Connie Willis - Blackout

Cess held it out of reach. “‘The Steeple Cross Women’s Institute held a tea Friday afternoon,’” he read aloud, “‘to welcome the officers of the 21st Airborne to the village.’ Definitely more important than blowing up tanks, Worthing. Front-page stuff. This’ll be in the Times, I presume?”

“No, the Sudbury Weekly Shopper,” Ernest said, making another grab for the sheet of paper, this time successful. “And it’s due at nine tomorrow morning along with four others, which I haven’t finished yet. And, thanks to you, I already missed last week’s deadline. Take Moncrieff with you.”

“He’s down with a bad cold.”

“Which he no doubt caught while blowing up tanks in the pouring rain. Not exactly my idea of fun,” Ernest said, rolling a new sheet of paper into the typewriter, and began typing again.

“It’s not raining,” Cess said. “There’s only a light fog, and it’s supposed to clear by morning. Perfect flying weather. That’s why we’ve got to blow them up tonight. It’ll only take an hour or two. You’ll be back in more than enough time to finish your articles and get them over to Sudbury.”

Ernest didn’t believe that any more than he believed it wasn’t raining. It had rained every day all spring. “There must be someone else who can do it. What about Lady Bracknell? He’d be perfect for the job. He’s full of hot air.”

“He’s in London, meeting with the higher-ups, and everyone else is over at Camp Omaha. You’re the only one who can do it. Come, Worthing, do you want to tell your children you sat at a typewriter all through the war or that you blew up tanks?”

“Cess, what makes you think we’ll ever be allowed to tell anyone anything?”

“I suppose that’s true. But surely by the time we have grandchildren, some of it will have been declassified. That is, if we win the war. Which we won’t if you don’t help. I can’t manage both the tanks and the cutter on my own.”

“Oh, all right,” Ernest said, pulling the paper out of the typewriter and putting it in a file folder on top of several others. “Give me five minutes to lock up.”

“Lock up? Do you honestly think Goebbels is going to break in and steal your tea party story while we’re gone?”

“I’m only following regulations,” Ernest said, swiveling his chair to face the metal filing cabinet. He opened the second drawer down, filed the folder, then fished a ring of keys out of his pocket and locked the cabinet. “‘All written materials of Fortitude South and the Special Means unit shall be considered “top top secret” and handled accordingly.’ And speaking of regulations, if I’m going to be in some bloody cow pasture all night, I need a decent pair of boots. All officers are to be issued appropriate gear for missions.’”

Cess handed him an umbrella. “Here.”

“I thought you said fog, not rain.”

“Light fog. Clearing toward morning. And wear an Army uniform, in case someone shows up in the middle of the operation. You have two minutes. I want to be there before dark.” He went out.

Ernest waited, listening, till he heard the outside door slam, then swiftly unlocked the file drawer, pulled out the folder, removed several of the pages, replaced the file, and relocked the drawer. He slid the pages he’d removed into a manila envelope, sealed it, and stuck it under a stack of forms in the bottom drawer of the desk. Then he took a key from around his neck, locked the drawer, hung the key around his neck again under his shirt, picked up the umbrella, put on his uniform and his boots, and went outside.

Into an all-enveloping grayness. If this was what Cess considered a light fog, he shuddered to think what a heavy one was. He couldn’t see the tanks or the lorry. He couldn’t even see the gravel driveway at his feet.

But he could hear an engine. He felt his way toward it, his hands out in front of him till they connected with the side of the Austin. “What took you so long?” Cess asked, leaning out of the fog to open its door. “Get in.”

Ernest climbed in. “I thought you said the tanks were here.”

“They are,” Cess said, roaring off into blackness. “We’ve got to go pick them up in Tenterden and then take them down to Icklesham.”

Tenterden was not “here.” It was fifteen miles in the opposite direction from Icklesham and, in this fog, it would be well after dark before they even got there. This’ll take all night, he thought. I’ll never make that deadline. But halfway to Brede, the fog lifted, and when they reached Tenterden, everything was, amazingly, loaded and ready to go. Ernest, following Cess and the lorry in the Austin, began to feel some hope that it wouldn’t take too long to get unloaded and set up, and they might actually be done blowing up the tanks by midnight. Whereupon the fog closed in again, causing Cess to miss the turn for Icklesham twice and for the lane once. It was nearly midnight before they located the right pasture.

Ernest parked the Austin among some bushes and got out to open the gate. He promptly stepped in mud up to his ankles and then, after he’d extricated himself, in a large cowpat. He squelched over to the lorry, looking around for cows, even though in this foggy darkness he wouldn’t see one till he’d collided with it. “I thought there weren’t supposed to be any cows in this pasture,” he said to Cess.

“There were before, but the farmer moved them into the next one over,” Cess said, leaning out the window. “That’s why we picked this pasture. That, and the large copse of trees over there.” He pointed vaguely out into the murk. “The tanks will be hidden out of sight under the trees.”

“I thought the whole idea was to let the Germans see them.”

