To Say Nothing of the Dog

CHAPTER THREE

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Finch said. “He’s already suffering from advanced time-lag. Won’t that large a jump—?”

“Not necessarily,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “And after he’s completed his assignment, he can stay as long as he needs to to recover. You heard him, it’s a perfect holiday spot.”

“But in his condition, do you think he’ll be able to—” Finch said anxiously.

“It’s a perfectly straightforward job,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “A child could do it. The important thing is that it be done before Lady Schrapnell gets back, and Ned’s the only historian in Oxford who’s not off somewhere chasing after misericords. Take him over to the net and then ring up Time Travel and tell Chiswick to meet me there.”

The telephone bipped, and Finch answered it, then listened for a considerable length of time. “No, he was at the Royal Free,” he said finally, “but they decided to run a TWR, so they had to transport him to St. Thomas’s. Yes, in Lambeth Palace Road.” He listened again, holding the receiver some distance from his ear. “No, this time I’m certain.” He rang off. “That was Lady Schrapnell,” he said unnecessarily. “I’m afraid she may be returning soon.”

“What’s a TWR?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“I invented it. I think Mr. Henry had best get over to the net to be prepped.”

Finch walked me over to the lab, which I was grateful for, especially as it seemed to me we were going completely the wrong direction, though when we got there, the door looked the same, and there was the same group of SPCC picketers outside.

They were carrying electric placards that read, “What’s wrong with the one we already have?,” “Keep Coventry in Coventry,” and “It’s Ours!” One of them handed me a flyer that began, “The restoration of Coventry Cathedral will cost fifty billion pounds. For the same amount of money, the present Coventry Cathedral could not only be bought back and restored, but a new, larger shopping center could be built to replace it.”

Finch pulled the tract out of my hand, gave it back to the picketer, and opened the door.

The net looked the same inside, too, though I didn’t recognize the pudgy young woman at the console. She was wearing a white lab coat, and her halo of cropped blonde hair made her look like a cherub rather than a net technician.

Finch shut the door behind us, and she whirled. “What do you want?” she demanded.

Perhaps more an archangel than a cherub.

“We need to arrange for a jump,” Finch said. “To Victorian England.”

“Out of the question,” she snapped.

Definitely an archangel. The sort that tossed Adam and Eve out of the Garden.

Finch said, “Mr. Dunworthy authorized it, Miss…”

“Warder,” she snapped.

“Miss Warder. This is a priority jump,” he said.

“They’re all priority jumps. Lady Schrapnell doesn’t authorize any other sort.” She picked up a clipboard and brandished it at us like a flaming sword. “Nineteen jumps, fourteen of them requiring 1940 ARP and WVS uniforms, which the wardrobe department is completely out of, and all the fixes. I’m three hours behind schedule on rendezvous, and who knows how many more priority jumps Lady Schrapnell will come up with before the day’s over.” She slammed the clipboard down. “I don’t have time for this. Victorian England! Tell Mr. Dunworthy it’s completely out of the question.” She turned back to the console and began hitting keys.

Finch, undaunted, tried another tack. “Where’s Mr. Chaudhuri?”

“Exactly,” she said, whirling round again. “Where is Badri, and why isn’t he here running the net? Well, I’ll tell you.” She picked up the clipboard threateningly again. “Lady Schrapnell—”

“She didn’t send him to 1940, did she?” I asked. Badri was of Pakistani descent. He’d be arrested as a Japanese spy.

“No,” she said. “She made him drive her to London to look for some historian who’s gone missing. Which leaves me to run Wardrobe and the net and deal with people who waste my time asking stupid questions.” She crashed the clipboard down. “Now, if you don’t have any more of them, I have a priority fix to calculate.” She whirled back to the console and began pounding fiercely at the keys.

Or perhaps an arch-archangel, one of those beings with enormous wings and hundreds of eyes, “and they were terrible to see.” What were they called? Sarabands?

“I think I’d better go fetch Mr. Dunworthy,” Finch whispered to me. “You’d best stay here.”

