Connie Willis - To Say Nothing of the Dog

“You said a self-correction could extend into the past, right, T.J.?” I said, ignoring her.

T.J. nodded. “Some of the models showed preemptive self-corrections.”

“And that the only instance you found of a significant object being removed from its space-time location was as part of a self-correction.”

He nodded again.

“And you said that our incongruity didn’t match any of the Waterloo models. I want you to see if it matches with the focus changed.”

T.J. obligingly sat down at the bank of computers and pushed the sleeves of his robe up. “To what?”

“Coventry Cathedral,” I said. “November the fourteenth—”

“November the fourteenth?” T.J. and Carruthers interrupted in unison. Warder gave me one of those “how-many-drops-have-you-had?” looks.

“November the fourteenth,” I said firmly. “1940. I don’t know the exact time. Sometime after 7:45 PM. and before eleven. My guess is half-past nine.”

“But that’s during the air raid,” Carruthers said, “the place none of us could get anywhere near.”

T.J. said, “What’s this all about, Ned?”

“The Fountain Pen Mystery and Hercule Poirot,” I said. “We’ve been looking at this the wrong way round. What if the rescue of the cat wasn’t the incongruity? What if it was part of the continuum’s self-correction and the real incongruity had happened earlier? Or later?”

T.J. began feeding in figures.

“There wasn’t any increased slippage on Verity’s drop,” I said, “even though five minutes either way would have kept her from rescuing Princess Arjumand. So would the net’s failure to open, but neither line of defense worked. And why did the slippage on my drop send me to Oxford to meet Terence, keep him from meeting Maud, and loan him the money for the boat so he could go meet Tossie? What if it was because the continuum wanted those things to happen? And what if all the signs we saw as indications of breakdown — my being bounced to the Middle Ages, Carruthers being trapped in Coventry — were all part of the self-correction, as well?”

A table of coordinates came up. T.J. scanned the columns, fed in more figures, scanned the new patterns. “Only the focus?” he said.

“You said discrepancies only occurred in the immediate vicinity of the site,” I said to T.J. “But what if the site wasn’t Muchings End? What if it was the raid on the cathedral, and what Verity and I saw was a discrepancy, was the course of events that would have happened if the incongruity hadn’t been repaired?”

“Interesting,” T.J. said. He rapidly fed in more figures.

“Only the focus,” I said. “Same events, same slippage.”

“This will take a while,” he said, feeding in more figures.

I turned to Carruthers. “Here’s what I need you to find out in Coventry.” I reached round Warder for a handheld and spoke into it. “I want the names of the cathedral staff, lay and clerical, in 1940,” I said, “and the cathedral’s marriage records for 1888 through—” I hesitated a moment, thinking, and then said, “—1888 through 1915. No, 1920, to be on the safe side.”

“What if the records were destroyed in the raid?”

“Then get the C of E’s list of church livings for 1940. That will have been on file in Canterbury and a number of other places. They can’t all have been hit by the Blitz.”

I hit the handheld’s print key, watched it spit out the list, and tore it off. “I need these as soon as possible.”

Carruthers stared at it. “You expect me to go now?”

“Yes,” I said. “This is important. If I’m right, we’ll have the bishop’s bird stump in time for the consecration.”

“Then you’d better hurry,” Warder said dryly. “It’s in two hours.”

“The consecration?” I said blankly. “That’s impossible,” and finally asked what should have been my first question on stepping out of the net. “What day is it?”

Verity ran in, carrying an armful of facsimile sheets. She’d changed into a slat dress and plimsolls. Her legs were just as long as I’d imagined them. “Ned, the consecration’s in a few hours!”

“I just found that out,” I said, trying to think what to do. I’d counted on having a couple of days to collect evidence to support my theory, but now there would scarcely be time to get to Coventry and back—

“Can I help?” Verity said.

“We need proof the incongruity’s been fixed,” I said. “I intended to send Carruthers—”

“I can go,” Verity said.

I shook my head. “There isn’t time. When does the consecration start?” I asked Warder.

“Eleven o’clock,” she said.

“And what time is it now?”

“A quarter past nine.”

I looked over at T.J. “How long till you have the sim?”

“Another minute,” T.J. said, his fingers flying. “Got it.” He hit “return,” the columns of coordinates disappeared, and the model came up.

I don’t know what I’d expected. The model that came up on the screen looked just like all the others — a shapeless, shadowy blur.

“Well, will you look at that?” T.J. said softly. He hit some more keys. “This is the new focus,” he said, “and this is a superimpose of the Waterloo soup kettle sim.”

He spoke into the comp’s ear. Both models came up, one over the other, and even I could see that they matched.

“Do they match?” Warder said.

“Yeah,” T.J. nodded slowly. “There are a few minor differences. The slippage at the site isn’t as great, and you can see it’s not an exact match here and here,” he said, pointing at nonexistent shapes. “And I don’t know what this is,” he pointed at nothing in particular, “but it definitely looks like a self-correction pattern. See how the slippage lessens as it approaches 1888, and then ceases altogether on—”

“June eighteenth,” I said.

T.J. typed in some figures. “June eighteenth. I’ll need to run slippage checks and probabilities, and find out what this is,” he said, tapping the nothing-in-particular, “but it definitely looks like that was the incongruity.”

“What was?” Carruthers said. “And who caused it?”

“That’s what I needed you to find out in Coventry,” I said, looking at my useless pocket watch. “But there’s no time.”

“Of course there’s time,” Verity said. “This is a time travel lab. We can send Carruthers back to get the information.”

“He can’t go back to 1940,” I said. “He’s already been there. And the last thing we need is to cause another incongruity.”

“Not to 1940, Ned. To last week.”

“He can’t be in two places at once,” I said and realized he wouldn’t be. Last week he’d been in 1940, not 2057. “Warder, how long will it take you to calculate a drop?” I said.

“A drop! I’ve already got three rendez—”

“I’ll press the surplices,” Verity said.

“I need him to go back for— how long do you think it’ll take you? A day?”

“Two,” Carruthers said.

“For two days. Weekdays. The church archives aren’t open on weekends. And it has to be two days he was in 1940. And then bring him back here immediately.”

Warder looked stubborn. “How do I know he won’t get trapped in Coventry again?”

“Because of that,” I said, pointing at the comp. “The incongruity’s fixed.”

“It’s all right, Peggy,” Carruthers said. “Go ahead and calculate it.” He turned to me. “You’ve got the list of what I need to find out?”

I gave it to him. “And one other thing. I need a list of the heads of all the ladies’ church committees in 1940.”

“I don’t have to look up the head of the Flower Committee. I know who it was,” he said. “That harpy Miss Sharpe.”