Connie Willis - All Clear

And let’s hope you’re right, Dunworthy thought. “Run along,” he said. “I have business to conduct.”

“I don’t mind waiting.”

“There’s no point. I do not intend to change my mind. And in case you were hoping to sneak into the drop with me the way you did when I went after Kivrin

“There’s no point. I do not intend to change my mind. And in case you were hoping to sneak into the drop with me the way you did when I went after Kivrin Engle, I am not here to use the net. I am here to talk to Badri.”

“Then there’s no need to bar me from the lab, is there?” Colin said, sidling in before Dunworthy could shut the door. “I’ll wait till you’re done and then tell you my other idea. You won’t even know I’m here.”

“See that I don’t,” Dunworthy said, and started over to Badri, who was at the console.

“If you’re here about your drop to St. Paul’s,” Badri said, “we just finished calculating the coordinates, so you can go at any time.”

“Good,” Dunworthy said. “I want to see the slippage for this week’s drops. Is the amount still increasing?”

“Yes.” Badri called it up on the screen. “But the rate of increase is less than last week.”

Good, Dunworthy thought. Perhaps it was only a temporary anomaly.

“I’ve been looking at the individual drops,” Badri said. “The elevated slippage seems to be confined to drops back to World War II, so the increase could be due to the greater incidence of divergence points wars produce. Or to wartime conditions—civilian observers, ARP patrols, that sort of thing.”

But scores of historians had gone to World War II over the years, and there’d been no increase in the average slippage. “Have all the historians I spoke to you about been canceled or rescheduled?”

“Yes, sir,” Badri said, and Linna handed him a list.

“What about Michael Davies?” Dunworthy asked, looking at it.

“We rescheduled him to do his Dunkirk evacuation observation first. He left”—he consulted the console screen—“four days ago. He’ll be back six to ten days from now.”

“And the Pearl Harbor drop’s scheduled for when?”

“The end of May.”

Good, Dunworthy thought. I’ll have six weeks before I need to make a decision. “Why the uncertainty in when he’ll return? Was the projected slippage high?”

“No, sir, but his drop’s outside Dover, so it may take him a day or two to make it back there after the end of the evacuation.”

“We had a dreadful time finding him a drop site,” Linna volunteered. “The only one we could find was five miles from Dover.”

Dunworthy frowned. Difficulty in finding drop sites was one of the signs Dr. Ishiwaka had predicted. “An abnormal amount of difficulty?”

“Yes,” Linna said.

“No,” Badri said, “not considering the large number of people in the area. And the high level of secrecy surrounding the operation.”

“Any other instances of difficulty finding a drop site?” Dunworthy asked.

“We had some minor difficulty finding Charles Bowden one in Singapore, but we were finally able to send him through on the British colony’s polo grounds. And we had a good deal of difficulty with Polly Churchill’s, but that was because of your location requirements and the blackout.”

“Send her to see me as soon as she returns from the Blitz. When is that?”

“She should be reporting in tomorrow or the day after with the address of the boardinghouse where she’ll be staying.”

“What? Do you mean to tell me she hasn’t reported in yet?”

“No, sir, but there’s nothing to worry about,” Badri said. “She may have had difficulty finding a room to let, or she may have decided to wait till she had a job as well. That way she could tell us the name of the department store—”

“She’s been there a month,” Dunworthy said. “It can’t possibly have taken her that long to find a job. Why wasn’t I told she hadn’t reported in?” He turned accusingly to Colin. “Did you know about this?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Colin said. “She hasn’t been there a month. Has she, Badri?”

“No. She’s only been there two days.”

“What? Eddritch told me a month ago that she’d left on assignment.”

“She did, sir, but not for the Blitz,” Linna said. “We were having difficulty finding a drop site for her, so she suggested we send her to one of the other parts of her project first.”

“And you did? You sent her to the zeppelin attacks on London without obtaining my approval first?”

“You’d already approved the project, so we thought … But we couldn’t send her to the zeppelins. She hadn’t done her World War I prep yet. We sent her to the third part.”

“The third part?” Dunworthy thundered. “And then you sent her to the Blitz?”

“Yes, sir, we—”

“In spite of the fact that I’d told you to cancel all out-of-order drops?”

“Out-of-order?” Badri said. “I … you didn’t say that was what you were doing. You only gave us a list—”

“Of drops which were to be rescheduled so they’d be chronological. Or canceled if that wasn’t possible.”

“You didn’t say anything about chronology,” Linna said defensively.

“I … I’d no idea,” Badri stammered. “If we’d known—”

“Is something wrong?” Colin asked, coming over. “Has something happened to Polly?”

Dunworthy ignored him. “What do you mean you had no idea?” he said to Badri. “Why else did you think I was rescheduling them? And if Polly Churchill was on assignment, why wasn’t she on the list you gave me?”

“You asked for a list of every historian in the past,” Linna said, “and she’d already returned.”

Dunworthy wheeled on Colin. “You knew she’d gone, didn’t you? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you knew,” Colin said. “What’s wrong? Why wasn’t she supposed to go to the Blitz?”

Dunworthy turned back to Badri. “How long will it take to set up the coordinates on Polly’s drop?”

“Has something happened to Polly?” Colin said again.

“Has something happened to Polly?” Colin said again.

“No, because I’m pulling her out of there.”

“You’re sending a retrieval team after her, sir?” Badri said.

“No. That will take too long. I’ll go myself. How long?”

“But you don’t know where she is,” Badri argued. “She’ll be checking in in another day or two. Wouldn’t it be easier to wait till—”

“I know she’s looking for a job on Oxford Street. How long?”

“I’d have to change her drop to send mode,” Badri said. “It’s set up for a return drop at the moment. A day or two.”

“Too long,” Dunworthy said. “I want her out of there now. And I don’t want anything to interfere if she tries to check in. How long to set up a new drop nearby?”

“A new drop?” Badri said. “I’ve no idea. It took us weeks to find Polly’s. The blackout—”

“What about the St. Paul’s drop?” Dunworthy asked Badri. “How long to set new temporal coordinates?”

“An hour perhaps, but you can’t go through to St. Paul’s. John Bartholomew was there in—”

“Not in early September. He didn’t go through till the twentieth.”

“But you can’t go through in early September. It’s too dangerous.”

“St. Paul’s wasn’t bombed till October,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“I’m not talking about St. Paul’s. I’m talking about your—”

“What day did Polly go through?” Dunworthy interrupted.

“September tenth.”

“Has something happened to her?” Colin said. “Is she in some sort of trouble?”