I was more than glad to comply. I was beginning to feel the drowsiness that the nurse at Infirmary had questioned me about, and all I wanted to do was sit down and rest. I found a chair on the far side of the net, took a stack of gas masks and stirrup pumps off another one so I could put my feet up on it, and stretched out to wait for Finch and try to remember the name of arch-archangels, the ones “full of eyes round about.” It began with an “s.” Samurai? No, that was Lady Schrapnell. Sylphs? No, those were heavenly sprites, who flitted through the air. The water sprites began with something else. An “N.” Nemesis? No, that was Lady Schrapnell.

What were they called? Hylas had come upon them while he was fetching water from a pond, and they had pulled him into the water with them, twining their white arms about him, tangling him in their trailing auburn hair, drowning him in the dark, deep waters… .

I must have dozed off because when I opened my eyes, Mr. Dunworthy was there, and the tech was threatening him with her clipboard.

“It’s out of the question,” she was saying. “I’ve got four fixes to do, eight rendezvous, and I’ve got to replace a costume one of your historians got wet and ruined.” She flipped violently through the sheets on the clipboard. “The soonest I can fit you in is Friday the seventh at half-past three.”

“The seventh?” Finch gurgled. “That’s next week!”

“It must be today,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“Today?” she said, raising the clipboard like a weapon. “Today?”

Seraphim. “Full of eyes all around and within, and fire, and out of the fire went forth lightning.”

“It won’t require calculating new time coordinates,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “We’re using the ones Kindle came through from. And we can use the drop you’ve got set up at Muchings End.” He looked round at the lab. “Where’s the tech in charge of Wardrobe?”

“In 1932,” she said. “Sketching choir robes. On a priority jump for Lady Schrapnell to see whether their surplices were linen or cotton. Which means I’m in charge of Wardrobe. And the net. And everything else around here.” She flipped the pages back down to their original position and set it down on the net console. “The whole thing’s out of the question. Even if I could fit you in, he can’t go like that, and, besides, he’d need to be prepped on Victorian history and customs.”

“Ned’s not going to tea with the Queen,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “His assignment will only bring him into limited contact with the contemps, if any. He won’t need a course in Victoriana for that.”

The seraphim reached for her clipboard.

Finch ducked.

“He’s Twentieth Century,” she said. “That means he’s out of his area. I can’t authorize his going without his being prepped.”

“Fine,” Mr. Dunworthy said. He turned to me. “Darwin, Disraeli, the Indian question, Alice in Wonderland, Little Nell, Turner, Tennyson, Three Men in a Boat, crinolines, croquet—”

“Penwipers,” I said.

“Penwipers, crocheted antimacassars, hair wreaths, Prince Albert, Flush, frock coats, sexual repression, Ruskin, Fagin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, George Bernard Shaw, Gladstone, Galsworthy, Gothic Revival, Gilbert and Sullivan, lawn tennis, and parasols. There,” he said to the seraphim. “He’s been prepped.”

“Nineteenth Century’s required course is three semesters of political history, two—”

“Finch,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Go over to Jesus and fetch a headrig and tapes. Ned can do high-speed subliminals while you,” he turned back to the seraphim, “get him dressed and set up the jump. He’ll need summer clothes, white flannels, linen shirt, boating blazer. For luggage, he’ll need…”

“Luggage!” the seraphim said, sprouting eyes. “I don’t have time to collect luggage! I have nineteen jumps—”

“Fine,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “We’ll take care of the luggage. Finch, go over to Jesus and fetch some Victorian luggage. And did you contact Chiswick?”

“No, sir. He wasn’t there, sir. I left a message.”

He left, colliding with a tall, thin young black man on his way out. The black man had a sheaf of papers, and he looked no older than eighteen, and I assumed he was one of the pickets from outside and held out my hand for a leaflet, but he went up to Mr. Dunworthy and said nervously, “Mr. Dunworthy? I’m T.J. Lewis. From Time Travel. You were looking for Mr. Chiswick?”

“Yes,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Where is he?”

“In Cambridge, sir,” he said.

“In Cambridge? What the devil’s he doing over there?”

“Ap-applying for a job, sir,” he stammered. “H-he quit, sir.”

