To Sail Beyond The Sunset: The Life and Loves of Maureen Johnson

Chapter 27 - At the Coventry Cusp

I didn't eat. much.

The party was in my honour and I loved it. But I needed two mouths, one for eating, one for the fifty-odd people who wanted to kiss me - and I wanted to kiss them. I wasn't really hungry. Even when I was a prisoner in the Cathedral the food had been adequate, and when I was another sort of prisoner with the Committee for Aesthetic Deletions, I was quite well fed, within the limits of hotel cooking.

But I was starved for love, and warm and loving people.

Did I say the party was in my honour? Well, yes, but any party Pixel attends is primarily in his honour. He is sure of that and behaves accordingly. He zigzagged among the couches, tail high, accepting hand feeding, and rubbing against his friends and retainers.

Dagmar came over, asked Laz to make room, and squeezed in beside me - hugged me and kissed me. I found that I was leaking tears.

‘Dagmar, I can't tell you how I felt when I heard your voice. Are you going to stay here? You'll like it here.'

She grinned at me, hanging on to my neck. ‘Do you think I want to go back to Kansas City? Compared with KC; Boondock is Heaven.'

‘Good! I'll sponsor you: I had my arm around her, which caused me to add, ‘You've put on a few pounds and it becomes you. And such a beautiful tan! Or is it out of a spray bomb?'

‘No, I did it the best way, lying in the sun and increasing the dosage slowly. Maureen, you won't believe what a treat sunbathing is to someone who would be risking a public flogging if she sunbathed in her home town.'

Laz said, ‘Mama, I wish I could tan the way Dragmar does, instead of these kingsize freckles:

‘You get that from me, Lapis Lazuli; I always freckle. It's the price we pay for red hair.'

‘I know. But Dagmar can sunbathe every day, month after month, and never get a freckle. Look at her.'

I sat up straight. ‘What did you say?'

‘I said she doesn't freckle. All our men are following her around.' Laz tickled Dagmar in the ribs. ‘Aren't they, Dag?'

‘Not so!'

‘You said "Month after month -" Dagmar, I saw you last two weeks ago. Less than three. How long have you been here?'

‘Me? Uh... slightly over two years. Yours was a tough case - or so they tell me.'

After being in the Time Corps twenty years of my personal time, seven years of Boondock time, I should not have been surprised. Time paradox is no news to me; I keep a careful journal to keep me sorted out, Maureen's personal time versus times and time lines and dates for each of the places I scout. But this time I was the subject of the operation (Operation Triple-M = Mama Maureen is Missing). I had been gone (my personal time) five and a half weeks... but it had taken over two years to find me and rescue me.

Laz called Hilda over to straighten me out. She snuggled in between Lorelei Lee and me on my other side; the couch was getting crowded. But Hilda does not take up much space. She said, ‘Mama Maureen, you told Tamara that you were just going away for a day's holiday. She knew you were fibbing, of course, but she never contradicts any of our little white lies. She thought you were just shuttling to Secundus for some private fun and maybe some shopping.'

‘Hilda Mae, I did intend to be back here the next day, no matter how long I spent in research. I planned to spend a few weeks in the British Museum in 1950, time line two, soaking up as much detail as possible about the Battle of Britain, 1940-41. I had a fresh recorder implant for that purpose. I didn't dare go to England during that war without careful preparation; England was a battle zone - easy to be shot as a spy. I would have done the research and been back the next day, in time for dinner... if that time-twister bus had not broken down.'

‘It didn't break down.'

‘Huh? I mean, excuse me?'

‘It was sabotage, Mo. The Revisionists. The same pascoodnyoks who came so close to killing Richard and Gwen Hazel and Pixel on time line three. We don't know why they wanted to stop you, or why they chose that method; neither side was taking prisoners, and we killed too many too fast. By "we" I don't mean me; I'm the drawing room type as everybody knows. I mean the old pros, Richard and Gwen and Gretchen and a strike force from time line five commanded by Lensman Ted Smith. But the Circle had put me in charge of Operation Triple-M, and I did dig out information that led us to the Revisionists. I got most of it from one of my own employees, the pilot of that bus. I made a bad mistake, Maureen, in hiring that evil maggot. My poor judgement almost cost your life. I'm sorry.'

