Doomsday Book

CHAPTER ONE

Mr. Dunworthy opened the door to the laboratory and his spectacles promptly steamed up.

"Am I too late?" he said, yanking them off and squinting at Mary.

"Shut the door," she said. "I can't hear you over the sound of those ghastly carols."

Dunworthy closed the door, but it didn't completely shut out the sound of "O, Come All Ye Faithful" wafting in from the quad. "Am I too late?" he said again.

Mary shook her head. "All you've missed is Gilchrist's speech." She leaned back in her chair to let Dunworthy squeeze past her into the narrow observation area. She had taken off her coat and wool hat and set them on the only other chair, along with a large shopping bag full of parcels. Her gray hair was in disarray, as if she had tried to fluff it up after taking her hat off. "A very long speech about Mediaeval's maiden voyage in time," she said, "and the college of Brasenose taking its rightful place as the jewel in history's crown. Is it still raining?"

"Yes," he said, wiping his spectacles on his muffler. He hooked the wire rims over his ears and went up to the thin-glass partition to look at the net. In the center of the laboratory was a smashed-up wagon surrounded by overturned trunks and wooden boxes. Above them hung the protective shields of the net, draped like a gauzy parachute.

Kivrin's tutor Latimer, looking older and more infirm than usual, was standing next to one of the trunks. Montoya was standing over by the console wearing jeans and a terrorist jacket and looking impatiently at the digital on her wrist. Badri was sitting in front of the console, typing something in and frowning at the display screens.

"Where's Kivrin?" Dunworthy said.

"I haven't seen her," Mary said. "Do come and sit down. The drop isn't scheduled till noon, and I doubt very much that they'll get her off by then. Particularly if Gilchrist makes another speech."

She draped her coat over the back of her own chair and set the shopping bag full of parcels on the floor by her feet. "I do hope this doesn't go all day. I must pick up my great-nephew Colin at the Underground station at three. He's coming in on the tube."

She rummaged in her shopping bag. "My niece Dierdre is off to Kent for the holidays and asked me to look after him. I do hope it doesn't rain the entire time he's here," she said, still rummaging. "He's twelve, a nice boy, very bright, though he has the most wretched vocabulary. Everything is either necrotic or apocalyptic. And Dierdre allows him entirely too many sweets."

She continued to dig through the contents of the shopping bag. "I got this for him for Christmas." She hauled up a narrow red- and green-striped box. "I'd hoped to get the rest of my shopping done before I came here, but it was pouring rain, and I can only tolerate that ghastly digital carillon music on the High Street for brief intervals."

She opened the box and folded back the tissue. "I've no idea what thirteen-year-old boys are wearing these days, but mufflers are timeless, don't you think, James? James?"

He turned from where had been staring blindly at the display screens. "What?"

"I said, mufflers are always an appropriate Christmas gift for boys, don't you think?"

He looked at the muffler she was holding up for his inspection. It was of dark gray plaid wool. He would not have been caught dead in it when he was a boy, and that had been fifty years ago. "Yes," he said, and turned back to the thin-glass.

"What is it, James? Is something wrong?"

Latimer picked up a small brass-bound casket, and then looked vaguely around, as if he had forgotten what he intended to do with it. Montoya glanced impatiently at her digital.

"Where's Gilchrist?" Dunworthy said.

"He went through there," Mary said, pointing at a door on the far side of the net. "He orated on Mediaeval's place in history, talked to Kivrin for a bit, the tech ran some tests, and then Gilchrist and Kivrin went through that door. I assume he's still in there with her, getting her ready."

"Getting her ready," Dunworthy muttered.

"James, do come and sit down, and tell me what's wrong," she said, jamming the muffler back in its box and stuffing it into the shopping bag, "and where you've been. I expected you to be here when I arrived. After all, Kivrin's your favorite pupil."

"I was trying to reach the Head of the History Faculty," Dunworthy said, looking at the display screens.

"Basingame? I thought he was off somewhere on Christmas vac."

"He is, and Gilchrist maneuvered to be appointed Acting Head in his absence so he could get the Middle Ages opened to time travel. He rescinded the blanket ranking of ten and arbitrarily assigned rankings to each century. Do you know what he assigned the 1300's? A six. A six! If Basingame had been here, he'd never have allowed it. But the man's nowhere to be found." He looked hopefully at Mary. "You don't know where he is, do you?"

"No," she said. "Somewhere in Scotland, I think."

"Somewhere in Scotland," he said bitterly. "And meanwhile, Gilchrist is sending Kivrin into a century which is clearly a ten, a century which had scrofula and the plague and burned Joan of Arc at the stake."

He looked at Badri, who was speaking into the console's ear now. "You said Badri ran tests. What were they? A coordinates check? A field projection?"

"I don't know." She waved vaguely at the screens, with their constantly changing matrices and columns of figures. "I'm only a doctor, not a net technician. I thought I recognized the technician. He's from Balliol, isn't he?"

Dunworthy nodded. "He's the best tech Balliol has," he said, watching Badri, who was tapping the console's keys one at a time, his eyes on the changing readouts. "All of New College's techs were gone for the vac. Gilchrist was planning to use a first-year apprentice who'd never run a manned drop. A first- year apprentice for a remote! I talked him into using Badri. If I can't stop this drop, at least I can see that it's run by a competent tech."

Badri frowned at the screen, pulled a meter out of his pocket, and started toward the wagon.

"Badri!" Dunworthy called.

Badri gave no indication he'd heard. He walked around the perimeter of the boxes and trunks, looking at the meter. He moved one of the boxes slightly to the left.

"He can't hear you," Mary said.

"Badri!" he shouted. "I need to speak to you."

Mary had stood up. "He can't hear you, James," she said. "The partition's soundproofed."

Badri said something to Latimer, who was still holding the brass-bound casket. Latimer looked bewildered. Badri took the casket from him and set it down on the chalked mark.

Dunworthy looked around for a microphone. He couldn't see one. "How were you able to hear Gilchrist's speech?" he asked Mary.

"Gilchrist pressed a button on the inside there," she said, pointing at a wall panel next to the net.

Badri had sat down in front of the console again and was speaking into the ear again. The net shields began to lower into place. Badri said something else, and they rose to where they'd been.

"I told Badri to recheck everything, the net, the apprentice's calculations, everything," he said, "and to abort the drop immediately if he found any errors, no matter what Gilchrist said."

"But surely Gilchrist wouldn't jeopardize Kivrin's safety," Mary protested. "He told me he'd taken every precaution — "

"Every precaution! He hasn't run recon tests or parameter checks. We did two years of unmanneds in Twentieth Century before we sent anyone through. He hasn't done any. Badri told him he should delay the drop until he could do at least one, and instead he moved the drop up two days. The man's a complete incompetent."

"But he explained why the drop had to be today," Mary said. "In his speech. He said the contemps in the 1300's paid no attention to dates, except planting and harvesting dates and church holy days. He said the concentration of holy days was greatest around Christmas, and that was why Mediaeval had decided to send Kivrin now, so she could use the Advent holy days to determine her temporal location and ensure her being at the drop site on the twenty-eighth of December."

"His sending her now has nothing to do with Advent or holy days," he said, watching Badri. He was back to tapping one key at a time and frowning. "He could send her next week and use Epiphany for a rendezvous date. He could run unmanneds for six months and then send her lapse-time. Gilchrist is sending her now because Basingame's off on holiday and isn't here to stop him."

"Oh, dear," Mary said. "I rather thought he was rushing it myself. When I told him how long I needed Kivrin in Infirmary, he tried to talk me out of it. I had to explain that her inoculations needed time to take effect."

"A rendezvous on the twenty-eighth of December," Dunworthy said bitterly. "Do you realize what holy day that is? The Feast of the Slaughter of the Innocents. Which, in light of how this drop is being run, may be entirely appropriate."

"Why can't you stop it?" Mary said. "You can forbid Kivrin to go, can't you? You're her tutor."

"No," he said. "I'm not. She's a student at Brasenose. Latimer's her tutor." He waved his hand in the direction of Latimer, who had picked up the brass-bound casket again and was peering absentmindedly into it. "She came to Balliol and asked me to tutor her unofficially."

He turned and stared blindly at the thin-glass. "I told her then that she couldn't go."

Kivrin had come to see him when she was a first-year student. "I want to go to the Middle Ages," she had said. She wasn't even a meter and a half tall, and her fair hair was in braids. She hadn't looked old enough to cross the street by herself.

"You can't," he had said, his first mistake. He should have sent her back to Mediaeval, told her she would have to take the matter up with her tutor. "The Middle Ages are closed. They have a ranking of ten."

"A blanket ten," Kivrin had said, "which Mr. Gilchrist says they don't deserve. He says that ranking would never hold up under a year-by-year analysis. It's based on the contemps' mortality rate, which was largely due to bad nutrition and no med support. The ranking wouldn't be nearly as high for an historian who'd been inoculated against disease. Mr. Gilchrist plans to ask the History Faculty to reevaluate the ranking and open part of the fourteenth century."

"I cannot conceive of the History Faculty opening a century that had not only the Black Death and cholera, but the Hundred Years War," Dunworthy had said.

"But they might, and if they do, I want to go."

"It's impossible," he'd said. "Even if it were opened, Mediaeval wouldn't send a woman. An unaccompanied woman was unheard of in the fourteenth century. Only women of the lowest class went about alone, and they were fair game for any man or beast who happened along. Women of the nobility and even the emerging middle class were constantly attended by their fathers or their husbands or their servants, usually all three, and even if you weren't a woman, you're a student. The fourteenth century is far too dangerous for Mediaeval to consider sending a student. They would send an experienced historian."

"It's no more dangerous than Twentieth Century," Kivrin had said. "Mustard gas and automobile crashes and pinpoints. At least no one's going to drop a bomb on me. And who's an experienced Mediaeval historian? Nobody has on-site experience, and your Twentieth Century historians here at Balliol don't know anything about the Middle Ages. Nobody knows anything. There are scarcely any records, except for parish registers and tax rolls, and nobody knows what their lives were like at all. That's why I want to go. I want to find out about them, how they lived, what they were like. Won't you please help me?"

He had finally said, "I'm afraid you'll have to speak with Mediaeval about that," but it was too late.

"I've already talked to them," she said. "They don't know anything about the Middle Ages either. I mean, anything practical. Mr. Latimer's teaching me Middle English, but it's all pronomial inflections and vowel shifts. He hasn't taught me to say anything.

"I need to know the language and the customs," she said, leaning over Dunworthy's desk, "and the money and table manners and things. Did you know they didn't use plates? They used flat loaves of bread called manchets, and when they finished eating their meat, they broke them into pieces and ate them. I need someone to teach me things like that, so I won't make mistakes."

"I'm a twentieth-century historian, not a mediaevalist. I haven't studied the Middle Ages in forty years."

"But you know the sorts of things I need to know. I can look them up and learn them, if you'll just tell me what they are."

"What about Gilchrist?" he had said, even though he considered Gilchrist a self-important fool.

"He's working on the re-ranking and hasn't any time."

And what good will the re-ranking do if he has no historians to send? Dunworthy thought. "What about Montoya? She's working on a mediaeval dig out near Witney, isn't she? She should know something about the customs."

"Ms. Montoya hasn't any time either, she's so busy trying to recruit people to work on the Skendgate dig. Don't you see? They're all useless. You're the only one who can help me."

He should have said, "Nevertheless, they are members of Brasenose's faculty, and I am not," but instead he had been maliciously delighted to hear her tell him what he had thought all along, that Latimer was a doddering old man and Montoya a frustrated archaeologist, that Gilchrist was incapable of training historians. He had been eager to use her to show Mediaeval how it should be done.

"We'll have you augmented with an interpreter," he had said. "And I want you to learn Church Latin, Norman French, and Old German, in addition to Mr. Latimer's Middle English," and she had immediately pulled a pencil and an exercise book from her pocket and begun making a list.

"You'll need practical experience in farming — milking a cow, gathering eggs, vegetable gardening," he'd said, ticking them off on his fingers. "Your hair isn't long enough. You'll need to take cortixidils. You'll need to learn to spin, with a spindle, not a spinning wheel. The spinning wheel wasn't invented yet. And you'll need to learn to ride a horse."

He had stopped, finally coming to his senses. "Do you know what you need to learn?" he had said, watching her, earnestly bent over the list she was scribbling, her braids dangling over her shoulders. "How to treat open sores and infected wounds, how to prepare a child's body for burial, how to dig a grave. The mortality rate will still be worth a ten, even if Gilchrist somehow succeeds in getting the ranking changed. The average life expectancy in 1300 was thirty-eight. You have no business going there."

Kivrin had looked up, her pencil poised above the paper. "Where should I go to look at dead bodies?" she had said earnestly. "The morgue? Or should I ask Dr. Ahrens in Infirmary?"

"I told her she couldn't go," Dunworthy said, still staring unseeing at the glass, "but she wouldn't listen."

"I know," Mary said. "She wouldn't listen to me either."

Dunworthy sat down stiffly next to her. The rain and all that chasing after Basingame had aggravated his arthritis. He still had his overcoat on. He struggled out of it and unwound the muffler from around his neck.

"I wanted to cauterize her nose for her," Mary said. "I told her the smells of the fourteenth century could be completely incapacitating, that we're simply not used to excrement and bad meat and decomposition in this day and age. I told her nausea would interfere significantly with her ability to function."

"But she wouldn't listen," Dunworthy said.

"No."

"I tried to explain to her that the Middle Ages were dangerous and Gilchrist wasn't taking sufficient precautions, and she told me I was worrying over nothing."

"Perhaps we are," Mary said. "After all, it's Badri who's running the drop, not Gilchrist, and you said he'd abort if there was any problem."

"Yes," he said, watching Badri through the glass. He was typing again, one key at a time, his eyes on the screens. Badri was not only Balliol's best tech, but the University's. And he had run dozens of remotes.

"And Kivrin's well-prepared. You've tutored her, and I've spent the last month in Infirmary getting her physically ready. She's protected against cholera and typhoid and anything else that was extant in 1320, which, by the way, the plague you are so worried over wasn't. The Black Death didn't reach England until 1348. I've removed her appendix and augmented her immune system. I've given her full-spectrum antivirals and a short course in mediaeval medicine. And she's done a good deal of work on her own. She was studying medicinal herbs while she was in Infirmary."

"I know," Dunworthy said. She had spent the last Christmas vac memorizing masses in Latin and learning to weave and embroider, and he had taught her everything he could think of. But was it enough to protect her from being trampled by a horse, or raped by a drunken knight on his way home from the Crusades? They were still burning people at the stake in 1320. There was no inoculation to protect her from that or from someone seeing her come through and deciding she was a witch.

He looked back through the thin-glass. Latimer picked the trunk up for the third time and set it back down. Montoya looked at her watch again. The tech punched the keys and frowned.

"I should have refused to tutor her," he said. "I only did it to show Gilchrist up for the incompetent he is."

"Nonsense," Mary said. "You did it because she's Kivrin. She's you all over again — bright, resourceful, determined."

"I was never that foolhardy."

"Of course you were. I can remember a time when you couldn't wait to rush off to the London Blitz and have bombs dropped on your head. And I seem to remember a certain incident involving the old Bodleian — "

The prep room door flared open, and Kivrin and Gilchrist came into the room, Kivrin holding her long skirts up as she stepped over the scattered boxes. She was wearing the white rabbit-fur-lined cloak and the bright blue kirtle she had come to show him yesterday. She had told him the cloak was hand-woven. It looked like an old wool blanket someone had draped over her shoulders, and the kirtle's sleeves were too long. They nearly covered her hands. Her long, fair hair was held back by a fillet and fell loosely onto her shoulders. She still didn't look old enough to cross the street by herself.

Dunworthy stood up, ready to pound on the glass again as soon as she looked in his direction, but she stopped midway into the clutter, her face still half-averted from him, looked down at the marks on the floor, stepped forward a little, and arranged her dragging skirts around her.

Gilchrist went over to Badri, said something to him, and picked up a carryboard that was lying on top of the console. He began checking items off with a brisk poke of the light pen.

Kivrin said something to him and pointed at the brass-bound casket. Montoya straightened impatiently up from leaning over Badri's shoulder, and came over to where Kivrin was standing, shaking her head. Kivrin said something else, more firmly and Montoya knelt down and moved the trunk over next to the wagon.

Gilchrist checked another item off his list. He said something to Latimer, and Latimer went and got a flat metal box and handed it to Gilchrist. He said something to Kivrin, and she brought her flattened hands together in front of her chest. She bent her head over them and began speaking.

"Is he having her practice praying?" Dunworthy said. "That will be useful, since God's help may be the only help she gets on this practicum."

Mary blew her nose again. "They're checking the implant."

"What implant?"

"A special chip-corder so she can record her field work. Most of the contemps can't read or write, so I implanted an ear and an A-to-D in one wrist and a memory in the other. She activates it by pressing the pads of her palms together. When she's speaking into it, it looks like she's praying. The chips have a two-point-five gigabyte capacity, so she'll be able to record her observations for the full two and a half weeks."

"You should have implanted a locator as well so she could call for help."

Gilchrist was messing with the flat metal box. He shook his head and then moved Kivrin's folded hands up a little higher. The too-long sleeve fell back. Her hand was cut. A thin brown line of dried blood ran down the cut.

"Something's wrong," Dunworthy said, turning toward Mary. "She's hurt."

Kivrin was talking into her hands again. Gilchrist nodded. Kivrin looked at him, saw Dunworthy, and flashed him a delighted smile. Her temple was bloody, too. Her hair under the fillet was matted with it. Gilchrist looked up, saw Dunworthy, and hurried toward the thin-glass partition, looking irritated.

"She hasn't even gone yet, and they've already let her be injured!" Dunworthy pounded on the glass.

Gilchrist walked over to the wall panel, pressed a key, and then came over and stood in front of Dunworthy. "Mr. Dunworthy," he said. He nodded at Mary. "Dr. Ahrens. I'm so pleased you decided to come see Kivrin off." He put the faintest emphasis on the last three words, so that they sounded like a threat.

"What's happened to Kivrin?" Dunworthy said.

"Happened?" Gilchrist said, sounding surprised. "I don't know what you mean."

Kivrin had started over to the partition, holding up the skirt of her kirtle with a bloody hand. There was a reddish bruise on her cheek.

"I want to speak to her."

"I'm afraid there isn't time," Gilchrist said. "We have a schedule to keep to."

"I demand to speak to her."

Gilchrist pursed his lips and two white lines appeared on either side of his nose. "May I remind you, Mr. Dunworthy," he said coldly, "that this drop is Brasenose's, not Balliol's. I of course appreciate the assistance you have given in loaning us your tech, and I respect your many years of experience as an historian, but I assure you I have everything well in hand."

"Then why is your historian injured before she's even left?"

"Oh, Mr. Dunworthy, I'm so glad you came," Kivrin said, coming up to the glass. "I was afraid I wouldn't be able to say goodbye to you. Isn't this exciting?"

Exciting. "You're bleeding," Dunworthy said. "What's gone wrong?"

"Nothing," Kivrin said, touching her temple gingerly and then looking at her fingers. "It's part of the costume." She looked past him at Mary. "Dr. Ahrens, you came, too. I'm so glad."

Mary had stood up, still holding her shopping bag. "I want to see your antiviral inoculation," she said. "Have you had any other reaction besides the swelling? Any itching?"

"It's all right, Dr. Ahrens," Kivrin said. She held the sleeve back and then let it fall again before Mary could possibly have had a good look at the underside of her arm. There was another reddish bruise on Kivrin's forearm, already beginning to turn black and blue.

"It would seem to be more to the point to ask her why she's bleeding," Dunworthy said.

"It's part of the costume. I told you, I'm Isabel de Beauvrier, and I'm supposed to have been waylaid by robbers while travelling," Kivrin said. She turned and gestured at the boxes and smashed wagon. "My things were stolen, and I was left for dead. I got the idea from you, Mr. Dunworthy," she said reproachfully.

"I certainly never suggested that you start out bloody and beaten," Dunworthy said.

"Stage blood was impractical," Gilchrist said. "Probability couldn't give us statistically significant odds that no one would tend her wound."

"And it never occurred to you to dupe a realistic wound? You knocked her on the head instead?" Dunworthy said angrily.

"Mr. Dunworthy, may I remind you — "

"That this is Brasenose's project, not Balliol's? You're bloody right it isn't. If it were Twentieth Century's, we'd be trying to protect the historian from injury, not inflicting it on her ourselves. I want to speak to Badri. I want to know if he's rechecked the apprentice's calculations."

Gilchrist's lips pursed. "Mr. Dunworthy, Mr. Chaudhuri may be your net technician, but this is my drop. I assure you we have considered every possible contingency — "

"It's just a nick," Kivrin said. "It doesn't even hurt. I'm all right, really. Please don't get upset, Mr. Dunworthy. The idea of being injured was mine. I remembered what you said about how a woman in the Middle Ages was so vulnerable, and I thought it would be a good idea if I looked more vulnerable than I was."

It would be impossible for you to look more vulnerable than you are, Dunworthy thought.

"If I pretend to be unconscious, then I can overhear what people are saying about me, and they won't ask a lot of questions about who I am, because it will be obvious that — "

"It's time for you to get into position," Gilchrist said, moving threateningly over to the wall panel.

"I'm coming," Kivrin said, not budging.

"We're ready to set the net."

"I know," she said firmly. "I'll be along as soon as I've told Mr. Dunworthy and Dr. Ahrens goodbye."

Gilchrist nodded curtly and walked back into the debris. Latimer asked him something, and he snapped an answer.

"What does getting into position entail?" Dunworthy asked. "Having him take a cosh to you because Probability's told him there's a statistical possibility someone won't believe you're truly unconscious?"

"It involves lying down and closing my eyes," Kivrin said, grinning. "Don't worry.

"There's no reason you can't wait until tomorrow and at least give Badri time to run a parameter check," Dunworthy said.

"I want to see that inoculation again," Mary said.

"Will you two stop fretting?" Kivrin said. "My inoculation doesn't itch, the cut doesn't hurt, Badri's spent all morning running checks. I know you're worried about me, but please don't be. The drop's on the main road from Oxford to Bath about two miles from Skendgate. If no one comes along, I'll walk into the village and tell them I've been attacked by robbers. After I've determined my location so I can find the drop again." She put her hand up to the glass. "I just want to thank you both for everything you've done. I've wanted to go to the Middle Ages more than anything, and now I'm actually going."

"You're likely to experience headache and fatigue after the drop," Mary said. "They're a normal side-effect of the time lag."

Gilchrist came back over to the thin-glass. "It's time for you to get into position," he said.

"I've got to go," she said, gathering up her heavy skirts. "Thank you both so much. I wouldn't be going if it weren't for you two helping me."

"Goodbye," Mary said.

"Be careful," Dunworthy said.

"I will," Kivrin said, but Gilchrist had already pressed the wall panel, and Dunworthy couldn't hear her. She smiled, held up her hand in a little wave, and went over to the smashed wagon.

Mary sat back down and began rummaging through the shopping bag for a handkerchief. Gilchrist was reading off items from the carryboard. Kivrin nodded at each one, and he ticked them off with the light pen.

"What if she gets blood poisoning from that cut on her temple?" Dunworthy said, still standing at the glass.

"She won't get blood poisoning," Mary said. "I enhanced her immune system." She blew her nose.

Kivrin was arguing with Gilchrist about something. The white lines along his nose were sharply defined. She shook her head, and after a minute he checked off the next item with an abrupt, angry motion.

Gilchrist and the rest of Mediaeval might be incompetent, but she wasn't. She had learned Middle English and Church Latin and Anglo-Saxon. She had memorized the Latin masses and taught herself to embroider and milk a cow. She had come up with an identity and a rationale for being alone on the road between Oxford and Bath, and she had the interpreter and augmented stem cells and no appendix.

"She'll do swimmingly," Dunworthy said, "which will only serve to convince Gilchrist Mediaeval's methods aren't slipshod and dangerous."

Gilchrist walked over to the console and handed the carryboard to Badri. Kivrin folded her hands again, closer to her face this time, her mouth nearly touching them, and began to speak into them.

Mary came closer and stood beside Dunworthy, clutching her handkerchief. "When I was nineteen — which was, oh, Lord, forty years ago, it doesn't seem that long — my sister and I travelled all over Egypt," she said. "It was during the Pandemic. Quarantines were being slapped on all about us, and the Israelis were shooting Americans on sight, but we didn't care. I don't think it even occurred to us that we might be in danger, that we might catch it or be mistaken for Americans. We wanted to see the Pyramids."

