Dooms Day Book

He got up and went over to the tea trolley and made himself a cup of tea. Gilchrist was on the phone again, apparently speaking to the porter. The porter didn’t know where Basingame was either. When Dunworthy had talked to him, he had told him he thought Basingame had mentioned Loch Balkillan, a lake that turned out not to exist.

Dunworthy drank his tea. Gilchrist rang up the bursar and the deputy warden, neither of whom knew where Basingame had gone. The nurse who had guarded the door earlier came in and finished the blood tests. The male medic picked up one of the inspirational brochures and began to read it.

Montoya filled out her admissions form and her lists of contacts. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked Dunworthy. “Write down the people I’ve been in contact with today?”

“The past three days,” he said.

They continued to wait. Dunworthy drank another cup of tea. Montoya rang up the NHS and tried to persuade them to give her a quarantine exemption so she could go back to the dig. The female medic went back to sleep.

The nurse wheeled in a trolley with supper on it. “‘Greet chere made our hoste us everichon, And to the soper sette us anon

,’” Latimer said, the only remark he had made all afternoon.

While they ate, Gilchrist regaled Latimer with his plans for sending Kivrin to the aftermath of the Black Death. “The accepted historical view is that it completely destroyed mediaeval society,” he told Latimer as he cut his roast beef, “but my research indicates it was purgative rather than catastrophic.”

From whose point of view? Dunworthy thought, wondering what was taking so long. He wondered if they were truly processing the blood tests or if they were simply waiting for one or all of them to collapse across the tea trolley so they could get a fix on the incubation period.

Gilchrist rang up New College again and asked for Basingame’s secretary.

“She’s not there,” Dunworthy said. “She’s in Devonshire with her daughter for Christmas.”

Gilchrist ignored him. “Yes. I need to get a message through to her. I’m trying to reach Mr. Basingame. It’s an emergency. We’ve just sent an historian to the 1300’s, and Balliol failed to properly screen the tech who ran the net. As a result, he’s contracted a contagious virus.” He put the phone down. “If Mr. Chaudhuri failed to have any of the necessary antivirals, I’m holding you personally responsible, Mr. Dunworthy.”

“He had the full course in September,” Dunworthy said.

“Have you proof of that?” Gilchrist said.

“Did it come through?” the medic asked.

They all, even Latimer, turned to look at her in surprise. Until she’d spoken, she’d seemed fast asleep, her head far forward on her chest and her arms folded, holding the contacts lists.

“You said you sent somebody back to the Middle Ages,” she said belligerently. “Did it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t—” Gilchrist said.

“This virus,” she said. “Could it have come through the time machine?”

Gilchrist looked nervously at Dunworthy. “That isn’t possible, is it?”

“No,” Dunworthy said. It was obvious Gilchrist knew nothing about the continuum paradoxes or string theory. The man had no business being Acting Head. He didn’t even know how the net he had so blithely sent Kivrin through worked. “The virus couldn’t have come through the net.”

“Dr. Ahrens said the Indian was the only case,” the medic said. “And you said,” she pointed at Dunworthy, “that he’d had the full course. If he’s had his antivirals, he couldn’t catch a virus unless it was a disease from somewhere else. And the Middle Ages was full of diseases, wasn’t it? Smallpox and the plague?”

Gilchrist said, “I’m certain that Mediaeval has taken steps to protect against that possibility—”

“There is no possibility of a virus coming through the net,” Dunworthy said angrily. “The space-time continuum does not allow it to happen.”

“You send people through,” she persisted, “and a virus is smaller than a person.”

Dunworthy hadn’t heard that argument since the early years of the nets, when the theory was only partially understood.

“I assure you we’ve taken every precaution,” Gilchrist said.

“Nothing that would affect the course of history can go through a net,” Dunworthy explained, glaring at Gilchrist. The man was simply encouraging her with this talk of precautions and probabilities. “Radiation, toxins, microbes, none of them has ever passed through a net. If they’re present the net simply won’t open.”

The medic looked unconvinced.

“I assure you—” Gilchrist said, and Mary came in.

She was carrying a sheaf of variously-colored papers. Gilchrist stood up immediately. “Dr. Ahrens, is there a possibility that this viral infection Mr. Chaudhuri has contracted might have come through the net?”