Connie Willis - Blackout

Polly edged past the barrels and went down the steps into the narrow well. The stacked barrels and the ledge above blocked the light from the fires-but there was still more than enough light to see by. The passage and the barrels had protected the well completely. There wasn’t even any dust on the steps, and the spiderweb on the hinge hadn’t been disturbed. She tried the rusty doorknob in case the blast had jarred it loose, but it was still frozen, the door still locked.

The light show outside was growing more spectacular by the minute. The shimmer wouldn’t be noticeable at all amongst the fires and glittering flares and crisscrossing searchlights. Which meant if the Luftwaffe would kindly keep this up for a few more minutes, she could go home to supper. And-finally-get her black skirt.

And a new pair of stockings. That last crawling scramble can’t have done them any good. And I’ll make Badri find me a new drop that isn’t so uncomfortable to wait in, she thought, sitting down on the second-from-the-bottom step.

And a drop that wasn’t so difficult to get to. This one might still be working, but it would be effectively nonfunctional most of the time, between sightseers gawking at the incident site and children scrambling over it searching for shrapnel, followed by construction workers and bulldozers swarming over the mound, clearing the site. And overly conscientious air-raid wardens checking for looters.

She hoped it wouldn’t take Badri and his techs as long as last time to find another site. Having days-or God forbid-weeks between encounters that to the contemps were only hours apart caused all sorts of problems. She was likely to forget the names of the people at St. George’s or Miss Snelgrove’s instructions on filling up purchase-on-account slips.

But I’ll have time to learn how to wrap parcels, she thought. And to eat some decent meals.

She wished the drop would open soon. The fires might be giving the sky a warm orangey glow, but the cement step she was sitting on was even colder than the alley had been.

I need to get a warmer coat as well, she thought, pulling on her gloves. She’d opted for a light one since she would only be here through part of October, but she hadn’t thought about needing to sit in the drop, and the autumn of the Blitz had been one of the coldest and wettest on record.

It had to be getting near the half-hour mark-it felt as if she’d been sitting here for hours. Which means it’s probably been ten minutes, she thought wryly, resisting the impulse to look at her watch. She knew all too well how slowly time moved when one was waiting for one’s drop to open. That night in Hampstead Heath, it had seemed to take hours.

She waited what seemed like another quarter of an hour, pulled her sleeve back to look at her watch, and then stopped, frowning. She could scarcely see her sleeve or the door in front of her. Oh, no. Was the raid letting up? If it was, the shimmer would be visible, and if anyone came out to check for incendiaries, the drop wouldn’t be able to open. She went down the darkened passage to see.

The raid was still in full cry. The flares had stopped and the fire to the east had died down, which was why there was less light in the passage, but there were several fires to the north now, one close enough that she could see flames. There was a steady succession of shuddering explosions.

She looked at her watch, which here at the edge of the mound was light enough to read even without the radium dial. It read ten to ten, but she realized she had no idea what time she’d reached the drop. She’d left the alley a short time after 8:55, but it had taken her forever to get across the mound.

But she’d been able to see into the passage for at least part of that and hadn’t seen any shimmer, and it had taken her several minutes to inspect the well for damage. And her foot had had time to fall asleep while she sat there on the steps. Even allowing for how slowly time went when one was waiting, half an hour had to have passed.

Polly scampered back to the well, afraid the drop would open before she got back, and in her haste scraped against one of the barrels, snagging her skirt.

I hope Mr. Dunworthy’s not in the lab when I arrive, she thought, hurrying down the three steps. He’ll think I’m an incident victim and cancel my assignment on the spot. Perhaps I should go to St. George’s and go through tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to tidy up.

But she’d already waited too long to check in. And Miss Snelgrove would sack her if she showed up without a black skirt tomorrow. It had to be tonight. With luck, Mr. Dunworthy would be off in London again, and she could persuade Badri and Linna not to tell him what had happened.

Why wasn’t the drop opening? She pulled back her sleeve to look at her watch again and then ducked as a bomb screamed and then hit with a thunderous boom no more than a street away. And then another. And there was a crashing clatter as something hit the tangle of broken joists.

An incendiary, Polly thought, but there were no sparks, no blue-white flash of magnesium. It must have been a piece of shrapnel. Mr. Dunworthy will kill me if I get hit by shrapnel.