Kivrin had stopped praying. Badri left his console and came over to where she was standing. He spoke to her for several minutes, the frown never leaving his face. She knelt and then lay down on her side next to the wagon, turning so she was on her back with one arm flung over her head and her skirts tangled about her legs. The tech arranged her skirts, pulled out the light measure, and paced around her, walked back to the console and spoke into the ear. Kivrin lay quite still, the blood on her forehead almost black under the light.

"Oh, dear, she looks so young," Mary said.

Badri spoke into the ear, glared at the results on the screen, went back to Kivrin. He stepped over her, straddling her legs, and bent down to adjust her sleeve. He took a measurement, moved her arm so it was across her face as if warding off a blow from her attackers, measured again.

"Did you see the Pyramids?" Dunworthy said.

"What?" Mary said.

"When you were in Egypt. When you went tearing about the Middle East oblivious to danger. Did you get to see the Pyramids?"

"No. Cairo was put under quarantine the day we landed." She looked at Kivrin, lying there on the floor. "But we saw the Valley of the Kings."

Badri moved Kivrin's arm a fraction of an inch, stood frowning at her for a moment, and then went back to the console. Gilchrist and Latimer followed him. Montoya stepped back to make room for all of them around the screen. Badri spoke into the console's ear, and the semi-transparent shields began to lower into place, covering Kivrin like a veil.

"We were glad we went," Mary said. "We came home without a scratch."

The shields touched the ground, draped a little like Kivrin's too-long skirts, stopped.

"Be careful," Dunworthy whispered. Mary took hold of his hand.

Latimer and Gilchrist huddled in front of the screen, watching the sudden explosion of numbers. Montoya glanced at her digital. Badri leaned forward and opened the net. The air inside the shields glittered with sudden condensation.

"Don't go," Dunworthy said.

First entry. 23 December, 2054. Oxford. This will be a record of my historical observations of life in Oxfordshire, England, 12 December, 1320, to 28 December, 1320 (Old Style).

Mr. Dunworthy, I'm calling this the Domesday Book because it's supposed to be a record of life in the Middle Ages, which is what William the Conqueror's survey turned out to be, even though he intended it as a method of making sure he got every pound of gold and tax his tenants owed him.

I am also calling it the Domesday Book because I would imagine that's what you'd like to call it, you are so convinced something awful's going to happen to me. I'm watching you in the observation area right now, telling poor Dr. Ahrens all the dreadful dangers of the 1300's. You needn't bother. She's already warned me about time lag and every single mediaeval disease, in gruesome detail, even though I'm supposed to be immune to all of them. And warned me about the prevalence of rape in the 1300's. And when I tell her I'll be perfectly all right she doesn't listen to me either. I will be perfectly all right, Mr. Dunworthy.

Of course you will already know that, and that I made it back in one piece and all according to schedule, by the time you get to hear this, so you won't mind my teasing you a little. I know you are only concerned for me, and I know very well that without all your help and preparation I wouldn't make it back in one piece or at all.

I am therefore dedicating The Domesday Book to you, Mr. Dunworthy. If it weren't for you I wouldn't be standing here in kirtle and cloak, talking into this corder, waiting for Badri and Mr. Gilchrist to finish their endless calculations and wishing they would hurry so I can go.

I'm here.

CHAPTER TWO

"Well," Mary said on a long, drawn-out breath. "I could do with a drink."

"I thought you had to go fetch your great-nephew," Dunworthy said, still watching the place where Kivrin had been. The air glittered with ice particles inside the veil of shields. Near the floor, frost had formed on the inside of the thin-glass.

The unholy three of Mediaeval were still watching the screens, even though they showed nothing but the flat line of arrival. "I needn't fetch Colin until three," Mary said. "You look as though you could use a bit of bracing up yourself, and the Lamb and Cross is just down the street."

"I want to wait until he has the fix," Dunworthy said, watching the tech.

There were still no data on the screens. Badri was frowning. Montoya looked at her digital and said something to Gilchrist. Gilchrist nodded, and she scooped up a bag that had been lying half under the console, waved goodbye to Latimer, and went out through the side door.

"Unlike Montoya, who obviously cannot wait to return to her dig, I would like to stay until I'm sure Kivrin got through without incident," Dunworthy said.

"I'm not suggesting you go back to Balliol," Mary said, wrestling her way into her coat, "but the fix will take at least an hour, if not two, and in the meantime, your standing here won't hurry it along. Watched pot and all that. The pub's just across the way. It's very small and quite nice, the sort of place that doesn't put up Christmas decorations or play artificial bell music." She held his overcoat out to him. "We'll have a drink and something to eat, and then you can come back here and pace holes in the floor until the fix comes in."

"I want to wait here," he said, still looking at the empty net. "Why didn't Basingame have a locator implanted in his wrist? The head of a History Faculty has no business going off on holiday and not even a number where he can be reached."

Gilchrist straightened himself up from the still unchanging screen and clapped Badri on the shoulders. Latimer blinked as if he wasn't sure where he was. Gilchrist shook his hand, smiling expansively. He started across the floor toward the wall panel partition, looking smug.

"Let's go," Dunworthy said, snatching his overcoat from her and opening the door. A blast of "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night" hit them. Mary darted through the door as though she were escaping, and Dunworthy pulled it to behind them and followed Mary through the quad and out through Brasenose's gate.

It was bitter cold, but it wasn't raining. It looked as though it might at any moment, though, and the crush of shoppers on the pavement in front of Brasenose had apparently decided it would. At least half of them had umbrellas already opened. A woman with a large red one and both arms full of parcels bumped into Dunworthy. "Watch where you're going, can't you?" she said, and hurried on.

"The Christmas spirit," Mary said, buttoning her coat with one hand and hanging onto her shopping bag with the other. "The pub's just down there past the chemist's," she said, nodding her head at the opposite side of the street. "It's these ghastly bells, I think. They'd ruin anyone's mood."

She started off down the pavement through the maze of umbrellas. Dunworthy debated putting his coat on and then decided it wasn't worth the struggle for so short a distance. He plunged after her, trying to keep clear of the deadly umbrellas and to determine what carol was being slaughtered now. It sounded like a cross between a call to arms and a dirge, but it was probably "Jingle Bells."

Mary was standing at the curb opposite the chemist's, digging in her shopping bag again. "What is that ghastly din supposed to be?" she said, coming up with a collapsible umbrella. "O Little Town of Bethlehem?"

"Jingle Bells," Dunworthy said and stepped out into the street.

"James!" Mary said and grabbed hold of his sleeve.

The bicycle's front tire missed him by centimeters, and the near pedal caught him on the leg. The rider swerved, shouting, "Don't you know how to cross a bleeding street?"

Dunworthy stepped backward and crashed into a six-year-old holding a plush Santa. The child's mother glared.

"Do be careful, James," Mary said.

They crossed the street, Mary leading the way. Halfway across it began to rain. Mary ducked under the chemist's overhang and tried to get her umbrella open. The chemist's window was draped in green and gold tinsel and had a sign posted in among the perfumes that said, "Save the Marston Parish Church Bells. Give to the Restoration Fund."

The carillon had finished obliterating "Jingle Bells" or "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and was now working on "We Three Kings." Dunworthy recognized the minor key.

Mary still couldn't get her umbrella up. She shoved it back in the bag and took off down the pavement again. Dunworthy followed, trying to avoid collisions, past a stationer's and a tobacconist's hung with blinking red and green lights, through the door Mary was holding open for him.

His spectacles steamed up immediately. He took them off to wipe at them with the collar of his overcoat. Mary shut the door and plunged them into a blur of brown and blissful silence.

"Oh, dear," Mary said. "I told you they were the sort that wouldn't put up decorations."

Dunworthy put his spectacles back on. The shelves behind the bar were strung with blinking lights in pale green, pink and an anemic blue. On the corner of the bar was a large fiber-op Christmas tree on a revolving stand.

There was no one else in the narrow pub except a beefy- looking man behind the bar. Mary squeezed between two empty tables and into the corner.

"At least we can't hear those wretched bells in here," she said, putting her bag down on the settle. "No, I'll get the drinks. You sit down. That cyclist nearly put you out."

She excavated some mangled pound notes out of the shopping bag and went up to the bar. "Two pints of bitter," she told the barman. "Do you want something to eat?" she asked Dunworthy. "They've sandwiches and cheese rolls."

"Did you see Gilchrist staring at the console and grinning like the Cheshire cat? He didn't even look to see whether Kivrin had gone or whether she was still lying there, half-dead."

"Make that two pints and a good stiff whiskey," Mary said.

Dunworthy sat down. There was a creche on the table complete with tiny plastic sheep and a half-naked baby in a manger. "Gilchrist should have sent her from the dig," he said. "The calculations for a remote are exponentially more complicated than for an on-site. I suppose I should be grateful he didn't send her lapse-time as well. The first-year apprentice couldn't do the calculations. I was afraid when I loaned him Badri, Gilchrist would decide he wanted a lapse-time drop instead of a real-time."

He moved one of the plastic sheep closer to the shepherd. "If he's aware there's a difference," he said. "Do you know what he said when I told him he should run at least one unmanned? He said, 'If something unfortunate does happen, we can go back in time and pull Ms. Engle out before it happens, can't we?' The man has no notion of how the net works, no notion of the paradoxes, no notion that Kivrin is there, and what happens to her is real and irrevocable."

Mary maneuvered her way between the tables, carrying the whiskey in one hand and the two pints awkwardly in the other. She set the whiskey down in front of him. "It's my standard prescription for cycling victims and overprotective fathers. Did it catch you in the leg?"

"No," Dunworthy said.

"I had a bicycle accident in last week. One of your Twentieth Centuries. Just back from a World War I drop. Two weeks unscathed at Belleau Wood and then walked into a high- wheeler on the Broad." She went back to the bar to fetch her cheese roll.

"I hate parables," Dunworthy said. He picked up the plastic Virgin. She was dressed in blue with a white cloak. "If he had sent her lapse-time, at least she wouldn't have been in danger of freezing to death. She should have had something warmer than a rabbit-fur lining, or didn't it occur to Gilchrist that 1320 was the beginning of the Little Ice Age?"

"I've just thought who you remind me of," Mary said, setting down her plate and a napkin. "William Gaddson's mother."

That was a truly unfair remark. William Gaddson was one of his first-year students. His mother had been up six times this term, the first time to bring William a pair of earmuffs.

"He catches a chill if he doesn't wear them," she had told Dunworthy. "Willy's always been susceptible to chill, and now he's so far away from home and all. His tutor isn't taking proper care of him, even though I've spoken to him repeatedly."

Willy was the size of an oak tree and looked as susceptible to chill as one. "I'm certain he can take care of himself," he had told Mrs. Gaddson, which was a mistake. She had promptly added Dunworthy to the list of people who refused to take proper care of Willy, but it hadn't stopped her coming up every two weeks to deliver vitamins to Dunworthy and insist that Willy be taken off the rowing team because he was over-exerting himself.

"I would hardly put my concern for Kivrin in the same category as Mrs. Gaddson's overprotectiveness," Dunworthy said. "The 1300's are full of cutthroats and thieves. And worse."

"That's what Mrs. Gaddson said about Oxford," Mary said placidly, sipping her pint of ale. "I told her she couldn't protect Willy from life. And you can't protect Kivrin. You didn't become an historian by staying safely at home. You've got to let her go, even if it is dangerous. Every century's a ten, James."

"This century doesn't have the Black Death."

"It had the Pandemic, which killed thirty-five million people. And the Black Death wasn't in England in 1320," she said. "It didn't reach there till 1348." She put her mug down on the table, and the figurine of Mary fell over. "But even if it had, Kivrin couldn't get it. I immunized her against bubonic plague." She smiled ruefully at Dunworthy. "I have my own moments of Mrs. Gaddsonitis. Besides, she would never get the plague because we're both worrying over it. None of the things one frets about ever happen. Something one's never thought of does."

"Very comforting." He placed the blue-and-white Mary next to the figure of Joseph. It fell over. He set it carefully back up.

"It should be comforting, James," she said briskly. "Because it's obvious you've thought of every possible dreadful thing that could happen to Kivrin. Which means she's perfectly all right. She's probably already sitting in a castle having peacock pie for lunch, although I suppose it isn't the same time of day there."

He shook his head. "There will have been slippage — God only knows how much, since Gilchrist didn't do parameter checks. Badri thought it would be several days."

Or several weeks, he thought, and if it were the middle of January, there wouldn't be any holy days for Kivrin to determine the date by. Even a discrepancy of several hours could put her on the Oxford-Bath road in the middle of the night.

"I do hope the slippage won't mean she'll miss Christmas," Mary said. "She was terribly keen to observe a mediaeval Christmas mass."

"It's two weeks till Christmas there," he said. "They're still using the Julian calendar. The Gregorian calendar wasn't adopted till 1752."

"I know. Mr. Gilchrist orated on the subject of the Julian calendar in his speech. He went on at considerable length about the history of calendar reform and the discrepancy in dates between the Old Style and Gregorian calendars. At one point I thought he was going to draw a diagram. What day is it there?"

"The thirteenth of December."

"Perhaps it's just as well we don't know the exact time. Dierdre and Colin were in the States for a year, and I was worried sick about them, but out of synch. I was always imagining Colin being run over on the way to school when it was actually the middle of the night. Fretting doesn't work properly unless one can visualize disasters in all their particulars, including the weather and the time of day. For a time I worried about not knowing what to worry about, and then I didn't worry at all. Perhaps it will be the same with Kivrin."

It was true. He had been visualizing Kivrin as he last saw her, lying amid the wreckage with her temple bloody, but that was probably all wrong. She had gone through nearly an hour ago. Even if no traveller had come along yet, the road would get cold, and he couldn't imagine Kivrin lying there docilely in the Middle Ages with her eyes closed.

The first time he had gone through to the past he had been doing there-and-backs while they calibrated the fix. They had sent him through in the middle of the quad in the middle of the night, and he was supposed to stand there while they did the calculations on the fix and picked him up again. But he was in Oxford in 1956, and the check was bound to take at least ten minutes. He had sprinted four blocks down the Broad to see the old Bodleian and nearly given the tech heart failure when she opened the net and couldn't find him.

Kivrin would not still be lying there with her eyes shut, not with the mediaeval world spread out before her. He could see her suddenly, standing there in that ridiculous white cloak, scanning the Oxford-Bath road for unwary travellers, ready to fling herself back on the ground at a moment's notice, and in the meantime taking it all in, her implanted hands clasped together in a prayer of impatience and delight, and he felt suddenly reassured.

She would be perfectly all right. She would step back through the net in two weeks' time, her white cloak grubby beyond belief, full of stories about harrowing adventures and hair's- breadth escapes, tales to curdle the blood, no doubt, things that would give him nightmares for weeks after her telling him about them.

"She'll be all right, you know, James," Mary said, frowning at him.

"I know," he said. He went and got them another half pint apiece. "When did you say your great-nephew was getting in?"

"At three. He's staying a week, and I've no idea what to do with him. Except worry, of course. I suppose I could take him to the Ashmolean. Children always like museums, don't they? Pocahontas's robe and all that?"

Dunworthy remembered Pocahontas's robe as being a completely uninteresting scrap of stiff grayish material much like Colin's intended muffler. "I'd suggest the Natural History Museum."

There was a rattle of tinsel and some "Ding Dong, Merrily on High" and Dunworthy looked anxiously over at the door. His secretary was standing on the threshold, squinting blindly into the pub.

"Perhaps I should send Colin up Carfax Tower to vandalize the carillon," Mary said.

"It's Finch," Dunworthy said, and put his hand up so he could see them, but he had already started for their table. "I've been looking for you everywhere, sir," he said. "Something's gone wrong."

"With the fix?"

His secretary looked blank. "The fix? No, sir. It's the Americans. They've arrived early."

"What Americans?"

"The bellringers. From Colorado. The Western States' Women's Guild of Change and Handbell Ringers."

"Don't tell me you've imported more Christmas bells," Mary said.

"I thought they were supposed to arrive on the twenty- second," Dunworthy said to Finch.

"This is the twenty-second," Finch said. "They were to arrive this afternoon but their concert at Exeter was cancelled, so they're ahead of schedule. I called Mediaeval, and Mr. Gilchrist told me he thought you'd gone out to celebrate." He looked at Dunworthy's empty mug.

"I'm not celebrating," Dunworthy said. "I'm waiting for the fix on one of my students." He looked at his watch. "It will take at least another hour."

"You promised you'd take them on a tour of the local bells, sir."

"There's really no reason why you need to be here," Mary said. "I can ring you at Balliol as soon as the fix is in."

"I'll come when we have the fix," Dunworthy said, glaring at Mary. "Show them round the college and then give them lunch. That should take an hour."

Finch looked unhappy. "They're only here until four o'clock. They have a handbells concert tonight in Ely, and they're extremely eager to see Christ Church's bells."

"Then take them to Christ Church. Show them Great Tom. Take them up in St. Martin's tower. Or take them round to New College. I will be there as soon as I can."

Finch looked like he was going to ask something else and then changed his mind. "I'll tell them you'll be there within the hour, sir," he said and started for the door. Halfway there he stopped and came back. "I almost forgot, sir. The vicar called to ask if you'd be willing to read the Scripture for the Christmas Eve interchurch service. It's to be at St. Mary the Virgin's this year."

"Tell him yes," Dunworthy said, thankful that he'd given up on the change ringers. "And tell him we'll need to get into the belfry this afternoon so I can show these Americans the bells."

"Yes, sir," he said. "What about Iffley? Do you think I should take them out to Iffley? They've a very nice eleventh century."

"By all means," Dunworthy said. "Take them to Iffley. I will be back as soon as I can."

Finch opened his mouth and closed it again. "Yes, sir," he said, and went out the door to the accompaniment of "The Holly and the Ivy."

"You were a bit hard on him, don't you think?" Mary asked. "After all, Americans can be terrifying."

"He'll be back in five minutes asking me whether he should take them to Christ Church first," Dunworthy said. "The boy has absolutely no initiative."

"I thought you admired that in young people," Mary said wryly. "At any rate, he won't go running off to the Middle Ages."

The door opened, and "The Holly and the Ivy" started up again. "That'll be him wanting to know what he should give them for lunch."

"Boiled beef and overcooked vegetables," Mary said. "Americans love to tell stories about our dreadful cooking. Oh, dear."

Dunworthy looked toward the door. Gilchrist and Latimer stood there, haloed in the gray light from outside. Gilchrist was smiling broadly and saying something over the bells. Latimer struggled to collapse a large black umbrella.

"I suppose we've got to be civil and invite them to join us," Mary said.

Dunworthy reached for his coat. "Be civil if you like. I have no intention of listening to those two congratulating each other for having sent an inexperienced young girl into danger."

"You're sounding like you-know-who again," Mary said. "They wouldn't be here if anything had gone wrong. Perhaps Badri's got the fix."

"It's too soon for that," he said, but he sat back down again. "More likely he threw them out so he could get on with it."

Gilchrist had apparently caught sight of him as he stood up. He half-turned, as if to walk back out again, but Latimer was already nearly to the table. Gilchrist followed, no longer smiling.

"Is the fix in?" Dunworthy asked.

"The fix?" Gilchrist said vaguely.

"The fix," Dunworthy said. "The determination of where and when Kivrin is that makes it possible to pull her out again."

"Your tech said it would take at least an hour to determine the coordinates," Gilchrist said stuffily. "Does it always take him that long? He said he would come tell us when it was completed, but that the preliminary readings indicate that the drop went perfectly and that there was minimal slippage."

"What good news!" Mary said, sounding relieved. "Do come sit down. We've been waiting for the fix, too, and having a pint. Will you have something to drink?" she asked Latimer, who had got the umbrella down and was fastening the strap.

"Why, I believe I shall," Latimer said. "This is after all a great day. A drop of brandy, I think. Strong was the wyn, and wel to drinke us leste." He fumbled with the strap, getting it tangled in the ribs of the umbrella. "At last we have the chance to observe the loss of adjectival inflection and the shift to the nominative singular at first hand."

A great day, Dunworthy thought, but he felt relieved in spite of himself. The slippage had been his greatest worry. It was the most unpredictable part of a drop, even with parameter checks.

The theory was that it was the net's own safety and abort mechanism, Time's way of protecting itself from continuum paradoxes. The shift forward in time was supposed to prevent collisions or meetings or actions that would affect history, sliding the historian neatly past the critical moment when he might shoot Hitler or rescue the drowning child.

But net theory had never been able to determine what those critical moments were or how much slippage any given drop might produce. The parameter checks gave probabilities, but Gilchrist hadn't done any. Kivrin's drop might have been off by two weeks or a month. For all Gilchrist knew, she might have come through in April, in her fur-lined coat and winter kirtle.

But Badri had said minimal slippage. That meant Kivrin was off by no more than a few days, with plenty of time to find out the date and make the rendezvous.

"Mr. Gilchrist?" Mary was saying. "Can I get you a brandy?"

"No, thank you," he said.

Mary rummaged for another crumpled note and went over to the bar.

"Your tech seems to have done a passable job," Gilchrist said, turning to Dunworthy. "Mediaeval would like to arrange to borrow him for our next drop. We'll be sending Ms. Engle to 1355 to observe the effects of the Black Death. Contemporary accounts are completely unreliable, particularly in the area of mortality rates. The accepted figure of fifty million deaths is clearly inaccurate, and estimates that it killed one-third to one-half of Europe are obvious exaggerations. I'm eager to have Ms. Engle make trained observations."

"Aren't you being rather premature?" Dunworthy said. "Perhaps you should wait to see if Kivrin manages to survive this drop or at the very least gets through to 1320 safely."

Gilchrist's face took on its pinched look. "It strikes me as somewhat unjust that you constantly assume Mediaeval is incapable of carrying out a successful practicum," he said. "I assure you we have carefully thought out its every aspect. The method of Kivrin's arrival has been researched in every detail.

"Probability puts the frequency of travellers on the Oxford- Bath road as one every 1.6 hours, and it indicates a 92 per cent chance of her story of an assault being believed due to the frequency of such assaults. A wayfarer in Oxfordshire had a 42.5 per cent chance of being robbed in winter, 58.6 per cent in summer. That's an average, of course. The chances were greatly increased in parts of Otmoor and the Wychwood and on the smaller roads."

Dunworthy wondered how on earth Probability had arrived at those figures. The Domesday Book didn't list thieves, with the possible exception of the king's censustakers, who sometimes took more than the census, and the cutthroats of the time surely hadn't kept records of whom they had robbed and murdered, the locations marked neatly on a map. Proofs of deaths away from home had been entirely de facto: the person had failed to come back. And how many bodies had lain in the woods, undiscovered and unmarked by anyone?

"I assure you we have taken every precaution possible to protect Kivrin," Gilchrist said.

"Like parameter checks?" Dunworthy said. "And unmanneds and symmetry tests?"

Mary came back. "Here we are, Mr. Latimer," she said, putting a glass of brandy down in front of him. She hooked Latimer's wet umbrella over the back of the settle and sat down beside him.

"I was just assuring Mr. Dunworthy that every aspect of this drop was exhaustively researched," Gilchrist said. He picked up the plastic figurine of a wise man carrying a gilt box. "The brass-bound casket in her equipage is an exact reproduction of a jewel casket in the Ashmolean." He set the wise man down. "Even her name was painstakingly researched. Isabel is the woman's name listed most frequently in the Assize Rolls and the Regista Regum for 1295 through 1320.

"It is actually a corrupted form of Elizabeth," Latimer said, as if it were one of his lectures. "Its widespread use in England from the twelfth century is thought to trace its origin to Isavel of Angoulème, wife of King John."

"Kivrin told me she'd been given an actual identity, that Isabel de Beauvrier was one of the daughters of a Yorkshire nobleman," Dunworthy said.

"She was," Gilchrist said. "Gilbert de Beauvrier had four daughters in the appropriate age range, but their Christian names were not listed in the rolls. That was a common practice. Women were frequently listed only by surname and relationship, even in parish registers and on tombstones."

Mary put a restraining hand on Dunworthy's arm. "Why did you choose Yorkshire?" she asked quickly. "Won't that put her a long way from home?"

She's seven hundred years from home, Dunworthy thought, in a century that didn't value women enough to even list their names when they died.

