Connie Willis - All Clear

She looked at the route the Major had mapped out for her. Two of the six V-1s lay along it. She’d have to head west to Wandsworth instead and then north. It would take extra petrol, but she could say the road the Major had suggested had been blocked by a convoy or something.

She traced the route and set out for Hendon, hoping she’d arrive early enough to go on to Edgware and pick up the bandages first, but there was all sorts of military traffic. It was after twelve by the time she reached the airfield, and the officer was already waiting at the door, looking impatiently at his watch.

I hope he’s not angry, she thought, but as she pulled up, he grinned and bounded toward the ambulance. He was no older than she was, and boyishly handsome, with dark hair and a crooked smile.

He opened the door and leaned in. “Where have you been, you beautiful—?” He stopped in midsentence. “Sorry, I thought you were someone I knew.”

“Apparently,” she said.

“Not that you’re not beautiful. You are,” he said, flashing her the crooked smile. “Rather devastatingly beautiful, as a matter of fact.”

“I’m here from Ambulance Post Number Forty-Seven to pick up Flight Officer Lang,” she said crisply.

“I’m Officer Lang.” He got into the front seat. “Where’s Lieutenant Talbot?”

“She’s on sick leave, sir.”

“Sick leave? She wasn’t hit by one of these blasted rocket bombs, was she?”

“No, sir.” Only by an historian. “Not exactly.”

“Not exactly? What happened? She wasn’t badly hurt?”

“No, only a wrenched knee. I pushed her into a gutter.”

“Because you wanted to be the one to drive me?” he said. “I’m flattered.”

“No, because I thought I heard a V-1, but it was only a motorcycle.”

“And so she’s not able to drive, and they sent you as her replacement,” he said, grinning. “It wasn’t an accident you were sent, you know. It was fate.”

I doubt that, she thought. And why do I have a feeling you say the same thing to every FANY who drives you? “Where am I to take you, sir?”

“London. Whitehall.”

Which was better than somewhere in Bomb Alley, but not perfect. Once they got there, they’d be safe. No V-1s had fallen in Whitehall that day, but more than a dozen had hit between Hendon and London.

“Whitehall. Yes, sir,” she said, and opened out the map to find the safest route.

“You won’t need that,” he said, plucking it out of her hands and folding it up. “I can show you the way.” There was nothing for her to do but start the engine. “It’s quickest to take the Great North Road. Follow this lane till the first turning, and then bear right.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, heading in the direction he indicated and trying to think of an excuse for getting the map back so she could see what towns lay along the Great North Road.

“Definitely fate,” Flight Officer Lang was saying. “It’s clear we were destined to meet, Lieutenant—what’s your name?”

“Kent, sir,” she said absently. She should have told him that the Major insisted her FANYs take the Edgware Road to London. That way they’d be out of range nearly the entire way.

“Lieutenant Kent,” he said sternly. “Lovers brought together by fate do not call each other by their last names. Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet. Stephen”—he pointed at himself—“and?”

“Mary, sir.”

“Sir?” His voice was filled with mock outrage. “Did Juliet call Romeo sir? Did Guinevere call Lancelot sir? Well, actually, I suppose she may have done. He was a knight, after all, but I don’t want you to do it. It makes me feel a hundred years old.”

A hundred and thirty-some old, actually, she thought.

“As your superior officer, I order you to call me Stephen, and I shall call you Mary. Mary,” he said, looking over at her and then frowning puzzledly. “Have we met before?”

“No,” she said. “Does this route take us through Edgware?”

“Edgware?” he said. “No, that’s the other direction. This road goes through Golders Green, and then we take the Great North Road south through Finchley.”

Oh, no. There’d been a V-1 in East Finchley this afternoon, and two in Golders Green. “Oh, dear, I thought this went through Edgware,” she said, and didn’t have to feign the distress in her voice. “I was to pick up some stretchers for the Major at Edgware’s ambulance post.” She slowed the car, looking for a place to pull off and turn around. “We must go back.”

“You’ll have to do it after we return, I’m afraid. I’ve a meeting at two, and I’ll be cashiered if I’m not there on time. And we’re late as it is. It’s already half past twelve.”

The Golders Green V-1s had hit at 12:56 and 1:08. And let’s hope Flight Officer Lang isn’t right about our meeting being fate, and that that fate is to be blown to bits by a V-1. I should have memorized the casualties from each rocket attack, she thought, so I’d know if an RAF flight officer and his driver were killed this afternoon.

But there’d scarcely been room in her implant for all the rockets which had hit in the areas she was most likely to be in, so all she knew was that the 12:56 one had been on Queen’s Road and the 1:08 one on abridge somewhere outside the village. And they were heading straight toward both of them.

The net wouldn’t have let her come through if her presence in the past would affect events, but that didn’t mean she could blithely drive into the path of a V-1, certain that nothing would happen.

For one thing, she could be killed even if he wasn’t. And for another, Flight Officer Lang had a constantly dangerous job. It might not make a difference to the course of history whether he was killed this afternoon or on a mission tomorrow.

But it made a great deal of difference to her, which was why she needed to get off this road. “I promise you we’ll go straight to Edgware after my meeting,” Lang was saying. “And to make up for it I’ll take you out for dinner and dancing. What do you say?”

I’d say that won’t make up for my being dead, she thought.

There was a crossroads ahead. Good. She’d ask him again which way to turn, then pretend she’d misheard his instructions, turn right instead of left, and get them somehow onto a road that would lead them back out of range.

She waited till they were nearly to the crossroads and then said, “Which road did you say I take?”

“We stay on this. In another mile it turns into Queen’s Road. Are you certain we haven’t met before?”

“Yes,” she said, only half listening. She peered ahead, looking for another crossroads. She wouldn’t ask this time, she’d simply turn off.

“You’re certain you haven’t driven me before?” he persisted. “Last spring?”

Absolutely certain. She wished he’d stop talking so she could hear. She might be able to swerve—or stop—if she heard the V-1 soon enough, but the noise of a car engine sometimes masked the sound, and with him prattling on—

“Or last winter?”

“No, I’ve only been in Dulwich for six weeks,” she said, glancing at her watch: 12:53. She rolled down the window. She couldn’t hear anything yet. And she didn’t know where on Queen’s Road the V-1 would—

“Stop,” he ordered. “There’s a lorry ahead!” There was—a U.S. Army transport, apparently stopped. She nearly ran up the rear end of it, and as she braked, she saw it was the last in a line of lorries loaded with what looked like crates of ammunition.

Oh, no, she thought, and then realized the lorries were her salvation. “It’s a convoy,” she said, backing the Daimler up. “We’ll never get through.” She began turning it around, wishing the road wasn’t so narrow.