The drone of the planes overhead became a roar, and there was another whoosh, and a boom that sounded as if it were directly across the street. “The raids tonight are supposed to be in Bloomsbury,” Polly shouted up at the planes, “not Kensington.” She thought of Colin, warning her about stray bombs, about the hundreds of minor incidents which hadn’t made it into the historical record. “You’ve got no business being out in a raid,” he’d told her.

You’re right, she thought, crouching back into the corner of the steps. There was another whoosh and a window-rattling boom several blocks away, and then a long, rising scream that sent Polly ducking down, her hands over her ears. The sound crescendoed to eardrum-rupturing intensity, and there was an anticlimactic thud and then a terrific flash, and the whole building shook as if it would come apart.

Polly looked up at the brick walls on either side. They’re going to come crashing down, she thought, and no one will have any notion I’m in here. I’ve got to get out of here.

“Open!” she shouted as if the techs in Oxford could hear her, and dived at the door. “Open!” but another bomb was already falling, drowning out her voice.

The whoosh rose to a scream.

Since England, despite her hopeless military situation, still shows no signs of willingness to come to terms, I have decided to begin preparations for, and if necessary to carry out, an invasion against her.

War Emergency Hospital-Summer 1940

WHEN MIKE CAME TO, A NUN IN A WHITE VEIL WAS STANDING over him. Oh, God, he thought, I’m in France. The Lady Jane left me behind on the beach at Dunkirk, and the Germans are coming. But that couldn’t be right. He remembered coming back across the Channel, remembered sitting there at the dock, looking down at his shredded-

“My foot,” he said, even though the nun wouldn’t be able to understand English. He tried to raise his head to see it. “It’s bleeding.”

“There, there, you mustn’t think about that now,” the nun said, and she had a British accent, so he must be in England.

But I didn’t think the English had nuns. Hadn’t Henry VIII burned down all the convents? He must not have, because the nun was bending over him, pulling the blanket up over his shoulders. “You must rest,” she said. “You’ve just come out of surgery-”

“Surgery?” he said in alarm. He tried to sit up, but the moment he raised his head off the pillow, a wave of dizzying nausea washed over him, and he fell back, swallowing hard.

“You’re still feeling the effects of the ether,” she said, her hands firmly on his chest to keep him from attempting to sit up again. “You must lie still.”

“No.” He shook his head, and that was a mistake, too. I’m going to vomit all over her white habit, he thought, and swallowed hard. “You said they operated. Did they have to take off my foot?”

“Try to sleep,” she said, covering him up again.

“Did they?” he attempted to ask, but this time he did vomit, and while the nun was gone emptying the basin, he dozed off. And she was right, he must still be feeling the effects of the ether because he had strange drugged dreams-he was on the beach at Dunkirk with Private Hardy. “I’d have been a goner without your light,” Hardy said. “You saved my life,” but it wasn’t true. The boats had all left, and the Germans were coming.

“It’s all right,” Mike told him. “We’ll use my drop,” but it wouldn’t open, and then he was in the water, trying to reach the Lady Jane, but she was already pulling away from the mole, she was already pulling out of the harbor, and when he tried to swim after her, the water was full of flames, it was so hot-

I must have a fever, he thought, waking briefly. My foot must have gotten infected. Why aren’t they giving me antibiotics?

Because they hadn’t been invented yet, and neither had antivirals or tissue regeneration. Had they even developed penicillin in 1940? I have to get out of here. I have to get back to Oxford. And he tried, but the nuns held him down and gave him an injection, and they must have had sedatives in 1940 because he ended up back in the flaming water. He couldn’t see the Lady Jane anywhere, but there was a light, shining this way and that.

It’s Jonathan’s flashlight, he thought, and swam toward that, but he couldn’t reach it. “Wait!” he shouted, but the nun didn’t hear him.

“No, no better, Doctor,” she said. “I fear he’s too ill to be moved,” but he must not have been, because when he woke up, after what seemed like days and days in his dream, he was in another bed, another, larger ward, with two long rows of white painted metal beds, and the nun was different, younger and with a white bibbed apron over her blue habit. But she said the same things: “You must rest,” and “His fever’s up again,” and “Go below and put your shoes on. We’ll be in Dunkirk soon.”