"Ms. Engle was the one who suggested that," Gilchrist said. "She felt having the estate so distant would ensure that no attempt would be made to contact the family."

Or to cart her back to them, miles from the drop. Kivrin had suggested it. She had probably suggested the whole thing, searching through exchequer rolls and church registers for a family with a daughter the right age and no court connections, a family far enough up into the East Riding that the snow and the impassable roads would make it impossible for a messenger to ride and tell the family a missing daughter had been found.

"Mediaeval has given the same careful attention to every detail of this drop," Gilchrist said, "even to the pretext for her journey, her brother's illness. We were careful to ascertain that there had been an outbreak of influenza in that section of Gloucestershire in 1319, even though illness was abundant during the Middle Ages, and he could just as easily have contracted cholera or blood poisoning."

"James," Mary said warningly.

"Ms. Engle's costume was hand-sewn. The blue cloth for her dress was hand-dyed with woad using a mediaeval recipe. And Ms. Montoya has exhaustively researched the village of Skendgate where Kivrin will spend the two weeks."

"If she makes it there," Dunworthy said.

"James," Mary said.

"What precautions have you taken to ensure that the friendly traveller who happens along every 1.6 hours doesn't decide to cart her off to the convent at Godstow or a brothel in London or see her come through and decide she's a witch ? What precautions have you taken to ensure that the friendly traveller is in fact friendly and not one of the cutthroats who waylay 42.5 per cent of all passersby?"

"Probability indicated there was no more than a 0.04 per cent chance of someone being at the location at the time of the drop."

"Oh, look, here's Badri already," Mary said, standing up and putting herself between Dunworthy and Gilchrist. "That was quick work, Badri. Did you get the fix all right?"

Badri had come away without his coat. His lab uniform was wet and his face was pinched with cold. "You look half-frozen," Mary said. "Come and sit down." She motioned to the empty place on the settle next to Latimer. "I'll fetch you a brandy."

"Did you get the fix?" Dunworthy said.

He was not only wet, he was drenched. "Yes," he said, and his teeth started to chatter.

"Good man," Gilchrist said, standing up and clapping him on the shoulder. "I thought you said it would take an hour. This calls for a toast. Have you any champagne?" he called out to the barman, clapped Badri on the shoulder again, and went over to the bar.

Badri stood looking after him, rubbing his arms and shivering. He seemed inattentive, almost dazed.

"You definitely got the fix?" Dunworthy asked.

"Yes," he said, still looking after Gilchrist.

Mary came back to the table, carrying the brandy. "This should warm you up a bit," she said, handing it to him. "There. Drink it down. Doctor's orders."

He frowned at the glass as if he didn't know what it was. His teeth were still chattering.

"What is it?" Dunworthy said. "Kivrin's all right, isn't she?"

"Kivrin," he said, still staring at the glass, and then seemed suddenly to come to himself. He set the glass down. "I need you to come," he said, and started to push his way back through the tables to the door.

"What's happened?" Dunworthy said, standing up. The creche figures fell over, and one of the sheep rolled across the table and fell off.

Badri opened the door on the carillon's clanging of "Good Christian Men, Rejoice."

"Badri, wait, we're to have a toast," Gilchrist said, coming back to the table with a bottle and a tangle of glasses.

Dunworthy reached for his coat.

"What is it?" Mary said, reaching for her shopping bag. "Didn't he get the fix?"

Dunworthy didn't answer. He grabbed up his overcoat and took off after Badri. The tech was already halfway down the street, pushing his way through the Christmas shoppers as if they weren't even there. It was raining hard, but Badri seemed oblivious to that, too. Dunworthy pulled his overcoat more or less on and shoved into the crowd.

Something had gone wrong. There had been slippage after all, or the first-year apprentice had made an error in the calculations. Perhaps something had gone wrong with the net itself. But it had safeties and layereds and aborts. If anything had gone wrong with the net, Kivrin simply wouldn't have gone through. And Badri had said he'd got the fix.

It had to be the slippage. It was the only thing that could have gone wrong and the drop still take place.

Ahead Badri crossed the street, narrowly avoiding a bicycle. Dunworthy barged between two women carrying shopping bags even larger than Mary's and over a white terrier on a leash, and caught sight of him again two doors up.

"Badri!" he called. The tech half-turned and crashed straight into a middle-aged woman with a large flowered umbrella.

The woman was bent against the rain, holding the umbrella nearly in front of her, and she obviously didn't see Badri either. The umbrella, which was covered with lavender violets, seemed to explode upward, and then fell top-down onto the pavement. Badri, still plunging blindly ahead, nearly fell over it.

"Watch where you're going, won't you?" the woman said angrily, grabbing at the edge of the umbrella. "This is hardly the place to run, then, is it?"

Badri looked at her and then at the umbrella with the same dazed look he had had in the pub. "Sorry," Dunworthy could see him say and bend to pick it up. The two of them seemed to wrestle over the expanse of violets for a moment before Badri got hold of the handle and righted the umbrella. He handed it to the woman, whose heavy face was red with rage or the cold rain or both.

"Sorry?!" she said, raising the handle over her head as if she were going to strike him with it. "Is that all you've got to say?"

He put his hand uncertainly up to his forehead and then, as he had in the pub, seemed to remember where he was and took off again, practically running. He turned in at Brasenose's gate, and Dunworthy followed, across the quad, in a side door to the laboratory, down a passage, and into the net area. Badri was already at the console, bending over it and frowning at the screen.

Dunworthy had been afraid it would be awash with garbage, or worse, blank, but it showed the orderly columns of figures and matrices of a fix.

"You got the fix?" Dunworthy said, panting.

"Yes," Badri said. He turned and looked at Dunworthy. He had stopped frowning, but there was an odd, abstracted look on his face, as if he were trying hard to concentrate.

"When was…" he said and began to shiver. His voice trailed off as if he had forgotten what he was going to say.

The thin-glass door banged, and Gilchrist and Mary came in, with Latimer at their heels, fumbling with his umbrella. "What is it? What's happened?" Mary said.

"When was what, Badri?" Dunworthy demanded.

"I got the fix," Badri said. He turned and looked at the screen.

"Is this it?" Gilchrist said, leaning over his shoulder. "What do all these symbols mean? You'll need to translate for us laymen."

"When was what?" Dunworthy repeated.

Badri put his hand up to his forehead. "There's something wrong," he said.

"What?" Dunworthy shouted. "Slippage? Was there slippage?"

"Slippage?" he said, shivering so hard he could hardly get the word out.

"Badri," Mary said. "Are you all right?"

Badri got the odd, abstracted look again, as if he were considering the answer.

"No," he said, and pitched forward across the console.

CHAPTER THREE

She heard the bell as she came through. It sounded thin and tinny, like the piped-in bell music they were playing in the High for Christmas. The control room was supposed to be soundproof, but every time someone opened the anteroom door from outside, she had been able to hear the faint, ghostly sound of Christmas carols.

Dr. Ahrens had come in first, and then Mr. Dunworthy, and both times Kivrin had been convinced they were there to tell her she wasn't going after all. Dr. Ahrens had nearly cancelled the drop in hospital, when Kivrin's antiviral inoculation had swelled up into a giant red welt on the underside of her arm. "You're not going anywhere until the swelling goes down," Dr. Ahrens had said, and refused to discharge her from hospital. Kivrin's arm still itched, but she wasn't about to tell Dr. Ahrens that because she might tell Mr. Dunworthy, who had been acting horrified ever since he found out she was going.

I told him two years ago I wanted to go, Kivrin thought. Two years ago, and when she'd gone to show him her costume yesterday, he was still trying to talk her out of it.

"I don't like the way Mediaeval's running this drop," he'd said. And even if they were taking the proper precautions, a young woman has no business going to the Middle Ages alone."

"It's all worked out," she'd told him. "I'm Isabel de Beauvrier, daughter of Gilbert de Beauvrier, a nobleman who lived in the East Riding from l276 to 1332."

"And what was the daughter of a Yorkshire nobleman doing on the Oxford-Bath road alone?"

"I wasn't. I was with all my servants, travelling to Evesham to fetch my brother, who's lying ill in the monastery there, and we were set upon by robbers."

"By robbers," he had said, blinking at her through his spectacles.

"I got the idea from you. You said young women didn't travel anywhere alone in the Middle Ages, that they were always attended. So I was attended, but my servants bolted when we were attacked, and the robbers took the horses and all my goods. Mr. Gilchrist thinks it's a plausible story. He said the probability of — "

"It's a plausible story because the Middle Ages were full of cutthroats and thieves."

"I know," she'd said impatiently, "and disease carriers and marauding knights and other dangerous types. Weren't there any nice people in the Middle Ages?"

"They were all busy burning witches at the stake."

She had decided she'd better change the subject. "I came to show you my costume," she'd said, turning slowly so he could see her blue kirtle and white fur-lined cloak. "My hair will be down for the drop."

"You have no business wearing white to the Middle Ages," he'd said. "It will only get dirty."

He hadn't been any better this morning. He had paced the narrow observation area like an expectant father. She had worried the whole morning that he would suddenly try to call a halt to the whole proceeding.

There had been delays and more delays. Mr. Gilchrist had had to tell her all over again how the Domesday Book worked, as if she were a first-year student. Not one of them had any faith in her, except possibly Badri, and even he had been maddeningly careful, measuring and remeasuring the net area and once erasing an entire series of coordinates and entering it again.

She had thought the time would never come for her to get into position, and after she had, it was even worse, lying there with her eyes closed, wondering what was going on. Latimer told Gilchrist he was worried about the spelling of Isabel they had chosen, as if anyone back then had known how to read, let alone spell. Montoya came and stood over her and told her the way to identify Skendgate was by its church's frescoes of the Last Judgment, something she had told Kivrin at least a dozen times before.

Someone, she thought Badri because he was the only one who didn't have any instructions for her, bent and moved her arm a little in toward her body and tugged at the skirt of her robe. The floor was hard, and something was digging into her side just below her ribs. Mr. Gilchrist said something, and the bell started up again.

Please, Kivrin thought, please, wondering if Dr. Ahrens had suddenly decided Kivrin needed another inoculation or if Dunworthy had raced off to the History Faculty and gotten them to change the rating back to a ten.

Whoever it was must be holding the door open — she could still hear the bell, though she couldn't make out the tune. It wasn't a tune. It was a slow, steady tolling that paused and then went on, and Kivrin thought, I'm through.

She was lying on her left side, her legs sprawled awkwardly as if she had been knocked down by the men who had robbed her, and her arm half-flung over her face to ward off the blow that had sent the blood trickling down the side of her face. The position of her arm should make it possible for her to open her eyes without being seen, but she didn't open them yet. She lay still, trying to listen.

Except for the bell, there was no sound at all. If she were lying on a fourteenth-century roadside, there should be birds and squirrels at least. They had probably been shocked into silence by her sudden appearance or by the net's halo, which left shimmering frostlike particles in the air for several minutes.

After a long minute, a bird twittered, and then another one. Something rustled nearby, then stopped and rustled again. A fourteenth-century squirrel, or a wood mouse. There was a thinner rustle which was probably wind in the branches of the trees, though she couldn't feel any breeze on her face, and above it, from very far away, the distant sound of the bell.

She wondered why it was tolling. It could be ringing vespers. Or matins. Badri had told her he didn't have any idea how much slippage there would be. He had wanted to postpone the drop while he ran a series of checks, but Mr. Gilchrist had said Probability had predicted 6.4 hours maximum slippage.

She didn't know what time she had come through. It had been a quarter to eleven when she came out of prep — she had seen Ms. Montoya looking at her digital and asked her what time it was — but she had no idea how long it had taken after that. It had seemed like hours.

The drop had been scheduled for noon. If she had come through on time and Probability was right about the slippage, it would be six o'clock in the evening, which was too late for vespers. And if it were vespers, why did the bell go on tolling?

It could be tolling for mass, or for a funeral or a wedding. Bells had rung almost constantly in the Middle Ages — to warn of invasions or fires, to help a lost child find its way back to the village, even to ward off thunderstorms. It could be ringing for any reason at all.

If Mr. Dunworthy were here, he'd be convinced it was a funeral. "Life expectancy in 1300 was thirty-eight years," he had told her when she first said she wanted to go to the Middle Ages, "and you only lived that long if you survived cholera and smallpox and blood poisoning, and if you didn't eat rotten meat or drink polluted water or get trampled by a horse. Or get burned at the stake for witchcraft."

Or freeze to death, Kivrin thought. She was beginning to feel stiff with cold though she had been lying there only a little while. Whatever was poking her in the side felt like it had gone through her ribcage and was now puncturing her lung. Mr. Gilchrist had told her to lie there for several minutes and then stagger to her feet, as if coming out of unconsciousness. Kivrin had thought several minutes was hardly enough, considering Probability's assessment of the number of people on the road. It would surely be more than several minutes before a traveller happened along, and she was unwilling to give up the advantage her appearing to be unconscious gave her.

And it was an advantage, in spite of Mr. Dunworthy's idea that half of England would converge on an unconscious woman to rape her while the other half waited nearby with the stake they intended to burn her at. If she were conscious, her rescuers would ask her questions. If she were out cold, they would discuss her and other things besides. They would talk about where to take her and speculate on who she might be and where she might have come from, speculations with a good deal more information in them than "Who are you?" had.

But now she felt an overwhelming urge to do what Mr. Gilchrist had suggested — get up and look around. The ground was cold, her side hurt, and her head was starting to throb in time with the bell. Dr. Ahrens had told her that would happen. Travelling this far into the past would give her symptoms of time lag — headache, insomnia, and a general botch-up of the Circadian rhythms. She felt so cold. Was that a symptom of the time-lag, too, or was the ground she was lying on cold enough to penetrate her fur-lined cloak this quickly? Or was the slippage worse than the tech had thought and it was really the middle of the night?

She wondered if she were lying in the road. If she were, she should certainly not stay there. A fast horse or the wagon that had made the ruts might roll right over her in the dark.

Bells don't ring in the middle of the night, she told herself, and there was too much light filtering through her closed eyelids for it to be dark. But if the bell she could hear was a vespers bell, that would mean it was getting dark, and she had better get up and look around before night fell.

She listened all over again, to the birds, to the wind in the branches, to a steady scraping sound. The bell stopped, the echo of it ringing in the air, and there was a little sound, like an intaken breath or the shuffle of a foot on soft dirt, very close.

Kivrin tensed, hoping the involuntary movement didn't show through her concealing cloak, and waited, but there were no footsteps or voices. And no birds. There was someone, or something, standing over her. She was sure of it. She could hear its breathing, feel its breath on her. It stood there for a long time, not moving. After what seemed like an endless space of time, Kivrin realized she was holding her own breath and let it out slowly. She listened, but now she couldn't hear anything over the throbbing of her own pulse. She took a deep, sighing breath, and moaned.

Nothing. Whatever it was didn't move, didn't make a sound, and Mr. Dunworthy had been right: pretending to be unconscious was no way to come into a century where wolves still prowled the forests. And bears. The birds abruptly began to sing again, which meant either it was not a wolf or the wolf had gone away. Kivrin went through the ritual of listening again, and opened her eyes.

She couldn't see anything but her sleeve, which was against her nose, but just the act of opening her eyes made her head ache worse. She closed her eyes, whimpered, and stirred, moving her arm enough so that when she opened her eyes again she would be able to see something. She moaned again and fluttered her eyes open.

There was no one standing over her, and it wasn't the middle of the night. The sky overhead through the tangled branches of the trees was a pale grayish-blue. She sat up and looked around.

Almost the first thing Mr. Dunworthy had said to her that first time she had told him she wanted to go to the Middle Ages was, "They were filthy and disease-ridden, the muckhole of history, and the sooner you get rid of any fairy-tale notions you have about them, the better."

And he was right. Of course he was right. But here she was, in a fairy wood. She and the wagon and all the rest of it had come through in a little open space too small and shadowed to be called a glade. Tall, thick trees arched above and over it.

She was lying under an oak tree. She could see a few scalloped leaves in the bare branches high above. The oak was full of nests, though the birds had stopped again, traumatized by her movement. The underbrush was thick, a mat of dead leaves and dry weeds that should have been soft but wasn't. The hard thing Kivrin had been lying on was the cap of an acorn. White mushrooms spotted with red clustered near the gnarled roots of the oak tree. They, and everything else in the little glade — the tree trunks, the wagon, the ivy — glittered with the frosty condensation of the halo.

It was obvious that no one had been here, had ever been here, and equally obvious that this wasn't the Oxford-Bath road and that no traveller was going to happen along in 1.6 hours. Or ever. The mediaeval maps they'd used to determine the site of the drop had apparently been as inaccurate as Mr. Dunworthy'd said they were. The road was obviously further north than the maps had indicated, and she was south of it, in Wychwood Forest.

"Ascertain your exact spatial and temporal location immediately," Dr. Gilchrist had said. She wondered how she was supposed to do that — ask the birds? They were too far above her for her to see what species they were, and the mass extinctions hadn't started until the 1970's. Short of them being passenger pigeons or dodoes, their presence wouldn't point to any particular time or place, anyway.

She started to sit up, and the birds exploded into a wild flurry of flapping wings. She stayed still until the noise subsided and then rose to her knees. The flapping started all over again. She clasped her hands, pressing the flesh of her palms together and closing her eyes so if the traveller who was supposed to find her happened by, it would look like she was praying.

"I'm here," she said and then stopped. If she reported that she had landed in the middle of a wood, instead of on the Oxford- Bath road, it would just confirm what Mr. Dunworthy was thinking, that Mr. Gilchrist hadn't known what he was doing and that she couldn't take care of herself, and then she remembered that it wouldn't make any difference, that he would never hear her report until she was safely back.

If she got safely back, which she wouldn't if she was still in this wood when night fell. She stood up and looked around. It was either late afternoon or very early morning, she couldn't tell in the woods, and she might not be able to tell by the sun's position even when she got where she could see the sky. Mr. Dunworthy had told her that people sometimes stayed hopelessly turned around for their entire stay in the past. He had made her learn to sight using shadows, but she had to know what time it was to do that, and there was no time to waste on wondering which direction was which. She had to find her way out of here. The forest was almost entirely in shadow.

There was no sign of a road or even a path. Kivrin circled the wagon and boxes, looking for an opening in the trees. The woods seemed thinner to what felt like the west, but when she went that way, looking back every few steps to make sure she could still see the weathered blue of the wagon's cloth covering, it was only a stand of birches, their white trunks giving an illusion of space. She went back to the wagon and started out again in the opposite direction, even though the woods looked darker that way.

The road was only a hundred yards away. Kivrin clambered over a fallen log and through a thicket of drooping willows, and looked out onto the road. A highway, Probability had called it. It didn't look like a highway. It didn't even look like a road. It looked more like a footpath. Or a cowpath. So these were the wonderful highways of fourteenth-century England, the highways that were opening trade and broadening horizons.

The road was barely wide enough for a wagon, though it was obvious that wagons had used it, or at least a wagon. The road was rutted into deep grooves, and leaves had drifted across and into the ruts. Black water stood in some of them and along the road's edge, and a skim of ice had formed on some of the puddles.

Kivrin was standing at the bottom of a depression. The road climbed steadily up in both directions from where she was, and to what felt like the north, the trees stopped halfway up the hill. She turned around to look back. It was possible to catch a glimpse of the wagon from here — the merest patch of blue-but no one would. The road dived here into woods on either side, and narrowed, making it a perfect spot in which to be waylaid by cutthroats and thieves.

It was just the place to lend credibility to her story, but they would never see her, hurrying through the narrow stretch of road, or if they did catch sight of the barely visible corner of blue, they would think it was someone lying in wait and spur their horses into flight.

It came to Kivrin suddenly that, lurking there in the thicket, she looked more like one of those cutthroats than like an innocent maiden who'd been recently coshed on the head.

She stepped out onto the road and put her hand up to her temple. "O holpen me, for I am ful sore in drede!" she cried.

The interpreter was supposed to automatically translate what she said into Middle English, but Mr. Dunworthy had insisted she memorize her first speeches. She and Mr. Latimer had worked on the pronunciation all yesterday afternoon.

"Holpen me, for I haf been y-robbed by fel thefes," she said.

She considered falling down on the road, but now that she was out in the open she could see it was even later than she'd guessed, nearly sundown, and if she was going to see what lay at the top of the hill, she had better do it now. First, though, she needed to mark the rendezvous with some kind of sign.

There was nothing distinctive about any of the willows along the road. She looked for a rock to lay at the spot where she could still glimpse the wagon, but there wasn't a sign of one in the rough weeds at the edge of the road. Finally she clambered back through the thicket, catching her hair and her cloak on the willow branches, got the little brass-bound casket that was a copy of one in the Ashmolean, and carried it back to the edge of the road.

It wasn't perfect — it was small enough for someone passing by to carry off — but she was only going as far as the top of the hill. If she decided to walk to the nearest village, she'd come back and make a more permanent sign. And there weren't going to be any passersby any time soon. The steep sides of the ruts were frozen hard, the leaves were undisturbed, and the skim of ice on the puddles was unbroken. Nobody had been on the road all day, all week maybe.

She straightened weeds up around the chest to hide it and laid a branch over it, and then started up the hill. The road, except for the frozen mudhole at the bottom, was smoother than Kivrin had expected, and pounded flat, which meant horses used it a good deal in spite of its empty look.

It was an easy climb, but Kivrin felt tired before she had gone even a few steps, and her temple began to throb again. She hoped her time-lag symptoms wouldn't get worse — she could already see that she was a long way from anywhere. Or maybe that was just an illusion. She still hadn't "ascertained her exact temporal location," and this lane, this wood had nothing about them that said positively 1320.

The only signs of civilization at all were those ruts, which meant she could be in any time after the invention of the wheel and before paved roads, and not even definitely then. There were still lanes exactly like this not five miles from Oxford, lovingly preserved by the National Trust for the Japanese and American tourists.

She might not have gone anywhere at all, and on the other side of this hill she would find the M-1 or Ms. Montoya's dig, or an SDI installation. I would hate to ascertain my temporal location by being struck by a bicycle or an automobile, she thought, and stepped gingerly to the side of the road. But if I haven't gone anywhere, why do I have this wretched headache and feel like I can't walk another step?

She reached the top of the hill and stopped, out of breath. There was no need to have gotten out of the road. No car had been driven along it as yet. Or horse and buggy either. And she was, as she had thought, a long way from anywhere. There weren't any trees here, and she could see for miles. The wood the wagon was in came halfway up the hill and then straggled south and west for a long way. If she had come through farther into the trees, she would have been lost.

There were trees far to the east, too, following a river that she could catch occasional silver-blue glimpses of — the Thames? the Cherwell? — and little clumps and lines and blobs of trees dotting all the country between, more trees than she could imagine ever having been in England. The Domesday Book in 1086 had reported no more than 15 per cent of the land wooded, and Probability had estimated that lands cleared for fields and settlements would have reduced that to 12 per cent by the thirteen hundreds. They, or the men who had written the Domesday Book, had underestimated the numbers badly. There were trees everywhere.

Kivrin couldn't see any villages. The woods were bare, their branches gray-black in the late afternoon light, and she should be able to see the churches and manor houses through them, but she couldn't see anything that looked like a settlement.

There had to be settlements, though, because there were fields, and they were narrow strip fields that were definitely mediaeval. There were sheep in one of the fields, and that was mediaeval, too, but she couldn't see anyone tending them. Far off to the east there was a square gray blur that had to be Oxford. Squinting, she was almost able to make out the walls and the squat shape of Carfax tower, though she couldn't see any sign of the towers of St. Frideswide's or Osney in the fading light.

The light was definitely fading. The sky up here was a pale bluish-lavender with a hint of pink near the western horizon, and she wasn't turned around because even while she had stood here, it had gotten darker.

Kivrin crossed herself and then folded her hands in prayer, bringing her steepled fingers close to her face. "Well, Mr. Dunworthy, I'm here. I seem to be in the right place, more or less. I'm not right on the Oxford-Bath road. I'm about five hundred yards south of it on a side road. I can see Oxford. It looks like it's ten miles away."

She gave her estimate of what season and time of day it was, and described what she thought she could see, and then stopped and pressed her face against her hands. She should tell the Domesday Book what she intended to do, but she didn't know what that was. There should be a dozen villages on the rolling plain west of Oxford, but she couldn't see any of them, even though the cultivated fields that belonged to them were there, and the road.

