Blackout

The English Channel-29 May 1940

MIKE LURCHED TO THE REAR OF THE BOAT. “WHAT DO YOU mean, we’re halfway across the Channel?” he shouted, peering out over the stern. There was no land in sight, nothing but water and darkness on all sides. He groped his way back to the helm and the Commander. “You have to turn back!”

“You said you were a war correspondent, Kansas,” the Commander shouted back at him, his voice muffled by the wind. “Well, here’s your chance to cover the war instead of writing about beach fortifications. The whole bloody British Army’s trapped at Dunkirk, and we’re going to rescue them!”

But I can’t go to Dunkirk, Mike thought. It’s impossible. Dunkirk’s a divergence point. Besides, this wasn’t the way the evacuation had operated. The small craft hadn’t set off on their own. That had been considered much too dangerous. They’d been organized into convoys led by naval destroyers.

“You’ve got to go back to Dover,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard against the sound of the chugging engine and the wet, salt-laden wind. “The Navy-”

“The Navy?” the Commander snorted. “I wouldn’t trust those paper-pushers to lead me across a mud puddle. When we bring back a boatload of our boys, they’ll see just how seaworthy the Lady Jane is!”

“But you don’t have any charts, and the Channel’s mined-”

“I’ve been piloting this Channel by dead reckoning since before those young pups from the Small Vessels Pool were born. We won’t let a few mines stop us, will we, Jonathan?”

“Jonathan? You brought Jonathan? He’s fourteen years old!”

Jonathan emerged out of the bow’s darkness half dragging, half carrying a huge coil of rope. “Isn’t this exciting?” he said. “We’re going to go rescue the British Expeditionary Force from the Germans. We’re going to be heroes!”

“But you don’t have official clearance,” Mike said, desperately trying to think of some argument that would convince them to turn back. “And you’re not armed-”

“Armed?” the Commander bellowed, taking one hand off the wheel to reach inside his peacoat and pull out an ancient pistol. “Of course we’re armed. We’ve got everything we need.” He waved one hand toward the bow. “Extra rope, extra petrol-”

Mike squinted through the darkness to where he was pointing. He could just make out square metal cans lashed to the gunwales. Oh, Christ. “How much gas-petrol-do you have on board?”

“Twenty tins,” Jonathan said eagerly. “We’ve more down in the hold.”

Which is enough to blow us sky-high if we’re hit by a torpedo.

“Jonathan,” the Commander bellowed, “stow that rope in the stern and go check the bilge pump.”

“Aye, aye, Commander.” Jonathan started for the hatch.

Mike went after him. “Jonathan, listen, you’ve got to convince your grandfather to turn back. What he’s doing is-” he was going to say “suicidal,” but settled for “against Navy regulations. He’ll lose his chance to be recommissioned-”

“Recommissioned?” Jonathan said blankly. “What do you mean? Grandfather was never in the Navy.”

Oh, Christ, he’d probably never been across the Channel either.

“Jonathan!” the Commander called. “I told you to go check the bilge pump. And, Kansas, go below and put your shoes on. And have a drink. You look like death.”

That’s because we’re going to die, Mike thought, trying to think of some way to get him to turn the boat around and head back to Saltram-on-Sea, but nothing short of knocking him out with the butt of that pistol and taking the wheel would work, and then what? He knew even less than the Commander did about piloting a boat, and there weren’t any charts on board, even if he could decipher them, which he doubted.

“Get yourself some dinner,” the Commander ordered. “We’ve a long night’s work ahead of us.”

They had no idea what they were getting into. More than sixty of the small craft that had gone over to Dunkirk had been sunk and their crews injured or killed. Mike started down the ladder.

“There’s some of that pilchard stew left,” the Commander called down after him.

I don’t need to eat, Mike thought, descending into the hold, which now had a full foot of water in it. I need to think. How could they be going to Dunkirk? It was impossible. The laws of time travel didn’t allow historians anywhere near divergence points.

Unless Dunkirk isn’t a divergence point, he thought, wading over to the bunk to retrieve his shoes and socks.

They were in the farthest corner. Mike clambered up onto the bunk to get them and then sat there with a shoe in his hand, staring blindly at it, considering the possibility. Dunkirk had been a major turning point in the war. If the soldiers had been captured by the Germans, the invasion of England, and its surrender, would have been inevitable. But it wasn’t a single discrete event, like Lincoln’s assassination or the sinking of the Titanic, where an historian’s making a grab for John Wilkes Booth’s pistol or shouting “Iceberg ahead!” could alter the entire course of events. He couldn’t keep the British Expeditionary Force from being rescued, no matter what he did. There were too many boats, too many people involved, spread over too great an area. Even if an historian wanted to alter the outcome of the evacuation, he couldn’t.

But he could alter individual events. Dunkirk had been full of narrow escapes and near misses. A five-minute delay in landing could put a boat underneath a bomb from a Stuka or turn a near-miss into a direct hit, and a five-degree change in steering could mean the difference between it being grounded or making it out of the harbor.

Anything I do could get the Lady Jane sunk, Mike thought, horrified. Which means I don’t dare do anything. I’ve got to stay down here till we’re safely out of Dunkirk. Maybe he could feign seasickness, or cowardice.

But even his mere presence here could alter events. At a divergence point, history balanced on a knife’s edge, and his merely being on board could be enough to tilt the balance. Most of the small craft that had come back from Dunkirk had been packed to capacity. His presence might mean there wasn’t room for a soldier who’d otherwise have been saved-a soldier who would have gone on to do something critical at Tobruk or Normandy or the Battle of the Bulge.

But if his presence at Dunkirk would have altered events and caused a paradox, then the net would never have let him through. It would have refused to open, the way it had in Dover and Ramsgate and all those other places Badri had tried. The fact that it had let him through at Saltram-on-Sea meant that he hadn’t done anything at Dunkirk to alter events, or that whatever he’d done hadn’t affected the course of history.

Or that he hadn’t made it to Dunkirk. Which meant the Lady Jane had hit a mine or been sunk by a German U-boat-or the rising water in her hold-before she ever got there. She wouldn’t be the only boat that had happened to.

I knew I should have memorized that asterisked list of small craft, he thought. And I should have remembered that slippage isn’t the only way the continuum has of keeping historians from altering the course of history.

There was a sudden pounding of footsteps overhead and Jonathan poked his head down the hatch. “Grandfather sent me to fetch you,” he said breathlessly.

“Get the bloody hell up here!” the Commander shouted over Jonathan’s voice.

They’ve spotted the U-boat that’s going to kill us, Mike thought, grabbing his shoes and wading over to the ladder. That’s why this is possible. Because the Lady Jane never made it to Dunkirk. He clambered up it. Jonathan was leaning over the hatch, looking excited. “Grandfather needs you to navigate,” he said.

“I thought he didn’t have any charts,” Mike said.

“He doesn’t,” Jonathan said. “He-”

“Now!” the Commander roared.

“We’re here,” Jonathan said. “He needs us to guide him through the harbor.”

“What do you mean, we’re here?” Mike said, hauling himself up the ladder and out onto the deck. “We can’t be-”

But they were. The harbor lay in front of them, lit by a pinkish-orange glow that illuminated two destroyers and dozens of small boats. And behind it, on fire and half obscured by towering plumes of black smoke, was Dunkirk.