Blackout - Connie Willis

“No. They might have spoken to Dad, I suppose. If they did, he very likely told them you’d gone back to London. That’s what we thought you’d done.”

Which might mean the team was looking for him in London. “Daphne, if my editor or anyone else does come, will you tell them where I am and what’s happened? And ask your father if anyone inquired about me. If they did, write and tell me.”

“Oh, I will. I’ll write you even if no one comes. And I’ll come visit you again if Dad can spare me.” Again that flirtatious glance at him. “Next time I’ll manage a cake, I promise.”

The matron came in and announced that visiting hours were over. Daphne stood up. “Thank you for coming,” Mike said, “and for the grapes. And for telling me about the Commander and Jonathan. I’m so sorry.”

She nodded, her made-up face suddenly sad. “Miss Fintworth says not to give up hope, that they may still be alive, but if they are, why haven’t they come home or written to us or anything?”

“Time,” the matron said sternly.

“Goodbye. I’ll come again soon, and you needn’t worry, I won’t go out with anyone but you,” Daphne said, planted a lipsticky kiss on his cheek, and hurried out to more whistles.

“You lucky devil,” one of the patients called out.

Lucky. I killed an old man and a fourteen-year-old boy. Here he’d been worried about saving Private Hardy’s life, and instead-I should have refused to go in the water. I should have told the Commander I’d lied before, that I couldn’t swim. Instead, he’d unfouled the propeller, and it had affected events, all right. It had gotten the Commander and Jonathan killed. And what else had it affected? What other damage had he done?

He lay awake well into the night, going over and over it, like an animal pacing its cage, and when he closed his eyes, trying to shut it out, he saw Jonathan and the Commander, heard the Stuka diving and the water splashing up where they’d been only moments before. If he hadn’t unfouled the propeller, the bomb would have hit the bow. They’d have begun taking on water, and one of the other boats would have come over to take everyone off and transfer them to-

But there hadn’t been any boats anywhere nearby, and there’d been dozens of Stukas. And with a damaged bow, they’d have been a sitting duck. On its next pass, the Stuka would have hit them amidships and killed everybody on board. Was that what was supposed to have happened? What would have happened if he hadn’t been there?

He sat up in bed, considering the implications of that possibility. If they were supposed to have been killed, if the Lady Jane had had an asterisk next to it on that list he hadn’t memorized, then he’d altered events not by getting them killed, but by saving them.

And a chaotic system had built-in mechanisms for countering alterations. It had negative loops that could tamp down effects or cancel them out altogether. History was full of examples. Assassins missed, guns misfired, bombs failed to go off. Hitler had survived an attempt on his life because the bomb had been put on the wrong side of a table leg. A telegram warning of the Pearl Harbor attack had been sent in time to have the ships take defensive measures, but it had gotten put in the wrong decoding pile and hadn’t arrived till after the attack.

And if the Commander and Jonathan weren’t supposed to have been rescued, that would have been easy to correct. Had their deaths on that second trip been part of a negative loop, of a cancellation? If it was, then he might not have done any damage after all. And that was why he’d been allowed to go to Dunkirk, because his actions hadn’t had a lasting effect on the outcome. But it still left Jonathan and the Commander dead. And what about Private Hardy?

Unless his saving of him had been canceled out, too. Hardy’d been drenched when he climbed aboard. He might have gotten pneumonia and-

He was the one who told the nurses I unfouled the propeller, Mike thought suddenly. He’d assumed it had been the Commander, but Daphne’d said they’d set out again immediately, and that would explain why the hospital hadn’t known his name. But why would Hardy have gone with him to the hospital?

Because he was being admitted, too. Hardy hadn’t said anything about being injured, but he might not have realized he was.

Just like me, Mike thought, and when Sister Carmody came in to open the blackout curtains in the morning, he said, “Can you find out something for me? I need to know if a patient was admitted to the hospital in Dover the same day I was. His name was Hardy.”

She looked at him doubtfully. “You’re certain this is something you’ve remembered and not something you read about?”

“Read about?”

“Yes. Amnesia patients’ memories are often confused. And, you know, ‘Kiss me, Hardy’ and all that.”

“What?” he said, completely lost.

“Oh, I forgot, you’re an American. When Lord Nelson was fatally injured at the Battle of Trafalgar, his last words were ‘Kiss me, Hardy,’” she explained. “Hardy was his aide de camp. But if you didn’t know that, then it can’t have been something you read, can it?”