There was no one on the road. It curved down the other side of the hill and disappeared immediately into a thick copse, but half a mile farther on was the highway where the drop should have landed her, wide and flat and pale green, and where this road obviously led. There was no one on the highway for as far as she could see.

Off to her left and halfway across the plain toward Oxford she caught a glimpse of distant movement, but it was only a line of cows heading home to a huddle of trees that must hide a village. It wasn't the village Ms. Montoya had wanted her to look for — Skendgate was south of the highway.

Unless she was in the wrong place altogether, and she wasn't. That was definitely Oxford there to the east, and the Thames curving away south of it down to the brownish-gray haze that had to be London, but none of that told her where the village was. It might be between here and the highway, just out of sight, or it might be back the other way, or on another side road or path altogether. There was no time to go and see.

It was rapidly getting darker. In another half hour there might be lights to go by, but she couldn't afford to wait. The pink had already darkened to lavendar in the west, and the blue overhead was almost purple. And it was getting colder. The wind was picking up. The folds of her cloak flapped behind her, and she pulled it tighter around her. She didn't want to spend a December night in a forest with a splitting headache and a pack of wolves, but she didn't want to spend it lying out on the cold- looking highway either, hoping for someone to come along.

She could start for Oxford, but there was no way she could reach it before dark. If she could just see a village, any village, she could spend the night there and look for Ms. Montoya's village later. She looked back down the road she had come up, trying to catch a glimpse of light or smoke from a hearth or something, but there wasn't anything. Her teeth began to chatter.

And the bells began to ring. The Carfax bell first, sounding just like it always had even though it must have been recast at least three times since fifteen hundred, and then, before the first stroke had died away, the others, as if they had been waiting for a signal from Oxford. They were ringing vespers, of course, calling the people in from the fields, beckoning them to stop work and come to prayers.

And telling her where the villages were. The bells were chiming almost in unison, yet she could hear each one separately, some so distant only the final, deeper echo reached her. There, along that line of trees, and there, and there. The village the cows were heading to was there, behind that low ridge. The cows began to walk faster at the sound of the bell.

There were two villages practically under her nose — one just the other side of the highway, the other several fields away, next to the little tree-lined stream. Skendgate, Ms. Montoya's village, lay where she thought it did, back the way she had come, past the frozen ruts and over the low hill now more than two miles.

Kivrin clasped her hands. "I just found out where the village is," she said, wondering if the sounds of the bells would make it onto the Domesday Book. "It's on this side road. I'm going to go fetch the wagon and drag it out onto the road, and then I'm going to stagger into the village before it gets dark and collapse on somebody's doorstep."

One of the bells was far away to the southwest and so faint she could hardly hear it. She wondered if it were the bell she had heard earlier, and why it had been ringing. Maybe Dunworthy was right, and it was a funeral. "I'm all right, Mr. Dunworthy," she said into her hands. "Don't worry about me. I've been here over an hour and nothing bad has happened so far."

The bells died away slowly, the bell from Oxford leading the way again, though, impossibly, its sound hung longer on the air than any of the others. The sky turned violet-blue, and a star came out in the southeast. Kivrin's hands were still folded in prayer. "It's beautiful here."

Well, Mr. Dunworthy, I'm here. I seem to be in the right place, more or less. I'm not right on the Oxford-Bath road. I'm about five hundred yards south of it on a side road. I can see Oxford. It's about ten miles away.

I don't know exactly when I came through, but if it was noon as scheduled, there's been about four hours' slippage. It's the right time of year. The leaves are mostly off the trees, but the ones on the ground are still more or less intact, and only about a third of the fields have been plowed under. I won't be able to tell my exact temporal location until I reach the village and can ask someone what day it is. You probably know more about where and when I am than I do, or at least you will after you've done the fix.

But I know I'm in the right century. I can see fields from the little hill I'm on. They're classic mediaeval strip fields, with the rounded ends where the oxen turn. The pastures are bounded with hedges, and about a third of them are Saxon dead hedges, while the rest are Norman hawthorn. Probability put the ratio in 1300 at twenty-five to seventy-five per cent, but that was based on Suffolk, which is farther east.

To the south and west is forest — Wychwood?-all deciduous as far as I can tell. To the east I can see the Thames. I can almost see London, even though I know that's impossible. In 1320 it would have been over fifty miles away, wouldn't it, instead of only twenty. I still think I can see it. I can definitely see the city walls of Oxford, and Carfax tower.

It's beautiful here. It doesn't feel as though I were seven hundred years away from you. Oxford is right there, within walking distance, and I cannot get the idea out of my head that if I walked down this hill and into town I would find all of you, still standing there in the lab at Brasenose waiting for the fix, Badri frowning at the displays and Ms. Montoya fretting to get back to her dig, and you, Mr. Dunworthy, clucking like an old mother hen. I don't feel separated from you at all, or even very far away.

CHAPTER FOUR

Badri's hand came away from his forehead as he fell, and his elbow hit the console and broke his fall for a second, and Dunworthy glanced anxiously at the screen, afraid he might have hit one of the keys and scrambled the display. Badri crumpled to the floor.

Latimer and Gilchrist didn't try to grab him either. Latimer didn't even seem to realize anything had gone wrong. Mary grabbed for Badri immediately, but she was standing behind the others and only caught a fold of his sleeve. She was instantly on her knees beside him, straightening him out onto his back and jamming an earphone into her ear.

She rummaged in her shopping bag, came up with a bleeper, and held the call button down for a full five seconds. "Badri?" she said loudly, and it was only then that Dunworthy realized how deathly silent it was in the room. Gilchrist was standing where he had been when Badri fell. He looked furious. I assure you we've considered every possible contingency. He obviously hadn't considered this one.

Mary let go of the bleeper button and shook Badri's shoulders gently. There was no response. She tilted his head far back and bent over his face, her ear practically in his open mouth and her head turned so she could see his chest. He hadn't stopped breathing. Dunworthy could see his chest rising and falling, and Mary obviously could, too. She raised her head immediately, already pressing on the bleeper, and pressed two fingers against the side of his neck, held them there for what seemed an endless time, and then raised the bleeper to her mouth.

"We're at Brasenose. In the history laboratory," she said into the bleeper. "Five-two. Collapse. Syncope. No evidence of seizure." She took her hand off the call button and pulled Badri's eyelids up.

"Syncope?" Gilchrist said. "What's that? What's happened?"

She glanced irritably at him. "He's fainted," she said. "Get me my kit," she said to Dunworthy. "In the shopping bag."

She had knocked the bag over getting the bleeper out. It lay on its side. Dunworthy fumbled through the boxes and parcels, found a hard plastic box that looked the right size, and snapped it open. It was full of red and green foil Christmas crackers. He jammed it back in the bag.

"Come along," Mary said, unbuttoning Badri's lab shirt. "I haven't got all day."

"I can't find — " Dunworthy began.

She snatched the bag away and upended it. The crackers rolled everywhere. The box with the muffler came open, and the muffler fell out. Mary grabbed up her handbag, zipped it open, and pulled out a large flat wallet. She opened it and took out a tach bracelet. She fastened the bracelet around his wrist and turned to look at the blood pressure reads on the kit's monitor.

The wave form didn't tell Dunworthy anything and he couldn't tell from Mary's reaction what she thought it meant. Badri hadn't stopped breathing, his heart hadn't stopped beating, and he wasn't bleeding anywhere that Dunworthy could see. Perhaps he had only fainted. But people didn't simply fall over, except in books or the vids. He must be injured or ill. He had seemed to be almost in shock when he came into the pub. Could he have been struck by a bicycle like the one that had just missed hitting Dunworthy, and not realized at first that he was injured? That would account for his disconnected manner, his peculiar agitation.

But not for the fact that he had come away without his coat, that he had said, "I need you to come," that he had said, "There's something wrong."

Dunworthy turned and looked at the console screen. It still showed the matrices it had when the tech collapsed. He couldn't read them, but it looked like a normal fix, and Badri had said Kivrin had gone through all right. There's something wrong.

With her hands flat, Mary was patting Badri's arms, the sides of his chest, down his legs. Badri's eyelids fluttered, and then his eyes closed again.

"Do you know if Badri had any health problems?"

"He's Mr. Dunworthy's tech," Gilchrist said accusingly. "From Balliol. He was on loan to us," he added, making it sound like Dunworthy was somehow responsible for this, had arranged the tech's collapse to sabotage the project.

"I don't know of any health problems," Dunworthy said. "He'd have had a full screen and seasonals at the start of term."

Mary looked dissatisfied. She put on her stethoscope and listened to his heart for a long minute, rechecked the blood pressure reads, took his pulse again. "And you don't know anything of a history of epilepsy? Diabetes?"

"No," Dunworthy said.

"Has he ever used drugs or illegal endorphins?" She didn't wait for him to answer. She pressed the button on her bleeper again. "Ahrens here. Pulse one ten. BP one hundred over sixty. I'm doing a blood screen." She tore open a gauze wipe, swabbed at the arm without the bracelet, tore open another packet.

Drugs or illegal endorphins. That would account for his agitated manner, his disconnected speech. But if he used, it would have shown up on the beginning-of-term screen, and he couldn't possibly have worked the elaborate calculations of the net if he was using. There's something wrong.

Mary swabbed at the arm again and slid a cannula under the skin. Badri's eyelids fluttered open.

"Badri," Mary said. "Can you hear me?" She reached in her coat pocket and produced a bright red capsule. "I need to give you your temp," she said and held it to his lips, but he didn't give any indication he'd heard.

She put the capsule back in her pocket and began rummaging in the kit. "Tell me when the reads come up on that cannula," she said to Dunworthy, taking everything out of the wallet and then putting it back in. She laid the kit down and started through her handbag. "I thought I had a skin-temp thermometer with me," she said.

"The reads are up," Dunworthy said.

Mary picked her bleeper up and began reading the numbers into it.

Badri opened his eyes. "You have to…" he said, and closed them again. "So cold," he murmured.

Dunworthy took off his overcoat, but it was too wet to lay over him. He looked helplessly around the room for something to cover him with. If this had happened before Kivrin left they could have used that blanket of a cloak she'd been wearing. Badri's jacket was wadded underneath the console. He laid it sideways over him.

"Freezing," Badri murmured, and began to shiver.

Mary, still reciting reads into the bleeper, looked sharply across at him. "What did he say?"

Badri murmured something else and then said clearly, "Headache."

"Headache," Mary said. "Do you feel nauseated?"

He moved his head a little to indicate no. "When was — " he said and clutched at her arm.

She put her hand over his, frowned, and pressed her other hand to his forehead.

"He's got a fever," she said.

"There's something wrong," Badri said, and closed his eyes. His hand let go of her arm and dropped back to the floor.

Mary picked his limp arm up, looked at the reads, and felt his forehead again. "Where is that damned skin-temp?" she said, and began rummaging through the wallet again.

The bleeper chimed. "They're here," she said. "Somebody go show them the way in." She patted Badri's chest. "Just lie still."

They were already at the door when Dunworthy opened it. Two medics from Infirmary pushed through carrying kits the size of steamer trunks.

"Immediate transport," Mary said before they could get the trunks open. She got up off her knees. "Fetch the stretcher," she said to the female medic. "And get me a skin-temp and a sucrose drip."

"I assumed Twentieth Century's personnel had been screened for dorphs and drugs," Gilchrist said.

One of the medics knocked past him with a pump feed.

"Mediaeval would never allow — " He stepped out of the way as the other one came in with the stretcher.

"Is this a drugover?" the male medic said, glancing at Gilchrist.

"No," Mary said. "Did you bring the skin-temp?"

"We don't have one," he said, plugging the feed into the shunt. "Just a thermistor and temps. We'll have to wait till we get him in." He held the plastic bag over his head for a minute till the grav feed kicked the motor on and then taped the bag to Badri's chest.

The female medic took the jacket of Badri and covered him with a gray blanket. "Cold," Badri said. "You have to — "

"What do I have to do?" Dunworthy said.

"The fix — "

"One, two," the medics said in unison, and rolled him onto the stretcher.

"James, Mr. Gilchrist, I'll need you to come to hospital with me to fill out his admission forms," Mary said. "And I'll need his medical history. One of you can come in the ambulance, and the other follow."

Dunworthy didn't wait to argue with Gilchrist over which of them should ride in the ambulance. He clambered in and up next to Badri, who was breathing hard, as if being carried on the stretcher had been too much exertion.

"Badri," he said urgently, "you said something was wrong. Did you mean something went wrong with the fix?"

"I got the fix," Badri said, frowning.

The male medic, attaching Badri to a daunting array of displays, looked irritated.

"Did the apprentice get the coordinates wrong? It's important, Badri. Did he make an error in the remote coordinates?"

Mary climbed into the ambulance.

"As Acting Head, I feel I should be the one to accompany the patient in the ambulance," Dunworthy heard Gilchrist say.

"Meet us in Casualties at Infirmary," Mary said and pulled the doors to. "Have you gotten a temp yet?" she asked the medic.

"Yes," he said. "39.5 C. BP 90 over 55, pulse 115."

"Was there an error in the coordinates?" Dunworthy said to Badri.

"Are you set back there?" the driver said over the intercom.

"Yes," Mary said. "Code one."

"Did Puhalski make an error in the locational coordinates for the remote?"

"No," Badri said. He grabbed at the lapel of Dunworthy's coat.

"Is it the slippage then?"

"I must have — " Badri said. "So worried."

The sirens blared, drowning out the rest of what he said. "You must have what?" Dunworthy shouted over their up and down klaxon.

"Something wrong," Badri said, and fainted again.

Something wrong. It had to be the slippage. Except for the coordinates, it was the only thing that could go wrong with a drop that wouldn't abort it, and he had said the locational coordinates were right. How much slippage, though? Badri had told him it might be as much as two weeks, and he wouldn't have run all the way to the pub in the pouring rain without his coat unless it were much more than that. How much more? A month? Three months? But he'd told Gilchrist the preliminaries showed minimal slippage.

Mary elbowed past him and put her hand on Badri's forehead again. "Add sodium thiosalicylate to the drip," she said. "And start a WBC screen. James, get out of the way."

Dunworthy edged past Mary and sat down on the bench, near the back of the ambulance.

Mary picked up her bleeper again. "Stand by for a full CBC and serotyping."

"Pyelonephritis?" the medic said, watching the reads change. BP 96 over 60, pulse 120, temp 39.5.

"I don't think so," Mary said. "There's no apparent abdominal pain, but it's obviously an infection of some sort, with that temp."

The sirens dived suddenly down in frequency and stopped. The medic began pulling wires out of the wall hookups.

"We're here, Badri," Mary said, patting his chest again. "We'll soon have you right as rain."

He gave no indication he had heard. Mary pulled the blanket up to his neck and arranged the dangling wires on top of it. The driver yanked the door open, and they slid the stretcher out. "I want a full blood workup," Mary said, holding onto the door as she climbed down. "CF, HI and antigenic ID." Dunworthy clambered down after her and followed her into the casualties department.

"I need a med hist," she was already telling the registrar. "On Badri — what's his last name, James?"

"Chaudhuri," he said.

"National Health Service number?"

"I don't know," he said. "He works at Balliol."

"Would you be so good as to spell the name for me, please?"

"C-H-A-" he said. Mary was disappearing into the Accident Ward. He started after her.

"I'm sorry, sir," the registrar said, darting up from her console to block his way. "If you'll just be seated — "

"I must talk to the patient you just admitted," he said.

"Are you a relative?"

"No," he said. "I'm his employer. It's very important."

"He's in an examining cubicle just now," she said. "I'll ask for permission for you to see him as soon as the examination is completed." She sat gingerly back down at the console, as if ready to leap up again at the slightest movement on his part.

Dunworthy thought of simply barging in on the examination, but he didn't want to risk being barred from hospital altogether, and at any rate, Badri was in no condition to talk. He had been clearly unconscious when they took him out of the ambulance. Unconscious and with a fever of 39.5. Something wrong.

The registrar was looking suspiciously up at him. "Would you mind terribly giving me that spelling again?"

He spelled Chaudhuri for her and then asked where he could find a telephone.

"Just down the corridor," she said. "Age?"

"I don't know," he said. "Twenty-five? He's been at Balliol for four years."

He answered the rest of her questions as best he could and then looked out the door to see if Gilchrist had come and went down the corridor to the telephones and rang up Brasenose. He got the porter, who was decorating an artificial Christmas tree that stood on the lodge counter.

"I need to speak to Puhalski," Dunworthy said, hoping that was the name of the first-year tech.

"He's not here," the porter said, draping a silver garland over the branches with his free hand.

"Well, as soon as he returns, please tell him I need to speak with him. It's very important. I need him to read a fix for me. I'm at — " Dunworthy waited pointedly for the porter to finish arranging the garland and write the number of the call box down, which he finally did, scribbling it on the lid of a box of ornaments. "If he can't reach me at this number, have him ring the casualties department at Infirmary. How soon will he return, do you think?"

"That's difficult to say," the porter said, unwrapping an angel. "Some of them come back a few days early, but most of them don't show up until the first day of term."

"What do you mean? Isn't he staying in college?"

"He was. He was going to run the net for Mediaeval, but when he found he wasn't needed, he went for home."

"I need his home address then and his telephone number."

"It's somewhere in Wales, I believe, but you'd have to talk to the college secretary for that, and she's not here just now either."

"When will she be back?"

"I can't say, sir. She went to London to do a bit of Christmas shopping."

Dunworthy gave another message while the porter straightened the angel's wings, and then rang off and tried to think if there were any other techs in Oxford for Christmas. Clearly not, or Gilchrist wouldn't have used a first-year student in the first place.

He put a call through to Magdalen anyway, but got no answer. He hung up, thought a minute, and then rang up Balliol. There was no answer there either. Finch must still be out showing the American bellringers the bells at Great Tom. He looked at his digital. It was only half-past two. It seemed much later. They might only be at lunch.

He rang up the phone in Balliol's hall, but still got no answer. He went back into the waiting area, expecting Gilchrist to be there. He wasn't but the two medics were, talking to a staff nurse. Gilchrist had probably gone back to Brasenose to plot his next drop or the one after that. Perhaps he'd send Kivrin straight into the Black Death the third time round for direct observation.

"There you are," the staff nurse said. "I was afraid you'd left. If you'll just come with me."

Dunworthy had assumed she was speaking to him, but the medics followed her out the door, too, and down a corridor.

"Here we are, then," she said, holding a door open for them. The medics filed through. "There's tea on the trolley, and a WC just through there."

"When will I be able to see Badri Chaudhuri?" Dunworthy asked, holding the door so she couldn't shut it.

"Dr. Ahrens will be with you directly," she said and shut the door in spite of him.

The female medic had already slouched down in a chair, her hands in her pockets. The man was over by the tea trolley, plugging in the electric kettle. Neither of them had asked the registrar any questions on the way down the corridor, so perhaps this was routine, though Dunworthy couldn't imagine why they would want to see Badri. Or why they had all been brought here.

This waiting room was in an entirely different wing from the casualties ward. It had the same spine-destroying chairs of the waiting room in Casualties, the same tables with inspirational pamphlets fanned out on them, the same foil garland draped over the tea trolley and secured with bunches of plastene holly. There were no windows, though, not even in the door. It was self- contained and private, the sort of room where people waited for bad news.

Dunworthy sat down, suddenly tired. Bad news. An infection of some sort. BP 96, pulse l20, temp 39.5. The only other tech in Oxford off in Wales and the bursar out doing her Christmas shopping. And Kivrin somewhere in 1320, days or even weeks from where she was supposed to be. Or months.

The male medic poured milk and sugar into a cup and stirred it, waiting for the electric kettle to heat. The woman appeared to have gone to sleep.

Dunworthy stared at her, thinking about the slippage. Badri had said the preliminary calculations indicated minimal slippage, but they were only preliminary. Badri had told him he thought two weeks' slippage was likely, and that made sense.

The farther back the historian was sent, the greater the average slippage. Twentieth-Century drops usually had only a few minutes, Eighteenth-Century a few hours. Magdalen, which was still running unmanneds to the Renaissance, was getting slippage of from three to six days.

But those were only averages. The slippage varied from person to person, and it was impossible to predict for any given drop. Nineteenth Century had had one off by forty-eight days, and in uninhabited areas there was often no slippage at all.

And often the amount seemed arbitrary, whimsical. When they'd run the first slippage checks for Twentieth Century back in the twenties, he'd stood in Balliol's empty quad and been sent through to two a.m. on the fourteenth of September, 1956, with only three minutes' slippage. But when they sent him through again at 2:08, there had been nearly two hours', and he'd come through nearly on top of an undergraduate sneaking in after a night out.

Kivrin might be six months from where she was supposed to be, with no idea of when the rendezvous was. And Badri had come running to the pub to tell him to pull her out.

Mary came in, still wearing her coat. Dunworthy stood up. "Is it Badri?" he asked, afraid of the answer.

"He's in the casualties ward," she said. "We need his NHS number, and we can't find his records in Balliol's file."

Her gray hair was mussed again, but otherwise she seemed as businesslike as she was when she discussed Dunworthy's students with him. "He's not a member of the college," he said, feeling relieved. "Techs are assigned to the individual colleges, but they're officially employed by the University."

"Then his records would be in the Registrar's Office. Good. Do you know if he's travelled outside England in the past month?"

"He did an on-site for Nineteenth Century in Hungary two weeks ago. He's been in England since then."

"Has he had any relations visit him from Pakistan?"

"He hasn't any. He's third generation. Have you found out what he's got?"

She wasn't listening. "Where are Gilchrist and Montoya?" she said.

"You told Gilchrist to meet us here, but he hadn't come in yet when I was brought in here."

"And Montoya?"

"She left as soon as the drop was completed," Dunworthy said.

"Have you any idea where she might have gone?"

No more than you have, Dunworthy thought. You watched her leave, too. "I assume she went back to Witney to her dig. She spends the majority of her time there."

"Her dig?" Mary said, as if she'd never heard of it.

What is it? he thought. What's wrong? "In Witney," he said. "The National Trust farm. She's excavating a mediaeval village."

"Witney?" she said, looking unhappy. "She'll have to come in immediately."

"Shall I try to ring her up?" Dunworthy said, but Mary had already gone over to the medic standing by the tea trolley.

"I need you to fetch someone in from Witney," she said to him. He put down his cup and saucer and shrugged on his jacket. "From the National Trust site. Lupe Montoya." She went out the door with him.

He expected her to come back as soon as she'd finished giving him the directions to Witney. When she didn't, he started after her. She wasn't in the corridor. Neither was the medic, but the nurse from Casualties was.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, barring his path the way the registrar in Casualties had. "Dr. Ahrens asked that you wait for her here."

"I'm not leaving the infirmary. I need to put a call through to my secretary."

"I'll be glad to fetch you a phone, sir," she said firmly. She turned and looked down the corridor.

Gilchrist and Latimer were coming. "…hope Ms. Engle has the opportunity to observe a death," Gilchrist was saying. "Attitudes toward death in the 1300's differed greatly from ours. Death was a common and accepted part of life, and the contemps were incapable of feeling loss or grief."

"Mr. Dunworthy," the nurse said, tugging at his arm, "if you'll just wait inside, I'll bring you a telephone."

She went to meet Gilchrist and Latimer. "If you'll come with me, please," she said, and ushered them into the waiting room.

"I'm acting head of Mediaeval," Gilchrist said, glaring at Dunworthy. "Badri Chaudhuri is my responsibility."

"Yes, sir," the nurse said, shutting the door. "Dr. Ahrens will be with you directly."

Latimer set his umbrella on one of the chairs and Mary's shopping bag on the one next to it. He had apparently retrieved all the parcels Mary had dumped on the floor. Dunworthy could see the muffler box and one of the Christmas crackers sticking out of the top. "We couldn't find a taxi," he said, breathing hard. He sat down next to his burdens. "We had to take the tube."

"Where is the apprentice tech you were going to use on the drop — Puhalski-from?" Dunworthy said. "I need to speak with him."

"Concerning what, if I may ask? Or have you taken over Mediaeval entirely in my absence?"

"It's essential that someone read the fix and make sure it's all right."

"You'd be delighted if something were to go wrong, wouldn't you? You've been attempting to obstruct this practicum from the beginning."

"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.

CHAPTER FIVE

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.

"Should I assign them rooms in Salvin then, sir?" Finch asked again.

