Connie Willis - Blackout

He was still talking when they reached the War Emergency Hospital in Orpington. “I nearly drowned, and he jumped in and saved me, hauled me aboard. If it hadn’t been for him-”

Talbot opened the doors, and two attendants came out to unload the stretcher. Mary scrambled out, holding the plasma bottle aloft. An attendant took it from her. “Good luck, soldier,” she said as they started into the hospital with him.

“Thank you,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for him, and for your listening to me-”

“Wait!” Fairchild said, leaping past Mary and inside. “You can’t take that blanket. It’s ours.”

“Oh, no,” Mary said to Talbot. “I completely forgot to ask in Dover if they had any blankets.”

“I did. They didn’t.”

Fairchild came back, triumphantly carrying the blanket. “Did you ask if they had any extras to spare?” Talbot asked her.

“They don’t. I nearly had to wrestle them to get this one back.”

“What about Bethnal Green?” Mary suggested. “Could we go by the post there on the way home and check to see if they-?”

“No, we already asked them, the day of the applecart upset,” Talbot said.

Which meant she’d have to think of some other way to get to Bethnal Green to confirm the attack. Perhaps she could borrow a bicycle after she went off duty. But the Major sent her and Reed to Bromley after sticking plaster and rubbing alcohol, and early the next morning they set out for Dover again.

“And then you bear left at the bridge,” Fairchild said, teaching her the route. “And then right just past those trees.” She pointed ahead to where two tanks sat in a pasture. “That’s odd. I thought all our tanks were in France.”

Mary wondered if they were real tanks. British Intelligence had used inflatable rubber tanks as part of their plan to deceive the Germans into thinking the invasion would be launched from southeast England. Perhaps they were left over from that.

A horrible thought struck her. British Intelligence had also attempted to fool the Germans as to where their V-1s had landed. They’d planted false stories and photos in the newspapers to make them alter their launch trajectories so the rockets would fall short of London. Which was why Dulwich and Croydon and Bomb Alley had been hit more than anywhere else.

What if Research had mistakenly put the falsified data into her implant instead of the actual times and locations? That would explain why no one had said anything about Bethnal Green-because the V-1 hadn’t actually hit there. If that were the case, she was in trouble. Her safety depended on her knowing exactly where and when every V-1 and V-2 had landed.

As soon as we get back to the post, I’ve got to find out if that railway was damaged, she thought, but the moment they reached the post, the Major sent her and Fairchild off to Woolwich for the extra blankets she’d finally managed to procure, and it was dark before they got back. Which meant she’d have to wait and go to Bethnal Green tomorrow-unless the V-1s that hit tonight were on time. If they were, then the data in her implant was correct, and she could stop worrying. Unless of course one of them hit the post.

She fidgeted through the evening, waiting for 11:43, when the first one was supposed to have hit. The siren was supposed to have sounded at 11:31. She listened impatiently to the FANYs argue over who got to wear the green silk first, trying not to look at her watch every five minutes. She was immeasurably glad when eleven o’clock and lights-out came. She retired under the covers with a pocket torch to read her watch by and a magazine she’d borrowed from the common room. If anyone noticed the light, she’d say she was reading.

She propped the magazine on top of the torch to shield the light and waited. Ten past eleven. A quarter past. The girls continued to argue in the dark. “But Donald’s never seen you in the Yellow Peril,” Sutcliffe-Hythe said, “and Edwin’s already seen me in it twice.”

“I know,” Maitland said, “but I’m hoping Donald will propose.”

Twenty past. Twenty-five. Six more minutes, Mary thought, listening for the wail of the siren starting up, for the drone of the V-1. She wished she’d listened to a recording of one in the Bodleian so she’d know exactly what they sounded like. Their distinctive rattle, which was supposed to sound like a backfiring automobile engine, had been loud enough that it had been possible to dive for the nearest gutter when one heard it and save oneself.

Twenty-nine. Half-past. 11:31. My watch must be fast, she thought, and held it up to her ear. Oh, do come on. Sound the alert. I don’t want to have to go back through to Oxford. What will I tell the Major? And Mr. Dunworthy. If he finds out I’ve not only been driving Bomb Alley, but have a faulty implant, he’ll never let me come back.

11:32. 11:33…

They’d make a beautiful target, wouldn’t they? 

MIKE LURCHED TO THE REAR OF THE BOAT. “WHAT DO YOU mean, we’re halfway across the Channel?” he shouted, peering out over the stern. There was no land in sight, nothing but water and darkness on all sides. He groped his way back to the helm and the Commander. “You have to turn back!”

“You said you were a war correspondent, Kansas,” the Commander shouted back at him, his voice muffled by the wind. “Well, here’s your chance to cover the war instead of writing about beach fortifications. The whole bloody British Army’s trapped at Dunkirk, and we’re going to rescue them!”