“To let them see some of them,” Cess corrected. “There are a dozen in this battalion.”

“We’ve got to blow up a dozen tanks?”

“No, only two. The Army didn’t park them far enough under the trees. Their rear ends can still be seen poking out from under the branches. I think it’ll be easiest if I back across the field. Help me turn around.”

“Are you certain that’s a good idea?” Ernest said. “It’s awfully muddy.”

“That’ll make the tracks more visible. You needn’t worry. This lorry’s got good tires. I won’t get her stuck.”

He didn’t. Ernest did, driving the lorry back to the gate after they’d unloaded the two tanks. It took them the next two hours to get out of the mudhole, in the process of which Ernest lost his footing and fell flat, and they made a hideous rutted mess out of the center of the field.

“Gцring’s boys will never believe tank treads did that,” Ernest said, shining a shielded torch on the churned-up mud.

“You’re right,” Cess said. “We’ll have to put a tank over it to hide it, and-I know!-we’ll make it look as though it got stuck in the mud.”

“Tanks don’t get stuck in the mud.”

“They would in this mud,” Cess said. “We’ll only blow up three quadrants and leave the other one flat, so it’ll look like it’s listing.”

“Do you honestly think they’ll be able to see that from fifteen thousand feet?”

“No idea,” Cess said, “but if we stand here arguing, we won’t be done by morning, and the Germans will see what we’re up to. Here, lend me a hand. We’ll unload the tank and then drive the lorry back to the lane. That way we won’t have to drag it.”

Ernest helped him unload the heavy rubber pallet. Cess connected the pump and began inflating the tank. “Are you certain it’s facing the right way?” Ernest asked. “It should be facing the copse.”

“Oh, right,” Cess said, shielding his torch with his hand and shining the light on it. “No, it’s the wrong way round. Here, help me shift it.”

They pushed and shoved and dragged the heavy mass around till it faced the other way. “Now let’s hope it isn’t upside down,” Cess said. “They should put a ‘this end up’ on them, though I suppose that might make the Germans suspicious.” He began to pump. “Oh, good, there’s a tread.”

The front end of a tank began to emerge out of the flat folds of gray-green rubber, looking remarkably tanklike. Ernest watched for a moment, then fetched the phonograph, the small wooden table it sat on, and its speaker. He set them up, got the record from the lorry, placed it on the turntable, and lowered the needle. The sound of tanks rolling thunderously toward him filled the pasture, making it impossible to hear anything Cess said.

On the other hand, he thought as he wrestled the tank-tread cutter off the back of the lorry, he no longer had to switch on his torch. He could find his way simply by following the sound. Unless there were in fact cows in this pasture-which, judging by the number of fresh cowpats he was stepping in, there definitely could be.

Cess had told him on the way to Tenterden that the cutter was perfectly simple to operate. All one had to do was push it, like a lawn mower, but it was at least five times as heavy. It required bearing down with one’s whole weight on the handle to make it go even a few inches, it refused to budge at all in grass taller than two inches, and it tended to veer off at an angle. Ernest had to go back to the lorry, fetch a rake, smooth over what he’d done, then redo it several times before he had a more-or-less straight tread mark from the gate to the mired tank.

Cess was still working on the right front quadrant. “Sprang a leak,” he shouted over the rumble of tanks. “Luckily, I brought my bicycle patch kit along. Don’t come any nearer! That cutter’s sharp.”

Ernest nodded, hoisted it over in front of where the tank’s other tread would be, and started back toward the gate. “How many of these do you want?” he shouted to Cess.

“At least a dozen pair,” Cess shouted, “and some of them need to overlap. I think the fog’s beginning to lift.”

The fog was not beginning to lift. When he switched on his torch so he could return the needle to the beginning of the record, the phonograph was shrouded in mist. And even if it should lift, they wouldn’t be able to tell in this blackness. He looked at his watch. Two o’clock, and they still hadn’t inflated a tank. They were going to be stuck here forever.

Cess finally completed the mired tank and slogged across the field to the copse to do the other two, Ernest following with the cutter, making tread tracks to indicate where the tanks had driven in under the trees.

Halfway there, the sound of tanks shut off. Damn, he’d forgotten to move the needle. He had to go all the way back across the pasture to start the record, and he’d no sooner reached the cutter again than the fog did indeed lift. “I told you,” Cess said happily, and it immediately began to rain.

“The phonograph!” Cess cried, and Ernest had to rescue it and then the umbrella and prop it over the phonograph, tying it to the tank’s rubber gun with rope.

The shower lasted till just before dawn, magnifying the mud and making the grass so slippery that Ernest fell down twice more-once racing to move the phonograph needle, which had stuck and was repeating the same three seconds of tank rumbling over and over, and the second time helping Cess repair yet another puncture. “But think of the war story you’ll have to tell your grandchildren!” Cess said as he wiped the mud off.

“I doubt whether I’ll ever have grandchildren,” Ernest said, spitting out mud. “I am beginning to doubt whether I’ll even survive this night.”