"Yes. No. Put them in the junior common room for now. They can practice their changes or whatever it is they do. Get Badri's file and phone it in. If the lines are all engaged, you'd best phone it in to this number. I'll be here even if Dr. Ahrens isn't. And then find out about Basingame. It's more important than ever that we locate him. You can assign the Americans rooms later."

"They're very upset, sir."

So am I, Dunworthy thought. "Tell the Americans I'll find out what I can about the situation and ring you back." He watched the screen go gray.

"You can't wait to inform Basingame of what you perceive to be Mediaeval's failure, can you?" Gilchrist said. "In spite of the fact that it was your tech who has jeopardized this drop by using drugs, a fact of which you may be sure I will inform Mr. Basingame on his return."

Dunworthy looked at his digital. It was half past four. Finch had said they'd been stopped at a bit before three. An hour and a half. Oxford had only had two temp quarantines in recent years. One had turned out to be an allergic reaction to an injection, and the other one had turned out to be nothing at all, a schoolgirl prank. Both had been called off as soon as they had the results of the blood tests, and those hadn't taken even ten minutes. Mary had taken blood in the ambulance. Dunworthy had seen the medic hand the vials to the house officer when they came into Casualties. There had been ample time for them to obtain the results. Three quarters of an hour.

"I'm certain Mr. Basingame will also be interested in hearing that it was your failure to have your tech screened that's resulted in this practicum being jeopardized," Gilchrist said.

Dunworthy should have recognized the symptoms as those of an infection: Badri's low blood pressure, his labored breathing, his elevated temp. Mary had even said in the ambulance that it had to be an infection of some kind with his temp that high, but he had assumed she meant a localized infection, staph or an inflamed appendix. And what disease could it be? Smallpox and typhoid had been eradicated back in the twentieth century and polio in this one. Bacterials didn't have a chance against antibody specification, and the antivirals worked so well nobody even had colds anymore.

"It seems distinctly odd that after being so concerned about the precautions Mediaeval was taking that you wouldn't take the obvious precaution of screening your tech for drugs," Gilchrist said.

It must be a thirdworld disease. Mary had asked all those questions about whether Badri had been out of the Community, about his Pakistani relatives. But Pakistan wasn't thirdworld, and Badri couldn't have gone out of the Community without a whole series of inoculations. And he hadn't gone outside the EEC. Except for the Hungarian on-site, he'd been in Oxford all term.

"I would like to use the telephone," Gilchrist was saying. "I quite agree that we need Basingame here to take matters in hand."

Dunworthy was still holding the phone. He blinked at it, surprised.

"Do you mean to prevent me from phoning Basingame?" Gilchrist said.

Latimer stood up. "What is it?" he said, his arms held out as if he thought Dunworthy might pitch forward into them. "What's wrong?"

"Badri isn't using," Dunworthy said to Gilchrist. "He's ill."

"I fail to see how you can claim to know that without having run a screen," Gilchrist said, looking pointedly at the phone.

"We're under quarantine," Dunworthy said. "It's some sort of infectious disease."

"It's a virus," Mary said from the door. "We don't have it sequenced yet, but the preliminary results ID it as a viral infection."

She had unbuttoned her coat, and it flapped behind her like Kivrin's cloak as she hurried into the room. She was carrying a lab tray by the handle. It was piled high with equipment and paper packets.

"The tests indicate that it's probably a myxovirus," she said, setting the tray down on one of the end tables. "Badri's symptoms are compatible with that: high fever, disorientation, headache. It's definitely not a retrovirus or a picornavirus, which is good news, but it will be some time yet before we have a complete ID."

She pulled two chairs up next to the table and sat down on one. "We've notified the World Influenza Centre in London and sent them samples for ident and sequencing. Until we have a positive ID, a temp quarantine has been called as required by NHS regulations in cases of possible epidemic conditions." She pulled on a pair of imperm gloves.

"Epidemic!" Gilchrist said, shooting a furious glance at Dunworthy as if accusing him of engineering the quarantine to discredit Mediaeval.

"Possible epidemic conditions," Mary corrected, tearing open paper packets. "There is no epidemic as yet. Badri's is the only case so far. We've run a Community computer check, and there have been no other cases with Badri's profile, which is also good news."

"How can he have a viral infection?" Gilchrist said, still glaring at Dunworthy. "I suppose Mr. Dunworthy didn't bother to check for that either."

"Badri's an employee of the University," Mary said. "He should have had the usual start-of-term physical and antivirals."

"You don't know?" Gilchrist said.

"The Registrar's office is closed for Christmas," she said. "I haven't been able to reach the Registrar, and I can't call up Badri's files without his NHS number."

"I've sent my secretary to our bursar's office to see if we have hardcopies of the University's files," Dunworthy said. "We should at the least have his number."

"Good," Mary said. "We'll be able to tell a good deal more about the sort of virus we're dealing with when we know what antivirals Badri's had and how recently. He may have a history of anomalous reactions, and there's also a chance he's missed a seasonal. Do you happen to know his religion, Mr. Dunworthy? Is he New Hindu?"

Dunworthy shook his head. "He's Church of England," he said, knowing what Mary was getting at. The New Hindus believed that all life was sacred, including killed viruses, if killed was the right word. They refused to have any inoculations or vaccines. The University gave them waivers on religious grounds but didn't allow them to live in college. "Badri's had his start-of-term clearance. He'd never have been allowed to work the net without it."

Mary nodded as if she had already come to that conclusion. "As I said, this is very likely an anomaly."

Gilchrist started to say something, but stopped when the door opened. The nurse who had been guarding the door came in, wearing a mask and gown and carrying pencils and a sheaf of papers in her imperm-gloved hands.

"As a precaution, we need to test those people who have been in contact with the patient for antibodies. We'll need bloods and temps, and we need each of you to list all of your contacts and those of Mr. Chaudhuri."

The nurse handed several sheets of paper and a pencil to Dunworthy. The top sheet was a hospital admissions form. The one underneath was headed "Primaries" and divided into columns marked "Name, location, time." The bottom sheet was just the same except that it was headed "Secondaries."

"Since Badri is our only case," Mary said, "we are considering him the index case. We do not have a positive mode of transmission yet, so you must list anyone who's had any contact with Badri, however momentary. Anyone he spoke to, touched, has had any contact with."

Dunworthy had a sudden image of Badri leaning over Kivrin, adjusting her sleeve, moving her arm.

"Anyone at all who may have been exposed," Mary said.

"Including all of us," the medic said.

"Yes," Mary said.

"And Kivrin," Dunworthy said.

For a moment she looked like she had no idea at all who Kivrin was.

"Ms. Engle has had full-spectrum antivirals and T-cell enhancement," Gilchrist said. "She would not be at risk, would she?"

Dr. Ahrens hesitated only a second. "No. She didn't have any contact with Badri before this morning, did she?"

"Mr. Dunworthy only offered me the use of his tech two days ago," Gilchrist said, practically snatching the papers and pencil the nurse was offering him out of her hands. "I, of course, assumed that Mr. Dunworthy had taken the same precautions with his techs which Mediaeval had. It has become apparent, however, that he didn't, and you may be sure I will inform Basingame of your negligence, Mr. Dunworthy."

"If Kivrin's first contact with Badri was this morning, she was fully protected," Mary said. "Mr. Gilchrist, if you'd be so good." She indicated the chair, and he came and sat down.

Mary took one of the sets of papers from the nurse and held up the sheet marked "Primaries." "Any person Badri had contact with is a primary contact. Any person you have had contact with is a secondary. On this sheet I would like you to list all contacts you have had with Badri Chaudhuri over the last three days, and any contacts of his that you know of. On this sheet," she held up the sheet marked "Secondaries", "list all your contacts with the time you had them. Begin with the present and work backward."

She popped a temp into Gilchrist's mouth, peeled a portable monitor off its paper strip, and stuck it on his wrist. The nurse passed the papers out to Latimer and the medic. Dunworthy sat down and began filling out his own.

The Infirmary form asked for his name, National Health Service number, and a complete medical history, which the NHS number could no doubt call up in better detail than he could remember it. Illnesses. Surgeries. Inoculations. If Mary didn't have Badri's NHS number that meant he was still unconscious.

Dunworthy had no idea what date his last start-of-term antivirals had been. He put question marks next to them, turned to the Primaries sheet, and wrote his own name at the top of the column. Latimer, Gilchrist, the two medics. He didn't know their names, and the female medic was asleep again. She held her papers bunched in one hand, her arms folded across her chest. Dunworthy wondered if he needed to list the doctors and nurses who had worked on Badri when he came in. He wrote "casualties department staff" and then put a question mark after it. Montoya.

And Kivrin, who, according to Mary, was fully protected. "Something wrong," Badri had said. Had he meant this infection? Had he realized he was getting ill while he was trying to get the fix and come running to the pub to tell them he had exposed Kivrin?

The pub. There hadn't been anyone in the pub except the barman. And Finch, but he'd gone before Badri got there. Dunworthy lifted up the sheet and wrote Finch's name under "Secondaries," and then turned back to the first sheet and wrote "barman, Lamb and Cross." The pub had been empty, but the streets hadn't been. He could see Badri in his mind's eye, pushing his way through the Christmas crowd, barging into the woman with the flowered umbrella and elbowing his way past the old man and the little boy with the white terrier. "Anyone he's had any contact with," Mary had said.

He looked across at Mary, who was holding Gilchrist's wrist and making careful entries in a chart. Was she going to try to get bloods and temps from everyone on these lists? It was impossible. Badri had touched or brushed past or breathed on dozens of people in his headlong flight back to Brasenose, none of whom Dunworthy or Badri, would recognize again. Doubtless he had come in contact with as many or more on his way to the pub, and each of them had come in contact with how many others in the busy shops?

He wrote down "Large number of shoppers and pedestrians, High Street(?)" drew a line, and tried to remember the other occasions on which he'd seen Badri. He hadn't asked him to run the net until two days ago, when he'd found out from Kivrin that Gilchrist was intending to use a first-year apprentice.

Badri had just gotten back from London when Dunworthy telephoned. Kivrin had been in hospital that day for her final examination, which was good. She couldn't have had any contact with him then, and he'd been in London before that.

Tuesday Badri had come to see Dunworthy to tell him he'd checked the first-year student's coordinates and done a full systems check. Dunworthy hadn't been there, so he'd left a note. Kivrin had come to Balliol Tuesday, as well, to show him her costume, but that had been in the morning. Badri had said in his note that he'd spent all morning at the net. And Kivrin had said she was going to see Latimer at the Bodleian in the afternoon. But she might have gone back to the net after that, or have been there before she came to show him her costume.

The door opened and the nurse ushered Montoya in. Her terrorist jacket and jeans were wet. It must still be raining. "What's going on?" she said to Mary, who was labelling a vial of Gilchrist's blood.

"It seems," Gilchrist said, pressing a wad of cotton wool to the inside of his arm and standing up, "that Mr. Dunworthy failed to have his tech properly checked for inoculations before he ran the net, and now he is in hospital with a temperature of 39.5. He apparently has some sort of exotic fever."

"Fever?" Montoya said, looking bewildered. "Isn't 39.5 low?"

"103 degrees in Fahrenheit," Mary said, sliding the vial into its carrier. "Badri's infection is possibly contagious. I need to run some tests and you'll need to write down all of your contacts and Badri's."

"Okay," Montoya said. She sat down in the chair Gilchrist had vacated and shrugged off her jacket. Mary swabbed the inside of her arm and clipped a new vial and disposable punch together. "Let's get it over with. I've got to get back to my dig."

"You can't go back," Gilchrist said. "Haven't you heard? We're under quarantine, thanks to Mr. Dunworthy's carelessness."

"Quarantine?" she said and jerked so the punch missed her arm completely. The idea of a disease she might contract had not affected her at all, but the mention of a quarantine did. "I have to get back," she said, appealing to Mary. "You mean I have to stay here?"

"Until we have the blood test results," Mary said, trying to find a vein for the punch.

"How long will that be?" Montoya said, trying to look at her digital with the arm Mary was working on. "The guy who brought me in didn't even let me cover up the site or turn off the heaters, and it's raining like crazy out there. I've got a churchyard that's going to be full of water if I don't get out there."

"As long as it takes to get blood samples from all of you and run an antibodies count on them," Mary said, and Montoya must have gotten the message because she straightened out her arm and held it still. Mary filled a vial with her blood, gave her her temp, and slid a tach bracelet on. Dunworthy watched her, wondering if she had been telling the truth. She hadn't said Montoya could leave after they had the test results, only that she had to stay here until they were in. And what then? Would they be taken to an isolation ward together or separately? Or given some sort of medication? Or given more tests?

Mary took Montoya's tach bracelet off and handed her the last set of papers. "Mr. Latimer? You're next."

Latimer stood up, holding his papers. He looked at them confusedly, then set them down on the chair he'd been sitting on, and started over to Mary. Halfway there, he turned and went back for Mary's shopping bag. "You left this at Brasenose," he said, holding it out to Mary.

"Oh, thank you," she said. "Just set it next to the table, won't you? These gloves are sterile."

Latimer set the bag down, tipping it slightly. The end of the muffler trailed out on the floor. He methodically tucked it back in.

"I'd completely forgotten I left it there," Mary said, watching him. "In all the excitement, I — " She clapped her gloved hand over her mouth. "Oh, my Lord! Colin! I'd forgotten all about him. What time is it?"

"4:08," Montoya said without looking at her digital.

"He was supposed to come in at three," she said, standing up and clattering the vials of blood in their carrier.

"Perhaps when you weren't there he went round to your rooms," Dunworthy said.

She shook her head. "This is the first time he's been to Oxford. That's why I told him I'd be there to meet him. I never even gave him a thought until now," she said, almost to herself.

"Well, then, he'll still be at the Underground station," Dunworthy said. "Shall I go and fetch him?"

"No," she said. "You've been exposed."

"I'll phone the station then. You can tell him to take a taxi here. Where was he coming in? Cornmarket?"

"Yes, Cornmarket."

Dunworthy rang up information, got through on the third try, got the number off the screen and rang the station. The line was engaged. He hit disconnect and punched the number in again.

"Is Colin your grandson?" Montoya said. She had put aside her papers. The others didn't seem to be paying any attention to this latest development. Gilchrist was filling in his forms and glaring, as if this was one more example of negligence and incompetence. Latimer was sitting patiently by the tray, his sleeve rolled up. The medic was still asleep.

"He's my great-nephew," Mary said. "He was coming up on the tube to spend Christmas with me."

"What time was the quarantine called?"

"Ten past three," Mary said.

Dunworthy held up his hand to indicate he'd gotten through. "Is that Cornmarket Underground Station?" he said. It obviously was. He could see the gates and a lot of people behind an irritated-looking station master. "I'm phoning about a boy who came in on the tube at three o'clock. He's twelve. He would have come in from London." Dunworthy held his hand over the receiver and asked Mary, "What does he look like?"

"He's blonde and has blue eyes. He's tall for his age."

"Tall," Dunworthy said loudly over the sound of the crowd. "His name is Colin — "

"Templer," Mary said. "Dierdre said he'd take the tube from Marble Arch at one."

"Colin Templer. Have you seen him?"

"What the bloody hell do you mean have I seen him?" the stationmaster shouted. "I've got five hundred people in this station and you want to know if I've seen a little boy. Look at this mess."

The visual abruptly showed a milling crowd. Dunworthy scanned it, looking for a tallish boy with blonde hair and blue eyes. It switched back to the station master.

"There's just been a temp quarantine," he shouted over the roar which seemed to get louder by the minute, "and I've got a station full of people who want to know why the trains have stopped and why don't I do something about it. I've got all I can do to keep them from tearing the place apart. I can't bother about a boy."

"His name is Colin Templer," Dunworthy shouted. "His great aunt was supposed to meet him."

"Well, why didn't she then and make one less problem for me to deal with? I've got a crowd of angry people here who want to know how long the quarantine's going to last and why don't I do something about that — " He cut off suddenly. Dunworthy wondered if he'd hung up or had the phone snatched out of his hand by an angry shopper.

"Had the stationmaster seen him?" Mary said.

"No," Dunworthy said. "You'll have to send someone after him."

"Yes, all right. I'll send one of the staff," she said, and started out.

"The quarantine was called at 3:10, and he wasn't supposed to get here till three," Montoya said. "Maybe he was late."

That hadn't occurred to Dunworthy. If the quarantine had been called before his train reached Oxford, it would have been stopped at the nearest station and the passengers rerouted or sent back to London.

"Ring the station back," he said, handing her the phone. He told her the number. "Tell them his train left Marble Arch at one. I'll have Mary phone her niece. Perhaps Colin's back already."

He went out in the corridor, intending to ask the nurse to fetch Mary, but she wasn't there. Mary must have sent her to the station.

There was no one in the corridor. He looked down it at the call box he had used before and then walked rapidly down to it and punched in Balliol's number. There was an off-chance that Colin had gone to Mary's rooms after all. He would send Finch round, and if Colin wasn't there, down to the station. It would very likely take more than one person looking to find Colin in that mess.

"Hi," a woman said.

Dunworthy frowned at the number in the inset, but he hadn't misdialed. "I'm trying to reach Mr. Finch at Balliol College."

"He's not here right now," the woman, obviously American, said. "I'm Ms. Taylor. Can I take a message?"

This must be one of the bellringers. She was younger than he'd expected, not much over thirty, and she looked rather delicate to be a bellringer. "Would you have him call Mr. Dunworthy at Infirmary as soon as he returns, please?"

"Mr. Dunworthy." She wrote it down, and then looked up sharply. "Mr. Dunworthy," she said in an entirely different tone of voice, "are you the person responsible for our being held prisoner here?"

There was no good answer to that. He should never have phoned the junior common room. He had sent Finch to the bursar's office.

"The National Health Service issues temp quarantines in cases of an unidentified disease. It's a precautionary measure. I'm sorry for any inconvenience it's caused you. I've instructed my secretary to make your stay comfortable, and if there's anything I can do for you — "

"Do? Do?! You can get us to Ely, that's what you can do. My ringers were supposed to give a handbell concert at the cathedral at eight o'clock, and tomorrow we have to be in Norwich. We're ringing a peal on Christmas Eve."

He was not about to be the one to tell her they were not going to be in Norwich tomorrow. "I'm sure that Ely is already aware of the situation, but I will be more than happy to phone the cathedral and explain — "

"Explain! Perhaps you'd like to explain it to me, too. I'm not used to having my civil liberties taken away like this. In America, nobody would dream of telling you where you can or can't go."

And over ten million Americans died during the Pandemic as a result of that sort of thinking, he thought. "I assure you, Madam, that the quarantine is solely for your protection and that all of your concert dates will be more than willing to reschedule. In the meantime, Balliol is delighted to have you as our guests. I am looking forward to meeting you in person. Your reputation precedes you."

And if that were true, he thought, I would have told you Oxford was under quarantine when you wrote for permission to come.

"There is no way to reschedule a Christmas Eve peal. We were to have rung a new peal, the Chicago Surprise Minor. The Norwich Chapter is counting on us to be there, and we intend — "

He hit the disconnect button. Finch was probably in the bursar's office, looking for Badri's medical records, but Dunworthy wasn't going to risk getting another bell ringer. He looked up Regional Transport's number instead and started to punch it in.

The door at the end of the corridor opened, and Mary came through it.

"I'm trying Regional Transport," Dunworthy said, punching in the rest of the number and passing her the receiver.

She waved it away, smiling. "It's all right. I've just spoken to Dierdre. Colin's train was stopped at Barton. The passengers were put on the tube back to London. She's going down to Marble Arch to meet him." She sighed. "Dierdre didn't sound very glad that he's coming home. She planned to spend Christmas with her new livein's family, and I think she rather wanted him out of the way, but it can't be helped. I'm simply glad he's out of this."

He could hear the relief in her voice. He put the receiver back. "Is it that bad?"

"We just got the preliminary ident back. It's definitely a Type A myxovirus. Influenza."

He had been expecting something worse, some third world fever or a retrovirus. He had had the flu back in the days before antivirals. He had felt terrible, congested, feverish, achy, for a few days and then gotten over it without anything but bedrest and fluids.

"Will they call the quarantine off then?"

"Not until we get Badri's medical records," she said. "I keep hoping he skipped his last course of antivirals. If not, then we'll have to wait till we locate the source."

"But it's only the flu."

"If there's a small antigenic shift, a point or two, it's only the flu," she corrected him. "If there's a large shift, it's influenza, which is an entirely different matter. The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 was a myxovirus. It killed twenty million people. Viruses mutate every few months. The antigens on their surface change so that they're unrecognizable to the immune system. That's why seasonals are necessary. But they can't protect against a large point shift."

"And that's what this is?"

"I doubt it. Major mutations only happen every ten years or so. I think it's more likely that Badri failed to get his seasonals. Do you know if he was running an on-site at the beginning of term?"

"No. He may have been."

"If he was, he may simply have forgotten to go in for them, in which case all he has is this winter's flu."

"What about Kivrin? Has she had her seasonals?"

"Yes, and full-spectrum antivirals and T-cell enhancement. She's fully protected."

"Even if it's influenza?"

She hesitated a fraction of a second. "If she was exposed to the virus through Badri this morning, she's fully protected."

"And if she saw him before then?"

"If I tell you this, you'll only worry, and I'm certain there's no need to." She took a breath. "The enhancement and the antivirals were given so that she would have peak immunity at the beginning of the drop."

"And Gilchrist moved the drop up by two days," Dunworthy said bitterly.

"I wouldn't have allowed her to go through if I hadn't thought it was all right."

"But you hadn't counted on her being exposed to an influenza virus before she even left."

"No, but it doesn't change anything. She has partial immunity, and we're not certain she was even exposed. Badri scarcely went near her."

"And what if she was exposed earlier?"

"I knew I shouldn't have told you," Mary said. She sighed. "Most myxoviruses have an incubation period of from twelve to forty-eight hours. Even if Kivrin was exposed two days ago, she'd have had enough immunity to prevent the virus from replicating sufficiently to cause anything but minor symptoms. But it's not influenza." She patted his arm. "And you're forgetting the paradoxes. If she'd been exposed, she'd have been highly contagious. The net would never have let her through."

She was right. Diseases couldn't go through the net if there was any possibility of the contemps contracting them. The paradoxes wouldn't allow it. The net wouldn't have opened.

"What are the chances of the population in 1320 being immune?" he asked.

"To a modern-day virus? Almost none. There are eighteen hundred possible mutation points. The contemps would have all had to have had the exact virus, or they'd be vulnerable."

Vulnerable. "I want to see Badri," he said. "When he came to the pub, he said there was something wrong. He kept repeating it in the ambulance on the way to the hospital."

"Something is wrong," Mary said. "He's got a serious viral infection."

"Or he knows he exposed Kivrin. Or he didn't get the fix."

"He said he got the fix." She looked sympathetically at him. "I suppose it's useless to tell you not to worry about Kivrin. You saw how I've just acted over Colin. But I meant it when I said they're both safer out of this. Kivrin's much better off where she is than she would be here, even among those cutthroats and thieves you persist in imagining. At least she won't have to deal with NHS quarantine regulations

He smiled. "Or American change ringers. America hadn't been discovered yet." He reached for the door handle.

The door at the end of the corridor banged open and a large woman carrying a valise barged through it. "There you are, Mr. Dunworthy," she shouted the length of the corridor. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

"Is that one of your bell ringers?" Mary said, turning to look down the corridor at her.

"Worse," Dunworthy said. "It's Mrs. Gaddson."

CHAPTER SIX

It was growing dark under the trees and at the bottom of the hill. Kivrin's head began to ache before she had even reached the frozen wagon ruts, as if it had something to do with microscopic changes in altitude or light.

She couldn't see the wagon at all, even standing directly in front of the little chest, and squinting into the darkness past the thicket made her head feel even worse. If this was one of the "minor symptoms" of time-lag, she wondered what a major one would be like.

When I get back, she thought, struggling through the thicket, I intend to have a little talk with Dr. Ahrens on the subject. I think they are underestimating the debilitating effects these minor symptoms can have on an historian. Walking down the hill had left her more out of breath than climbing it had, and she was so cold.

Her cloak and then her hair caught on the willows as she pushed her way through the thicket, and she got a long scratch on her arm that immediately began to ache, too. She tripped once and nearly fell flat, and the effect on her headache was to jolt it so that it stopped hurting and then returned with redoubled force.