“When?”

“Just now. He said he couldn’t stand working for Lady Schrapnell another minute, sir.”

“Well,” Mr. Dunworthy said. He took his spectacles off and peered at them. “Well. All right, then. Mr. Lewis, is it?”

“T.J., sir.”

“T.J., would you go tell the assistant head — what’s his name? Ranniford — that I need to speak with him. It’s urgent.”

T.J. looked unhappy.

“Don’t tell me he’s quit as well?”

“No, sir. He’s in 1655, looking at roof slates.”

“Of course,” Mr. Dunworthy said disgustedly. “Well, then, whoever else is in charge over there.”

T.J. looked even unhappier. “Uh, that would be me, sir.”

“You?” Mr. Dunworthy said in surprise. “But you’re only an undergraduate. You can’t tell me you’re the only person over there.”

“Yes, sir,” T.J. said. “Lady Schrapnell came and took everyone else. She would have taken me, but the first two-thirds of Twentieth Century and all of Nineteenth are a ten for blacks and therefore off-limits.”

“I’m surprised that stopped her,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“It didn’t,” he said. “She wanted to dress me up as a Moor and send me to 1395 to check on the construction of the steeple. It was her idea that they’d assume I was a prisoner brought back from the Crusades.”

“The Crusades ended in 1272,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“I know, sir. I pointed that out, also the fact that the entire past is a ten for blacks.” He grinned. “It’s the first time my having black skin has been an actual advantage.”

“Yes, well, we’ll see about that,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Have you ever heard of Ensign John Klepperman?”

“No, sir.”

“World War II. Battle of Midway. The entire bridge of his ship was killed and he had to take over as captain. That’s what wars and disasters do, put people in charge of things they’d never ordinarily be in charge of. Like Time Travel. In other words, this is your big chance, Lewis. I take it you’re majoring in temporal physics?”

“No, sir. Comp science, sir.”

Mr. Dunworthy sighed. “Ah, well, Ensign Klepperman had never fired a torpedo either. He sank two destroyers and a cruiser. Your first assignment is to tell me what would happen if a parachronistic incongruity had occurred, what indications we would have of it. And don’t tell me it couldn’t happen.”

“Para-chron-istic incon-gruity,” T.J. said, writing it on the top of the papers he was holding. “When do you need this, sir?”

“Yesterday,” Mr. Dunworthy said, handing him the bibliography from the Bodleian.

T.J. looked bewildered. “You want me to go back in time and—”

“I am not setting up another drop,” Warder cut in.

Mr. Dunworthy shook his head tiredly. “I meant I need the information as soon as possible,” he said to T.J.

“Oh,” T.J. said. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir,” and started for the door. Halfway there, he stopped and asked, “What happened to Ensign Klepperman?”

“Killed in the line of duty,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

T.J. nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

He went out and Finch came in, carrying a headrig.

“Ring up Ernst Hasselmeyer in Berlin and ask him if he knows anything about parachronistic incongruities, and if he doesn’t, ask him who does,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “And then I want you to go over to the cathedral.”

“The cathedral?” Finch said, alarmed. “What if Lady Schrapnell’s there?”

“Hide in the Drapers’ Chapel,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “See if there’s anyone over there who works in Time Travel, anyone at all. There has to be someone around with more experience than an undergraduate.”

Finch said, “Right away, sir,” and crossed over to me. He put the headrig in my ear. “The subliminal tapes, sir,” he said.

I started to roll up my sleeve for the hypnotic.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to use drugs in your condition,” he said. “You’ll have to listen to them at normal speed.”

“Finch,” Mr. Dunworthy said, coming over. “Where’s Kindle?”

“You sent her to her rooms, sir,” Finch said.

He touched the headrig. “Queen Victoria ruled England from 1837 to 1901,” the tape said in my ear.

“Go and ask her how much slippage there was on the drop,” Mr. Dunworthy said to Finch. “The one where—”

“—she brought unprecedented peace and prosperity to England.”

