The Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

  She might not have gone anywhere at all, and on the other side of this hill she would find the M-l or Ms. Montoya’s dig, or an SDI installation. I would hate to ascertain my temporal location by being struck by a bicycle or an automobile, she thought, and stepped gingerly to the side of the road. But if I haven’t gone anywhere, why do I have this wretched headache and feel like I can’t walk another step?

  She reached the top of the hill and stopped, out of breath. There was no need to have gotten out of the road. No car had been driven along it as yet. Or horse and buggy either. And she was, as she had thought, a long way from anywhere. There weren’t any trees here, and she could see for miles. The wood the wagon was in came halfway up the hill and then straggled south and west for a long way. If she had come through farther into the tress, she would have been lost.

  There were trees far to the east, too, following a river that she could catch occasional silver-blue glimpses of—the Thames? the Cherwell?—and little clumps and lines and blobs of trees dotting all the country between, more trees than she could imagine ever having been in England. The Domesday Book in 1086 had reported no more than fifteen percent of the land wooded, and Probability had estimated that lands cleared for fields and settlements would have reduced that to twelve percent by the 1300s. They, or the men who had written the Domesday Book, had underestimated the numbers badly. There were trees everywhere.

  Kivrin couldn’t see any villages. The woods were bare, their branches gray-black in the late-afternoon light, and she should be able to see the churches and manor houses through them, but she couldn’t see anything that looked like a settlement.

  There had to be settlements, though, because there were fields, and they were narrow strip fields that were definitely mediaeval. There were sheep in one of the fields, and that was mediaeval, too, but she couldn’t see anyone tending them. Far off to the east there was a square gray blur that had to be Oxford. Squinting, she was almost able to make out the walls and the squat shape of Carfax Tower, though she couldn’t see any sign of the towers of St. Frideswide’s or Osney in the fading light.

  The light was definitely fading. The sky up here was a pale bluish-lavender with a hint of pink near the western horizon, and she wasn’t turned around because even while she had stood here, it had gotten darker.

  Kivrin crossed herself and then folded her hands in prayer, bringing her steepled fingers close to her face. “Well, Mr. Dunworthy, I’m here. I seem to be in the right place, more or less. I’m not right on the Oxford-Bath road. I’m about five hundred yards south of it on a side road. I can see Oxford. It looks like it’s ten miles away.”

  She gave her estimate of what season and time of day it was, and described what she thought she could see, and then stopped and pressed her face against her hands. She should tell the Domesday Book what she intended to do, but she didn’t know what that was. There should be a dozen villages on the rolling plain west of Oxford, but she couldn’t see any of them, even though the cultivated fields that belonged to them were there, and the road.

  There was no one on the road. It curved down the other side of the hill and disappeared immediately into a thick copse, but half a mile farther on was the highway where the drop should have landed her, wide and flat and pale green, and where this road obviously led. There was no one on the highway for as far as she could see.

  Off to her left and halfway across the plain toward Oxford she caught a glimpse of distant movement, but it was only a line of cows heading home to a huddle of trees that must hide a village. It wasn’t the village Ms. Montoya had wanted her to look for—Skendgate was south of the highway.

  Unless she was in the wrong place altogether, and she wasn’t. That was definitely Oxford there to the east, and the Thames curving away south of it down to the brownish-gray haze that had to be London, but none of that told her where the village was. It might be between here and the highway, just out of sight, or it might be back the other way, or on another side road or path altogether. There was no time to go and see.

  It was rapidly getting darker. In another half hour there might be lights to go by, but she couldn’t afford to wait. The pink had already darkened to lavender in the west, and the blue overhead was almost purple. And it was getting colder. The wind was picking up. The folds of her cloak flapped behind her, and she pulled it tighter around her. She didn’t want to spend a December night in a forest with a splitting headache and a pack of wolves, but she didn’t want to spend it lying out on the cold-looking highway either, hoping for someone to come along.