It was almost completely dark in the clearing, though what little she could see was still very clear, the colors not so much fading as deepening toward black — black-green and black-brown and black-gray. The birds were settling in for the night. They must have got used to her. They didn't so much as pause in their pre- bedtime twitterings and settlings down.

Kivrin hastily grabbed up the scattered boxes and splintered kegs, and flung them into the tilting wagon. She took hold of the wagon's tongue and began to pull it toward the road. The wagon scraped a few inches, slid easily across a patch of leaves, and stuck. Kivrin braced her foot and pulled again. It scraped a few more inches and tilted even more. One of the boxes fell out.

Kivrin put it back in and walked around the wagon, trying to see where it was stuck. The right wheel was jammed against a tree root, but it could be pushed up and over, if only she could get a decent purchase. She couldn't on this side — Mediaeval had taken an ax to this side so that it would look like the wagon had been smashed when it overturned, and they had done a good job. It was nothing but splinters. I told Mr. Gilchrist he should have let me have gloves, she thought.

She came around to the other side, took hold of the wheel, and shoved. It didn't budge. She pulled her skirts and cloak out of the way and knelt beside the wheel so she could put her shoulder to it.

The footprint was in front of the wheel, in a little space swept bare of leaves and only as wide as the foot. The leaves had drifted up against the roots of the oaks on either side. The leaves did not hold a print that she could see in the graying light, but the print in the dirt was perfectly clear.

It can't be a footprint, Kivrin thought. The ground is frozen. She reached out to put her hand in the indentation, thinking it might be some trick of shadow or the failing light. The frozen ruts out in the road would not have taken any print at all. But the dirt gave easily under her hand, and the print was deep enough to feel.

It had been made by a soft-soled shoe with no heel, and the foot that had made it was large, larger even than hers. A man's foot, but men in the 1300's had been smaller, shorter, with feet not even as big as hers. A giant's foot.

Maybe it's an old footprint, she thought wildly. Maybe it's the footprint of a woodcutter, or a peasant looking for a lost sheep. Maybe this is one of the king's woodlands, and they've been through here hunting. But it wasn't the footprint of someone chasing a deer. It was the print of someone who had stood there for a long time, watching her. I heard him, she thought, and a little flutter of panic forced itself up into her throat. I heard him standing there.

She was still kneeling, holding onto the wheel for balance. If the man, whoever it was, and it had to be a man, a giant, were still here in this glade, watching, he must know that she had found the footprint. She stood up. "Hello!" she called, and frightened the birds to death again. They flapped and squawked themselves into hushed silence. "Is someone there?"

She waited, listening, and it seemed to her that in the silence she could hear the breathing again. "Speke. I am in distresse an my servauntes fled."

Lovely, she thought even as she said it. Tell him you're helpless and all alone.

"Halloo!" she called again and began a cautious circuit of the glade, peering out into the trees. If he was still standing there, it was so dark she wouldn't be able to see him. She couldn't make out anything past the edges of the glade. She couldn't even tell for sure which way the thicket and the road lay. If she waited any longer, it would be completely dark, and she would never be able to get the wagon to the road.

But she couldn't move the wagon. Whoever had stood there between the two oaks, watching her, knew that the wagon was here. Maybe he had even seen it come through, bursting on the sparkling air like something conjured by an alchemist. If that were the case, he had probably run off to get the stake Dunworthy was so sure the populace kept in readiness. But surely if that were the case he would have said something, even if it was only, "Yoicks!" or "Heavenly Father!" and she would have heard him crashing through the underbrush as he ran way.

He hadn't run away, though, which meant he hadn't seen her come through. He had come upon her afterwards, lying inexplicably in the middle of the woods beside a smashed wagon, and thought what? That she had been attacked on the road and then dragged here to hide the evidence?

Then why hadn't he tried to help her? Why had he stood there, silent as an oak, long enough to leave a deep footprint, and then gone away again? Maybe he had thought she was dead. He would have been frightened of her unshriven body. People as late as the fifteenth century had believed that evil spirits took immediate possession of any body not properly buried.

Or maybe he had gone for help, to one of those villages that Kivrin had heard, maybe even Skendgate, and was even now on his way back with half the town, all of them carrying lanterns.

In that case, she should stay where she was and wait for him to come back. She should even lie down again. When the townspeople arrived, they could speculate about her and then bear her to the village, giving her examples of the language, the way her plan had been intended to work in the first place. But what if he came back alone, or with friends who had no intention of helping her?

She couldn't think. Her headache had spread out from her temple to behind her eyes. As she rubbed her forehead, it began to throb. And she was so cold! This cloak, in spite of its rabbit-fur lining, wasn't warm at all. How had people survived the Little Ice Age dressed only in cloaks like this? How had the rabbits survived?

At least she could do something about the cold. She could gather some wood and start a fire, and then if the footprint person came back with evil intentions, she could hold him off with a flaming brand. And if he had gone off for help and not been able to find his way back in the dark, the fire would lead him to her.

She made the circuit of the glade again, looking for wood. Dunworthy had insisted she learn to build a fire without tinder or flint. "Gilchrist expects you to wander around the Middle Ages in the dead of winter without knowing how to build a fire?" he had said, outraged, and she had defended him, told him Mediaeval didn't expect her to spend that much time out of doors. But they should have realized how cold it could get.

The sticks made her hands cold, and every time she bent over to pick up a stick, her head hurt. Eventually she stopped bending over altogether and simply stooped and grabbed for the broken-off twigs, keeping her head straight. That helped a little, but not much. Maybe she was feeling this way because she was so cold. Maybe the headache, the breathlessness, were coming from being so cold. She had to get the fire started.

The wood felt icy-cold and wet. It would never burn. And the leaves would be damp, too, far too damp to use for tinder. She had to have dry kindling and a sharp stick to start a fire. She laid the wood down in a little bundle by the roots of a tree, careful to keep her head straight, and went back to the wagon.

The bashed-in side of the wagon had several broken pieces of wood she could use for kindling. She got two splinters in her hand before she managed to pull them free, but the wood at least felt dry, though it was cold, too. There was a large, sharp spur of wood just above the wheel. She bent over to grab it and nearly fell, gasping with the sudden nauseating dizziness.

"You'd better lie down," she said out loud.

She eased herself to sitting, holding onto the ribs of the wagon for support. "Dr. Ahrens," she said a little breathlessly, "you ought to come up with something to prevent time-lag. This is awful."

If she could just lie down for a bit, perhaps the dizziness would go away and she could build the fire. She couldn't do it without bending over, though, and just the thought of doing that brought the nausea back.

She pulled her hood up over her head and closed her eyes, and even that hurt, the action seeming to focus the pain in her head. Something was wrong. This could not possibly be a reaction to time-lag. She was supposed to have a few minor symptoms that would fade within an hour or two of her arrival, not get worse. A little headache, Dr. Ahrens had said, some fatigue. She hadn't said anything about nausea, about being racked with cold.

She was so cold. She pulled the skirts of her cloak around her like a blanket, but the action seemed to make her even colder. Her teeth began to chatter, the way they had up on the hill, and great, convulsive shudders shook her shoulders.

I'm going to freeze to death, she thought. But it can't be helped. I can't get up and start the fire. I can't. I'm too cold. It's too bad you were wrong about the contemps, Mr. Dunworthy, she thought, and even the thought was dizzy. Being burned at the stake sounds lovely.

She would not have believed that she could have fallen asleep, huddled there on the cold ground. She had not noticed any spreading warmth, and if she had she would have been afraid it was the creeping numbness of hypothermia and tried to fight it. But she must have slept because when she opened her eyes again it was night in the glade, full night with frosty stars in the net of branches overhead, and she was on the ground looking up at them.

She had slid down as she slept, so that the top of her head was against the wheel. She was still shivering with cold, though her teeth had stopped chattering. Her head had begun to throb, tolling like a bell, and her whole body ached, especially her chest, where she had held the wood against her while she gathered sticks for the fire.

Something's wrong, she thought, and this time there was real panic in the thought. Maybe she was having some kind of allergic reaction to time travel. Was there even such a thing? Dunworthy had never said anything about an allergic reaction, and he had warned her about everything: rape and cholera and typhoid and the plague.

She twisted her hand around inside the cloak and felt under her arm for the place where she had had the welt from the antiviral inoculation. The welt was still there, though it didn't hurt to touch it, and it had stopped itching. Maybe that was a bad sign, she thought. Maybe the fact that it had stopped itching meant that it had stopped working.

She tried to lift her head. The dizziness came back instantly. She lay her head back down and disentangled her hands from the cloak, carefully and slowly, the nausea cutting across every movement. She folded her hands and pressed them against her face. "Mr. Dunworthy," she said. "I think you'd better come and get me."

She slept again, and when she woke up she could hear the faint, jangling sound of the piped-in Christmas music. Oh, good, she thought, they've got the net open, and tried to pull herself to sitting against the wheel.

"Oh, Mr. Dunworthy, I'm so glad you came back,' she said, fighting the nausea. "I was afraid you wouldn't get my message."

The jangling sound became louder, and she could see a wavering light. She pulled herself up a little farther. "You got the fire started," she said. "You were right about it's getting cold." The wagon's wheel felt icy through her cloak. Her teeth started to chatter again. "Dr. Ahrens was right. I should have waited till the swelling went down. I didn't know the reaction would be this bad."

It wasn't a fire, after all. It was a lantern. Dunworthy was carrying it as he walked toward her.

"This doesn't mean I'm getting a virus, does it? Or the plague?" She was having trouble getting the words out, her teeth were chattering so hard. "Wouldn't that be awful? Having the plague in the Middle Ages? At least I'd fit right in."

She laughed, a high-pitched, almost hysterical laugh that would probably frighten Mr. Dunworthy to death. "It's all right," she said, and she could hardly understand her own words. "I know you were worried, but I'll be perfectly all right. I just — "

He stopped in front of her, the lantern lighting a wobbling circle on the ground in front of her. She could see Dunworthy's feet. He was wearing shapeless leather shoes, the kind that had made the footprint. She tried to say something about the shoes, to ask him whether Mr. Gilchrist had made him put on Authentic Mediaeval Dress just to come and fetch her, but the light's movement was making her dizzy again.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, he was kneeling in front of her. He had set the lantern down, and the light lit the hood of his cloak and folded hands.

"It's all right," she said. "I know you were worried, but I'm all right. Truly. I just felt a little ill."

He raised his head. "Certes, it been derlostuh dayes forgott foreto getest hissahntes im aller," he said.

He had a hard, lined face, a cruel face, a cutthroat's face. He had watched her lying there and then he had gone away and waited for it to get dark, and now he had come back.

Kivrin tried to put up a hand to fend him off, but her hands had got tangled somehow in the cloak. "Go away," she said, her teeth chattering so hard she couldn't get the words out. "Go away."

He said something else, with a rising inflection this time, a question. She couldn't understand what he was saying. It's Middle English, she thought. I studied it for three years, and Mr. Latimer taught me everything there is to know about adjectival inflection. I should be able to understand it. It's the fever, she thought. That's why I can't make out what he's saying.

He repeated the question or asked some other question, she couldn't even tell that much.

It's because I'm ill, she thought. I can't understand him because I'm ill. "Kind sir," she began, but she could not remember the rest of the speech. "Help me," she said, and tried to think how to say that in Middle English, but she couldn't remember anything but the Church Latin. "Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina," she said.

He bowed his head over his hands and began to murmur so low she could not hear, and then she must have lost consciousness again because he had picked her up and was carrying her. She could still hear the jangling sound of the bells from the open net, and she tried to tell what direction they were coming from, but her teeth were chattering so hard she couldn't hear.

"I'm ill," she said as he set her on the white horse. She fell forward, clutching at the horse's mane to keep from falling off. He put his hand up to her side and held her there. "I don't know how this happened. I had all my inoculations."

He led the donkey off slowly. The bells on its bridle jingled tinnily.

Mr. Dunworthy, I think you'd better come and get me.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"I knew it," Mrs. Gaddson said, steaming down the corridor toward them. "He's contracted some horrible disease, hasn't he? It's all that rowing."

Mary stepped forward. "You can't come in here," she said. "This is an isolation area."

Mrs. Gaddson kept coming. The transparent poncho she was wearing over her coat threw off large, spattering drops as she walked toward them, swinging the valise like a weapon. "You can't put me off like that. I'm his mother. I demand to see him."

Mary put up her hand like a policeman. "Stop," she said in her best ward sister voice.

Amazingly, Mrs. Gaddson stopped. "A mother has a right to see her son," she said. Her expression softened. "Is he very ill?"

"If you mean your son William, he's not ill at all," Mary said, "at least so far as I know." She put her hand up again. "Please don't come any closer. Why do you think William's ill?"

"I knew it the minute I heard about the quarantine. A sharp pain went through me when the stationmaster said 'temp quarantine.'" She set down the valise so she could indicate the location of the sharp pain. "It's because he didn't take his vitamins. I asked the college to be sure to give them to him," she said, shooting a glance at Dunworthy that was the rival of any of Gilchrist's, "and they said he was able to take care of himself. Well, obviously, they were wrong."

"William is not the reason the temp quarantine was called. One of the university techs has come down with a viral infection," Mary said.

Dunworthy noticed gratefully that she didn't say "Balliol's tech."

"The tech is the only case, and there is no indication that there will be any others. The quarantine is a purely precautionary measure, I assure you."

Mrs. Gaddson didn't look convinced. "My Willy's always been sickly, and he simply will not take care of himself. He studies far too hard in that drafty room of his," she said with another dark look at Dunworthy. "I'm surprised he hasn't come down with a viral infection before this."

Mary took her hand down and put it in the pocket she carried her bleeper in. I do hope she's calling for help, Dunworthy thought.

"By the end of one term at Balliol, Willy's health was completely broken down, and then his tutor forced him to stay up over Christmas and read Petrarch," Mrs. Gaddson said. That's why I came up. The thought of him all alone in this horrid place for Christmas, eating heaven knows what and doing all sorts of things to endanger his health, was something this mother's heart could simply not bear."

She pointed to the place where the pain had gone through her at the words "temp quarantine." "And it is positively providential that I came when I did. Positively providential. I nearly missed the train, my valise was so cumbersome, and I almost thought, 'Ah, well, there'll be another along,' but I wanted to get to my Willy, so I shouted at them to hold the doors, and I hadn't so much as stepped off at Cornmarket when the stationmaster said, 'Temp quarantine. Train service is temporarily suspended.' Only just think, if I'd missed that train and taken the next one, I would have been stopped by the quarantine."

Only just think. "I'm sure William will be surprised to see you," Dunworthy said, hoping she would go find him.

"Yes," she said grimly. "He's probably sitting there without even his muffler on. He'll get this viral infection, I know it. He gets everything. He used to break out in horrible rashes when he was little. He's bound to come down with it. At least his mother is here to nurse him through it."

The door was flung open and two people wearing masks, gowns, gloves, and some sort of paper covering over their shoes, came racing through it. They slowed to a walk when they saw there was no one collapsed on the floor.

"I need this area cordoned off and an isolation ward sign posted," Mary said. She turned to Mrs. Gaddson. "I'm afraid there's a possibility you've been exposed to the virus. We do not have a positive mode of transmission yet, and we can't rule out the possibility of its being airborne," she said, and for one horrible moment Dunworthy thought she meant to put Mrs. Gaddson in the waiting room with them.

"Would you escort Mrs. Gaddson to an isolation cubicle?" she asked one of the masked-and-gowneds. "We'll need to run blood tests and get a list of your contacts. Mr. Dunworthy, if you'll just come with me," she said and led him into the waiting room and shut the door before Mrs. Gaddson could protest. "They can keep her awhile and give poor Willy a few last hours of freedom."

"That woman would make anyone break out in a rash," he said.

Everyone except the medic had looked up at their entrance. Latimer was sitting patiently by the tray, his sleeve rolled up. Montoya was still using the phone.

"Colin's train was turned back," Mary said. "He's safely at home by now."

"Oh, good," Montoya said and put the phone down. Gilchrist leaped for it.

"Mr. Latimer, I'm sorry to keep you waiting," Mary said. She broke open a pair of imperm gloves, put them on, and began assembling a punch.

"Gilchrist here. I wish to speak with the Senior Tutor," Gilchrist said into the telephone. "Yes. I'm trying to reach Mr. Basingame. Yes, I'll wait."

The Senior Tutor has no idea where he is, Dunworthy thought, and neither has the bursar. He'd already spoken to them when he was trying to stop the drop. The bursar hadn't even known he was in Scotland.

"I'm glad they found the kid," Montoya said, looking at her digital. "How long do you think they'll keep us here? I've got to get back to my dig before it turns into a swamp. We're excavating Skendgate's churchyard right now. Most of the graves date from the 1400's, but we've got some Black Deaths and a few pre-William the Conquerors. Last week we found a knight's tomb. Beautiful condition. I wonder if Kivrin's there yet?"

Dunworthy assumed she meant at the village and not in one of the graves. "I hope so," he said.

"I told her to start recording her observations of Skendgate immediately, the village and the church. Especially the tomb. The inscription's partly warn off, and some of the carving. The date's readable, though. 1318."

"It's an emergency," Gilchrist said. He fumed through a long pause. "I know he's fishing in Scotland. I want to know where."

Mary put a plaster on Latimer's arm and motioned to Gilchrist. He shook his head at her. She went over to the medic and shook her awake. She followed her over to the tray, blinking sleepily.

"There are so many things only direct observation can tell us," Montoya said. "I told Kivrin to record every detail. I hope there's room on the corder. It's so small." She looked at her watch again. "Of course it had to be. Did you get a chance to see it before they implanted it? It really does look like a bone spur."

"Bone spur?" Dunworthy said, watching the medic's blood spurt into the vial.

"That's so it can't cause an anachronism even if it's discovered. It fits right against the palmar surface of the scaphoid bone." She rubbed the wrist bone above the thumb.

Mary motioned to Dunworthy, and the medic stood up, rolling down her sleeve. Dunworthy took her place in the chair. Mary peeled the back from a monitor, stuck it to the inside of Dunworthy's wrist, and handed him a temp to swallow.

"Have the bursar call me at this number as soon as he returns," Gilchrist said, and hung up.

Montoya snatched up the phone, punched in a number and said, "Hi. Can you tell me the quarantine perimeters? I need to know if Witney's inside it? My dig's there." Whoever she was talking to apparently told her no. "Then who can I talk to about getting the perimeters changed? It's an emergency."

They're worried about their "emergencies," Dunworthy thought, and neither of them's even given a thought to worrying about Kivrin. Well, what was there to worry about? Her corder had been disguised to look like a bone spur so it wouldn't cause an anachronism when the contemps decided to chop off her hands before they burned her at the stake.

Mary took his blood pressure and then jabbed him with the punch. "If the phone ever becomes available," she said, slapping on the plaster and motioning to Gilchrist, who was standing next to Montoya, looking impatient. "You might ring up William Gaddson and warn him that his mother's coming."

Montoya said, "Yes. The number for the National Trust," hung up the phone, and scribbled a number on one of the brochures.

The phone trilled. Gilchrist, halfway to Mary, launched himself at it, grabbing it up before Montoya could reach it. "No," he said and handed it grudgingly over to Dunworthy.

It was Finch. He was in the bursar's office "Have you got Badri's medical records?" Dunworthy said.

"Yes,sir. The police are here, sir. They're looking for places to put all the detainees who don't live in Oxford."

"And they want us to put them up at Balliol," Dunworthy said.

"Yes, sir. How many shall I tell them we can take?"

Mary had stood up, Gilchrist's vial of blood in hand, and was signalling to Dunworthy.

"Wait a moment, please," he said, and punched hold on the mouthpiece.

"Are they asking you to board detainees?" Mary asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Don't commit to filling all your rooms," she said. "We may need infirmary space."

Dunworthy took his hand away and said, "Tell them we can put them in Fisher and whatever rooms are left in Salvin. If you haven't assigned rooms to the bellringers, double them up. Tell the police Infirmary has asked for Bulkeley-Johnson as an emergency ward. Did you say you'd found Badri's medical records?"

"Yes, sir. I had the very devil of a time finding them. The bursar had filed them under Badri comma Chaudhuri, and the Americans — "

"Did you find his NHS number?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm putting Dr. Ahrens on," he said before Finch could launch into tales of the bell ringers. He motioned to Mary. "You can give her the information directly."

Mary attached a plaster to Gilchrist's arm and a temp monitor to the back of his hand.

"I got through to Ely, sir," Finch said. "I informed them of the handbell concert cancellation and they were quite pleasant, but the Americans are still very unhappy."

Mary finished entering Latimer's reads, stripped off the gloves and came over to take the phone from Dunworthy.

"Finch? Dr. Ahrens here. Read me Badri's NHS number."

Dunworthy handed her his Secondaries sheet and a pencil, and she wrote it down and then asked for Badri's inoculation records and made a number of notations Dunworthy couldn't decipher.

"Any reactions or allergies?" There was a pause, and then she said, "All right, no. I can get the rest off the computer," she said. "I'll ring you back if I need additional information." She handed the phone back to Dunworthy. "He wants to speak with you again," she said, and left, taking the paper with her.

"They're most unhappy at being kept here," Finch said. "Ms. Taylor is threatening to sue for involuntary breach of contract."

"When was Badri's last course of antivirals?"

Finch took a considerable time looking through the sheaf of printouts, Scriptures and lavatory paper tallies. "Here it is, sir. September fourteenth."

"Did he have the full course?"

"Yes, sir. Receptor analogues, MPA booster, and seasonals."

"Has he ever had a reaction to an antiviral?"

"No, sir. There's nothing under Allergies in the history. I already told Dr. Ahrens that."

Badri had had all his antivirals. He had no history of reactions.

"Have you been to New College yet?" Dunworthy asked.

"No, sir, I'm just on my way. What should I do about supplies, sir? We've adequate stores of soap, but we're very low on lavatory paper."

The door opened, but it wasn't Mary. It was the medic who had been sent to fetch Montoya. He went over to the tea trolley and plugged in the electric kettle.

"Should I ration the toilet paper, do you think, sir," Finch said, "or put up notices asking everyone to conserve?"

"Whatever you think best," Dunworthy said and rang off.

It must still be raining. The medic's uniform was wet, and when the kettle boiled, he put his red hands over the steam, as if trying to warm them.

"Are you quite finished using the telephone?" Gilchrist said.

Dunworthy handed it to him. He wondered what the weather was like where Kivrin was, and whether Gilchrist had had Probability compute the chances of her coming through in the rain. Her cloak had not looked specially waterproof, and that friendly traveller who was supposed to come along within l.6 hours would have holed up in a hostelry or haymow till the roads dried enough to be passable.

Dunworthy had taught Kivrin how to make a fire, but she could hardly do so with wet kindling and numb hands. Winters in the 1300's had been cold. It might even be snowing. The Little Ice Age had just begun in 1320, the weather eventually getting so cold that the Thames froze over. The lower temps and erratic weather had played such havoc with the crops that some historians blamed the Black Death's horrors on the malnourished state of the peasants. The weather had certainly been bad. In the autumn of 1348, it had rained in one part of Oxfordshire every day from Michaelmas to Christmas. Kivrin was probably lying there on the wet road, half-dead from hypothermia.

And broken out in a rash, he thought, from her over-doting tutor worrying too much about her. Mary was right. He did sound like Mrs. Gaddson. The next thing he knew he'd be plunging off into 1320, forcing the doors of the net open like Mrs. Gaddson on the tube, and Kivrin would be as glad to see him as William was going to be to see his mother. And as in need of help.

Kivrin was the brightest and most resourceful student he had ever had. She surely knew enough to get in out of the rain. For all he knew, she had spent her last vac with the Eskimos, learning to build an igloo.

She had certainly thought of everything else, even down to her fingernails. When she had come in to show him her costume, she had held up her hands. Her nails had been broken off, and there were traces of dirt in the cuticles. "I know I'm supposed to be nobility, but rural nobility, and they did a lot of farm chores in between Bayeaux Tapestries, and East Riding ladies didn't have scissors till the 1600's, so I spent Sunday afternoon in Montoya's dig, grubbing among the dead bodies, to get this effect." There was obviously no reason to worry about a minor detail like snow.

But he couldn't help it. If he could speak to Badri, ask him what he'd meant when he said, "Something wrong," make certain the drop had gone properly and that there hadn't been too much slippage, he might be able to stop worrying. But Mary had not been able even to get Badri's NHS number till Finch phoned with it. He wondered if he were still unconscious. Or worse.

