Connie Willis - All Clear

“But if that’s true, then we all did it, and every historian who’s ever gone to the past is to blame.” She frowned. “But why weren’t there indications up to a few months ago? Why did it take forty years?”

“That I don’t know. In a chaotic system, not all actions have significant consequences. Some are damped down by other events or absorbed or canceled out. It may have taken that long for enough changes to accumulate for a tipping point.”

Like the vases and china and crystal in the china shop, Polly thought. Each crash of the bull against the table, each pounding step, brings them nearer and nearer to the edge, till one last minor nudge takes them over it. That’s what Mike and Eileen and I did, that one last tiny nudge. And it brought the continuum crashing down.

But Mike had tried to go back through his drop before he saved Hardy’s life. Why hadn’t it let him?

But Mike had tried to go back through his drop before he saved Hardy’s life. Why hadn’t it let him?

“Why didn’t—?” Polly began, and realized Mr. Dunworthy was in no condition to answer any more questions. He looked dreadful, and in spite of the fire, he’d begun to shiver again.

“Time to go home,” she said. She put money down for the tea and brandy, removed her coat from his knees, and put it on.

When she took his arm, he didn’t resist, but let her lead him out of the pub, onto the wet, now-dark street and into a taxi. His hand, as she helped him in, was hot to the touch. “You’ve a fever. I think I’d better take you to hospital. St. Bart’s,” she said to the driver.

“No,” Mr. Dunworthy said, clutching her arm. “They were very kind to me. They don’t … Please, not the hospital.”

“All right, but when we get home I’m telephoning the doctor.”

And I’m going to go in first so I can give Eileen some warning, so she won’t think he’s the retrieval team and get her hopes up.

But he is the retrieval team, she thought bleakly. He came through to rescue me, and now he’s as stuck in this morass as we are.

They pulled up in front of the house. “I need to run inside and fetch your fare,” she told the driver. “I’ll be back straightaway,” but he was shaking his head.

“I’d best ’elp you take ’im in, miss,” he said. “You’ll never manage ’im by yourself.” And before she could say anything, he was out of the taxi and helping Mr.

Dunworthy out, so she had no opportunity to warn Eileen.

But Eileen seemed to size up the situation instantly. “Can you help us get him into bed?” she asked the taxi driver.

“Who’s at?” Alf asked, emerging from the kitchen with a slice of bread in one hand and a spoon in the other.

“Mr. D—” Eileen began.

“Mr. Hobbe,” Polly said.

“Is ’e soused?” Binnie asked.

“No, he’s ill,” Polly said.

Binnie nodded wisely. “That’s what Mum allus—”

“Binnie, go turn down the bed,” Eileen said.

“Not Binnie. Rapunzel. I’ve decided my name’s Rapunzel.”

I am going to kill that child, Polly thought, but Eileen said calmly, “Please go turn down the bed, Rapunzel.”

She did, tossing her perpetually untied hair ribbon as if it were Rapunzel’s braid, and Polly helped Mr. Dunworthy out of his wet coat and shoes while Eileen ran down to the corner to phone the doctor.

She’d been afraid Alf and Binnie would come in and ask annoying questions, but after a minute of standing in the doorway whispering to each other, they disappeared.

When she came out to hang Mr. Dunworthy’s wet shirt on the oven door and put the kettle on, Alf asked, “ ’E ain’t a truant officer, is ’e? Or a tube station guard?”

Which meant they thought they recognized him from somewhere. She hoped they hadn’t tried to rob him as he walked to St. Paul’s.

“No,” she said. “He’s Eileen’s old schoolmaster.”

Schoolmasters were apparently as frightening as truant officers. The two of them didn’t even attempt to follow her into his room, though by the time the doctor arrived they were back to their old selves.

“It ain’t measles, is it?” Binnie asked. “We ain’t gonna be quarantined, are we?”

We already are, Polly thought.

“Is ’e going to die?” Alf asked.

Yes. On or before May first.

“He’ll be perfectly fine,” the doctor said heartily. “All he needs is to be kept warm and to rest, and he’s not to worry over anything. He needs building up, so he’s to have beefsteak and eggs—whole, not dried—every day.”

“But how?” Eileen said. “The rationing—”

“I’m writing a prescription. Take it to the ration office, and they’ll give you the necessary coupons.” He handed her the prescription and a paper packet. “And he’s to take this powder, dissolved in a glass of water, at bedtime.”

“Just like in an Agatha Christie novel,” Eileen said, looking at the packet after the doctor’d gone. “That’s always how the victim’s murdered.”

“Who’s been murdered?” Alf asked eagerly.

“No one. Go do your lessons,” Eileen said, still examining the packet. “But I doubt whether there’s anything in this powder for a fever. Aspirin’s the only thing which will help.”

Nothing will help, Polly thought, but she offered to go to the chemist’s for the tablets. “I need to ring the theater and tell them I’m not coming in. I can do that while I’m at the chemist’s.”

“Oh, I forgot all about your rehearsal,” Eileen said. “You could still go. I can care for Mr. Dunworthy.”

“It’s too late. By the time I got there, the performance would be over. And someone’s got to go for the aspirin.”

And she needed to get away for a few moments, to think out how she was going to tell Eileen. She would not be upset on her own behalf, but Polly couldn’t bear the look Eileen would have on her face when she told her they weren’t getting out. And worse, that she wasn’t the only one with a deadline. That Mr. Dunworthy had one, too. Soon.

As soon as she reached the chemist’s, she rang up the Alhambra. “Your luck’s in,” Hattie said. “Canning Town got it last night, so Tabbitt hasn’t made it in either, but he’ll be here tomorrow, so you’d better be. And if I were you, I’d think of a different excuse in the meantime. He’ll never believe the one you just told me.” There was a pause. “Oh, I’ve got to go. I’m on. Victory number. Ta.”

But there won’t be any Victory numbers, Polly thought, feeling her way back to the house through the darkness of the blackout. And what will happen to Hattie when we lose the war? And to the other girls in the chorus?

You know what will happen to them, she thought.

But perhaps it wouldn’t come to that. Mr. Dunworthy had said he didn’t know if the continuum was collapsing or correcting itself. And there were things in his But perhaps it wouldn’t come to that. Mr. Dunworthy had said he didn’t know if the continuum was collapsing or correcting itself. And there were things in his theory which didn’t fit. If their actions had been a threat, why had they been allowed to come through at all? Why hadn’t they been prevented from coming in the first place, like Gerald?

And once they were here, why hadn’t they been allowed to leave? Mr. Dunworthy had said it was to contain the infection, but if Polly’s drop had opened, she wouldn’t have stumbled, shell-shocked and stricken, into Townsend Brothers, and Marjorie wouldn’t have ended up in Jermyn Street, wouldn’t have become a nurse, and if the people on the beach watching the smoke from Dunkirk hadn’t prevented Mike from going to his drop, he wouldn’t have fallen asleep on the Lady Jane and ended up in Dunkirk and saved Hardy’s life. And if Eileen’s drop had opened, she wouldn’t have been able to keep the City of Benares letter from Mrs. Hodbin; she wouldn’t have been there to drive the ambulance on the twenty-ninth and save her passengers’ lives.