Doomsday Book (18 page)

"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."