  She could start for Oxford, but there was no way she could reach it before dark. If she could just see a village, any village, she could spend the night there and look for Ms. Montoya’s village later. She looked back down the road she had come up, trying to catch a glimpse of light or smoke from a hearth or something, but there wasn’t anything. Her teeth began to chatter.

  And the bells began to ring. The Carfax bell first, sounding just like it always had even though it must have been recast at least three times since 1300, and then, before the first stroke had died away, the others, as if they had been waiting for a signal from Oxford. They were ringing vespers, of course, calling the people in from the fields, beckoning them to stop work and come to prayers.

  And telling her where the villages were. The bells were chiming almost in unison, yet she could hear each one separately, some so distant only the final, deeper echo reached her. There, along that line of trees, and there, and there. The village the cows were heading to was there, behind that low ridge. The cows began to walk faster at the sound of the bell.

  There were two villages practically under her nose—one just the other side of the highway, the other several fields away, next to the little tree-lined stream. Skendgate, Ms. Montoya’s village, lay where she thought it did, back the way she had come, past the frozen ruts and over the low hill not more than two miles.

  Kivrin clasped her hands. “I just found out where the village is,” she said, wondering if the sounds of the bells would make it onto the Domesday Book. “It’s on this side road. I’m going to go fetch the wagon and drag it out onto the road, and then I’m going to stagger into the village before it gets dark and collapse on somebody’s doorstep.”

  One of the bells was far away to the southwest and so faint she could scarcely hear it. She wondered if it was the bell she had heard earlier, and why it had been ringing. Maybe Dunworthy was right, and it was a funeral. “I’m all right, Mr. Dunworthy,” she said into her hands. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve been here over an hour and nothing bad has happened so far.”

  The bells died away slowly, the bell from Oxford leading the way again, though, impossibly, its sound hung longer on the air than any of the others. The sky turned violet-blue, and a star came out in the southeast. Kivrin’s hands were still folded in prayer. “It’s beautiful here.”

  TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK

  (000249–000614)

  Well, Mr. Dunworthy, I’m here. I seem to be in the right place, more or less. I’m not right on the Oxford-Bath road. I’m about five hundred yards south of it on a side road. I can see Oxford. It’s about ten miles away.

  I don’t know exactly when I came through, but if it was noon as scheduled, there’s been about four hours slippage. It’s the right time of year. The leaves are mostly off the trees, but the ones on the ground are still more or less intact, and only about a third of the fields have been plowed under. I won’t be able to tell my exact temporal location until I reach the village and can ask someone what day it is. You probably know more about where and when I am than I do, or at least you will after you’ve done the fix.

  But I know I’m in the right century. I can see fields from the little hill I’m on. They’re classic mediaeval strip fields, with the rounded ends where the oxen turn. The pastures are bounded with hedges, and about a third of them are Saxon dead hedges, while the rest are Norman hawthorn. Probability put the ratio in 1300 at twenty-five to seven
ty-five percent, but that was based on Suffolk, which is farther east.

  To the south and west is forest—Wychwood?—all deciduous as far as I can tell. To the east I can see the Thames. I can almost see London, even though I know that’s impossible. In 1320 it would have been over fifty miles away, wouldn’t it, instead of only twenty. I still think I can see it. I can definitely see the city walls of Oxford, and Carfax Tower.

  It’s beautiful here. It doesn’t feel as though I were seven hundred years away from you. Oxford is right there, within walking distance, and I cannot get the idea out of my head that if I walked down this hill and into town I would find all of you, still standing there in the lab at Brasenose waiting for the fix, Badri frowning at the displays and Ms. Montoya fretting to get back to her dig, and you, Mr. Dunworthy, clucking like an old mother hen. I don’t feel separated from you at all, or even very far away.

  4

  Badri’s hand came away from his forehead as he fell, and his elbow hit the console and broke his fall for a second, and Dunworthy glanced anxiously at the screen, afraid he might have hit one of the keys and scrambled the display. Badri crumpled to the floor.