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?"

"Of course not," she said, frowning as if the whole idea were ridiculous. "In the first place, diseases can't come through the net. It would violate the paradoxes. In the second place, if it had, which it can't, Badri would have caught it less than an hour after it came through, which would mean the virus had an incubation period of an hour, an utter impossibility. But if it did, which it can't, you all would be down ill already," she looked at her digital, "since it's been over three hours since you were exposed to it." She began collecting the contacts lists.

Gilchrist looked irritated. "As Acting Head of the History Faculty I have responsibilities I must attend to," he said. "How long do you intend to keep us here?"

"Only long enough to collect your contacts lists," she said. "And to give you your instructions. Perhaps five minutes."

She took Latimer's list from him. Montoya grabbed hers up from the end table and began writing hastily.

"Five minutes?" the medic who had asked about the virus coming through the net said. "Do you mean we're free to go?"

"On medical probation," she said. She put the lists at the bottom of her sheaf of papers and began passing the top sheets, which were a virulent pink, around to everyone. They appeared to be a release form of some sort, absolving the infirmary of any and all responsibility.

"We've completed your blood tests," she went on, "and none of them show an increased level of antibodies."

She handed Dunworthy a blue sheet which absolved the NHS of any and all responsibility and confirmed willingness to pay any and all charges not covered by the NHS in full and within thirty days.

"I've been in touch with the WIC, and their recommendation is controlled observation, with continuous febrile monitoring and blood samples at twelve-hour intervals."

The sheet she was distributing now was green and headed, "Instructions for Primary Contacts." Number one was, "Avoid contact with others."

Dunworthy thought of Finch and the bellringers waiting, no doubt, at the gate of Balliol with summons and Scriptures, and of all those Christmas shoppers and detainees between here and there.

"Record your temp at one-half hour intervals," she said, passing round a yellow form. "Come in immediately if your monitor," she tapped at her own, "shows a marked increase in temp. Some fluctuation is normal. Temps tend to rise in the late afternoon and evening. Any temp between 36 and 37.4 is normal. Come in immediately if your temp exceeds 37.4 or rises suddenly, or if you begin to feel any symptoms — headache, tightness in the chest, mental confusion, or dizziness."

Everyone looked at his or her monitor, and, no doubt, began to feel a headache coming on. Dunworthy had had a headache all afternoon.

"Avoid contact with others as much as possible," Mary said. "Keep careful track of any contacts you do have. We're still uncertain of the mode of transmission, but most myxoviruses spread by droplet and direct contact. Wash your hands with soap and water frequently."

She handed Dunworthy another pink sheet. She was running out of colours. This one was a log, headed "Contacts," and under it, "Name, Address, Type of contact, Time."

It was unfortunate that Badri's virus had not had to deal with the CDC, the NHS and the WIC. It would never have got in the door.

"You must report back here at seven tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I'd recommend a good supper and then to bed. Rest is the best defense against any virus. You are off-duty," she said, looking at the medics, "for the duration of the temp quarantine." She passed out several more rainbow-hued papers and then asked brightly, "Any questions?"

Dunworthy looked at the medic, waiting for her to ask Mary if smallpox had come through the net, but she was looking uninterestedly at her clutch of papers.

"Can I go back to my dig?" Montoya asked.

"Not unless it's inside the quarantine perimeter," Mary said.

"Well, great," she said, jamming her papers angrily into the pockets of her terrorist jacket. "The whole village will have washed away while I'm stuck here." She stomped out.

"Are there any other questions?" Mary said imperturbably. "Very well, then, I'll see you all at seven o'clock."

The medics ambled out, the one who had asked about the virus yawning and stretching as if she were preparing for another nap. Latimer was still sitting down, watching his temp monitor. Gilchrist said something snappish to him, and he got up and put his coat on and collected his umbrella and his stack of papers.

"I expect to be kept informed of every development," Gilchrist said. "I am contacting Basingame and telling him it's essential that he return and take charge of this matter." He swept out and then had to wait, holding the door open, for Latimer to pick up two papers he had dropped.

"Go round in the morning and collect Latimer, won't you?" Mary said, looking through the contacts lists. "He'll never remember he's to be here at seven."

"I want to see Badri," Dunworthy said.

"'Laboratory, Brasenose,'" she said, reading from the sheets. "'Dean's office, Brasenose. Laboratory, Brasenose.' Didn't anyone see Badri except in the net?"

"In the ambulance on the way here he said, 'Something wrong.' There could have been slippage. If she's more than a week off, she'll have no idea when to rendezvous."

She didn't answer. She sorted through the sheets again, frowning.

"I need to make certain there weren't any problems with the fix," he said insistently.

She looked up. "Very well," she said. "These contact sheets are hopeless. There are great gaps in Badri's whereabouts for the past three days. He's the only person who can tell us where he was and with whom he came in contact." She led the way back down the corridor. "I've had a nurse with him, asking him questions, but he's very disoriented and fearful of her. Perhaps he won't be as frightened of you."

She led the way down the corridor to the lift and said, "Ground floor, please," into its ear. "Badri's only conscious for a few moments at a time," she said to Dunworthy. "It may be most of the night."

"That's all right," Dunworthy said. "I won't be able to rest till I'm sure Kivrin is safely through."

They went up two flights in the lift, down another corridor, and through a door marked, "NO ENTRANCE. ISOLATION WARD." Inside the door, a grim-looking ward sister was sitting at a desk watching a monitor.

"I'm taking Mr. Dunworthy in to see Mr. Chaudhuri," Mary said. "We'll need SPG's. How is he?"

"His fever's up again. 39.5," the sister said, handing them the SPG's, which were plastene-sealed bundles of paper clothing gowns that stripped up the back, caps, imperm masks that were impossible to get on over the caps, bootie-like snugs that went on over their shoes, and imperm gloves. Dunworthy made the mistake of putting his gloves on first and took what seemed like hours attempting to unfold the gown and affix the mask.

"You'll need to ask very specific questions," Mary said. "Ask him what he did when he got up this morning, if he'd stayed the night with anyone, where he ate breakfast, who was there, that sort of thing. His high fever means that he's very disoriented. You may have to ask your questions several times." She opened the door to the room.

It wasn't really a room — there was only space for the bed and a narrow camp stool, not even a chair. The wall behind the bed was covered with displays and equipment. The far wall had a curtained window and more equipment. Mary glanced briefly at Badri and then began scanning the displays.

Dunworthy looked at the screens. The one nearest him was full of numbers and letters. The bottom line read: "ICU 14320691-22-12-54 1803 200/RPT 1800CRS IMJPCLN 200MG/q6h NHS40- 211-7 M AHRENS." Apparently the doctor's orders.

The other screens showed spiking lines and columns of figures. None of them made any sense except for a number in the middle of the small display second from the right. It read, "Temp: 39.9." Dear God.

He looked at Badri. He was lying with his arms outside the bedclothes, his arms both connected to drips that hung from stanchions. One of the drips had at least five bags feeding into the main tube. His eyes were closed, and his face looked thin and drawn, as if he had lost weight since this morning. His dark skin had a strange purplish cast to it.

"Badri," Mary said, leaning over him, "Can you hear us?"

He opened his eyes and looked at them without recognition, which was probably due less to the virus than to the fact that they were covered from head to foot in paper.

"It's Mr. Dunworthy," Mary said helpfully. "He's come to see you." Her bleeper started up.

"Mr. Dunworthy?" he said hoarsely and tried to sit up.

Mary pushed him gently down into the pillow. "Mr. Dunworthy has some questions for you," she said, patting his chest gently the way she had in the net at Brasenose. She straightened up, watching the displays on the wall behind him. "Lie still. I need to leave now, but Mr. Dunworthy will stay with you. Rest and try to answer Mr. Dunworthy's questions." She left.

"Mr. Dunworthy?" Badri said again as if he were trying to make sense of the words.

"Yes," Dunworthy said. He sat down on the campstool. "How are you feeling?"

"When do you expect him back?" he said, and his voice sounded weak and strained. He tried to sit up again. Dunworthy put out his hand to stop him.

"Have to find him," he said. "There's something wrong."

CHAPTER EIGHT

They were burning her at the stake. She could feel the flames. They must already have tied her to the stake, though she could not remember that. She remembered them lighting the fire. She had fallen off the white horse, and the cutthroat had picked her up and carried her over to it.

"We must go back to the drop,' she had told him.

He had leaned over her, and she could see his cruel face in the flickering firelight.

"Mr. Dunworthy will open the net as soon as he realizes something's wrong," she had told him. She shouldn't have told him that. He had thought she was a witch and had brought her here to be burned.

"I'm not a witch," she said, and immediately a hand came out of nowhere and rested coolly on her forehead.

"Shh," a voice said.

"I am not a witch," she said, trying to speak slowly so they would understand her. The cutthroat hadn't understood her. She had tried to tell him they shouldn't leave the drop, but he had paid no attention to her. He had put her on his white horse and led it out of the clearing and through the stand of white-trunked birches, into the thickest part of the forest.

She had tried to pay attention to which way they were going so she could find her way back, but the man's swinging lantern had lit only a few inches of ground at their feet, and the light had hurt her eyes. She had closed them, and that was a mistake because the horse's awkward gait made her dizzy, and she had fallen off the horse onto the ground.

"I am not a witch," she said. "I'm an historian."

"Hawey fond enyowuh thissla dey?" the woman's voice said, far away. She must have come forward to put a faggot on the fire and then stepped back again, away from the heat.

"Enwodes fillenun gleydund sore destrayste." a man's voice said, and the voice sounded like Mr. Dunworthy's. "Ayeen mynarmehs hoor alle op hider ybar."

"Sweltes shay dumorte blauen?" the woman said.

"Mr. Dunworthy," Kivrin said, holding out her arms to him, "I've fallen among cutthroats!" but she couldn't see him through the smothering smoke.

"Shh," the woman said, and Kivrin knew that it was later, that she had, impossibly, slept. How long does it take to burn, she wondered. The fire was so hot she should be ashes by now, but when she held her hand up, it looked untouched, though little red flames flickered along the edges of the fingers. The light from the flames hurt her eyes. She closed them.

I hope I don't fall off the horse again, she thought. She had been clinging to the horse, both arms around its neck, though its uneven walk made her head ache even worse, and she had not let go, but she had fallen off, even though Mr. Dunworthy had insisted she learn how to ride, had arranged for her to have lessons at a riding stable near Woodstock. Mr. Dunworthy had told her this would happen. He had told her they would burn her at the stake.

The woman put a cup to her lips. It must be vinegar in a sponge, Kivrin thought, they gave that to martyrs. But it wasn't. It was a warm, sour liquid. The woman had to tilt Kivrin's head forward to drink it, and it came to Kivrin for the first time that she was lying down.

I'll have to tell Mr. Dunworthy, she thought, they burned people at the stake lying down. She tried to bring her hands up to her lips in the position of prayer to activate the corder, but the weight of the flames dragged them down again.

I'm ill, Kivrin thought, and knew that the warm liquid had been a medicinal potion of some kind, and that it had brought her fever down a little. She was not lying on the ground after all, but in a bed in a dark room, and the woman who had hushed her and given her the liquid was there beside her. She could hear her breathing. Kivrin tried to move her head to see her, but the effort made it hurt again. The woman must be asleep. Her breathing was even and loud, almost like snoring. It hurt Kivrin's head to listen to it.

I must be in the village, she thought. The redheaded man must have brought me here.

She had fallen off the horse, and the cutthroat had helped her back on, but when she looked into his face, he hadn't looked like a cutthroat at all. He was young, with red hair and a kind expression, and he had leaned over her where she was sitting against the wagon wheel, kneeling on one knee beside her and said, "Who are you?"

She had understood him perfectly.

"Canstawd ranken derwyn?" the woman said and tilted Kivrin's head forward for more of the bitter liquid. Kivrin could barely swallow. The fire was inside her throat now. She could feel the little orange flames, though the liquid should have put them out. She wondered if he had taken her to some foreign land, Spain or Greece, where the people spoke a language they hadn't put into the interpreter.

She had understood the redheaded man perfectly. "Who are you?" he had asked, and she had thought that the other man must be a slave he'd brought back from the Crusades, a slave who spoke Turkish or Arabic, and that was why she couldn't understand him.

"I'm an historian," she had said, but when she looked up into his kind face it wasn't him. It was the cutthroat.

She had looked wildly around for the red-headed man, but he wasn't there. The cutthroat picked up sticks and laid them on some stones for a fire.

"Mr. Dunworthy!" Kivrin had called out desperately, and the cutthroat had come and knelt in front of her, the light from his lantern flickering on his face.

"Fear not," he had said. "He will return soon."

"Mr. Dunworthy!" she had screamed, and the red-headed man had come and knelt beside her again.

"I shouldn't have left the drop," she had told him, watching his face so he wouldn't turn into the cutthroat. "Something must have gone wrong with the fix. You must take me back there."

He had unfastened the cloak he was wearing, swinging it easily off his shoulders, and laid it over her, and she knew he understood.

"I need to go home," she had said to him as he bent over her. He had a lantern with him, and it lit his kind face and flickered on his red hair like flames.

"Godufadur," he had called out, and she thought, that's the slave's name. Gauddefaudre. He will ask the slave to tell him where he found me, and then he'll take me back to the drop. And Mr. Dunworthy. Mr. Dunworthy would be frantic that she wasn't there when he opened the net. It's all right, Mr. Dunworthy, she had said silently. I'm coming.

"Dreede nawmaydde," the redheaded man had said and lifted her up in his arms. "Fawrthah Galwinnath coam."

"I'm ill," Kivrin said to the woman, "so I can't understand you," but this time no one leaned forward out of the darkness to quiet her. Maybe they had tired of watching her burn and had gone away. It was certainly taking a long time, though the fire seemed to be growing hotter now.

The redheaded man had set her on the white horse before him and ridden into the woods, and she had thought he must be taking her back to the drop. The horse had a saddle now, and bells, and the bells jangled as they rode, playing a tune. It was "O Come, All Ye Faithful," and the bells grew louder and louder with each verse, till they sounded like the bells of St. Mary the Virgin's.

They rode a long way, and she had thought they must surely be near the drop by now.

"How far is the drop?" she had asked the redheaded man. "Mr. Dunworthy will be so worried," but he didn't answer her. He rode out of the woods and down a hill. The moon was up, shining palely in the branches of a stand of narrow, leafless trees, and on the church at the bottom of the hill.

"This isn't the drop," she had said, and tried to pull on the horse's reins to turn it back the way they had come, but she did not dare take her arms from around the redheaded man's neck for fear she might fall. And then they were at a door, and it opened, and opened again, and there was a fire and light and the sound of bells, and she knew they had brought her back to the drop after all.

"Shay boyen syke nighonn tdeeth," the woman said. Her hands were wrinkled and rough on Kivrin's skin. She pulled the bed coverings up around Kivrin. Fur, Kivrin could feel soft fur against her face, or maybe it was her hair.

"Where have you brought me to?" Kivrin asked. The woman leaned forward a little, as if she couldn't hear her, and Kivrin realized she must have spoken in English. Her interpreter wasn't working. She was supposed to be able to think her words in English and speak them in Middle English. Perhaps that was why she couldn't understand them, because her interpreter wasn't working.

She tried to think how to say it in Middle English. "Where hast thou bringen me to?" The construction was wrong. She must ask, "What is this place?" but she could not remember the Middle English for place.

She could not think. The woman kept piling on blankets, and the more furs she laid over her, the colder Kivrin got, as if the woman were somehow putting out the fire.

They would not understand what she meant if she asked, "What is this place?" She was in a village. The redheaded man had brought her to a village. They had ridden past a church and up to a large house. She must ask, "What is the name of this village?"

The word for place was demain, but the construction was still wrong. They would use the French construction, wouldn't they?

"Quelle demeure avez vous m'apporté?' she said aloud, but the woman had gone away, and that was not right. They had not been French for two hundred years. She must ask the question in English. "Where is the village you have brought me to?" But what was the word for village?

Mr. Dunworthy had told her she might not be able to depend on the interpreter, that she had to take lessons in Middle English and Norman French and German. He had made her memorize pages and pages of Chaucer. "Soun ye nought but eyr ybroken And every speche that ye spoken." No. No. "Where is this village you have brought me to?" What was the word for village?

He had brought her to a village and knocked on a door. An old man had come to the door, carrying an ax. To cut the wood for the fire, of course. An old man and then a woman, and they had both spoken words Kivrin couldn't understand, and the door had shut, and they had been outside in the darkness.

"Mr. Dunworthy! Dr. Ahrens!" she had cried, and her chest hurt too much to get the words out. "You mustn't let them close the drop," she had said to the redheaded man, but he had changed again into a cutthroat, a thief.

"Nay," he had said. "She is but injured," and then the door had opened again, and he had carried her in to be burnt.

She was so hot.

"Thawmot goonawt plersoun roshundt prayenum comth ithre," the woman said, and Kivrin tried to raise her head to drink, but the woman wasn't holding a cup. She was holding a candle close to Kivrin's face. Too close. Her hair would catch fire.

"Der maydemot nedes dya," the woman said.

The candle flickered close to her cheek. Her hair was on fire. Orange and red flames burned along the edges of her hair, catching stray wisps and twisting them into ash.

"Shh," the woman said, and tried to capture Kivrin's hands, but Kivrin struggled against her until her hands were free. She struck at her hair, trying to put the flames out. Her hands caught fire.

"Shh," the woman said, and held her hands still. It was not the woman. The hands were too strong. Kivrin tossed her head from side to side, trying to escape the flames, but they were holding her head still, too. Her hair blazed up in a cloud of fire.

It was smoky in the room when she woke up. The fire must have gone out while she slept. That had happened to one of the martyrs when they had burned him at the stake. His friends had piled green faggots on the fire so he would die of the smoke before the fire reached him, but it had put the fire nearly out instead, and he had smouldered for hours.

The woman leaned over her. It was so smoky Kivrin couldn't see whether she was young or old. The redheaded man must have put out the fire. He had spread his cloak over her and then gone over to the fire and put it out, kicking it apart with his boots, and the smoke had come up and blinded her.

The woman dripped water on her, and the drops sizzled on her skin. "Hauccaym anchi towoem denswile?" the woman said.

"I am Isabel de Beauvrier," Kivrin said. "My brother lies ill at Evesham." She could not think of any of the words. Quelle demeure. Perced to the rote. "Where am I?" she said in English.

A face leaned close to hers. "Hau hightes towe?" it said. It was the cutthroat face of the enchanted wood. She pulled back from it, frightened.

"Go away!" she said. "What do you want?"

"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus sancti," he said.

Latin, she thought thankfully. There must be a priest here. She tried to raise her head to see past the cutthroat to the priest, but she could not. It was too smoky in the room. I can speak Latin, she thought. Mr. Dunworthy made me learn it.

"You shouldn't have let him in here!" she said in Latin. "He's a cutthroat!" Her throat hurt, and she seemed to have no breath to put behind the words, but from the way the cutthroat drew back in surprise, she knew they had heard her.

"You must not be afraid,," the priest said, and she understood him perfectly. "You do but go home again."

"To the drop?" Kivrin said. "Are you taking me to the drop?"

"Asperges me, Domine, hyssope et mundabor," the priest said. Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, O Lord, and I shall be cleansed. She could understand him perfectly.

"Help me," she said in Latin. "I must return to the place from which I came."

"…nominus…," the priest said, so softly she couldn't hear him. Name. Something about her name. She raised her head. It felt curiously light, as though all her hair had burned away.

"My name?" she said.

"Can you tell me your name?" he said in Latin.

She was supposed to tell them she was Isabel de Beauvrier, daughter of Gilbert de Beauvrier, from the East Riding, but her throat hurt so she didn't think she could get it out.

"I have to go back," she said. "They won't know where I've gone."

"Confiteor deo omnipotenti," the priest said from very far away. She couldn't see him. When she tried to look past the cutthroat, all she could see were flames. They must have lit the fire again. "Beatae Mariae semper Virgini…"

He's saying the Confiteor Deo, she thought, the prayer of confession. The cutthroat shouldn't be here. There shouldn't be anyone else in the room during a confession.

It was her turn. She tried to fold her hands in prayer and couldn't, but the priest helped her, and when she couldn't remember the words, he recited them with her. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I confess to almighty God, and to you Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, deed and omission, through my fault."

"Mea culpa," she whispered, "mea culpa, mea maxima culpa." Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault, but that wasn't right, that was only in the Confiteor Deo.

"How have you sinned?" the priest said.

"Sinned?" she said blankly.

"Yes," he said gently, leaning so close he was practically whispering in her ear. "That you may confess your sins and have God's forgiveness, and enter into the kingdom eternal."

All I wanted to do was go to the Middle Ages, she thought. I worked so hard, learning the languages and the customs and doing everything Mr. Dunworthy told me. All I wanted to do was to be an historian.

She swallowed, a feeling like flame. "I have not sinned."

The priest drew back then, and she thought he had gone away angry because she wouldn't confess her sins.

"I should have listened to Mr. Dunworthy," she said. "I shouldn't have left the drop."

"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus sancti. Amen," she priest said. His voice was gentle, comforting. She felt his cool, cool touch on her forehead.

"Quid quid deliquisti," the priest murmured. "Through this holy unction and His own most tender mercy…" He touched her eyes, her ears, her nostrils, so lightly she couldn't feel his hand at all, but only the cool touch of the oil.

That isn't part of the sacrament of penance, Kivrin thought. That's the ritual for extreme unction. He's saying the last rites.

"Don't — " Kivrin said.

"Be not afraid," he said. "May the Lord pardon thee whatever offenses thou hast committed by walking," he said and put out the fire that was burning the soles of her feet.

"Why are you giving me the last rites?" Kivrin said and then remembered they were burning her at the stake. I'm going to die here, she thought, and Mr. Dunworthy will never know what happened to me.

"My name is Kivrin," she said. "Tell Mr. Dunworthy — "

"May you behold your Redeemer face to face," the priest said, only it was the cutthroat speaking. "And standing before Him may you gaze with blessed eyes on the truth made manifest."

"I'm dying, aren't I?" she asked the priest.

"There is naught to fear," he said, and took her hand.

"Don't leave me," she said, and clutched his hand.

"I will not," he said, but she couldn't see him for all the smoke. "May Almighty God have mercy upon thee, and forgive thee thy sins, and bring thee unto life everlasting," he said.

"Please come and get me, Mr. Dunworthy," she said, and the flames roared up between them.

Domine, mittere digneris sanctum Angelum tuum de caelis, qui custodiat, foveat, protegat, visitet, atque defendat omnes habitantes in hoc habitaculo.[1]

Exaudi orationim meam et clamor meus ad te veniat.[2]

CHAPTER NINE

"What is it, Badri? What's wrong?" Dunworthy asked.

"Cold," Badri said. Dunworthy leaned across him and pulled the sheet and blanket up over his shoulders. The blanket seemed pitifully inadequate, as thin as the paper gown Badri was wearing. No wonder he was cold.

"Thank you," Badri murmured. He pulled his hand out from under the bedclothes and took hold of Dunworthy's. He closed his eyes.

Dunworthy glanced anxiously at the displays, but they were as inscrutable as ever. The temp still read 39.7. Badri's hand felt very hot, even through the imperm glove, and the fingernails looked odd, almost a dark blue. Badri's skin seemed darker, too, and his face looked somehow thinner even than when they had brought him in.

The ward sister, whose outline under her paper robe looked uncomfortably like Mrs. Gaddson's, came in and said gruffly, "The list of primary contacts is on the chart." No wonder Badri was afraid of her. "CH1," she said, pointing to the keyboard under the first display on the left.

A chart divided into hour-long blocks came up on the screen. His own name, Mary's, and the ward sister's were at the top of the chart with the letters SPG after them, in parentheses, presumably to indicate that they were wearing protective garments when they came into contact with him.

"Scroll," Dunworthy said and the chart moved up over the screen through the arrival at the hospital, the ambulance medics, the net, the last two days. Badri had been in London Monday morning setting up an on-site for Jesus College. He had come up to Oxford on the tube at noon.

He had come to see Dunworthy at half-past two and was there until four. Dunworthy entered the times on the chart. Badri had told him he'd gone to London Sunday, though he couldn't remember what time. He entered, "London — phone Jesus for time of arrival."

"He drifts in and out a good bit," the sister said disapprovingly. "It's the fever." She checked the drips, gave a yank to the bedclothes, and went out.