‘Sorry about what? Hilda Mae, my precious, if you hadn't rescued me in Albuquerque, years ago, I would be dead, dead, dead! Don't ever forget it, because I never forget it.'

‘Spare me your gratitude, Mau; I had fun. Both times. I borrowed some snakes from Patty Paiwonski and hung this oaf upside down over a snake pit while I questioned him. That sharpened his memory and got us the correct time line, place, and date - Kansas City in Gregorian 2184 starting at 26 June on a previously unexplored variant of time tine two, one in which the Second American Revolution never took place. It is now designated time line eleven, and is a nasty enough place that the Circle put it in the Someday File for cleaning or cauterising when we get around to it.'

Hilda leaned down and twiddled her fingers at Pixel, spoke to him in cat language; he came at once and settled in her lap, purring loudly. ‘We put agents into that version of Kansas City but they lost you the same day you arrived. Or that night. They traced you from Grand Hotel Augustus to a private home, from there to the Mayor's palace, and then outdoors into the carnival. And I lost you. But we had established that Pixel was with you... even though he was here every day, too. Or almost -‘

‘How does he do that?'

‘How does Gay Deceiver have two portside bathrooms without being lopsided? Maureen, if you insist on believing in World-as-Logic you will never understand World-as-Myth. Pixel knows nothing about Einsteinian space-time, or the speed of light as a limit, or the Big Bang, or any of those fancies dreamed up by theorists, so they don't exist for him. Pixel knew where you were, inside the little world that does exist for him, but he doesn't speak much English. In Boondock, that is. So we took him where he can speak English -‘

‘Huh?'

‘Oz, of course. Pixel doesn't know what a cathedral is but he was able to describe that one fairly well once we were able to get his mind off all those wonderful new places to investigate. The Cowardly Lion helped us question him, and for the first time in his life Pixel was impressed - I think he wants to grow up to be a lion. So we hurried back and sent a task force to get you out of the Supreme Bishop's private jail. And you weren't there.'

Dagmar picked it up. ‘But I was, and Pixel led them straight to me - looking for you. I was in the cell you had been in - the proctors came for me as soon as you escaped.'

‘Yes,' agreed Hilda. ‘Dagmar had befriended you and that was not a safe thing to do, especially after the Supreme Bishop died.'

‘Dagmar! I'm sorry!'

‘About what? "All's well that ends well", to coin a phrase. Look at me now, ducks; I like it here. So back they went to Oz, taking me along this time, and after I listened to Pixel, I was able to tell Hilda that you were being held in Grand Hotel Augustus -‘

‘Hey! That's where I started!'

‘And that's where you wound up, too, in a suite that isn't in the hotel directory and can be reached from inside only by a private elevator from the sub-basement. So we came in by the scenic route, and caught the Committee with their pants down:

Lazarus had joined us, and now sat on the grass at my knees, without interrupting - and I wondered how long his angelic behaviour would last. Now he said, ‘Mama, you do know how true your words are. You remember when we moved? I was in high school.'

‘Yes, certainly. To our old farmhouse, out south.'

‘Yes. Then after World War Two you sold it, and it was torn down?

(How well I remembered!) ‘Tom down to build the Harriman Hilton. Yes.'

‘Well, Grand Hotel Augustus is the Harriman Hilton. Oh, after more than two centuries not much is the same structure, but the continuity is there. We researched it, and that's how we located this VIP suite that is not known to the public.' He rubbed his cheek against my knee. ‘That's all, I guess. Hilda?'

‘I think so.'

‘What a moment!' I protested .'What became of that baby? And the man with the bloody stump? The one with his arm chopped off in that accident.'

