"Yes, sir, but that's not the problem. She won't cooperate."

Dunworthy made Finch wait outside the door while he dressed and found his face mask, and they went across to Salvin. A huddle of detainees were standing by the door, dressed in an odd assortment of underthings, coats, and blankets. Only a few of them were wearing their face masks. By day after tomorrow they'll all be down with it, Dunworthy thought.

"Thank goodness you're here," one of the detainees said fervently. "We can't do a thing with her."

Finch led him over to the detainee, who was sitting upright in bed. She was an elderly woman with sparse white hair, and she had the same fever-bright eyes, the same frenetic alertness Badri had had that first night.

"Go away!" she said when she saw Finch and made a slapping motion at him. She turned her burning eyes on Dunworthy. "Daddy!" she cried, and then stuck her lower lip out in a pout. "I was very naughty," she said in a childish voice. "I ate all the birthday cake, and now I have a stomachache."

"Do you see what I mean, sir?" Finch put in.

"Are the Indians coming, Daddy?" she asked. "I don't like Indians. They have bows and arrows."

It took them until morning to get her onto a cot in one of the lecture rooms. Dunworthy eventually had to resort to saying, "Your daddy wants his good girl to lie down now," and just after they had her quieted down, the ambulance came. "Daddy!" she wailed when they shut the doors. "Don't leave me here all alone!"

"Oh, dear," Finch said when the ambulance drove off. "It's past breakfast time. I do hope they haven't eaten all the bacon."

He went off to ration supplies, and Dunworthy went back to his rooms to wait for Andrews' call. Colin was halfway down the staircase, eating a piece of toast and pulling on his jacket. "The vicar wants me to help collect clothes for the detainees," he said with his mouth full of toast. "Aunt Mary telephoned. You're to ring her back."

"But not Andrews?"

"No."

"Has the visual been restored?"

"No."

"Wear your regulation face mask!" Dunworthy called after him, "and your muffler!"

He rang up Mary and waited impatiently for nearly five minutes until she came to the telephone.

"James?" Mary's voice said. "It's Badri. He's asking for you."

"He's better, then?"

"No. His fever's still very high, and he's become quite agitated, keeps calling your name, insists he has something to tell you. He's working himself into a very bad state. If you could come and speak with him, it might calm him down."

"Has he said anything about the plague?" he asked.

"The plague?" she said, looking annoyed. "Don't tell me you've been infected by these ridiculous rumors that are flying about, James — that it's cholera, that it's breakbone fever, that it's a recurrence of the Pandemic — "

"No," Dunworthy said. It's Badri. Last night he said, 'It killed half of Europe,' and 'It must have been the rats.'"

"He's delirious, James. It's the fever. It doesn't mean anything."

She's right, he told himself. The detainee ranted on about Indians with bows and arrows, and you didn't begin looking for Sioux warriors. She had conjured up too much birthday cake as an explanation for her being ill, and Badri had conjured up the plague. It didn't mean anything.

Nevertheless, he said he would be there immediately and went to find Finch. Andrews hadn't specified what time he would call, but Dunworthy couldn't risk leaving the phone unattended. He wished he'd made Colin stay while he spoke to Mary.

Finch would very likely be in hall, guarding the bacon with his life. He took the receiver off the hook so the phone would sound engaged and went across the quad to the hall.

Ms. Taylor met him at the door. "I was just coming to look for you," she said. "I heard some of the detainees came down with the virus last night."

"Yes," he said, scanning the hall for Finch.

"Oh, dear. So I suppose we've all been exposed."

He couldn't see Finch anywhere.

"How long is the incubation period?" Ms. Taylor asked.

"Twelve to forty-eight hours," he said. He craned his neck, trying to see over the heads of the detainees.

"That's awful," Ms. Taylor said. "What if one of us comes down with it in the middle of the peal? We're Traditional, you know, not Council. The rules are very explicit."

He wondered why Traditional, whatever that might be, had deemed it necessary to have rules concerning change ringers infected with influenza.

"Rule Three," Ms. Taylor said. "'Every man must stick to his bell without interruption.' It isn't as if we can put somebody else in halfway through if one of us suddenly keels over. And it would ruin the rhythm."

He had a sudden image of one of the bellringers in her white gloves collapsing and being kicked out of the way so as not to disrupt the rhythm.

"Aren't there any warning symptoms?" Ms. Taylor asked.

"No," he said.

"That paper the NHS sent around said disorientation, fever, and headache, but that isn't any good. The bells always give us headaches."

I can imagine, he thought, looking for William Gaddson or one of the other undergraduates he could get to listen for the phone.

"If we were Council, of course, it wouldn't matter. They let people substitute right and left. During a peal of Tittum Bob Maximus at York, they had nineteen ringers. Nineteen! I don't see how they can even call it a peal."

None of his undergraduates appeared to be in hall, Finch had no doubt barricaded himself in the buttery, and Colin was out collecting clothing. "Are you still in need of a practice room?" he asked Ms. Taylor.

"Yes, unless one of us comes down with this thing. Of course, we could do Stedmans, but that would hardly be the same thing, would it?"

"I'll let you use my sitting room if you will answer the telephone and take down any messages for me. I am expecting an important trunk — long distance call, so it's essential that someone be in the room at all times."

He led her back to his rooms.

"Oh, it's not very big, is it?" she said. "I'm not sure there's room to work on our raising. Can we move the furniture around?"

"You may do anything you like, so long as you answer the telephone and take down any messages. I'm expecting a call from Mr. Andrews. Tell him he doesn't need clearance to enter the quarantine area. Tell him to go straight to Brasenose and I'll meet him there."

"Well, all right, I guess," she said as if she were doing him a favor. "At least it's better than that drafty cafeteria."

He left her rearranging furniture, not at all convinced that it was a good idea to entrust her with this, and hurried off to see Badri. He had something to tell him. It killed them all. Half of Europe.

The rain had subsided to little more than a fine mist, and the anti-EC picketers were gathered in force in front of the Infirmary. They had been joined by a number of boys Colin's age wearing black face plasters and shouting, "Let my people go!"

One of them grabbed Dunworthy's arm. "The government's got no right to keep you here against your will," he said, thrusting his striped face up to Dunworthy's face mask.

"Don't be a fool," Dunworthy said. "Do you want to start another pandemic?"

The boy let go his arm, looking confused, and Dunworthy escaped inside.

Casualties was full of patients on stretcher trolleys, and there was one standing next to the elevator. An imposing looking nurse in voluminous SPG's was standing next to it, reading something to the patient from a polythene-wrapped book.

"'Whoever perished, being innocent?'" she said, and he realized with dismay that it wasn't a nurse. It was Mrs. Gaddson.

"'Or where were the righteous cut off?'" she recited.

She stopped and thumbed through the thin pages of the Bible, looking for another cheering passage, and he ducked down the side corridor and into a stairwell, eternally grateful to the NHS for issuing face masks.