Dooms Day Book

by Connie Willis

  “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.

  “As a precaution, we need to test those people who have been in contact with the patient for antibodies. We’ll need bloods and temps, and we need each of you to list all of your contacts and those of Mr. Chaudhuri.”

  The nurse handed several sheets of paper and a pencil to Dunworthy. The top sheet was a
hospital admissions form. The one underneath was headed “Primaries” and divided into columns marked “Name, location, time.” The bottom sheet was just the same except that it was headed “Secondaries.”

  “Since Badri is our only case,” Mary said, “we are considering him the index case. We do not have a positive mode of transmission yet, so you must list anyone who’s had any contact with Badri, however momentary. Anyone he spoke to, touched, has had any contact with.”

  Dunworthy had a sudden image of Badri leaning over Kivrin, adjusting her sleeve, moving her arm.

  “Anyone at all who may have been exposed,” Mary said.

  “Including all of us,” the medic said.

  “Yes,” Mary said.

  “And Kivrin,” Dunworthy said.

  For a moment she looked like she had no idea at all who Kivrin was.

  “Ms. Engle has had full-spectrum antivirals and T-cell enhancement,” Gilchrist said. “She would not be at risk, would she?”

  Dr. Ahrens hesitated only a second. “No. She didn’t have any contact with Badri before this morning, did she?”

  “Mr. Dunworthy only offered me the use of his tech two days ago,” Gilchrist said, practically snatching the papers and pencil the nurse was offering him out of her hands. “I, of course, assumed that Mr. Dunworthy had taken the same precautions with his techs which Mediaeval had. It has become apparent, however, that he didn’t, and you may be sure I will inform Basingame of your negligence, Mr. Dunworthy.”

  “If Kivrin’s first contact with Badri was this morning, she was fully protected,” Mary said. “Mr. Gilchrist, if you’d be so good.” She indicated the chair, and he came and sat down.

  Mary took one of the sets of papers from the nurse and held up the sheet marked “Primaries.” “Any person Badri had contact with is a primary contact. Any person you have had contact with is a secondary. On this sheet I would like you to list all contacts you have had with Badri Chaudhuri over the last three days, and any contacts of his that you know of. On this sheet,” she held up the sheet marked “Secondaries”, “list all your contacts with the time you had them. Begin with the present and work backward.”

  She popped a temp into Gilchrist’s mouth, peeled a portable monitor off its paper strip, and stuck it on his wrist. The nurse passed the papers out to Latimer and the medic. Dunworthy sat down and began filling out his own.

  The Infirmary form asked for his name, National Health Service number, and a complete medical history, which the NHS number could no doubt call up in better detail than he could remember it. Illnesses. Surgeries. Inoculations. If Mary didn’t have Badri’s NHS number that meant he was still unconscious.

  Dunworthy had no idea what date his last start-of-term antivirals had been. He put question marks next to them, turned to the Primaries sheet, and wrote his own name at the top of the column. Latimer, Gilchrist, the two medics. He didn’t know their names, and the female medic was asleep again. She held her papers bunched in one hand, her arms folded across her chest. Dunworthy wondered if he needed to list the doctors and nurses who had worked on Badri when he came in. He wrote “casualties department staff” and then put a question mark after it. Montoya.

  And Kivrin, who, according to Mary, was fully protected. “Something wrong,” Badri had said. Had he meant this infection? Had he realized he was getting ill while he was trying to get the fix and come running to the pub to tell them he had exposed Kivrin?

  The pub. There hadn’t been anyone in the pub except the barman. And Finch, but he’d gone before Badri got there. Dunworthy lifted up the sheet and wrote Finch’s name under “Secondaries,” and then turned back to the first sheet and wrote “barman, Lamb and Cross.” The pub had been empty, but the streets hadn’t been. He could see Badri in his mind’s eye, pushing his way through the Christmas crowd, barging into the woman with the flowered umbrella and elbowing his way past the old man and the little boy with the white terrier. “Anyone he’s had any contact with,” Mary had said.

  He looked across at Mary, who was holding Gilchrist’s wrist and making careful entries in a chart. Was she going to try to get bloods and temps from everyone on these lists? It was impossible. Badri had touched or brushed past or breathed on dozens of people in his headlong flight back to Brasenose, none of whom Dunworthy or Badri, would recognize again. Doubtless he had come in contact with as many or more on his way to the pub, and each of them had come in contact with how many others in the busy shops?

  He wrote down “Large number of shoppers and pedestrians, High Street(?)” drew a line, and tried to remember the other occasions on which he’d seen Badri. He hadn’t asked him to run the net until two days ago, when he’d found out from Kivrin that Gilchrist was intending to use a first-year apprentice.