“Yes,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “And find out how much slippage there’s been on the others—”

“—remembered as a decorous, slow-paced society—”

“—and telephone St. Thomas’s. Tell them under no circumstances to let Lady Schrapnell leave.”

“Yes, sir,” Finch said and went out.

“So Lizzie Bittner is still living in Coventry?” Mr. Dunworthy asked.

“Yes,” I said. “She moved back from Salisbury after her husband died,” and then, because something more seemed to be expected, I said, “She told me all about the new cathedral and how Bishop Bittner had tried to save it. He reintroduced the Coventry morality plays in an attempt to shore up attendance and put up displays of the Blitz in the ruins. She took me on a tour of what had been the ruins and the new cathedral. It’s a shopping center now, you know.”

“Yes,” he said. “I always thought it made a better shopping center than a cathedral. Mid-Twentieth-Century architecture was nearly as bad as Victorian. It was a nice gesture, though. And Bitty liked it. It was originally sold to the Church of the Hereafter or something, wasn’t it? I suppose you’ve checked with them to make certain they don’t have it?”

I nodded, and then he must have left, though I don’t remember that part. A sound like the All-Clear after an air raid had started blasting in one ear, and the tapes were talking about the subservient role of women in the other.

“Women held little or no power in Victorian society,” the headrig said. Except Queen Victoria, I thought, and saw that Warder was coming toward me with a wet cloth. She scrubbed roughly at my face and hands and then smeared a white lotion above my upper lip.

“The role of the Victorian woman was that of nurse and helpmeet,” the headrig said, “of ‘the angel in the house.’ ”

“Don’t touch your lip,” Warder said, pulling the measuring tape from around her neck. “Your hair will have to do. There’s not enough time for fenoxidils.” She encircled my head with the tape. “Part it in the middle. I said, don’t touch your lip.”

“Women were thought to be too high-strung for formal education,” the subliminal said. “Their lessons were confined to drawing, music, and deportment.

“This whole thing’s ridiculous.” She wrapped the tape around my neck. “I should never have come to Oxford. Cambridge has a perfectly good degree in theatrical design. I could be costuming The Taming of the Shrew right now instead of doing three jobs at once.”

I stuck a finger between the tape and my Adam’s apple to prevent strangulation.

“Victorian women were sweet, softspoken, and submissive.”

“You know whose fault this is, don’t you?” she said, snapping the tape as she pulled it free. “Lady Schrapnell’s. Why on earth does she want to rebuild Coventry Cathedral anyway? She’s not even English. She’s an American! Just because she married a peer doesn’t mean she has the right to come over here to our country and start rebuilding our churches. They weren’t even married that long.”

She yanked my arm up and jammed the tape in my armpit. “And if she was going to rebuild something, why not something worthwhile, like Covent Garden Theatre? Or support the Royal Shakespeare or something? They were only able to mount two productions last season, and one of those was an old-fashioned nude production of Richard II from the 1990s. Of course, I suppose it would be asking too much of someone from Hollywood to appreciate art! Vids! Interactives!”

She took rapid, careless measurements of my chest, sleeve, and inseam, and disappeared, and I went back to my chairs, leaned my head against the wall, and thought about how peaceful it would be to be drowned.

This next part is a bit muddled. The headrig discussed Victorian table-settings, the All-Clear mutated into an air-raid siren, and the seraphim brought me a stack of folded trousers to try on, but I don’t remember any of it very clearly.

Finch lugged in a pile of Victorian luggage at one point — a portmanteau, a large carpetbag, a small satchel, a Gladstone bag, and two pasteboard boxes tied with string. I thought perhaps I was to choose from among them, like the trousers, but it developed that I was to take them all. Finch said, “I’ll fetch the rest,” and went out. The seraphim settled on a pair of white flannels and went off to look for suspenders.

“The oyster fork is placed on the soup spoon, tines angled toward the plate,” the headrig said. “The oyster spear is placed to its left. The shell is held steady in the left hand, and the oyster lifted whole from the shell, detaching it, if necessary, with the spear.”

I drowsed off several times and the seraphim shook me awake to try various articles of clothing on me and wipe off the white lotion.