‘But, Maureen,' Hilda said gently, ‘I tell you three times: it was not an accident. That "baby" was just a prop, a lifelike animation, to keep your hands busy and your attention distracted. The "wounded" man was a piece of grisly misdirection while they injected you - an old amputee with make-up; he wasn't freshly maimed. When I had my driver hanging over the snakes, he became downright loquacious and told me many details, mostly nasty.'

‘I'd like to speak to that driver!'

‘I'm afraid you can't. I don't encourage employees to sell me out, Maureen. You are a gentle soul. I'm not.'

‘The surgical teams will be' - we were gathered in a lecture room in Ira Johnson Hall, BIT, and Jubal had started his briefing - ‘matched as nearly as possible in professional background. Tentatively they are: Dr Maureen with Lapis Lazuli as her scrub nurse; Dr Galahad with Lorelei Lee; Dr Ishtar with Tamara; Dr Harshaw - that's me - with Gillian; Dr Lafe Hubert a.k.a. Lazarus, with Hilda; and Dr Ira Johnson with Dagmar Dobbs.

Dagmar, your match with Johnson Prime is not too close; you are over-qualified by a century and a half, plus whatever you have learned here. But it's the best we can manage Dr Johnson will not know that you are assigned to him. However, we know from library research and from quite a lot of oral history research - interviews conducted by field agents in Coventry and elsewhere in the years 1947-50, recording the experiences of persons who served in civil defence first-aid teams in that war - we know that team-up between surgeon and nurse could be last minute, scratch, either one of them not fully qualified. Battle conditions, Dagmar. If you get there first when the sirens sound - and you will - Dr Johnson will simply accept you.'

‘I'll try ‘

‘You will succeed. All of us assigned to first aid will be wearing gowns and masks that won't look odd in wartime England, 1941, and you'll be using surgical instruments and other gear that does not scream anachronism... although anachronisms won't matter much, we think, in the pressure of a heavy bombing raid.'

Jubal looked around the hall. ‘Everyone in this operation is a volunteer. I can't emphasise too often that this is an actual battle you are going into. If you are killed in England in 1941, history may be revised - but you will be dead. Those so called "iron bombs" used by the Nazi Luftwaffe will kill you just as dead as an exotic weapon of a later century. For that reason all of us are volunteers and anyone can quit right up to H-hour. All of Major Gretchen's young ladies are volunteers... and are on max hazard pay, as well.' Jubal stopped and cleared his throat, then went on.

‘But there is one volunteer we don't need, don't want, and who is urgently requested to stay home.'

Jubal looked around again. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, what in the hell are we going to do about Pixel? When the bombs start falling and the wounded start piling up at that field station, the last thing we need is a cat who can't be shut up and can't be shut out. Colonel Campbell? He's your cat.'

My grandson Richard Ames Campbell answered, ‘You have that the wrong way around, Doctor. I don't own Pixel.

Whatever ownership there may be points in the other direction. I agree with you that we can't afford to have him underfoot during battle. But I don't want him there on his own account; he's too unsophisticated to know that bombs can kill him. He got involved in another fire fight when he was just a kitten... and it did almost kill him. I don't want that ever to happen again. But I have never figured out how to lock him up.'

‘Just a moment, Richard.' Gwen Hazel stood up. ‘Jubal, may I offer a suggestion?'

‘Hazel, it says on the organisation chart that you are in command of this operation, all phases. I think that entitles you to make a suggestion. One, at least.'

‘Come off it, Jubal. There is a third member of our family that has more influence over Pixel than either Richard or I. My daughter Wyoming.'

‘Does she volunteer?

‘She will;

‘Stipulating that she will, can she control Pixel every second for about four hours? For technical reasons involving how we handle the time/space gates will use about that much Boondock time. So Dr Burroughs tells me.'

I interrupted. ‘May I say something?'

‘Hazel, do you yield?'

‘Don't be silly, Jubal; of course I do.'

‘Certainly we should use Wyoh; the child is utterly reliable. But don't have her try to hang on to Pixel here; one sneeze and he's gone. Take both of them to Oz and have them stay with Glinda. With Betsy, rather, but with Glinda's magic to ensure that Pixel doesn't walk through any walls.'

