"As I remember, Montoya recruits anyone who comes within reach. Perhaps she enlisted some passerby."
"She said there weren't any. The dig's very isolated."
"Well, she must have found someone. She's been out at the dig for eight days, and the incubation period's only twelve to forty-eight hours."
"The ambulance is here!" Colin said.
Mary pushed out the doors, Dunworthy and Colin on her heels. Two ambulancemen in masks lifted a stretcher out and onto a trolley. Dunworthy recognized one of them. He had helped bring Badri in.
Colin was bending over the stretcher, looking interestedly at Montoya, who lay with her eyes closed. Her head was propped up with pillows, and her face was flushed the same heavy red as Ms. Breen's had been. Colin leaned farther over her, and she coughed directly in his face.
Dunworthy grabbed the collar of Colin's jacket and dragged him away from her. "Come away from there. Are you trying to catch the virus? Why aren't you wearing your mask?"
"There aren't any."
"You shouldn't be here at all. I want you to go straight back to Balliol and — "
"I can't. I'm assigned to make certain you get your enhancement."
"Then sit down over there," Dunworthy said, walking him over to a chair in the reception area, "and stay away from the patients."
"You'd better not try to sneak out on me," Colin said warningly, but he sat down, pulled his gobstopper out of his pocket, and wiped it on the sleeve of his jacket.
Dunworthy went back over to the stretcher trolley. "Lupe," Mary was saying, "we need to ask you some questions. When did you fall ill?"
"This morning," Montoya said. Her voice was hoarse, and Dunworthy realized suddenly that she must be the person who had telephoned him. "Last night I had a terrible headache," she raised a muddy hand and drew it across her eyebrows, "but I thought it was because I was straining my eyes."
"Who was with you out at the dig?"
"Nobody," Montoya said, sounding surprised.
"What about deliveries? Did someone from Witney deliver supplies to you?"
She started to shake her head, but it apparently hurt, and she stopped. "No. I took everything with me."
"And you didn't have anyone with you to help you with the excavation?"
"No. I asked Mr. Dunworthy to tell the NHS to send some help, but he didn't." Mary looked across at Dunworthy, and Montoya followed her glance. "Are they sending someone?" she asked him. "They'll never find it if they don't get someone out there."
"Find what?" he said, wondering if her answer could be trusted or if she were delirious.
"The dig is half underwater right now," she said.
"Find what?"
"Kivrin's corder."
He had a sudden image of Montoya standing by the tomb, sorting through the muddy box of stone-shaped bones. Wrist bones. They had been wrist bones, and she had been examining the uneven edges, looking for a bone spur that was actually a piece of recording equipment. Kivrin's corder.
"I haven't excavated all the graves yet," Montoya said, "and it's still raining. They have to send someone out immediately."
"Graves?" Mary said, looking at him uncomprehendingly. "What is she talking about?"
"She's been excavating a mediaeval churchyard looking for Kivrin's body," he said bitterly, "looking for the corder you implanted in Kivrin's wrist."
Mary wasn't listening. "I want the contacts charts," she said to the house officer. She turned back to Dunworthy. "Badri was out at the dig, wasn't he?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"The eighteenth and nineteenth," he said.
"In the churchyard?"
"Yes. He and Montoya were opening a knight's tomb."
"A tomb," Mary said, as if it were the answer to a question. She bent over Montoya. "Did you work on the knight's tomb this week?" she asked.
Montoya tried to nod, stopped. "I get so dizzy when I move my head," she said apologetically. "I had to move the skeleton. Water'd gotten into the tomb."
"What day did you work on the tomb?"
Montoya frowned. "I can't remember. The day before the bells, I think."
"The thirty-first," Dunworthy said. He leaned over her. "Have you worked on it since?"
She tried to shake her head again.
"The contacts charts are up," the house officer said.
Mary walked rapidly over to his desk and took the keyboard over from him. She tapped several keys, stared at the screen, tapped more keys.
"What is it?" Dunworthy said.
"What are the conditions at the churchyard?" Mary said.
"Conditions?" he said blankly. "It's muddy. She's covered the churchyard with a tarp, but a good deal of rain was still getting in."
"Warm?"
"Yes. She said it was muggy. She had several electric fires hooked up. What is it?"
She drew her finger down the screen, looking for something. "Viruses are exceptionally sturdy organisms," she said. "They can lie dormant for long periods of time and be revived. Living viruses have been taken from Egyptian mummies." Her finger stopped at a date. "I thought so. Badri was at the dig four days before he came down with the virus."
She turned to the house officer. "I want a team out at the dig immediately," she told him. "Get NHS clearance. Tell them we may have found the source of the virus." She typed in a new screen, drew her finger down the names, typed in something else, and leaned back, looking at the screen. "We had four secondaries with no positive connection to Badri. Two of them were at the dig four days before they came down with the virus. The other one was there three days before."
"The virus is at the dig?" Dunworthy said.
"Yes." She smiled ruefully at him. "I'm afraid Gilchrist was right after all. The virus did come from the past. Out of the knight's tomb."
"Kivrin was at the dig," he said.
Now it was Mary who looked uncomprehending. "When?"
"The Sunday afternoon before the drop. The nineteenth."
"Are you certain?"
"She told me before she left. She wanted her hands to look authentic."
"Oh, my God," she said. "If she was exposed four days before the drop, she hadn't had her T-cell enhancement. The virus might have had a chance to replicate and invade her system. She might have come down with it."
Dunworthy grabbed her arm. "But that can't have happened. The net wouldn't have let her through if there was a chance she'd infect the contemps."
"There wasn't any one for her to infect," Mary said, "not if the virus came out of the knight's tomb. He died of it in 1118. The contemps had already had it. They'd be immune." She walked rapidly over to Montoya. "When Kivrin was out at the dig, did she work on the tomb?"
"I don't know," Montoya said. "I wasn't there. I had a meeting with Gilchrist."
"Who would know? Who else was there that day?"
"No one. Everyone had gone home for vac."
"How did she know what she was supposed to do?"
"The volunteers left notes to each other when they left."
"Who was there that morning?" Mary asked.
"Badri," Dunworthy said and took off for isolation.
He walked straight into Badri's room. The nurse, caught off-guard with her swollen feet up on the displays, said, "You can't go in without SPG's," and started after him, but he was already inside.
Badri was lying propped against a pillow. He looked very pale, as if his illness had bleached all the color from his skin, and weak, but he looked up when Dunworthy burst in and started to speak.
"Did Kivrin work on the knight's tomb?" Dunworthy demanded.
"Kivrin?" His voice was almost too weak to be heard.
The nurse banged in the door. "Mr. Dunworthy, you are not allowed in here — "
"On Sunday," Dunworthy said. "You were to have left her a message telling her what to do. Did you tell her to work on the tomb?"