  Latimer and Gilchrist didn’t try to grab him either. Latimer didn’t even seem to realize anything had gone wrong. Mary grabbed for Badri immediately, but she was standing behind the others and only caught a fold of his sleeve. She was instantly on her knees beside him, straightening him out onto his back and jamming an earphone into her ear.

  She rummaged in her shopping bag, came up with a bleeper, and held the call button down for a full five seconds. “Badri?” she said loudly, and it was only then that Dunworthy realized how deathly silent it was in the room. Gilchrist was standing where he had been when Badri fell. He looked furious. I assure you we’ve considered every possible contingency. He obviously hadn’t considered this one.

  Mary let go of the bleeper button and shook Badri’s shoulders gently. There was no response. She tilted his head far back and bent over his face, her ear practically in his open mouth and her head turned so she could see his chest. He hadn’t stopped breathing. Dunworthy could see his chest rising and falling, and Mary obviously could, too. She raised her head immediately, already pressing on the bleeper, and pressed two fingers against the side of his neck, held them there for what seemed an endless time, and then raised the bleeper to her mouth.

  “We’re at Brasenose. In the history laboratory,” she said into the bleeper. “Five-two. Collapse. Syncope. No evidence of seizure.” She took her hand off the call button and pulled Badri’s eyelids up.

  “Syncope?” Gilchrist said. “What’s that? What’s happened?”

  She glanced irritably at him. “He’s fainted,” she said. “Get me my kit,” she said to Dunworthy. “In the shopping bag.”

  She had knocked the bag over getting the bleeper out. It lay on its side. Dunworthy fumbled through the boxes and parcels, found a hard plastic box that looked the right size, and snapped it open. It was full of red and green foil Christmas crackers. He jammed it back in the bag.

  “Come along,” Mary said, unbuttoning Badri’s lab shirt. “I haven’t got all day.”

  “I can’t find—” Dunworthy began.

  She snatched the bag away and upended it. The crackers rolled everywhere. The box with the muffler came open, and the muffler fell out. Mary grabbed up her handbag, zipped it open, and pulled out a large flat kit. She opened it and took out a tach bracelet. She fastened the bracelet around Badri’s wrist and turned to look at the blood pressure reads on the kit’s monitor.

  The wave form didn’t tell Dunworthy anything, and he couldn’t tell from Mary’s reaction what she thought it meant. Badri hadn’t stopped breathing, his heart hadn’t stopped beating, and he wasn’t bleeding anywhere that Dunworthy could see. Perhaps he had only fainted. But people didn’t simply fall over, except in books or the vids. He must be injured or ill. He had seemed to be almost in shock when he came into the pub. Could he have been struck by a bicycle like the one that had just missed hitting Dunworthy, and not realized at first that he was injured? That would account for his disconnected manner, his peculiar agitation.

  But not for the fact that he had come away without his coat, that he had said, “I need you to come,” that he had said, “There’s something wrong.”

  Dunworthy turned and looked at the console screen. It still showed the matrices it had when the tech collapsed. He couldn’t read them, but it looked like a normal fix, and Badri had said Kivrin had gone through all right. There’s something wrong.

  With her hands flat, Mary was patting Badri’s arms, the sides of his chest, down his legs. Badri’s eyelids fluttered, and then his eyes closed again.

  “Do you know if Badri had any health problems?”

  “He’s Mr. Dunworthy’s tech,” Gilchrist said accusingly. “From Balliol. He was on loan to us,” he added, making it sound like Dunworthy was somehow responsible for this, had arranged the tech’s collapse to sabotage the project.

  “I don’t know of any health problems,” Dunworthy said. “He’d have had a full screen and seasonals at the start of term.”

  Mary looked dissatisfied. She put on her stethoscope and listened to his heart for a long minute, rechecked the blood pressure reads, took his pulse again. “And you don’t know anything of a history of epilepsy? Diabetes?”

  “No,” Dunworthy said.

