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 wallet again.

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 of 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.

"Badri," he said urgently, "you said something was wrong. Did you mean something went wrong with the fix?"

"I got the fix," Badri said, frowning.

The male medic, attaching Badri to a daunting array of displays, looked irritated.

"Did the apprentice get the coordinates wrong? It's important, Badri. Did he make an error in the remote coordinates?"

Mary climbed into the ambulance.

"As Acting Head, I feel I should be the one to accompany the patient in the ambulance," Dunworthy heard Gilchrist say.

"Meet us in Casualties at Infirmary," Mary said and pulled the doors to. "Have you gotten a temp yet?" she asked the medic.

"Yes," he said. "39.5 C. BP 90 over 55, pulse 115."

"Was there an error in the coordinates?" Dunworthy said to Badri.

"Are you set back there?" the driver said over the intercom.

"Yes," Mary said. "Code one."

"Did Puhalski make an error in the locational coordinates for the remote?"

"No," Badri said. He grabbed at the lapel of Dunworthy's coat.

"Is it the slippage then?"

"I must have — " Badri said. "So worried."

The sirens blared, drowning out the rest of what he said. "You must have what?" Dunworthy shouted over their up and down klaxon.

"Something wrong," Badri said, and fainted again.

Something wrong. It had to be the slippage. Except for the coordinates, it was the only thing that could go wrong with a drop that wouldn't abort it, and he had said the locational coordinates were right. How much slippage, though? Badri had told him it might be as much as two weeks, and he wouldn't have run all the way to the pub in the pouring rain without his coat unless it were much more than that. How much more? A month? Three months? But he'd told Gilchrist the preliminaries showed minimal slippage.

Mary elbowed past him and put her hand on Badri's forehead again. "Add sodium thiosalicylate to the drip," she said. "And start a WBC screen. James, get out of the way."

Dunworthy edged past Mary and sat down on the bench, near the back of the ambulance.

Mary picked up her bleeper again. "Stand by for a full CBC and serotyping."

"Pyelonephritis?" the medic said, watching the reads change. BP 96 over 60, pulse 120, temp 39.5.

"I don't think so," Mary said. "There's no apparent abdominal pain, but it's obviously an infection of some sort, with that temp."

The sirens dived suddenly down in frequency and stopped. The medic began pulling wires out of the wall hookups.

"We're here, Badri," Mary said, patting his chest again. "We'll soon have you right as rain."

He gave no indication he had heard. Mary pulled the blanket up to his neck and arranged the dangling wires on top of it. The driver yanked the door open, and they slid the stretcher out. "I want a full blood workup," Mary said, holding onto the door as she climbed down. "CF, HI and antigenic ID." Dunworthy clambered down after her and followed her into the casualties department.

"I need a med hist," she was already telling the registrar. "On Badri — what's his last name, James?"

"Chaudhuri," he said.

"National Health Service number?"

"I don't know," he said. "He works at Balliol."

"Would you be so good as to spell the name for me, please?"

"C-H-A-" he said. Mary was disappearing into the Accident Ward. He started after her.

"I'm sorry, sir," the registrar said, darting up from her console to block his way. "If you'll just be seated — "

"I must talk to the patient you just admitted," he said.

"Are you a relative?"

"No," he said. "I'm his employer. It's very important."

"He's in an examining cubicle just now," she said. "I'll ask for permission for you to see him as soon as the examination is completed." She sat gingerly back down at the console, as if ready to leap up again at the slightest movement on his part.

Dunworthy thought of simply barging in on the examination, but he didn't want to risk being barred from hospital altogether, and at any rate, Badri was in no condition to talk. He had been clearly unconscious when they took him out of the ambulance. Unconscious and with a fever of 39.5. Something wrong.

The registrar was looking suspiciously up at him. "Would you mind terribly giving me that spelling again?"

He spelled Chaudhuri for her and then asked where he could find a telephone.

"Just down the corridor," she said. "Age?"

"I don't know," he said. "Twenty-five? He's been at Balliol for four years."

He answered the rest of her questions as best he could and then looked out the door to see if Gilchrist had come and went down the corridor to the telephones and rang up Brasenose. He got the porter, who was decorating an artificial Christmas tree that stood on the lodge counter.

"I need to speak to Puhalski," Dunworthy said, hoping that was the name of the first-year tech.

"He's not here," the porter said, draping a silver garland over the branches with his free hand.

"Well, as soon as he returns, please tell him I need to speak with him. It's very important. I need him to read a fix for me. I'm at — " Dunworthy waited pointedly for the porter to finish arranging the garland and write the number of the call box down, which he finally did, scribbling it on the lid of a box of ornaments. "If he can't reach me at this number, have him ring the casualties department at Infirmary. How soon will he return, do you think?"

"That's difficult to say," the porter said, unwrapping an angel. "Some of them come back a few days early, but most of them don't show up until the first day of term."

"What do you mean? Isn't he staying in college?"

"He was. He was going to run the net for Mediaeval, but when he found he wasn't needed, he went for home."

"I need his home address then and his telephone number."

"It's somewhere in Wales, I believe, but you'd have to talk to the college secretary for that, and she's not here just now either."