‘Hazel?' Dr Harshaw enquired.

‘They'll both love it.'

‘It is so ordered. Now back to the raid. Projection, please.' An enormous live picture grew up behind Jubal and around him. ‘This holo is not Coventry itself but our Potemkin Village practice ground that Athene has built for us, about eighty kilometres east of here. Take a bow, Teena.'

The executive computer's voice came out of the air: ‘Thanks, Papa Jubal, but that's Shiva's work - Mycroft Holmes and me linked in synergistic parallel, with Minerva waving the baton. Now that I've got you all gathered together, let me remind you that all of you are invited to our wedding, Minnie and me to Mike, after the conclusion of Operation Coventry Cusp. So you all had better start thinking about wedding presents.'

‘Teena, you are crassly materialistic and neither of your composite bodies can possibly be ready that soon:

‘Gotcha! Ish okayed moving our bodies to Beulahland, so now we can be uncorked and animated on any date we pick. You better study up on the laws of temporal paradox, Jubal.'

Dr Harshaw sighed. ‘Conceded. I look forward to kissing the brides. Now will you please let us get on with the operation?'

‘Don't sweat it, Pops. You know or should know that there is never any hurry in a time operation.'

‘True. But we're all a bit eager. Friends, Teena - or Shiva - built our practice field from photos, stereos, holos, and motion pictures taken at Coventry on 1 April 1941. You will recognise 1941 as a date so far back that all time lines patrolled by the agents of the Circle of Ouroboros are, in 1941, a single time line. In short, anything we do in Coventry in 1941 affects all civilised time lines - civilised in a parochial sense, of course; the Circle is not unbiased.

‘Research for this operation turned up an odd fact. Lazarus?'

My son stood up. ‘History of World War Two 1939-1945 as I recall it shows a more favourable outcome in England and in Europe than that which turned up in this operation's field research. For example, my oldest brother, Brian Smith, Junior, was wounded in the landing at Marseilles, whereupon he was sent to England, to Salisbury Plain and the American training command. Mama?'

‘Yes, surely, Woodrow:

‘But the history we researched shows that this could not have happened. The Luftwaffe won the Battle of Britain and there never was a Marseilles landing, much less an American training command in England. Instead, Germany was smashed from the air by atomic bombs delivered from North Africa by American B-29 bombers. Friends and family, I was in that war. No atomic bombs were dropped on Europe in the war I remember.'

‘Thank you, Lazarus. I was in that war, too, and in North Africa. No B-29s operated from there as I recall it and no atomic bombs were used in the European theatre - so this research startled me as much as it did Lazarus. This bad news changed Operation Johnson Prime - which had as its purpose locating and recovering Dr Ira Johnson, the Prime of the Johnson family - to Operation Coventry Cusp... which includes Operation Johnson Prime as one of its phases, but has the far wider purpose of changing the outcome of that war through this one raid. The raid of 8 April 1941 was selected not only because Dr Johnson was known to have been in it, as an AFS surgeon in civil defence, but also because the four waves of bombers - giant Heinkels - that bombed Coventry that night were the largest number of Nazi bombers used in any one raid.

‘The Circle's mathematicians, working with Shiva, all agree that this is a cusp event, where a handful of people can turn the course of a history. So it will be the purpose of Major Gretchen's ladies to destroy as many as possible of that air Armada - as near 100 per cent as superior technology can manage. With this one assist, the RAF can and will win the Battle of Britain. Without it, it can be - or was - too big a raid for the Spitfires to handle. An almost invisible additional purpose of Operation Coventry Cusp, three layers down, is to save the lives of Spitfire pilots, so that they will live to fight another day.

‘This is the sort of nudge the Circle of Ouroboros specialises in, the minor assist that makes a major change in the outcome - and the companions of the Circle feel sanguine about this one.

