The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century (31 page)

I know now what the purpose of my practicum is. I must stop Langby from burning down St. Paul’s.

September 28
—
I try to tell myself I was mistaken about Langby last night, that I misunderstood what he said. Why would he want to burn down St. Paul’s unless he is a Nazi spy? How can a Nazi spy have gotten on the fire watch? I think about my faked letter of introduction and shudder. 

How can I find out? If I set him some test, some fatal thing that only a loyal Englishman in 1940 would know, I fear I am the one who would be caught out. I
must
get my retrieval working properly.

Until then, I shall watch Langby. For the time being at least that should be easy.

Langby has just posted the watches for the next two weeks. We stand every one together.

September 30—
I know what happened in September. Langby told me.

Last night in the choir, putting on our coats and boots, he said, “They’ve already tried once, you know.”

I had no idea what he meant. I felt as helpless as that first day when he asked me if I was from the ayarpee.

“The plan to destroy St. Paul’s. They’ve already tried once. The tenth of September.

A high explosive bomb. But of course you didn’t know about that. You were in Wales.”

I was not even listening. The minute he had said “high explosive bomb” I had remembered it all. It had burrowed in under the road and lodged on the foundations. The bomb squad had tried to defuse it, but there was a leaking gas main. They decided to evacuate St. Paul’s, but Dean Matthews refused to leave, and they got it out after all and exploded it in Barking Marshes. Instant and complete retrieval.

“The bomb squad saved her that time,” Langby was saying. “It seems there’s always somebody about.”

“Yes,” I said, “there is,” and walked away from him.

October 1
—
I thought last night’s retrieval of the events of September tenth meant some sort of breakthrough, but I have been lying here on my cot most of the night trying for Nazi spies in St. Paul’s and getting nothing. Do I have to know exactly what I’m looking for before I can remember it? What good does that do me?

Maybe Langby is not a Nazi spy. Then what is he? An arsonist? A madman? The crypt is hardly conducive to thought, being not at all as silent as a tomb. The chars talk most of the night and the sound of the bombs is muffled, which somehow makes it worse. I find myself straining to hear them. When I did get to sleep this morning, I dreamed about one of the tube shelters being hit, broken mains, drowning people.

October 4
—
I tried to catch the cat today. I had some idea of persuading it to dispatch the mouse that has been terrifying the chars. I also wanted to see one up close. I took the water bucket I had used with the stirrup pump last night to put out some burning shrapnel from one of the antiaircraft guns. It still had a bit of water in it, but not enough to drown the cat, and my plan was to clamp the bucket over him, reach under, and pick him up, then carry him down to the crypt and point him at the mouse. I did not even come close to him.

I swung the bucket, and as I did so, perhaps an. inch of water splashed out. I thought I remembered that the cat was a domesticated animal, but I must have been wrong about that. The cat’s wide complacent face pulled back into a skull-like mask that was absolutely terrifying, vicious claws extended from what I had thought were harmless paws, and the cat let out a sound to top the chars.

In my surprise I dropped the bucket and it rolled against one of the pillars. The cat disappeared. Behind me, Langby said, “That’s no way to catch a cat.”

“Obviously,” I said, and bent to retrieve the bucket.

“Cats hate water,” he said, still in that expressionless voice.

“Oh,” I said, and started in front of him to take the bucket back to the choir. “I didn’t know that.”

“Everybody knows it. Even the stupid Welsh.”

October 8
—
We have been standing double watches for a week—bomber’s moon.

Langby didn’t show up on the roofs, so I went looking for him in the church. I found him standing by the west doors talking to an old man. The man had a newspaper tucked under his arm and he handed it to Langby, but Langby gave it back to him. When the man saw me, he ducked out. Langby said, “Tourist. Wanted to know where the Windmill Theatre is. Read in the paper the girls are starkers.”

I know I looked as if I didn’t believe him because he said, “You look rotten, old man.

Not getting enough sleep, are you? I’ll get somebody to take the first watch for you tonight.” 

“No,” I said coldly. “I’ll stand my own watch. I like being on the roofs,” and added silently, where I can watch you.