The door's shutting seemed to wake Badri up. His eyes fluttered open.

"I need to ask you some questions, Badri," he said. "We need to find out who you've seen and talked to. We don't want them to come down with this, and we need you to tell us who they are."

"Kivrin," he said. His voice was soft, almost a whisper, but his hand was holding tightly to Dunworthy's. "In the laboratory."

"This morning?" Dunworthy said. "Did you see Kivrin before this morning? Did you see her yesterday?"

"No."

"What did you do yesterday?"

"I checked the net," he said weakly, and his hand clung to Dunworthy's.

"Were you there all day?"

He shook his head, the effort producing a whole series of bleeps and climbs on the displays. "I went to see you."

Dunworthy nodded. "You left me a note. What did you do after that? Did you see Kivrin?"

"Kivrin," he said. "I checked Puhalski's coordinates."

"Were they correct?"

He frowned. "Yes."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes. I verified them twice." He stopped to catch his breath. "I ran an internal check and a comparator."

Dunworthy felt a rush of relief. There hadn't been a mistake in the coordinates. "What about the slippage? How much slippage was there?"

"Headache," he murmured. "This morning. Must have drunk too much at the dance."

"What dance?"

"Tired," he murmured.

"What dance did you go to?" Dunworthy persisted, feeling like an Inquisition torturer. "When was it? Monday?"

"Tuesday," Badri said. "Drank too much." He turned his head away on the pillow.

"You rest now," Dunworthy said. He gently disengaged his hand from Badri's. "Try to get some sleep."

"Glad you came," Badri said, and reached for it again.

Dunworthy held it, watching Badri and the displays by turns as he slept. It was raining. He could hear the patter of drops behind the closed curtains.

He had not realized how ill Badri really was. He had been too worried about Kivrin to even think about him. Perhaps he shouldn't be so angry with Montoya and the rest of them. They had their preoccupations, too, and none of them had stopped to think what Badri's illness meant except in terms of the difficulties and inconvenience it caused. Even Mary, talking about needing Bulkeley-Johnson for an infirmary and the possibilities of an epidemic, hadn't brought home the reality of Badri's illness and what it meant. He had had his antivirals, and yet he lay here with a fever of 39.7.

The evening passed. Dunworthy listened to the rain and the chiming of the quarter hours at St. Hilda's and, more distantly, Christ Church. The ward sister informed Dunworthy grimly that she was going off-duty, and a much smaller and more cheerful blonde nurse, wearing the insignia of a student, came in to check the drips and look at the displays.

Badri struggled in and out of consciousness with an effort Dunworthy would hardly have described as "drifting." He seemed more and more exhausted each time he fought his way back to consciousness, and less and less able to answer Dunworthy's questions.

Dunworthy kept at it mercilessly. The Christmas dance had been in Headington. Badri had gone to a pub afterward. He couldn't remember the name of it. Monday night he had worked alone in the laboratory, checking Puhalski's coordinates. He had come up at noon from London. On the tube. It was impossible. Tube passengers and partygoers, and everyone he'd had contact with in London. They would never be able to trace and test all of them, even if Badri knew who they were.

"How did you get to Brasenose this morning?" Dunworthy asked the next time Badri "drifted" awake again.

"Morning?" Badri said, looking at the curtained window as if he thought it was morning already. "How long have I been asleep?"

Dunworthy didn't know how to answer that. He'd been asleep off and on all evening. "It's ten," he said, looking at his digital. "We brought you in to hospital at half past one. You ran the net this morning. You sent Kivrin through. Do you remember when you began feeling ill?"

"What's the date?" Badri said suddenly.

"December the twenty-second. You've only been here part of one day."

"The year," Badri said, attempting to sit up. "What's the year?"

Dunworthy glanced anxiously at the displays. His temp was nearly 39.8. "The year is 2054," he said, bending over him to calm him. "It's December the twenty-second."

"Back up," Badri said.

Dunworthy straightened and stepped back from the bed.

"Back up," he said again. He pushed himself up farther and looked around the room. "Where's Mr. Dunworthy? I need to speak to him."

"I'm right here, Badri." Dunworthy took a step toward the bed and then stopped, afraid of upsetting him. "What did you want to tell me?"

"Do you know where he might be then?" Badri said. "Would you give him this note?"

He handed him an imaginary sheet of paper, and Dunworthy realized he must be reliving Tuesday afternoon when he had come to Balliol.

"I have to get back to the net." He looked at an imaginary digital. "Is the laboratory open?"

"What did you want to talk to Mr. Dunworthy about?" Dunworthy asked. "Was it the slippage?"

"No. Back up! You're going to drop it. The lid!" He looked straight at Dunworthy, his eyes bright with fever. "What are you waiting for? Go and fetch him."

The student nurse came in.

"He's delirious," Dunworthy said.

She gave Badri a cursory glance and then looked up at the displays. They seemed ominous to Dunworthy, feeding numbers frantically across the screens and zigzagging in three dimensions, but the student nurse didn't seem particularly concerned. She looked at each of the displays in turn and calmly began adjusting the flow on the drips.

"Let's lie down, all right?" she said, still without looking at Badri, and, amazingly, he did.

"I thought you'd gone," he said to her, lying back against the pillow. "Thank goodness you're here," he said, and seemed to collapse all over again, though this time there was nowhere to fall.

The student nurse hadn't noticed. She was still adjusting the drips.

"He's fainted," Dunworthy said.

She nodded and began calling reads onto the display. She didn't so much as glance at Badri, who looked deathly pale under his dark skin.

"Don't you think you should call a doctor?" Dunworthy said, and the door opened and a tall woman in SPG's came in.

She didn't look at Badri either. She read the monitors one by one, and then asked, "Indications of pleural involvement?"

"Cyanosis and chills," the nurse said.

"What's he getting?"

"Myxabravine," she said.

The doctor took a stethoscope down from the wall, untangling the chestpiece from the connecting cord. "Any hemoptysis?"

She shook her head.

"Cold," Badri said from the bed. Neither of them paid the slightest attention. Badri began to shiver. "Don't drop it. It was china, wasn't it?"

"I want fifty cc's of acqueous penicillin and an ASA pack," the doctor said. She sat Badri, shivering harder than ever, up in bed and peeled the velcro strips of his paper nightgown open. She pressed the stethoscope's chestpiece against Badri's back in what seemed to Dunworthy to be a cruel and unusual punishment.

"Take a deep breath," the doctor said, her eyes on the display. Badri did, his teeth chattering.

"Minor pleural consolidation lower left," the doctor said cryptically and moved the chestpiece over a centimeter. "Another." She moved the chestpiece several more times and then said, "Do we have an ident yet?"

"Myxovirus," the nurse said, filling a syringe. "Type A."

"Sequencing?"

"Not yet." She fit the syringe into the shunt and pushed the plunger down. Somewhere outside a telephone rang.

The doctor velcroed the top of Badri's nightgown together, lowered him back to the bed again, and flipped the sheet carelessly over his legs.

"Give me a gram stain," she said, and left. The phone was still ringing.

Dunworthy longed to pull the blanket up over Badri properly, but the student nurse was hooking another drip onto the stanchion. He waited till she had finished with the drip and gone out, and then straightened the sheet and pulled the blanket carefully up over Badri's shoulders and tucked it in at the side of the bed.

"Is that better?" he said, but Badri had already stopped shivering and gone to sleep. Dunworthy looked at the displays. His temp was already down to 39.2, and the previously frantic lines on the other screens were steady and strong.

"Mr. Dunworthy," the student nurse's voice came from somewhere on the wall, "there's a telephone call for you. It's a Mr. Finch."

Dunworthy opened the door. The student nurse, out of her SPG's, motioned to him to take off his gown. He did, dumping the garments in the large cloth hamper she indicated. "Your spectacles, please," she said. He handed them to her and she began spritzing disinfectant on them. He picked up the phone, squinting at the screen.

"Mr. Dunworthy, I've been looking for you everywhere," Finch said. "The most dreadful thing's happened."

"What is it?" Dunworthy said. He glanced at his digital. It was ten o'clock. Too early for someone to have come down with the virus if the incubation period was twelve hours. "Is someone ill?"

"No, sir. It's worse than that. It's Mrs. Gaddson. She's in Oxford. She got through the quarantine perimeter somehow."

"I know. The last train. She made them hold the doors."

"Yes, well, she called from hospital. She insists on staying at Balliol, and she accused me of not taking proper care of William because I was the one who typed out the tutor assignments, and apparently his tutor's made him stay up over vac to read Petrarch."

"Tell her we haven't any room. Tell her the dormitories are being sterilized."

"I did, sir, but she said in that case she would room with William. I don't like to do that to him, sir."

"No," Dunworthy said. "There are some things one shouldn't have to endure, even in an epidemic. Have you told William his mother's coming?"

"No, sir. I tried, but he's not in college. Tom Gailey told me Mr. Gaddson was visiting a young lady at Shrewsbury, so I rang her up, but there was no answer."

"No doubt they're out reading Petrarch somewhere," Dunworthy said, wondering what would happen if Mrs. Gaddson should come upon the unwary couple on her way to Balliol.

"I don't see why he should be doing that, sir," Finch said, sounding troubled. "Or why his tutor should have assigned Petrarch at all. He's reading for mods."

"Yes, well, when Mrs. Gaddson arrives, put her in Warren." The nurse looked up sharply from polishing his spectacles. "It's across the quad at any rate. Give her a room that doesn't look out on anything. And check our supply of rash ointment."

"Yes, sir," Finch said. "I spoke with the bursar at New College. She said Mr. Basingame told her before he left that he wanted to be 'free of distractions,' but she said she assumed he'd told someone where he was going and that she'd try to phone his wife as soon as the lines settled down."

"Did you ask about their techs?"

"Yes, sir," Finch said. "All of them have gone home for the holidays."

"Which of our techs lives the closest to Oxford?"

Finch thought for a moment. "That would be Andrews. In Reading. Would you like his number?"

"Yes, and make me up a list of the others' numbers and addresses."

Finch recited Andrews' number. "I've taken steps to remedy the lavatory paper situation. I've put up notices with the motto: Waste Leads to Want."

"Wonderful," Dunworthy said. He rang off and tried Andrews' number. It was engaged.

The student nurse handed him back his spectacles and a new bundle of SPG's, and he put them on, taking care this time to put the mask on before the cap and to leave the gloves till last. It still took an unconscionable amount of time to array himself. He hoped the nurse would be significantly faster if Badri rang the bell for help.

He went back in. Badri was still restlessly asleep. He glanced at the display. His temp read 39.2.

His head ached. He took off his spectacles and rubbed at the space between his eyes. Then he sat down at the campstool and looked at the chart of contacts he had pieced together thus far. It could scarcely be called a chart, there were so many gaps in it. The name of the pub Badri had gone to after the dance. Where Badri had been Monday evening. And Monday afternoon. He had come up from London on the tube at noon, and Dunworthy had phoned him to ask him to run the net at half-past two. Where had he been those two and a half hours?

And where had he gone Tuesday afternoon after he came to Balliol and left the note saying he'd run a systems check on the net? Back to the laboratory? Or to another pub? He wondered if perhaps someone at Balliol had spoken to Badri while he was there. When Finch called back to inform him of the latest developments in American bellringers and lavatory paper, he would tell him to ask everyone who'd been in college if they'd seen Badri.

The door opened, and the student nurse, swathed in SPG's, came in. Dunworthy looked automatically at the displays, but he couldn't see any dramatic changes. Badri was still asleep. The nurse entered some figures on the display, checked the drip, and tugged at a corner of the bedclothes. She opened the curtain and then stood there, twisting the cord in her hands.

"I couldn't help overhearing you on the telephone," she said. "You mentioned a Mrs. Gaddson. I know it's terribly rude of me to ask, but might that have been William Gaddson's mother you were speaking of?"

"Yes," he said, surprised. "William's a student of mine at Balliol. Do you know him?"

"He's a friend of mine," she said, flushing such a bright pink he could see it through her imperm mask.

"Ah," he said, wondering when William had time to read Petrarch. "William's mother is here in hospital," he said, feeling he should warn her but unclear as to whom to warn her about. "It seems she's come to visit him for Christmas."

"She's here?" the nurse said, flushing an even brighter pink. "I thought we were under quarantine."

"Hers was the last train up from London," Dunworthy said wistfully.

"Does William know?"

"My secretary is attempting to notify him," he said, omitting the bit about the student at Shrewsbury.

"He's at the Bodleian," she said, "reading Petrarch." She unwrapped the curtain cord from her hand and went out, no doubt to telephone the Bodleian.

Badri stirred and murmured something Dunworthy could not make out. He looked flushed, and his breathing seemed more labored.

"Badri?" he said.

Badri opened his eyes. "Where am I?" he said.

Dunworthy glanced at the monitors. His fever was down a half a point and he seemed more alert than before.

"In infirmary," he said. "You collapsed in the lab at Brasenose while you were working the net. Do you remember?"

"I remember feeling odd," he said. "Cold. I came to the pub to tell you I'd got the fix…" A strange, frightened look came over his face.

"You told me there was something wrong," Dunworthy said. "What was it? Was it the slippage?"

"Something wrong," Badri repeated. He tried to raise himself on his elbow. "What's wrong with me?"

"You're ill," Dunworthy said. "You have the flu."

"Ill? I've never been ill." He struggled to sit up. "They died, didn't they?"

"Who died?"

"It killed them all."

"Did you see someone, Badri? This is important. Did someone else have the virus?"

"Virus?" he said, and there was obvious relief in his voice. "Do I have a virus?"

"Yes. A type of flu. It's not fatal. They've been giving you antimicrobials, and an analogue's on the way. You'll be recovered in no time. Do you know who you caught it from? Did someone else have the virus?"

"No." He eased himself back down onto the pillow. "I thought — Oh!" He looked up in alarm at Dunworthy. "There's something wrong," he said desperately.

"What is it?" He reached for the bell. "What's wrong?"

His eyes were wide with fright. "It hurts!"

Dunworthy pushed the bell. The nurse and a house officer came in immediately and went through their routine again, prodding him with the icy stethoscope.

"He complained of being cold," Dunworthy said. "And of something hurting."

"Where does it hurt?" the house officer said, looking at a display.

"Here," Badri said. He pressed his hand to the right side of his chest. He began to shiver again.

"Lower right pleurisy," the house officer said.

"Hurts when I breathe," Badri said through chattering teeth. "There's something wrong."

Something wrong. He had not meant the fix. He had meant that something was wrong with him. He was how old? Kivrin's age? They had begun giving routine rhinovirus antivirals nearly twenty years ago. It was entirely possible that when he'd said he'd never been ill, he meant he'd never had so much as a cold.

"Oxygen?" the nurse said.

"Not yet," the house officer said on his way out. "Start him on 200 units of chloramphe nicol."

The nurse laid Badri back down, attached a piggyback to the drip, watched Badri's temp drop for a minute, and went out.

Dunworthy looked out the window at the rainy night. "I remember feeling odd," he had said. Not ill. Odd. Someone who'd never had a cold wouldn't know what to make of a fever or chills. He would only have known something was wrong and would have left the net and hurried to the pub to tell someone. Have to tell Dunworthy. Something wrong.

Dunworthy took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. The disinfectant made them smart. He felt exhausted. He had said he couldn't relax until he knew Kivrin was all right. Badri was asleep, the harshness of his breathing taken away by the impersonal magic of the doctors. And Kivrin was asleep, too, in a flea-ridden bed seven hundred years away. Or wide-awake, impressing the contemps with her table manners and her dirty fingernails, or kneeling on a filthy stone floor, telling her adventures into her hands.

He must have dozed off. He dreamed he heard a telephone ringing. It was Finch. He told him the Americans were threatening to sue for insufficient supplies of lavatory paper and that the Dean had called with the Scripture. "It's Matthew 2:11," Finch said. "Waste leads to want," and at that point the nurse opened the door and told him Mary needed him to meet her in Casualties.

He looked at his digital. It was twenty past four. Badri was still asleep, looking almost peaceful. The nurse met him outside with the disinfectant bottle and told him to take the elevator.

The smell of disinfectant from his spectacles helped wake him up. By the time he reached the ground floor he was almost awake. Mary was there waiting for him in a mask and the rest of it. "We've got another case," she said, handing him a bundle of SPG's. "It's one of the detainees. It might be someone from that crowd of shoppers. I want you to try to identify her."

He got into the garments as clumsily as the first time, nearly tearing the gown in his efforts to get the velcro strips apart. "There were dozens of shoppers on the High," he said, pulling the gloves on. "And I was watching Badri. I doubt that I could identify anyone on that street."

"I know," Mary said. She led the way down the corridor and through the door to casualties. It seemed like years since he'd been there.

Ahead, a cluster of people, all anonymous in paper, were wheeling a stretcher trolley in. The house officer, also papered, was taking information from a thin, frightened-looking woman in a wet mackintosh and matching rain hat.

"Her name is Beverly Breen," she told him in a faint voice. "226 Plover Way, Surbiton. I knew something was wrong. She kept saying we needed to take the tube to Northampton."

She was carrying an umbrella and a large handbag, and when the house officer asked for the patient's NHS number, she leaned the umbrella against the admissions desk, opened the handbag, and looked through it.

"She was just brought in from the tube station complaining of headache and chills," Mary said. "She was in line to be assigned lodging."

She signaled the medics to stop the stretcher trolley and pulled the blanket back from the woman's neck and chest so he could get a better look at her, but he didn't need it.

The woman in the wet mac had found the card. She handed it to the officer, picked up the umbrella, the handbag and a sheaf of varicoloured papers and came over to the stretcher trolley carrying them. The umbrella was a large one. It was covered with lavender violets.

"Badri collided with her on the way back to the net," he said.

"Are you absolutely certain?" Mary said.

He pointed at the woman's friend, who had sat down now and was filling out forms. "I recognize the umbrella."

"What time was that?" she said.

"I'm not positive. Half-past one?"

"What type of contact was it? Did he touch her?"

"He ran straight into her," he said, trying to recall the scene. "He collided with the umbrella, and then he told her he was sorry, and she yelled at him for a bit. He picked up the umbrella and handed it to her."

"Did he cough or sneeze?"

"I can't remember."

The woman was being wheeled into Casualties. Mary stood up. "I want her put in isolation," she said, and started after them.

The woman's friend stood up, dropping one of the forms and clutching the others awkwardly to her chest. "Isolation?" she said frightenedly. "What's wrong with her?"

"Come with me, please," Mary said to her and led her off somewhere to have her blood taken and her friend's umbrella spritzed with disinfectant before Dunworthy could ask her whether she wanted him to wait for her. He started to ask the registrar and then sat down tiredly in one of the chairs against the wall. There was an inspirational brochure on the chair next to him. Its title was "The Importance of a Good Night's Sleep."

His neck hurt from his uncomfortable sleep on the campstool, and his eyes were smarting again. He supposed he should go back up to Badri's room, but he wasn't certain he had the energy to put on another set of SPG's. And he didn't think he could bear to wake Badri and ask him who else would be shortly wheeled into casualties with a temp of 39.5.

At any rate Kivrin wouldn't be one of them. It was half past four. Badri had collided with the woman with the lavendar umbrella at half past one. That meant an incubation of fifteen hours, and fifteen hours ago Kivrin had been fully protected.

Mary came back, her cap off and her mask dangling from her neck. Her hair was in disarray, and she looked as bone-weary as Dunworthy felt.

"I'm discharging Mrs. Gaddson," she told the registrar. "She's to be back here at seven for a blood test." She came over to where Dunworthy was sitting. "I'd forgotten all about her," she said, smiling. "She was rather upset. She threatened to sue me for unlawful detainment."

"She should get along well with my bell ringers. They're threatening to go to court over involuntary breach of contract."

Mary ran her hand through her disorderly hair. "We got an ident from the World Influenza Center on the influenza virus." She stood up as if she had had a sudden infusion of energy. "I could do with a cup of tea," she said. "Come along."

Dunworthy glanced at the registrar, who was watching them attentively, and hauled himself to his feet.

"I'll be in the surgical waiting room," Mary said to the registrar.

"Yes, Doctor," the registrar said. "I couldn't help overhearing your conversation…" she said hesitantly.

Mary stiffened.

"You told me you were discharging Mrs. Gaddson, and then I heard you mention the name 'William,' and I was just wondering if Mrs. Gaddson is by any chance William Gaddson's mother."

"Yes," Mary said, looking puzzled.

"You're a friend of his?" Dunworthy said, wondering if she would blush like the blonde student nurse.

She did. "I've come to know him rather well this vac. He's stayed up to read Petrarch."

"Among other things," Dunworthy said, and while she was busy blushing, steered Mary past the "NO ENTRANCE: ISOLATION AREA" sign and down the corridor.

"What in heaven's name was that all about?" she asked.

"Sickly William is even more self-sufficient than we had at first assumed," he said, and opened the door to the waiting room.

Mary flicked the light on and went over to the tea trolley. She shook the electric kettle and disappeared into the WC with it. He sat down. Someone had taken away the tray of blood- testing equipment and moved the end table back to its proper place, but Mary's shopping bag was still sitting in the middle of the floor. He leaned forward and moved it over next to the chairs.

Mary reappeared with the kettle. She bent and plugged it in. "Did you have any luck discovering Badri's contacts?" she said.

"If you could call it that. He went to a Christmas dance in Headington last night. He took the tube both ways. How bad is it?"

Mary opened two tea packets and draped them over the cups. "There's only powdered milk, I'm afraid. Do you know if he's had any contact recently with someone from the States?"

"No. Why?"

"Do you take sugar?"

"How bad is it?"

She poured powdered milk into the cups. "The bad news is that Badri's very ill." She spooned in sugar. "He had his seasonals through the University, which requires broader-spectrum protection than the NHS. He should be completely protected against a five-point shift, and partially resistant to a ten- point shift. But he's exhibiting full influenza symptoms, which indicates a major mutation."

The kettle was screaming. "Which means an epidemic."

"Yes."

"A pandemic?"

"Possibly. If the WIC can't sequence the virus quickly, or the staff bolts. Or the quarantine doesn't hold."

She unplugged the kettle and poured hot water into their cups. "The good news is that the WIC thinks it's an influenza that originated in South Carolina." She brought a cup over to Dunworthy. "In which case it's already been sequenced and an analogue and vaccine manufactured, it responds well to antimicrobials and symptomatic treatment, and it's not fatal."

"How long is its incubation period?"

"Twelve to forty-eight hours." She stood against the tea trolley and took a sip of tea. "The WIC is sending blood samples to the CDC in Atlanta for matching, and they're sending their recommended course of treatment."

"When did Kivrin check into infirmary on Monday for her antivirals?"

"Three o'clock," Mary said. "She was here until nine the next morning. I kept her overnight to ensure she got a good night's sleep."

"Badri says he didn't see her yesterday," Dunworthy said, "but he could have had contact with her Monday before she went into Infirmary."

"She'd need to have been exposed before her antiviral inoculation, and the virus have had a chance to replicate unchecked for her to be in danger, James," Mary said. "Even if she did see Badri Monday or Tuesday, she's in less danger of developing symptoms than you are." She looked seriously at him over her teacup. "You're still worried over the fix, aren't you?"

He half shook his head. "Badri says he checked the apprentice's coordinates and they were correct, and he'd already told Gilchrist the slippage was minimal," he said, wishing Badri had answered him when he asked him about the slippage.

"What else is there that can have gone wrong?" Mary asked.

"I don't know. Nothing. Except that she's alone in the Middle Ages."

Mary set her cup of tea down on the trolley. "She may be safer there than here. We're going to have a good many ill patients. Influenza spreads like wildfire, and the quarantine will only make it worse. The medical staff are always the first exposed. If they come down with it, or the supply of antimicrobials gives out, this century could be the one that's a ten."

She pushed her hand tiredly over her untidy hair. "Sorry, it's the fatigue speaking. This isn't the Middle Ages, after all. It's not even Twentieth Century. We have metabolizers and adjuvants, and if it's the South Carolina virus, we've an analogue and a vaccine. But I'm still glad Colin and Kivrin are safely out of this."

"Safely in the Middle Ages," Dunworthy said.

Mary smiled at him. "With the cutthroats."

The door banged open. A tallish blonde boy with large feet and a rugby duffel came in, dripping water on the floor.

"Colin!" Mary said.

"So this is where you've got to," Colin said. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

Mr. Dunworthy, ad adjuvandum me festina.[3]