“No. Can you find out? Please. It’s important,” and his urgency must have communicated itself to her because when she brought his breakfast, she told him she’d rung up Dover, but that no one named Hardy had been admitted when he was.

Which didn’t prove anything. He could have gotten sick later. Or been injured on his way back to his unit, he thought, remembering the bombed train he’d read about. Or in Dover. The docks had been shelled. Hardy could have helped put Mike in the ambulance, told the driver about the fouled propeller, and been killed five minutes later. This was a war. There were hundreds of ways to cancel things out. But if Mike’s altering of events had been canceled out and he hadn’t lost the war, then why wasn’t the retrieval team here? He wished he’d reminded Daphne to ask her father as she left. He was afraid she’d forget.

But she didn’t. A letter arrived by the Tuesday afternoon post. “I asked Dad,” she wrote on scented paper, “but he said no one’s been in the pub asking about you.”

But that didn’t mean they hadn’t been there. She’d said there’d been lots of reporters in the town after Dunkirk, and “We all thought you’d gone back to London.” The team could have asked Mr. Tompkins or one of the fishermen and then have gone to London to look for him, with no idea they should be checking military hospitals. But, even in 1940, London had been a huge place. How would they have gone about trying to find him?

Polly Churchill will be there as soon as the Blitz starts next week, he thought. They’d try to contact her to see if he’d been in touch with her. Which meant he needed to get in touch with her. But how? She’d said she was going to work in an Oxford Street department store, but he didn’t know which one, or even what name she’d be here under. He’d have to go to London and find her.

But if he was able to get to London, then he was able to get to his drop. And the last thing he wanted to do was find himself in the middle of the Blitz. He needed a way to contact the retrieval team now, from here, before he was thrown out. When he’d asked Sister Carmody about his status, she’d said, “Matron spoke to the Admiralty, and they said, since the crews on all the small craft had to sign on for a month’s service in the Navy before they left for Dunkirk, you have a perfect right to be here.”

But that had been the small craft formed into convoys at Dover. He hadn’t signed on for anything, and it was only a matter of time before they found that out-another reason he needed to contact the retrieval team now.

Just like they’d be trying to do if they thought he was in London. They’d be trying to communicate with him. They’d send a message telling him where they were and asking him to get in touch with them. Like those personal ads he’d read: If anyone has information regarding the whereabouts of time traveler Mike Davis, last seen at Saltram-on-Sea, please contact the retrieval team, and a phone number to call.

Only the message would be in code, like, Mike, all is forgiven. Please come home, or something. He picked up the Herald whose crossword he’d been working and began reading through the personal column: Wanted, country home willing to take Pekingese dog for duration of bombings. L. Smith, 26 Brown Street, Mayfair. No. Lost in Holborn Underground Station. Brown leather handbag. Reward. No. For sale, garden sets. Iris, lilies, poinsettias.

Poinsettias. Right before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy’d intercepted a phone call from a Tokyo newspaper to a Japanese dentist in Honolulu: “Presently the flowers in bloom are fewest out of the whole year. However, the hibiscus and the poinsettias are in bloom.” It had been a coded message telling Japan that the battleships and destroyers were all in port, but not the aircraft carriers. And the retrieval team would know he was scheduled to go to Pearl Harbor next.

But the address in the ad was in Shropshire, and there was no phone number. And five ads below it was a nearly identical one for “dahlias and gladiolas.” All the other ads were standard Found and For Sale’s. No Wishes to Contact or Anyone having information regarding the whereabouts of messages. But this was only the Herald. They might have put a message in the Times or the Evening Standard. Tomorrow he’d have to talk Mrs. Ives into getting him the other papers. And find out how to go about putting a personal ad of his own in: Dunworthy, contact Mike, War Emergency Hospital, Orpington. Time is of the essence, or maybe just R. T., contact M. D.

He scanned the Herald to see how much an ad cost, and then remembered his money was in his jacket. The jacket he’d left on the deck of the Lady Jane. And if he asked Mrs. Ives to help him, she’d ask all kinds of questions. He’d better wait till he was out of the hospital.

But he couldn’t get out till he could walk. Which meant his first priority was to get back on his feet. He wangled a postcard from Mrs. Ives-it took him fifteen minutes to talk her out of writing it for him-and wrote to the poinsettias address, requesting more information and giving the hospital’s address, just in case it was a message, and then tried to talk his nurses into letting him up.

