Dooms Day Book
Connie Willis
Nebula Best Novel winner (1993)
Hugo Best Novel winner (1993)
For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity’s history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.
But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history’s darkest hours.
Five years in the writing by one of science fiction’s most honored authors, “Doomsday Book” is a storytelling triumph. Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human spirit.
Doomsday Book
by Connie Willis
“And lest things which should be remembered perish with time and vanish from the memory of those who are to come after us, I, seeing so many evils and the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One, being myself as if among the dead, I, waiting for death, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed.
And, lest the writing should perish with the writer and the work fail with the laborer, I leave parchment to continue this work, if perchance any man survive and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun…”
Brother John Clyn, 1349
Book I
“What a ringer needs most is not strength but the ability to keep time… You must bring these two things together in your mind and let them rest there forever—bells and time, bells and time.”
Ronald Blythe, “Akenfield”
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.”
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