All Clear

“Yes, sir. They also come in powder pink and ecru,” and, to give him an exit opportunity, “I’m afraid we’re out of ivory.”

“Oh, too bad. My girl had her heart set on ivory,” he said, and left, mouthing “Twelve-thirty” at her.

Eileen still wasn’t back by then. Polly left a note for her and went to tell Mike, who’d got them a table in a secluded corner.

“I told her to meet us here,” she said, shrugging off her coat.

He handed her the menu. “I’m afraid they’re out of everything but the fish-paste sandwich.”

“Which is still better than anything at Mrs. Rickett’s,” Polly said. She handed him a sheet of paper.

“More airfield names?”

“No, the upcoming raids. The worst one’s on the twelfth. Sloane Square Underground station, seventy-nine casualties.”

“And no break in the nightly raids, I see,” he said, looking at the list.

“Not till next week. Then they shift to the industrial cities—Coventry and then Birmingham and Wolverhamp—”

“Coventry?”

“Yes. It was hit on the fourteenth. What’s the matter?”

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” he said excitedly. “We’ve only been considering the historians who are here right now, not the ones who were here earlier.”

“Before 1940, you mean?”

“No, not earlier now,” he said. “Earlier in Oxford time. Historians who had World War II assignments last year. Or ten years ago. Like Ned Henry and Verity Kindle. Weren’t they in Coventry the night it was bombed?”

“Yes, but that was two years ago … Oh,” she said, seeing what he was getting at. It didn’t matter when historians had done it in their past. This was time travel.

Here in 1940, they would do it two weeks from now.

“But there’s no way we could get to Ned and Verity. We don’t know where they were except that they were in the middle of Coventry, in the heart of the fire. And it’s much too dangerous—”

“Not any more dangerous than Dunkirk,” Mike said. “And we know one place they were—in the cathedral.”

“As it was burning down,” Polly said. “You can’t be thinking of trying to go there. The area around the cathedral was nearly a firestorm.”

“It might also be our fastest way out. We wouldn’t necessarily have to find Ned and Verity. The drop was inside the cathedral, wasn’t it? All we have to do is find it.”

“Mike, we can’t go through their drop.”

“Why not? We know it was working.”

“Why not? We know it was working.”

“But we can’t use it because it was two years ago. We can’t go through to a time we’re already in. Their drop opens on Oxford two years ago, and two years ago

—”

“We were all in Oxford,” he said. “Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. But we can send a message through them.”

“A message?”

“Yes. We find Verity and Ned before they go back and have them tell the lab where we are and that our drops won’t open and to reset the drop so it opens in our time. There’s no reason we can’t do that, is there?”

“Yes, there is. Because we didn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. If we’d found them and told them what had happened, Oxford would have known what was going to happen when it sent us through. We’d have known what was going to happen.”

He considered that. “Maybe they couldn’t tell us because it would create a paradox. If we knew we were going to be trapped, we wouldn’t come, and we had to come because we had come.”

“But Mr. Dunworthy wouldn’t have let us come. You know how over-protective he is. He’d never have let you come knowing they couldn’t get you out after you were injured.” And he wouldn’t have let me come knowing I had a deadline.

But she couldn’t say that. “This is a man who was worried I might get my foot caught in a barrage-balloon rope,” she said instead. “He’d never have let us get trapped in the Blitz. Or let you go to Coventry to get us out. The entire city burned. It would be suicide for you to go there. You’re here to observe heroes, not die trying to be one.”

“Then we need to come up with somebody besides Ned and Verity. Who else was here? Didn’t Dunworthy go to the Blitz at some point?”

“He went several times, but—”

“When?”

“I don’t know. I know he observed the big raids on May tenth and eleventh, because he talked about watching the fire in the House of Commons, and that happened on the tenth.”

“And you said before that the ninth and tenth were the worst raids ofthe Blitz?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Nothing. We need something sooner. When else was he here?”

“I don’t know. I remember him telling a story about attempting to get to his drop, and the gates at Charing Cross Railway Station being shut and him not being able to get in.”

“But you don’t know the date?”

“No.”

“But if he told you he was trying to get to his drop, that means it must have been somewhere in Charing Cross.”

“No, it doesn’t. He might have been taking the train to his drop. He could have been going anywhere.”