They refused to consider it, even with crutches. “You’re still mending,” they said and handed him the Times. He combed it for messages, but the only Please Contact was Will the young lady in the red polka-dotted frock at the dance at Tangmere Airfield last Saturday please contact Flt. Lt. Les Grubman.

There were several more garden sets ads, and on Friday a letter arrived from the poinsettias address, with an attached price list and seed catalog.

Mike decided to take matters into his own hands and get up on his own, but Sister Carmody caught him before he was even out of bed. “You know you mustn’t put any weight on that foot till it’s completely healed,” she told him.

“I can’t stand to stay in this bed another minute,” he said. “I’m going crazy.”

“I know just what you need-”

“A nice crossword puzzle?” he asked sarcastically.

“Yes,” she said, handing him the Herald and a pencil. “And some fresh air and sunlight.” She went out and returned in a few minutes with a cane-backed wheelchair and took him and his Herald up to the sun-room, though it wasn’t very sunny. It had tall windows, but there were black Xes of tape on the panes, sandbags were piled against them, and their green net curtains gave an underwater look to the room. The high-backed chairs were wicker, but they’d been painted dark brown and had darker green velvet cushions. In one of them sat a red-faced man with a neck brace, reading the Guardian.

In between the chairs were massive oak tables and bookcases and curio cabinets and equally massive and dark potted plants. There was barely room for Mike’s wheelchair as Sister Carmody pushed him over to the sandbagged windows. She parked him next to a massive table and opened the window. “There, some nice fresh air for you,” she said.

The red-faced man cleared his throat irritably and rattled his newspaper.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she whispered.

“No,” Mike said, looking speculatively at the heavy furniture. If he were alone in here, he might be able to lean on it and-

“Would you like me to stay and read to you?” Sister Carmody asked.

“No, I want to work on my crossword.”

She nodded and took a bell from her pocket and set it on the table with only a slight ringing, but the newspaper rattled irritably again.

“Matron’s just outside the door,” she whispered. “Ring if you need anything. If your pencil falls to the floor, you’re not to try to pick it up. You’re to ring for Matron. You’re not to get out of that chair. I’ll be back for you in time for lunch,” she said and tiptoed out.

It would take Red Face at least till lunch to read the Guardian. Mike would have to hurry him along. He opened the Herald, folded it noisily in half and then in quarters so the crossword was on top. “One across,” he said loudly. “‘Likely to make waves.’” He tapped his pencil on the table. “Make waves… betides?… no, it’s eight letters. Hurricane?”

Throat clearing and ominous rattlings.

“Sorry,” Mike called to him. “You wouldn’t know what ‘likely to make waves’ is, would you? Or ‘serving task with no end in sight’? Seven letters?”

Red Face snapped his Guardian shut, stood up, and stalked out. Mike bent intently over the crossword again for a few minutes, in case the matron came in, then rolled his wheelchair over closer to a potted palm and grabbed the trunk with one hand, testing to see if it was as sturdy as it looked.

It was. When he put his other hand around the trunk and raised himself slowly to standing, the fronds didn’t even move. He cautiously transferred some of his weight to his bad foot. So far, so good. The pain wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d thought it might be. He reached for the nearest bookcase, still holding on to the palm tree, and took a careful step toward it.

Oh, Christ. His nails dug into the wood of the bookcase. He balanced there, breathing out in hisses through his clenched teeth, trying to get the courage to take another step, praying the matron didn’t choose this moment to come in.

All right, next step. It’ll never get any better if you don’t do this, he told himself. He repositioned his hand on the bookcase, unclenched his teeth, and took another step. Jesus.

It took him half an hour to get two chairs’, another bookcase’s, and a curio cabinet’s length from his wheelchair, by which time he was drenched in sweat.

I shouldn’t have come this far, he thought. If he heard the matron coming, there’d be no way he could make it back to his wheelchair in time.

He began working his way back, incredibly grateful for the Victorians’ penchant for teeter-proof furniture. Bookcase, potted palm, wheelchair. He sank gratefully into it and sat there, panting for several minutes, then tackled the crossword, looking for something, anything, he could fill in quickly. “Island creature Peter Pan author shot”? What the hell could that be? “Doctor’s warning Hitler would ignore”?