‘Now please look at the picture behind me. Our view is from the spot in Greyfriars Green occupied by the dressing station where Johnson Prime served that night. Those three towers are all that was left standing in the central city after earlier raids - the towers of St Michael's cathedral, Greyfriars church, and Holy Trinity church. Off to the left is a lesser tower that does not show; that tower is the only original part of a Benedictine monastery built by Leofric, Earl of Merda, and his wife, Lady Godiva, in 1043. We have leased that tower from the Earl, and the gate that will deliver Gretchen's archers will be - has been - erected on it, as well as the time gate that will move them to 1941. It may amuse you to hear that, while the contract payment was in gold, a lagniappe was added, a magnificent white gelding that the Lady Godiva named "Aethelnoth" - and our gift to the Lady is the very mount she used in her famous ride through the town for the benefit of her townspeople.'

Jubal cleared his throat and grinned. ‘Despite widespread popular demand coming mostly from Castor and Pollux, this operation will not be combined with a sightseeing trip to watch Lady Godiva ride through Coventry.

‘Thats all today, friends. To take part in this operation you need to be convinced of three things: first, that the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler was so vile that it must not be allowed to win; second, that it is strongly desirable to defeat the Nazis without dropping scores of atomic bombs on Europe, and, third, that it is worth it to you to risk your neck to achieve the operation's objectives. The Circle answers yes to these questions, but you must weigh them in your own conscience. If your answer is not a whole-hearted yes on all points, then please do not volunteer.

‘After you have thought it over, the remaining Gideon's Band will meet for first rehearsal at ten tomorrow morning at our Potemkin-Village Coventry. A transbooth shuttling directly to the practice village is located just north of this building.'

In Coventry, England, on Tuesday 8 April 1941, at 7.22 p.m. the sun was setting, glowing red in smog and coal smoke. Looking at this city gave me a weird feeling, so exactly had Shiva's simulation matched what I now saw. I was standing at the entrance of a civil defence first-aid station, the one that research showed that Father had worked in (would work in) tonight. It was hardly more than walls of sandbags covered by canvas painted opaque to guard the black-out.

It had a jakes of sorts (Phew!), and an anteroom for the wounded, three pine tables, some cupboards, and duck boards on a dirt floor. No running water - a tank with a spigot. Gasoline lamps.

Greyfriars Green spread out around me, an untended park pocked with bomb cratera. I could not see the monastery tower we had rented from Lady Godiva's husband, Leofric, Earl of Mercia, but I knew that it was north of me, off to my left. Field Agent Hendrik Hudson Schultz, who had conducted the dicker with the Earl, reported that Godiva's hair really was surprisingly long and beautiful but that it was inadvisable to be downwind from her, and she had apparently not bathed more than twice in her life. Father Hendrick had spent a hard sixteen months learning eleventh century Anglo-Saxon and customs and medieval church Latin in preparation for the assignment - one he completed in ten days.

Tonight Father Hendrik was with Gretchen as her interpreter; it had not been judged cost-effective to require the members of the military task force to learn an Anglic language a century older than Chaucer, when their working language was not English but Galacta, and their MOS involved shooting, not talking.

Northeast of me I could see the three spires that gave the city its nickname: Greyfriars, Holy Trinity, and St Michael's. St Michael's and Greyfriar's were gutted in earlier bombings and much of the centre of the city was destroyed. When I had first heard of the bombing of Coventry, a century ago on my personal time line, I had thought that the bombing of this historic town was an example of the sheer viciousness of the Nazis. While it is not possible to exaggerate the viciousness of that regime and the stench of its gas ovens, I now knew that the bombing of Coventry was not simply Schreckdich, as this was an important industrial city, as important to England as Pittsburgh was to the United States.

Coventry was not the bucolic town I had pictured in my mind. I could see that, if fortune favoured us tonight, we might possibly not only destroy a major part of the Luftwaffe's biggest bombers but also save the lives of skilled craftsmen as necessary to military victory as are brave soldiers.

Behind me I heard Gwen Hazel checking her communications: ‘Blood's a Rover, this is Lady Godiva's Horse. Come in, Blood.'

