Doomsday Book (10 page)

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."

TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOOMSDAY BOOK (000618-000735)

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.