But I can’t go to Dunkirk, Mike thought. It’s impossible. Dunkirk’s a divergence point. Besides, this wasn’t the way the evacuation had operated. The small craft hadn’t set off on their own. That had been considered much too dangerous. They’d been organized into convoys led by naval destroyers.

“You’ve got to go back to Dover,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard against the sound of the chugging engine and the wet, salt-laden wind. “The Navy-”

“The Navy?” the Commander snorted. “I wouldn’t trust those paper-pushers to lead me across a mud puddle. When we bring back a boatload of our boys, they’ll see just how seaworthy the Lady Jane is!”

“But you don’t have any charts, and the Channel’s mined-”

“I’ve been piloting this Channel by dead reckoning since before those young pups from the Small Vessels Pool were born. We won’t let a few mines stop us, will we, Jonathan?”

“Jonathan? You brought Jonathan? He’s fourteen years old!”

Jonathan emerged out of the bow’s darkness half dragging, half carrying a huge coil of rope. “Isn’t this exciting?” he said. “We’re going to go rescue the British Expeditionary Force from the Germans. We’re going to be heroes!”

“But you don’t have official clearance,” Mike said, desperately trying to think of some argument that would convince them to turn back. “And you’re not armed-”

“Armed?” the Commander bellowed, taking one hand off the wheel to reach inside his peacoat and pull out an ancient pistol. “Of course we’re armed. We’ve got everything we need.” He waved one hand toward the bow. “Extra rope, extra petrol-”

Mike squinted through the darkness to where he was pointing. He could just make out square metal cans lashed to the gunwales. Oh, Christ. “How much gas-petrol-do you have on board?”

“Twenty tins,” Jonathan said eagerly. “We’ve more down in the hold.”

Which is enough to blow us sky-high if we’re hit by a torpedo.

“Jonathan,” the Commander bellowed, “stow that rope in the stern and go check the bilge pump.”

“Aye, aye, Commander.” Jonathan started for the hatch.

Mike went after him. “Jonathan, listen, you’ve got to convince your grandfather to turn back. What he’s doing is-” he was going to say “suicidal,” but settled for “against Navy regulations. He’ll lose his chance to be recommissioned-”

“Recommissioned?” Jonathan said blankly. “What do you mean? Grandfather was never in the Navy.”

Oh, Christ, he’d probably never been across the Channel either.

“Jonathan!” the Commander called. “I told you to go check the bilge pump. And, Kansas, go below and put your shoes on. And have a drink. You look like death.”

That’s because we’re going to die, Mike thought, trying to think of some way to get him to turn the boat around and head back to Saltram-on-Sea, but nothing short of knocking him out with the butt of that pistol and taking the wheel would work, and then what? He knew even less than the Commander did about piloting a boat, and there weren’t any charts on board, even if he could decipher them, which he doubted.

“Get yourself some dinner,” the Commander ordered. “We’ve a long night’s work ahead of us.”

They had no idea what they were getting into. More than sixty of the small craft that had gone over to Dunkirk had been sunk and their crews injured or killed. Mike started down the ladder.

“There’s some of that pilchard stew left,” the Commander called down after him.

I don’t need to eat, Mike thought, descending into the hold, which now had a full foot of water in it. I need to think. How could they be going to Dunkirk? It was impossible. The laws of time travel didn’t allow historians anywhere near divergence points.

Unless Dunkirk isn’t a divergence point, he thought, wading over to the bunk to retrieve his shoes and socks.

They were in the farthest corner. Mike clambered up onto the bunk to get them and then sat there with a shoe in his hand, staring blindly at it, considering the possibility. Dunkirk had been a major turning point in the war. If the soldiers had been captured by the Germans, the invasion of England, and its surrender, would have been inevitable. But it wasn’t a single discrete event, like Lincoln’s assassination or the sinking of the Titanic, where an historian’s making a grab for John Wilkes Booth’s pistol or shouting “Iceberg ahead!” could alter the entire course of events. He couldn’t keep the British Expeditionary Force from being rescued, no matter what he did. There were too many boats, too many people involved, spread over too great an area. Even if an historian wanted to alter the outcome of the evacuation, he couldn’t.

But he could alter individual events. Dunkirk had been full of narrow escapes and near misses. A five-minute delay in landing could put a boat underneath a bomb from a Stuka or turn a near-miss into a direct hit, and a five-degree change in steering could mean the difference between it being grounded or making it out of the harbor.

Anything I do could get the Lady Jane sunk, Mike thought, horrified. Which means I don’t dare do anything. I’ve got to stay down here till we’re safely out of Dunkirk. Maybe he could feign seasickness, or cowardice.

But even his mere presence here could alter events. At a divergence point, history balanced on a knife’s edge, and his merely being on board could be enough to tilt the balance. Most of the small craft that had come back from Dunkirk had been packed to capacity. His presence might mean there wasn’t room for a soldier who’d otherwise have been saved-a soldier who would have gone on to do something critical at Tobruk or Normandy or the Battle of the Bulge.