I answered, ‘Blood to Horse, roger.'

We had a uniquely complex communication net tonight; one I did not even try to understand (I'm a nappy engineer and a kitchen chemist - I've never seen an electron), a system that parallelled an even more astounding temporary time) space hook-up.

Like this - From outside, the west end of the aid station was a blank wall of sandbags. From inside, that end was curtained off, a putative storage space. But push aside the curtain and you would find mo time/space gates: one from Coventry 1941 to the medical school hospital, BIT, Tertius 4376 Gregorian, and the other doing just the reverse, so that supplies, personnel, and patients could move either way without traffic problems - and at the Tertius end was another double set of gates to Beulahland, so that the worst cases could be shuttled to a different time axis, there to be hospitalised for days or months - and returned to Coventry, fully recovered, this same night.

(Tomorrow there would be miracles to be explained. But we would be long gone.)

A similar but not identical double-gate arrangement served Gretchen's command. She and her girls (and Father Schultz) were waiting in the eleventh century on the monastery tower. The gate that would place them in the twentieth century would not be activated until Gwen Hazel notified Gretchen that the sirens had sounded.

Gwen Hazel could talk to the twentieth century, the forty-fourth century, and the eleventh century, each separately or all at once, using a buried throat mike, tongue switches, and a body antenna, whether she was at the Tellus Prime end or the Tellus Tertius end of the aid-station gates.

In addition to these hook-ups she was in touch with Zeb and Deety Carter, in Gay Deceiver, at 30.000 feet over the English Channel - too high for bombers, too high for Messerschmidts or Fokkers, too high for AA fire of that year. Guy had agreed to be there only if she was allowed to pick her own altitude. (Gay is a pacifist with, in her opinion, a deplorable amount of combat experience.) But at that altitude Gay was sure that she could spot Heinkels taking off and forming up long before the British coastal radar could see them.

As a result of rehearsals at Potemkin Village, drills involving every casualty we could think of, the surgical teams had been rearranged, with most of them held back on the Boondock side of the gates. ‘Triage' of a sort would be practised; the hopeless cases would be rushed through to Boondock, where no case is hopeless if the brain is alive and not too damaged. There Doctors Ishtar and Galahad would head their usual teams (who need not be volunteers for combat; they would never be in Coventry). The hopeless cases, repaired, would be gated to Beulahland for days or weeks of recovery, then gated back to Coventry before dawn.

Cas and Pol had been volunteered (by their wives my daughters Laz and Lor) as stretcher bearers, to move the worst cases from Coventry to gurney floats on the Boondock side.

It had been decided that too many surgical teams and -too much equipment showing up out of nowhere as soon as the sirens sounded would alert Father unnecessarily, make him smell a rat. But, when the wounded started pouring in, he would be too busy to notice or care.

Jubal and Gillian were a reserve team, and would go through when needed. Dagmar would go through when Deety in Gay Deceiver reported that the bombers were on their way, so that Dagmar would meet Father - Dr Johnson - as he first poked his head in. When the sirens sounded, Lazarus and I would go through, already masked and gowned, with me as his scrub nurse. I'm an adequate surgeon but I'm a whiz as an operating nurse - much more practice at it. We figured that three of us could do what might have to be done at ‘all clear', the end of the raid: grab Father and' kidnap him - drag him through the gate, sit him down in Boondock, and explain things to him there... including the idea that he could have the works - rejuvenation and expert tutoring in really advanced therapy and still be returned to Coventry 8 April 1941. If he insisted. If he had any wish to.

But by then I hoped and expected that, with Tamara's help, Father could be made to see the Quixotic futility of going back to the Battle of Britain when that battle had been won more than mo millennia earlier.

With Tamara's help - She was my secret weapon. By a concatenation of miracles I had married my lover from the stars... and thereby married my son, to my amazement and great happiness. Could more miracles let me marry the only man I have always loved, totally and without reservation? Father would certainly marry Tamara, given the chance - any man would! - and Tamara would then see to it that Father married me. I hoped.

