All Clear (Oxford Time Travel) by Connie Willis

Author:Connie Willis [Willis, Connie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780345522696
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

—T. S. ELIOT, FOUR QUARTETS

Croydon—October 1944

MARY ROLLED DOWN THE WINDOW OF THE AMBULANCE and leaned out, straining to hear. She was certain she’d heard the rattling putt-putt of a V-1.

“A flying bomb?” Fairchild said. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Shh,” Mary ordered, but she couldn’t hear anything either. Could it have been another motorcycle or—?

An enormous boom shook the parked ambulance.

“Oh, my God,” Fairchild said. “That was nearly on top of us.” She leaned forward to turn the ignition and start the ambulance’s bells. “You don’t think it hit the ambulance post, do you?”

“No, it was nearer than that.”

It was. The rocket had fallen just off the high street they’d driven through only minutes before, smashing shops and stores. At the near end, an estate agent’s was still recognizable, and at the other the marquee of a cinema stood at an awkward angle. Fires burned here and there among the wreckage.

Good, Mary thought. At least we’ll have light to see by. She wished she’d worn her coveralls and boots instead of her skirted uniform, since it looked like they were the first ones here and were going to have to clamber over the wreckage looking for victims.

Fairchild drove the ambulance as close to the wreckage as she could and parked, and they scrambled out. “At least we’ve plenty of bandages,” she said. “I’ll go find a telephone and ring the post.”

“Good, though I should imagine the post heard the explosion.” Mary put on her helmet and fastened the strap. “I’ll go see if there are casualties in the cinema.”

“It doesn’t show films on Wednesday,” Fairchild said. “I know because Reed and I came down to see Random Harvest Wednesday last, and it was shut. And none of these shops would have been open at this time of night, so perhaps there won’t have been any casualties.” She ran off to find a phone box, and Mary pulled on her gumboots and started through the wreckage, hoping Fairchild was right.

Halfway down the street she thought she heard a voice. She stopped, listening, but she couldn’t hear anything for Fairchild’s hurrying back toward her, dislodging bricks and chunks of mortar as she came. “I notified Croydon,” she reported. “Have you found any—?”

“Shh. I thought I heard something.”

They listened.

“Jeppers!” Mary heard a man’s voice call from somewhere at the other end of the destroyed area.

“It came from over there,” Fairchild said, pointing, and began picking her way through the rubble.

Mary followed, stopping every few feet to look about her. She’d been wrong about the fires. They gave off only enough light to maneuver by, not enough to see the hazards in her way or to make out more than silhouettes, and the flickering flames made her think she saw movement where there wasn’t any.

Midway across, Mary thought she heard the man again. She stopped, listening, and then called, “Where are you?”

“Over here.” The voice was so faint she could scarcely hear it.

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