I touched the new mustache gingerly. “How does it look?” I said.

“Lopsided,” the seraphim said, “but it can’t be helped. Did you pack a razor for him?”

“Yes,” Finch said, coming in with a large wicker hamper, “a pair of hairbrushes from the Ashmolean and a brush and soap mug. Here’s the money,” he said, handing me a wallet nearly the size of the portmanteau. “It’s mostly coins, I’m afraid. Bank notes from that era have deteriorated badly. There’s a bedroll, and I’ve packed the hamper full of provisions, and there are tinned goods in the boxes.” He scurried out again.

“The fish fork is placed to the left of the meat and salad forks,” the headrig droned. “It is recognizable by its pointed, slanted tines.”

The seraphim handed me a shirt to try on. She was carrying a damp white dress over her arm. It had trailing sleeves. I thought about the water nymph, wringing it out on the carpet, the very picture of beauty. I wondered if water nymphs used fish forks and if they liked men with mustaches. Had Hylas had a mustache in the painting by Waterhouse? It was called Hylas and the… what? What were they called? It began with an “N.”

More muddled parts. I remember Finch coming in with more luggage, a covered wicker basket, and the seraphim tucking something in my waistcoat pocket, and Finch shaking me on the shoulder, asking me where Mr. Dunworthy was.

“He’s not here,” I said, but I was mistaken. He was standing next to the wicker basket, asking Finch what he’d found out.

“How much slippage was there on the drop?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“Nine minutes,” Finch said.

“Nine minutes?” he said, frowning. “What about her other drops?”

“Minimal. Two minutes to a half hour. The drop is in an isolated part of the grounds, so there isn’t much chance of being seen.”

“Except the one time it counted,” Mr. Dunworthy said, still frowning. “What about coming back?”

“Coming back?” Finch said. “There’s no slippage on return drops.”

“I am aware of that,” Mr. Dunworthy said, “but this is an unusual situation.”

“Yes, sir,” Finch said, and went over, conferred with Warder for a few minutes, and came back. “No slippage on the return drop.”

Mr. Dunworthy looked relieved.

“What about Hasselmeyer?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“I have a message through to him.”

The door opened and T.J. Lewis hurried in with a thin stack of papers. “I’ve read the available research,” he said. “There’s not much. Setting up the necessary equipment to test for incongruities is extremely expensive. Time Travel was planning to build it with the money from the cathedral project. Most temporal physicists don’t believe incongruities are possible. Except for Fujisaki.”

“Fujisaki thinks they’re possible? What’s his theory?”

“He has two theories. One is that they’re not incongruities, that there are objects and events in the continuum that are nonsignificant.”

“How is that possible? In a chaotic system, every event is linked to every other.”

“Yes, but the system’s nonlinear,” T.J. said, looking at the papers, “with feedback and feedforward loops, redundancies and interference, so the effect of some objects and events is multiplied enormously, and in others it’s cancelled out.”

“And a parachronistic incongruity is an object whose removal has no effect?”

T.J. grinned. “Right. Like the air historians bring back in their lungs or, he looked at me, “the soot. Its removal doesn’t cause any repercussions in the system.”

“In which case the object shouldn’t be returned to its temporal location?” Mr. Dunworthy asked.

“In which case it probably can’t be returned,” T.J. said. “The continuum wouldn’t allow it. Unless it was nonsignificant in its returned state, too. Unfortunately, this sort of incongruity’s pretty much limited to air and soot. Anything larger has a significant effect.”

Even penwipers, I thought, leaning my head against the wall. I had bought an orange one shaped like a pumpkin at the Autumn Choir Festival and Salvage Drive and then forgotten it, and when I tried to come back, the net wouldn’t open. I wondered drowsily how it had come to open for the fan.

“What about living things?” Mr. Dunworthy asked.

“Harmless bacteria, possibly, but nothing else. The effect of life-forms on the continuum is exponentially greater than for inanimate objects, and exponentially greater again for intelligent life-forms because of the complexity of interactions they’re capable of. And of course nothing that could have an effect on the present or future. No viruses or microbes.”