If not, it would be enough and more than enough simply to have Father alive again.

I had gone back through the gate to Boondock when I heard Gwen Hazel's voice: ‘Godiva's Horse to all stations. Deety reports bandits in the air and forming up. Expect sirens in approx eighty minutes. Acknowledge.'

Gwen Hazel was standing beside me by the gates in the hospital, but this was a communication check as much as an intelligence. My own comm gear was simple: a throat mike not buried but merely under a bandage I did not need; a ‘hearing aid' that was not one and an antenna concealed by my clothes. I answered, ‘Blood's a Rover to Horse, roger.'

I heard, ‘British Yeoman to Horse, roger. Eighty minutes. One hour twenty minutes.'

I said ‘Blood to Horse. I heard Gretchen's roger. Should I?'

Gwen Hazel shut off transmission and spoke to me, ‘You shouldn't hear her until you both shift to Coventry 1941. Mau, will you please go through to Coventry for a second comm. check?'

‘I did so; we established that Gwen Hazel's link to me, forty-fourth C to twentieth C, was okay, and that now I could hear Gretchen - both as they should be. Then I went back to Boondock, as I was not yet gowned or masked. There was one point in the transition where something tugged at one's clothes and my ears popped - a static baffle against an air-pressure inequality, I knew. But ghostly, just the same.

Deety reported that the bombers' fighter escort was becoming airborne. The German Messerschmidts were equal to or better than the Spitfires, but they had to operate at the very limit of their range - it took most of their gasoline to get there and get back; they could engage in dogfighting only for a few minutes - or wind up in the Channel if they miscalculated.

Gwen Hazel said, ‘Dagmar. Take your station.'

‘Roger wilco.' Dagmar went through, gowned, masked, and capped - not yet gloved... although God knows what good gloves would do in the septic conditions we would experience. (Protect us, maybe, if not our patients.)

I tied Woodrow's mask for him; he did so for me. We were ready.

Gwen Hazel said, ‘Godiva's Horse to all stations sirens. British Yeoman, activate gate and shift time. Acknowledge.'

‘Yeoman to Horse, roger wilco!'

‘Horse to Yeoman, report arrival. Good hunting!' Hazel added to me, ‘Mau, you and Lazarus can go through now. Good luck!'

I followed Lazarus through... and swallowed my heart. Dagmar was gowning Father. He glanced at us as we came out from behind that curtain, paid us no further attention. I heard him say to Dagmar, ‘I haven't seen you before, Sister. What's your name?'

‘Dagmar Dobbs, Doctor. Call me Dag if you like. I just came up from London this morning, sir, with supplies.'

‘So I see. First time in weeks we seen a clean gown. And masks - what swank! You sound like a Yank, Dag.'

‘And I am, Doctor - and so do you.'

‘Guilty as charged. Ira Johnson, from Kansas City.'

‘Why, that's my home town!'

‘I thought I heard some tall corn in your speech. When the Heinies go home tonight, we must catch up on home town gossip.'

‘I don't have much; I haven't been home since I got my cap and pin.'

Dagmar kept Father busy and kept his attention - and I thanked her under my breath. I didn't want him to notice me until the raid was over. No time for Old Home Week until then.

The first bombs fell, some distance away.

I saw nothing of the raid. Ninety-three years ago, or seven months later that same year, depending on how you count it, I saw bombs falling on San Francisco under circumstances in which I had nothing to do but look up and hold my breath and wait. I'm not sorry that I was too busy to watch the bombing of Coventry. But I could hear it. If you can hear it hit, it is too far away to have your name on it. So they tell me. I'm not sure I believe them.

Gwen Hazel said in my ear, ‘Did you pear Gretchen? She says they got sixty-nine out of seventy-two of the first wave.'

I had not heard Gretchen. Lazarus and I were busy with our first patient, a little boy. He was badly burned and his left arm was crushed. Lazarus got ready to amputate. I blinked back tears and helped him.