  “Has he ever used drugs or illegal endorphins?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. She pressed the button on her bleeper again. “Ahrens here. Pulse 110. BP 100 over 60. I’m doing a blood screen.” She tore open a gauze wipe, swabbed at the arm without the bracelet, tore open another packet.

  Drugs or illegal endorphins. That would account for his agitated manner, his disconnected speech. But if he used, it would have shown up on the beginning-of-term screen, and he couldn’t possibly have worked the elaborate calculations of the net if he was using. There’s something wrong.

  Mary swabbed at the arm again and slid a cannula under the skin. Badri’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Badri,” Mary said. “Can you hear me?” She reached in her coat pocket and produced a bright red capsule. “I need to give you your temp,” she said and held it to his lips, but he didn’t give any indication he’d heard.

  She put the capsule back in her pocket and began rummaging in the kit. “Tell me when the reads come up on that cannula,” she said to Dunworthy, taking everything out of the kit and then putting it back in. She laid the kit down and started through her handbag. “I thought I had a skin-temp thermometer with me,” she said.

  “The reads are up,” Dunworthy said.

  Mary picked her bleeper up and began reading the numbers into it.

  Badri opened his eyes. “You have to …”he said, and closed them again. “So cold,” he murmured.

  Dunworthy took off his overcoat, but it was too wet to lay over him. He looked helplessly around the room for something to cover him with. If this had happened before Kivrin left, they could have used that blanket of a cloak she’d been wearing. Badri’s jacket was wadded underneath the console. Dunworthy laid it sideways over him.

  “Freezing,” Badri murmured, and began to shiver.

  Mary, still reciting reads into the bleeper, looked sharply across at him. “What did he say?”

  Badri murmured something else and then said clearly, “Headache.”

  “Headache,” Mary said. “Do you feel nauseated?”

  He moved his head a little to indicate no. “When was—” he said and clutched at her arm.

  She put her hand over his, frowned, and pressed her other hand to his forehead.

  “He’s got a fever,” she said.

  “There’s something wrong,” Badri said, and closed his eyes. His hand let go of her arm and dropped back to the floor.

  Mary picked his limp arm up, looked at the reads, and felt his forehead again. “Where is that damned skin-temp?” she said, and began rummaging through the kit again.

&
nbsp; The bleeper chimed. “They’re here,” she said. “Somebody go show them the way in.” She patted Badri’s chest. “Just lie still.”

  They were already at the door when Dunworthy opened it. Two medics from Infirmary pushed through carrying kits the size of steamer trunks.

  “Immediate transport,” Mary said before they could get the trunks open. She got up off her knees. “Fetch the stretcher,” she said to the female medic. “And get me a skin-temp and a sucrose drip.”

  “I assumed Twentieth Century’s personnel had been screened for dorphs and drugs,” Gilchrist said.

  One of the medics knocked past him with a pump feed.

  “Mediaeval would never allow—” He stepped out of the way as the other one came in with the stretcher.

  “Is this a drugover?” the male medic said, glancing at Gilchrist.

  “No,” Mary said. “Did you bring the skin-temp?”

  “We don’t have one,” he said, plugging the feed into the shunt. “Just a thermistor and temps. We’ll have to wait till we get him in.” He held the plastic bag over his head for a minute till the grav feed kicked the motor on and then taped the bag to Badri’s chest.

  The female medic took the jacket off Badri and covered him with a gray blanket. “Cold,” Badri said. “You have to—”

  “What do I have to do?” Dunworthy said.

  “The fix—”

  “One, two,” the medics said in unison, and rolled him onto the stretcher.

  “James, Mr. Gilchrist, I’ll need you to come to hospital with me to fill out his admission forms,” Mary said. “And I’ll need his medical history. One of you can come in the ambulance, and the other follow.”

  Dunworthy didn’t wait to argue with Gilchrist over which of them should ride in the ambulance. He clambered in and up next to Badri, who was breathing hard, as if being carried on the stretcher had been too much exertion.