He shrugged and said, “I suppose it’s better than being down in the crypt. At least on the roofs you can hear the one that gets you.”

October 10
—
I thought the double watches might be good for me, take my mind off my inability to retrieve. The watched-pot idea. Actually, it sometimes works. A few hours of thinking about something else, or a good night’s sleep, and the fact pops forward without any prompting, without any artificials.

The good night’s sleep is out of the question. Not only do the chars talk constantly, but the cat has moved into the crypt and sidles up to everyone, making siren noises and begging for kippers. I am moving my cot out of the transept and over by Nelson before I go on watch. He may be pickled, but he keeps his mouth shut.

October 11—
I dreamed of Trafalgar, ships’ guns and smoke and falling plaster and Langby shouting my name. My first waking thought was that the folding chairs had gone off. I could not see for all the smoke.

“I’m coming,” I said, limping toward Langby and pulling on my boots. There was a heap of plaster and tangled folding chairs in the transept. Langby was digging in it.

“Bartholomew!” he shouted, flinging a chunk of plaster aside. “Bartholomew!”

I still had the idea it was smoke. I ran back for the stirrup pump and then knelt beside him and began pulling on a splintered chair back. It resisted, and it came to me suddenly. There is a body under here. I will reach for a piece of the ceiling and find it is a hand. I leaned back on my heels, determined not to be sick, then went at the pile again.

Langby was going far too fast, jabbing with a chair leg. I grabbed his hand to stop him, and he struggled against me as if I were a piece of rubble to be thrown aside. He picked up a large flat square of plaster, and under it was the floor. I turned and looked behind me. Both chars huddled in the recess by the altar. “Who are you looking for?” I said, keeping hold of Langby’s arm.

“Bartholomew,” he said, and swept the rubble aside, his hands bleeding through the coating of smoky dust.

“I’m here,” I said. “I’m all right.” I choked on the white dust. “I moved my cot out of the transept.”

He turned sharply to the chars and then said quite calmly, “What’s under here?”

“Only the gas ring,” one of them said timidly from the shadowed recess, “and Mrs.

Galbraith’s pocketbook.” He dug through the mess until he had found them both. The gas ring was leaking at a merry rate, though the flame had gone out.

“You’ve saved St. Paul’s and me after all,” I said, standing there in my underwear and boots, holding the useless stirrup pump. “We might all have been asphyxiated.”

He stood up. “I shouldn’t have saved you,” he said.

Stage one: shock, stupefaction, unawareness of injuries, words may not make sense except to victim. He would not know his hand was bleeding yet. He would not remember what he had said. He had said he shouldn’t have saved my life.

“I shouldn’t have saved you,” he repeated. “I have my duty to think of.”

“You’re bleeding,” I said sharply. “You’d better lie down.” I sounded just like Langby in the gallery.

October 13
—
It was a high-explosive bomb. It blew a hole in the Choir, and some of the marble statuary is broken, but the ceiling of the crypt did not collapse, which is what I thought at first. It only jarred some plaster loose.

I do not think Langby has any idea what he said. That should give me some sort of advantage, now that I am sure where the danger lies, now that I am sure it will not come crashing down from some other direction. But what good is all this knowing, when I do not know what he will do? Or when?

Surely I have the facts of yesterday’s bomb in long-term, but even falling plaster did not jar them loose this time. I am not even trying for retrieval, now. I lie in the darkness waiting for the roof to fall in on me. And remembering how Langby saved my life.

October 15
—
The girl came in again today. She still has the cold, but she has gotten her paying position. It was a joy to see her. She was wearing a smart uniform and open-toed shoes, and her hair was in an elaborate frizz around her face. We are still cleaning up the mess from the bomb, and Langby was out with Allen getting wood to board up the Choir, so I let the girl chatter at me while I swept. The dust made her sneeze, but at least this time I knew what she was doing.

She told me her name is Enola and that she’s working for the WVS, running one of the mobile canteens that are sent to the fires. She came, of all things, to thank me for the job. She said that after she told the WVS that there was no proper shelter with a canteen for St. Paul’s, they gave her a run in the City. “So I’ll just pop in when I’m close and let you know how I’m making out, won’t I just?”