“I can’t go to Dunkirk!” he told her as she pulled the blanket up over him, but they were already there. He could see the docks and the flames from the town and the enveloping black smoke. “You have to take me back!” he shouted. “I’m not supposed to be here! It’s a divergence point!”

“Shh, you’re not going anywhere,” the nun said, and when he opened his eyes he was back in the bed, and she was standing next to it, holding his wrist, and the nausea and the splitting headache were gone.

“I think the effects of the ether have worn off,” he said.

“I should imagine so,” she said, and smiled. “I’ll fetch the doctor.”

“No, wait. How long-?” but she had already disappeared through the double doors at the end of the ward.

“Three weeks,” someone said, and Mike turned his head to look at the man in the bed next to him, or rather, boy-he couldn’t be more than seventeen. His head was bandaged, and his left arm was in a cast held up at an angle by pulleys and wires.

“You mean three days?” Mike said.

The boy shook his head. “It’s been three weeks since they operated on you. That’s why Sister Carmody smiled when you said you thought the effects of the ether had worn off.”

Three weeks? He’d been here three weeks? But that didn’t make sense. Why hadn’t the retrieval team come and gotten him?

“You’ve been rather out of it, I’m afraid,” the boy was saying. “I’m Flying Officer Fordham, by the way. Sorry I can’t shake your hand.” He raised his right arm, also in a cast, to show Mike, and let it fall back at his side.

“You said they operated on me? Did they amputate my foot?”

“I’ve no idea,” Fordham said. “I’m not in a good position to see much except for the ceiling, which has a water stain in exactly the shape of a Messerschmitt, worse luck.”

Mike wasn’t listening. He tried to raise his head up to see if his foot was still there, but the effort made him so dizzy he had to lie back and close his eyes to stop the spinning.

“Wretched angle to have an arm stuck at, isn’t it?” Fordham was saying, gesturing at the arm in the pulleys with his right hand. “I look as though I’m saluting der Fьhrer. Sieg heil! Decidedly unpatriotic. It may keep the Nazis from shooting me when they invade, though. Till they find out who I am, at any rate.”

“What day is it?” Mike asked.

“No idea of that either, I’m afraid. It’s easy to lose track in here, and unfortunately there’s no stain in the shape of a calendar. The twenty-ninth, I think, or the thirtieth.”

The thirtieth? That would make it a full month. He must have heard him wrong. “June thirtieth?”

“Oh, I say, you have been out a good while. It’s July.”

“July?” That’s not possible, he thought. Oxford would have sent a retrieval team as soon as he failed to return after the evacuation. “Have I had any visitors?” he asked.

“Not that I know of, but I’ve been out of it a good deal as well.”

And the retrieval team wouldn’t know where he was. They wouldn’t know he’d gone to Dunkirk or that he was in a hospital, and it would never occur to them to look in a convent.

The nun was back with a doctor. He wore a white coat and had an antiquated stethoscope around his neck. “Has he told you who he is yet?” he was asking the nun.

“No,” she said. “I came as soon as I saw he was awake-”

“What day is it?” Mike demanded.

“Awake and talking,” the doctor said. “How are you feeling?”

“What day is it?”

“August tenth,” the nurse said.

“Good heavens, as late as that?” Fordham said.

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked again, and the nurse cut in, “What’s your name?”

“There wasn’t any identification on you when you were admitted,” the doctor explained.

So the retrieval team wouldn’t have been able to find him even if it had occurred to them to look here.

“It’s Mike,” he said. “Mike Davis.”

The doctor wrote it on the chart. “Do you remember what unit you were with?”

“Unit?” Mike said blankly.

“Or your commanding officer?”

They think I’m a soldier, Mike thought. They think I was rescued from Dunkirk. And why not? He’d been on a boat full of soldiers, and the fact that he hadn’t been in uniform wouldn’t mean anything. Half of the soldiers hadn’t been either. He tried to remember what had happened to his papers. They’d been in his jacket, and he’d taken it off when he went in the water.

But why hadn’t they realized he was an American? He remembered talking in his delirium. Maybe his L-and-A implant had stopped working. Implants sometimes went haywire when an historian got sick.

The doctor was waiting, his pen poised above the chart.

“I-” Mike began, and then hesitated. If his implant wasn’t working, he shouldn’t tell them he was an American. And if this was a military hospital, he shouldn’t tell them he was a civilian. They’d throw him out. But military hospitals didn’t have nuns.