Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,224

from him.

“They refused to discharge me from hospital,” Badri said. “I should have forced them to let me go.”

I will have to tell him, Dunworthy thought, but he didn’t. He stood there silently, watching Badri torture the sash into wrinkles, and feeling infinitely sorry for him.

“Ms. Montoya showed me the Probability statistics,” Badri said. “Do you think Kivrin’s dead?”

I hope so, he thought. I hope she died of the virus before she realized where she was. Before she realized we had left her there. “It was not your fault,” he said.

“I was only two days late opening the net. I was certain she’d be there waiting. I was only two days late.”

“What?” Dunworthy said.

“I tried to get permission to leave hospital on the sixth, but they refused to discharge me until the eighth. I got the net open as soon as I could, but she wasn’t there.”

“What are you talking about?” Dunworthy said. “How could you open the net? Gilchrist shut it down.”

Badri looked up at him. “We used the backup.”

“What backup?”

“The fix I did on our net,” Badri said, sounding bewildered. “You were so worried about the way Mediaeval was running the drop, I decided I’d better put on a backup, in case something went wrong. I came to Balliol to ask you about it Tuesday afternoon, but you weren’t there. I left you a note saying I needed to talk to you.”

“A note,” Dunworthy said.

“The laboratory was open. I ran a redundant fix through Balliol’s net,” Badri said. “You were so worried.”

The strength seemed suddenly to go out of Dunworthy’s legs. He sat down on the bed.

“I tried to tell you,” Badri said, “but I was too ill to make myself understood.”

There had been a backup all along. He had wasted days and days trying to force Gilchrist to unlock the laboratory, searching for Basingame, waiting for Polly Wilson to contrive a way into the University’s computer, and all the while the fix had been in the net at Balliol. “So worried,” Badri had said through his delirium. “Is the laboratory open?” “Back up,” he had said. Backup.

“Can you open the net again?”

“Of course, but even if she hasn’t contracted the plague—”

“She hasn’t,” Dunworthy cut in. “She was immunized.”

“—she wouldn’t still be there. It’s been eight days since the rendezvous. She couldn’t have waited there all this time.”

“Can someone else go through?”

“Someone else?” Badri said blankly.

“To look for her. Could someone else use the same drop to go through?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long would it take you to set it up so we could try it?”

“Two hours at the most. The temporals and locationals are already set, but I don’t know how much slippage there’d be.”

The door to the ward burst open and Colin came in. “There you are,” he said. “The nurse said you’d taken a walk, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. I thought you’d got lost.”

“No,” Dunworthy said, looking at Badri.

“She said I’m to bring you back,” Colin said, taking hold of Dunworthy’s arm and helping him up, “that you’re not to overdo.” He herded him toward the door.

Dunworthy stopped at the door. “Which net did you use when you opened the net on the eighth?” he said to Badri.

“Balliol’s,” he said. “I was afraid part of the permanent memory had been erased when Brasenose’s was shut down, and there was no time to run a damage assessment routine.”

Colin backed the door open. “The sister comes on duty in half an hour. You don’t want her to find you up.” He let the door swing shut. “I’m sorry I wasn’t back sooner, but I had to take immunization schedules out to Godstow.”

Dunworthy leaned against the door. There might be too much slippage, and the tech was in a wheelchair, and he was not sure he could walk as far as the end of the corridor, let alone back to his room. So worried. He had thought Badri meant “You were so worried I decided to refeed the coordinates,” but he had meant “I put on a backup.” A backup.

“Are you all right?” Colin asked. “You’re not having a relapse or anything, are you?”

“No,” he said.

“Did you ask Mr. Chaudhuri if he could redo the fix?”

“No,” he said. “There was a backup.”

“A backup?” he said excitedly. “You mean, another fix?”

“Yes.”

“Does that mean you can rescue her?”

He stopped and leaned against the stretcher trolley. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll help you,” Colin said. “What do you want me to do? I’ll do anything you say. I can run errands, and