there. He wrote down the names and numbers on one of the inspirational pamphlets, thanked the senior tutor, hung up, and started on the list of numbers.

The first number he punched was engaged. The others got him an engaged tone before he'd even finished punching in the town exchanges, and on the last a computer voice broke in and said, "All lines are engaged. Please attempt your call later."

He rang Balliol, both the hall and his own office. He didn't get an answer at either number. Finch must have taken the Americans to London to hear Big Ben.

Gilchrist was still standing next to him, waiting to use the phone. Latimer had wandered over to the tea cart and was trying to plug in the electric kettle. The medic came out of her drowse to assist him. "Have you finished with the telephone?" Gilchrist said stiffly.

"No," Dunworthy said and tried Finch again. There was still no answer.

He rang off. "I want you to get your tech back to Oxford and pull Kivrin out. Now. Before she's left the drop site."

" You want?" Gilchrist said. "Might I remind you that this is Mediaeval's drop, not yours."

"It doesn't matter whose it is," Dunworthy said, trying to keep his temper. "It's University policy to abort a drop if there's any sort of problem."

"May I also remind you that the only problem we've encountered on this drop is that you failed to screen your tech for dorphs." He reached for the phone. " I will decide if and when this drop needs to be aborted."

The phone rang.

"Gilchrist here," Gilchrist said. "Just a moment please." He handed the telephone to Dunworthy.

"Mr. Dunworthy," Finch said, looking harried. "Thank goodness. I've been calling round everywhere. You won't believe the difficulties I've had."

"I've been detained," Dunworthy said before Finch could launch into an account of his difficulties. "Now listen carefully. I need you to go and fetch Badri Chaudhuri's employment file from the bursar's office. Dr. Ahrens needs it. Ring her up. She's here at Infirmary. Insist on speaking directly to her. She'll tell you what information she wants from the file."

"Yes, sir," Finch said, taking up a pad and pencil and taking rapid notes.

"As soon as you've done that, I want you to go straight to New College and see the Senior Tutor. Tell him I must speak with him immediately and give him this telephone number. Tell him it's an emergency, that it's essential that we locate Basingame. He's got to come back to Oxford immediately."

"Do you think he'll be able to, sir?"

"What do you mean? Has there been a message from Basingame? Has something happened to him?"

"Not that I know of, sir."

"Well, then, of course he'll be able to come back. He's only on a fishing trip. It's not as if he's on a schedule. After you've spoken to the Senior Tutor, ask any staff and students you can find. Perhaps one of them has an idea as to where Basingame is. And while you're there, find out whether any of their techs are here in Oxford."

"Yes, sir," Finch said. "But what should I do with the Americans?"

"You'll have to tell them I'm sorry to have missed them, but that I was unavoidably detained. They're supposed to leave for Ely at four, aren't they?"

"They were, but — "

"But what?"

"Well, sir, I took them round to see Great Tom and Old Marston Church and all, but when I tried to take them out to Iffley, we were stopped."

"Stopped?" Dunworthy said. "By whom?"

"The police, sir. They had barricades up. The thing is, the Americans are very upset about their handbell concert."

"Barricades?" Dunworthy said.

"Yes, sir. On the A4158. Should I put the Americans up in Salvin, sir? William Gaddson and Tom Gailey are on the north staircase but Basevi's being painted."

"I don't understand," Dunworthy said. "Why were you stopped?"

"The quarantine," Finch said, looking surprised. "I could put them in Fisher's. The heat's been turned off for vac, but they could use the fireplaces."

I'm back at the drop site. It's some distance from the road. I'm going to drag the wagon out onto the road so that my chances of being seen are better, but if no one happens along in the next half hour, I intend to walk to Skendgate, which I have located thanks to the bells of evening vespers.

I am experiencing considerable time lag. My head aches pretty badly, and I keep having chills. The symptoms are worse than I understood them to be from Badri and Dr. Ahrens. The headache particularly. I'm glad the village isn't far.

Quarantine. Of course, Dunworthy thought. The medic sent to fetch Montoya, and Mary's questions about Pakistan, and all of them put here in this isolated, self-contained room with a ward sister guarding the door. Of course.

"Will Salvin do then? For the Americans?" Finch was asking.

"Did the police say why a guar — " He stopped. Gilchrist was watching him, but Dunworthy didn't think he could see the screen from where he was. Latimer was fussing over the tea trolley, trying to open a sugar packet. The female medic was asleep. "Did the police say why these precautions had been taken?"

"No, sir. Only that it was Oxford and immediate environs, and to contact the National Health for instructions."

"Did you contact them?"

"No, sir. I've been trying. I can't get through. All the trunk lines have been engaged, too. The Americans have been trying to reach Ely to cancel their concert, but the lines are jammed."

Oxford and environs. That meant they had stopped the tube, too, and the bullet train to London, as well as blocking all the roads. No wonder the lines were jammed. "How long ago was this? When you went out to Iffley?"

"It was a bit after three, sir. I've been phoning round since then, trying to find you, and then I thought, perhaps he knows about it already. I rang up Infirmary and then started calling round to all the hospitals."

I didn't know about it already, Dunworthy thought. He tried to recall the conditions required for calling a quarantine. The original regulations had required it in every case of "unidentified disease or suspicion of contagion," but those had been passed in the first hysteria after the Pandemic, and they had been amended and watered down every few years since then till Dunworthy had no idea what they were now.

He did know that a few years ago they'd been "absolute identification of dangerous infectious disease" because there'd been a fuss in the papers when Lassa fever had raged unchecked for three weeks in a town in Spain. The local doctors hadn't done viral typing, and the whole mess had resulted in a push to put teeth in the regulations, but he had no idea if it had gone through.