She and her brother Tom are still sleeping in the tubes. I asked her if that was safe and she said probably not, but at least down there you couldn’t hear the one that got you and that was a blessing.

October 18
—
I am so tired I can hardly write this. Nine incendiaries tonight and a land mine that looked as though it was going to catch on the dome till the wind drifted its parachute away from the church. I put out two of the incendiaries. I have done that at least twenty times since I got here and helped with dozens of others, and still it is not enough. One incendiary, one moment of not watching Langby, could undo it all.

I know that is partly why I feel so tired. I wear myself out every night trying to do my job and watch Langby, making sure none of the incendiaries falls without my seeing it.

Then I go back to the crypt and wear myself out trying to retrieve something, anything, about spies, fires, St. Paul’s in the fall of 1940, anything. It haunts me that I am not doing enough, but I do not know what else to do. Without the retrieval, I am as helpless as these poor people here, with no idea what will happen tomorrow.

If I have to, I will go on doing this till I am called home. He cannot burn down St.

Paul’s so long as I am here to put out the incendiaries. “I have my duty,” Langby said in the crypt.

And I have mine.

October 21—
It’s been nearly two weeks since the blast and I just now realized we haven’t seen the cat since. He wasn’t in the mess in the crypt. Even after Langby and I were sure there was no one in there, we sifted through the stuff twice more. He could have been in the Choir, though.

Old Bence-Jones says not to worry. “He’s all right,” he said. “The Jerries could bomb London right down to the ground and the cats would waltz out to greet them. You know why? They don’t love anybody. That’s what gets half of us killed. Old lady out in Stepney got killed the other night trying to save her cat. Bloody cat was in the Anderson.”

“Then where is he?”

“Someplace safe, you can bet on that. If he’s not around St. Paul’s, it means we’re for it. That old saw about the rats deserting a sinking ship, that’s a mistake, that is. It’s cats, not rats.”

October 25
—
Langby’s tourist showed up again. He cannot still be looking for the Windmill Theatre. He had a newspaper under his arm again today, and he asked for Langby, but Langby was across town with Allen, trying to get the asbestos firemen’s coats. I saw the name of the paper. It was
The Worker.
A Nazi newspaper?

November 2—
I’ve been up on the roofs for a week straight, helping some incompetent workmen patch the hole the bomb made. They’re doing a terrible job. There’s still a great gap on one side a man could fall into, but they insist it’ll be all right because, after all, you wouldn’t fall clear through but only as far as the ceiling, and “the fall can’t kill you.” They don’t seem to understand it’s a perfect hiding place for an incendiary.

And that is all Langby needs. He does not even have to set a fire to destroy St. Paul’s.

All he needs to do is let one burn uncaught until it is too late.

I could not get anywhere with the workmen. I went down into the church to complain to Matthews, and saw Langby and his tourist behind a pillar, close to one of the windows. Langby was holding a newspaper and talking to the man. When I came down from the library an hour later, they were still there. So is the gap. Matthews says we’ll put planks across it and hope for the best.

November 5
—
I have given up trying to retrieve. I am so far behind on my sleep I can’t even retrieve information on a newspaper whose name I already know. Double watches the permanent thing now. Our chars have abandoned us altogether (like the cat), so the crypt is quiet, but I cannot sleep.

If I do manage to doze off, I dream. Yesterday I dreamed Kivrin was on the roofs, dressed like a saint. “What was the secret of your practicum?” I said. “What were you supposed to find out?”

She wiped her nose with a handkerchief and said, “Two things. One, that silence and humility are the sacred burdens of the historian. Two”—she stopped and sneezed into the handkerchief—“don’t sleep in the tubes.”

My only hope is to get hold of an artificial and induce a trance. That’s a problem. I’m positive it’s too early for chemical endorphins and probably hallucinogens. Alcohol is definitely available, but I need something more concentrated than ale, the only alcohol I know by name. I do not dare ask the watch. Langby is suspicious enough of me already.

It’s back to the OED, to look up a word I don’t know.