  Badri had just gotten back from London when Dunworthy telephoned. Kivrin had been in hospital that day for her final examination, which was good. She couldn’t have had any contact with him then, and he’d been in London before that.

  Tuesday Badri had come to see Dunworthy to tell him he’d checked the first-year student’s coordinates and done a full systems check. Dunworthy hadn’t been there, so he’d left a note. Kivrin had come to Balliol Tuesday, as well, to show him her costume, but that had been in the morning. Badri had said in his note that he’d spent all morning at the net. And Kivrin had said she was going to see Latimer at the Bodleian in the afternoon. But she might have gone back to the net after that, or have been there before she came to show him her costume.

  The door opened and the nurse ushered Montoya in. Her terrorist jacket and jeans were wet. It must still be raining. “What’s going on?” she said to Mary, who was labelling a vial of Gilchrist’s blood.

  “It seems,” Gilchrist said, pressing a wad of cotton wool to the inside of his arm and standing up, “that Mr. Dunworthy failed to have his tech properly checked for inoculations before he ran the net, and now he is in hospital with a temperature of 39.5. He apparently has some sort of exotic fever.”

  “Fever?” Montoya said, looking bewildered. “Isn’t 39.5 low?”

  “103 degrees in Fahrenheit,” Mary said, sliding the vial into its carrier. “Badri’s infection is possibly contagious. I need to run some tests and you’ll need to write down all of your contacts and Badri’s.”

  “Okay,” Montoya said. She sat down in the chair Gilchrist had vacated and shrugged off her jacket. Mary swabbed the inside of her arm and clipped a new vial and disposable punch together. “Let’s get it over with. I’ve got to get back to my dig.”

  “You can’t go back,” Gilchrist said. “Haven’t you heard? We’re under quarantine, thanks to Mr. Dunworthy’s carelessness.”

  “Quarantine?” she said and jerked so the punch missed her arm completely. The idea of a disease she might contract had not affected her at all, but the mention of a quarantine did. “I have to get back,” she said, appealing to Mary. “You mean I have to stay here?”

  “Until we have the blood test results,” Mary said, trying to find a vein for the punch.

  “How long will that be?” Montoya said, trying to look at her digital with the arm Mary was working on. “The guy who brought me in didn’t even let me cover up the site or turn off the heaters, and it’s raining like crazy out there. I’ve got a churchyard that’s going to be full of water if I don’t get out there.”

  “As long as it takes to get blood samples from all of you and run an antibodies count on them,” Mary said, and Montoya must have gotten the message because she straightened out her arm and held it still. Mary filled a vial with her blood, gave her her temp, and slid a tach bracelet on. Dunworthy watched her, wondering if she had been telling the truth. She hadn’t said Montoya could leave after they had the test results, only that she had to stay here until they were in. And what then? Would they be taken to an isolation ward together or separately? Or given some sort of medication? Or given more tests?

  Mary took Montoya’s tach bracelet off and handed her the last set of papers. “Mr
. Latimer? You’re next.”

  Latimer stood up, holding his papers. He looked at them confusedly, then set them down on the chair he’d been sitting on, and started over to Mary. Halfway there, he turned and went back for Mary’s shopping bag. “You left this at Brasenose,” he said, holding it out to Mary.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said. “Just set it next to the table, won’t you? These gloves are sterile.”

  Latimer set the bag down, tipping it slightly. The end of the muffler trailed out on the floor. He methodically tucked it back in.

  “I’d completely forgotten I left it there,” Mary said, watching him. “In all the excitement, I—” She clapped her gloved hand over her mouth. “Oh, my Lord! Colin! I’d forgotten all about him. What time is it?”

  “4:08,” Montoya said without looking at her digital.

  “He was supposed to come in at three,” she said, standing up and clattering the vials of blood in their carrier.

  “Perhaps when you weren’t there he went round to your rooms,” Dunworthy said.

  She shook her head. “This is the first time he’s been to Oxford. That’s why I told him I’d be there to meet him. I never even gave him a thought until now,” she said, almost to herself.

  “Well, then, he’ll still be at the Underground station,” Dunworthy said. “Shall I go and fetch him?”

  “No,” she said. “You’ve been exposed.”

  “I’ll phone the station then. You can tell him to take a taxi here. Where was he coming in? Cornmarket?”

  “Yes, Cornmarket.”

  Dunworthy rang up information, got through on the third try, got the number off the screen and rang the station. The line was engaged. He hit disconnect and punched the number in again.

  “Is Colin your grandson?” Montoya said. She had put aside her papers. The others didn’t seem to be paying any attention to this latest development. Gilchrist was filling in his forms and glaring, as if this was one more example of negligence and incompetence. Latimer was sitting patiently by the tray, his sleeve rolled up. The medic was still asleep.