Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

"Oh, good. I doubt very much I'll be able to get home before tomorrow, and I do worry about him staying alone in the flat. I'm apparently the only one who does, however," she said angrily. "I finally got through to Dierdre down in Kent, and she wasn't even concerned. 'Oh, is there a quarantine on?' she said. 'I've been so rushed I haven't had time to catch the news,' and then she proceeded to tell me all about her and her livein's plans, with the clear implication that she'd have had no time at all for Colin and was glad she was rid of him. There are times when I'm convinced she's not my niece."

"Did she send Colin's Christmas presents, do you know? He said she planned to send them by post."

"I'm certain she's been far too rushed to remember to buy them, let alone send them. The last time Colin was with me for Christmas, his gifts didn't arrive till Epiphany. Oh, which reminds me, do you know what's become of my shopping bag? It had Colin's gifts in it."

"I've got it at Balliol," he said.

"Oh, good. I didn't finish my shopping, but if you'd wrap up the muffler and the other things, he'll have something under the tree, won't he?" She stood up. "If you find any possible connection, come tell me immediately. As you can see, we've already traced several of the secondaries to Badri, but those may only be cross-connections, and the real connection be someone else."

She left, and he sat down beside the bed of the woman of the purple umbrella.

"Ms. Breen?" he said. "I'm afraid I must ask you some questions."

Her face was very red, and her breathing sounded like Badri's, but she answered his questions promptly and clearly. No, she hadn't been to America in the past month. No, she didn't know any Americans or anyone who'd been to America. But she had taken the tube up from London to shop for the day. "At Blackwell's, you know," and she had been all over Oxford shopping and then at the tube station, and there were at least five hundred people she had had contact with who might be the connection Mary was looking for.

It took him till past two to finish questioning the primaries and adding the contacts to the chart, none of which were the connection Mary was looking for, though he had found out that one of them had been to the same dance in Headington as Badri.

He went up to Isolation, though he didn't have much hope of Badri's being able to answer his questions, but Badri seemed improved. He was sleeping when Dunworthy came in, but when Dunworthy touched his hand, his eyes opened and focused on him.

"Mr. Dunworthy," he said. His voice was weak and hoarse. "What are you doing here?"

Dunworthy sat down. "How are you feeling?"

"It's odd, the things one dreams. I thought…I had such a headache…"

"I need to ask you some questions, Badri. Do you remember who you saw at the dance you went to in Headington?"

"There were so many people," he said, and swallowed as if his throat hurt. "I didn't know most of them."

"Do you remember who you danced with?"

"Elizabeth — " he said, and it came out a croak. "Sisu somebody, I don't know her last name," he whispered. "And Elizabeth Yakamoto."

The grim-looking ward sister came in. "Time for your X- ray," she said without looking at Badri. "You'll have to leave, Mr. Dunworthy."

"Could I have just a few more minutes? It's important," he asked, but she was already tapping keys on the console.

He leaned over the bed. "Badri, when you got the fix, how much slippage was there?"

"Mr. Dunworthy," the sister said insistently.

Dunworthy ignored her. "Was there more slippage than you expected?"

"No," Badri said huskily. He put his hand to his throat.

"How much slippage was there?"

"Four hours," Badri whispered, and Dunworthy let himself be ushered out.

Four hours. Kivrin had gone through at half-past twelve. That would have put her there at half-past four, nearly sunset, but still enough light left to see where she was, enough time to have walked to Skendgate if necessary.

He went to find Mary and give her the two names of the girls Badri had danced with. Mary checked them against the list of new admissions. Neither of them were on it, and Mary told him he could go home and took his temp and bloods so he wouldn't have to come back. He was about to start home when they brought Sisu Fairchild in. He didn't make it home till nearly teatime.

Colin wasn't at the gate nor in hall, where Finch was nearly out of sugar and butter. "Where's Dr. Ahrens' nephew?" Dunworthy asked him.

"He waited by the gate all morning," Finch said, anxiously counting over sugar cubes. "The post didn't come till past one, and then he went over to his great-aunt's flat to see if the parcels had been sent there. I gather they hadn't. He came back looking very glum, and then about half an hour ago, he said suddenly, 'I've just thought of something,' and shot out. Perhaps he'd thought of some other place the parcel might have been sent to."

But weren't, Dunworthy thought. "What time do the shops close today?" he asked Finch.

"Christmas Eve? Oh, they're already closed, sir. They always close early on Christmas Eve, and some of them closed at noon due to the lack of trade. I've a number of messages, sir — "

"They'll have to wait," Dunworthy said, snatched up his umbrella, and went out again. Finch was right. The shops were all closed. He went down to Blackwell's, thinking they had surely stayed open, but they were shut up tight. They had already taken advantage of the selling points of the situation, though. In the window, arranged amid the snow-covered houses of the toy Victorian village, were self-help medical books, drug compendia, and a brightly-colored paperback entitled, Laughing Your Way to Perfect Health .

He finally found an open post-office off the High, but it had only cigarettes, cheap sweets, and a rack of greeting cards, nothing in the way of suitable gifts for twelve-year-old boys. He went out without buying anything and then went back and purchased a pound's worth of toffee, a gobstopper the size of a small asteroid, and several packets of a sweet that looked like soap tablets. It wasn't much, but Mary had said she'd bought some other things.

The other things turned out to be a pair of gray woolen socks, even grimmer than the muffler, and a vocabulary improvement vid. There were crackers, at least, and sheets of wrapping paper, but a pair of socks and some toffee hardly made a Christmas. He looked around the study, trying to think what he had that might do.

Colin had said, "Apocalyptic!" when Dunworthy had told him Kivrin was in the Middle Ages. He pulled down The Age of Chivalry . It only had illustrations, no holos, but it was the best he could do on short notice. He wrapped it and the rest of the presents hastily, changed his clothes, and hurried over to St. Mary the Virgin's in a downpour, ducking across the deserted courtyard of the Bodleian and trying to avoid the spilling gutters.

No one in their right mind would come out in this. Last year the weather had been dry, and the church was still only half-full. Kivrin had gone with him. She had stayed up for the vac to study, and he had found her in the Bodleian and insisted on her coming to his sherry party and then to church.

"I shouldn't be doing this," she'd said on the way to the church. "I should be doing research."

"You can do it at St. Mary the Virgin. Built in 1139 and all just as it was in the Middle Ages, including the heating system."

"The ecumenical service is authentic, too, I suppose," she'd said.

"I have no doubt that in spirit it is as well-meant and as fraught with foolishness as any medieval mass," he had said.

He hurried down the narrow path next to Brasenose and opened the door of St. Mary's to a blast of hot air. His spectacles steamed up. He stopped in the narthex and wiped them on the tail of his muffler, but they clouded up again immediately.