Mr. Dunworthy cut him off. “What’s Fujisaki’s other theory?”

“His second theory is that there are incongruities, but that the continuum has built-in defenses that counteract them.”

“Slippage,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

T.J. nodded. “The mechanism of slippage prevents nearly all potential incongruities by removing the time traveller from the area of potential danger. Fujisaki’s theory is that the amount of slippage is limited, and that an incongruity occurs when the slippage can’t increase radically enough to prevent the parachronism.”

“What happens then?”

“Theoretically it could alter the course of history, or, if it were severe enough, destroy the universe, but there are safeguards in the modern net to prevent that. As soon as the danger of incongruities was realized, the net was modified to automatically shut down whenever the slippage reaches dangerous levels. And Fujisaki says that if an incongruity did occur, which it can’t, there are other lines of defense that would correct the incongruity and would manifest themselves as,” he read from the paper, “radically increased slippage in an area surrounding the incongruity, an increase in coincidental events—”

Mr. Dunworthy turned to me. “Did you experience any coincidences in Coventry?”

“No,” I said.

“What about your jumble sales?”

“No,” I said, thinking how nice it would have been if I had experienced one, if, strolling between the coconut shy and the plum-cake raffle, I had run bang into the bishop’s bird stump.

Mr. Dunworthy turned back to T.J. “What else?”

“Increased slippage in the peripheral temporal areas.”

“How large an area?”

He bit his lip. “Fujisaki says most incongruities are corrected within fifty years, but this is all theoretical.”

“What else?”

“If it were really serious, a breakdown in the net,” T.J. said.

“What sort of breakdown?”

He frowned. “Failure of the net to open. Malfunction in destination. But Fujisaki says those are all statistically unlikely,” T.J. said, “and that the continuum is essentially stable or it would have been destroyed by now.”

“What if there was no radical increase in slippage, but it was definitely an incongruity?” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Would that mean it had been corrected before it could have any effect on the continuum?”

“Yes,” T.J. said. “Otherwise there’d have to be slippage.”

“Good. Excellent job, Ensign Klepperman,” Mr. Dunworthy said. He went over to the seraphim, who was violently banging keys at the console. “Warden, I want a list of all the drops we’ve done to the 1880s and ‘90s with the recorded amount of slippage and the normal parameters.”

“It’s Warder,” the seraphim said. “And I can’t do it now. I’ve got a rendezvous.”

“The rendezvous can wait.” He went back over to T.J. “Lewis, I want you to look for unusual slippers.”

Or at least that’s what I thought he said. The All-Clear had started up again, and now it was accompanied by a steady, thumping throb, like ack-ack guns.

“And chicken drops.”

“Yes, sir,” T.J. said and left.

“Finch, where’s the hat?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“Right here,” Finch said, and that couldn’t be right either. I had white flannels and a waistcoat, but no hat. And Victorians always wore hats, didn’t they? Top hats and those hard round affairs, what were they called? It began with an “N.”

The seraphim was leaning over me, which meant I must have sat down again. She stood me up to try on blazers.

“Put your arm in this one,” she said, thrusting a maroon-striped one at me. “No, your right arm.”

“The sleeves are too short,” I said, looking at my bare wrists.

“What’s your name?”

“My name?” I said, wondering what that had to do with the sleeves being too short.

“Your name!” she said, yanking off the maroon-striped blazer and shoving a red one at me.

“Ned Henry,” I said. The sleeves of this one came down over my hands.

“Good,” she said, stripping it off and handing me a dark-blue-and-white one. “At least I won’t have to come up with a contemp name for you.” She tugged on the sleeves. “That’ll have to do. And don’t go diving into the Thames. I haven’t time to do any more costumes.” She clapped a straw boater on my head.

“The hat was here. You were right, Mr. Dunworthy,” I said, but he wasn’t there. Finch wasn’t either, and the seraphim was back at the console, banging away at the keys.

“I can’t believe Badri isn’t back yet,” she said. “Leaving me with this lot. Set the coordinates. Come up with a costume. And meanwhile, I’ve got an historian waiting three-quarters of an hour to come through. