Dooms Day Book

“1348?” Mary said again. He saw her glance at the screens on the wall behind Badri, as if hoping he was still delirious. “Are you certain?”

Badri nodded. “I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw the slippage—,” he said, and sounded as bewildered as Mary.

“There couldn’t have been enough slippage for her to be in 1348,” Dunworthy cut in. “I had Andrews run parameter checks. He said the maximal slippage was only five years.”

Badri shook his head. “It wasn’t the slippage. That was only four hours. It was too small. Minimal slippage on a drip that far in the past should have been at least forty-eight hours.”

The slippage had not been too great. It had been too small. I didn’t ask Andrews what the minimal slippage was, only the maximal.

“I don’t know what happened,” Badri said. “I had such a headache. The whole time I was setting the net, I had a headache.”

“That was the virus,” Mary said. She looked stunned. “Headache and disorientation are the first symptoms.” She sank down in the chair beside the bed. “1348.”

1348. He could not seem to take this in. He had been worried about Kivrin catching the Indian flu, he had been worried about there being too much slippage, and all the time she was in 1348. The plague had hit Oxford in 1348. At Christmastime.

“As soon as I saw how small the slippage was, I knew there was something wrong,” Badri said, so I called up the coordinates– -”

“You said you checked Puhalski’s coordinates,” Dunworthy said accusingly.

“He was only a first-year apprentice. He’d never even done a remote. And Gilchrist didn’t have the least idea what he was doing. I tried to tell you. Wasn’t she at the rendezvous?” He looked at Dunworthy. “Why didn’t you pull her out?”

“We didn’t know,” Mary said, still sitting there stunned. “You weren’t able to tell us anything. You were delirious.”

“The plague killed fifty million people,” Dunworthy said. “It killed half of Europe.”

“James,” Mary said.

“I tried to tell you,” Badri said. “That’s why I came to get you. So we could pull her out before she left the rendezvous.”

He had tried to tell him. He had run all the way to the pub. He had run out in the pouring rain without his coat to tell him, pushing his way between the Christmas shoppers and their shopping bags and umbrellas as if they weren’t there, and arrived wet and half-frozen, his teeth chattering with the fever. There’s something wrong.

I tried to tell you. He had. “It killed half of Europe,” he had said, and “it was the rats,” and “What year is it?” He had tried to tell him.

“If it wasn’t the slippage, it has to have been an error in the coordinates,” Dunworthy said, gripping the end of the bed.

Badri shrank back against the propped pillows like a cornered animal.

“You said Puhalski’s coordinates were correct.”

“James,” Mary said warningly.

“The coordinates are the only other thing that could go wrong,” he shouted. “Anything else would have aborted the drop. You said you checked them twice. You said you couldn’t find any mistakes.”

“I couldn’t,” Badri said. “But I didn’t trust them. I was afraid he’d made a mistake in the sidereal calculations that wouldn’t show up.” His face went gray. “I refed them myself. The morning of the drop.”

The morning of the drop. When he had had the terrific headache. When he was already feverish and disoriented. Dunworthy remembered him typing at the console, frowning at the display screens. I watched him do it, he thought. I stood and watched him send Kivrin to the Black Death.

“I don’t know what happened,” Badri said. “I must have—”

“The plague wiped out whole villages,” Dunworthy said. “So many people died, there was no one left to bury them.”

“Leave him alone, James,” Mary said. “It’s not his fault. He was ill.”

“Ill,” he said. “Kivrin was exposed to the Indian flu. She’s in 1348.”

“James,” Mary said.

He didn’t wait to hear it. He yanked the door open and plunged out.

Colin was balancing on a chair in the corridor, tipping it back so the front two legs were off the ground. “There you are,” he said.

Dunworthy walked rapidly past him.

“Where are you going?” Colin said, tipping the chair forward with a crash. “Great-Aunt Mary said not to let you leave till you’d had your enhancement.” He lurched sideways, caught himself on his hands, and scrambled up. “Why aren’t you wearing your SPG’s?”

Dunworthy shoved through the ward doors.

Colin came skidding through the doors. “Great-Aunt Mary said I was absolutely not to let you leave.”

“I don’t have time for inoculations,” Dunworthy said. “She’s in 1348.”

“Great-Aunt Mary?”

He started down the corridor.

“Kivrin?” Colin asked, running to catch up. “She can’t be. That’s when the Black Death was, isn’t it?”

Dunworthy shoved open the door to the stairs and started down them two at a time.

“I don’t understand,” Colin said. “How did she end up in 1348?”

Dunworthy pushed open the door at the foot of the stairs and started down the corridor to the call box, fishing in his overcoat for the pocket calendar Colin had given him.