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The rain had at least driven the picketers away. There was nothing in front of Brasenose but a few wet flyers they had dropped. An expandable metal gate had been pulled across the front of the entrance to Brasenose. The porter had retreated inside his lodge, and the shutter was down.

“Open up! “ Dunworthy shouted. He rattled the gate loudly. “Open up immediately!”

The porter pulled the shutter up and looked out. When he saw it was Dunworthy, he looked alarmed and then belligerent. “Brasenose is under quarantine,” he said. “It’s restricted.”

“Open this gate immediately,” Dunworthy said.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir,” he said. “Mr. Gilchrist has given orders that no one be admitted to Brasenose until the source of the virus is discovered.”

“We know the source,” Dunworthy said. “Open the gate.”

The porter let the shutter down, and in a minute he came out of the lodge and over to the gate. “Was it the Christmas decorations?” he said. “They said the ornaments were infected with it.”

“No,” Dunworthy said. “Open the gate and let me in.”

“I don’t know whether I should do that, sir,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “Mr. Gilchrist…”

“Mr. Gilchrist isn’t in charge any more,” he said. He pulled the folded paper out of his jacket and poked it through the metal gate at the porter.

He unfolded it and read it, standing there in the rain.

“Mr. Gilchrist is no longer Acting Head,” Dunworthy said. “Mr. Basingame has authorized me to take charge of the drop. Open the gate.”

“Mr. Basingame,” he said, peering at the already-blotted signature. “I’ll find the keys,” he said.

He went back in the lodge, taking the paper with him. Dunworthy huddled against the gate, trying to keep out of the freezing rain and shivering.

He had been worried about Kivrin sleeping on the cold ground, and she was in the middle of a holocaust, where people froze to death because no one was left on their feet to chop wood and the animals died in the fields because no one was left alive to bring them in. Eighty thousand dead in Siena, three hundred thousand in Rome, more than a hundred thousand in Florence. One half of Europe.

The porter finally emerged with a large ring of keys and came over to the gate. “I’ll have it open in a moment, sir,” he said, sorting through the keys.

Kivrin would surely have gone back to the drop as soon as she realized it was 1348. She would have been there all this time, waiting for the net to open, frantic that they hadn’t come to get her.

If she had realized. She would have no way of knowing she was in 1348. Badri had told her the slippage would be several days. She would have checked the date against the Advent holy days and thought she was exactly where she was supposed to be. It would never have occurred to her to ask the year. She would think she was in 1320, and all the time the plague would be sweeping toward her.

The gate’s lock clicked free, and Dunworthy pushed it together far enough to squeeze through. “Bring your keys,” he said. “I need you to unlock the laboratory.”

“That key’s not on here,” the porter said, and disappeared into the lodge again.

It was icy in the passage, and the rain came slanting in, colder still. Dunworthy huddled next to the door of the lodge, trying to catch some of the heat from inside and jammed his hands hard against the bottoms of his jacket pockets to stop the shivering.

He had been worried about cutthroats and thieves, and all this time she had been in 1348, where they had piled the dead in the streets, where they had burned Jews and strangers at the stake in their panic.

He had been worried about Gilchrist not doing parameter checks, so worried that he had infected Badri with his anxiety, and Badri, already feverish, had refed the coordinates. So worried.

He realized suddenly that the porter had been gone too long, that he must be warning Gilchrist.

He moved toward the door, and as he did, the porter emerged, carrying an umbrella and exclaiming over the cold. He offered half the umbrella to Dunworthy.

“I’m already wet through,” Dunworthy said and strode off ahead of him through the quad.

The door of the laboratory had a yellow plastic banner stretched across it. Dunworthy tore it off while the porter searched through his pockets for the key to the alarm, switching the umbrella from hand to hand.

Dunworthy glanced up behind him at Gilchrist’s rooms. They overlooked the laboratory, and there was a light on in the sitting room, but Dunworthy couldn’t detect any movement.

The porter found the flat cardkey that switched off the alarm. He switched it off and began looking for the key to the door. “I’m still not certain I should unlock the laboratory without Mr. Gilchrist’s authorization,” he said.

“Mr. Dunworthy!” Colin shouted from halfway across the quad. They both looked up. Colin came racing up, drenched to the skin with the book under his arm, wrapped in the muffler. “It—didn’t—hit—parts of Oxfordshire—till—March,” he said, stopping between words to catch his breath. “Sorry. I—ran—all the way.”

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Феликс Х. Пальма

Фантастика / Приключения / Научная Фантастика / Социально-психологическая фантастика / Исторические приключения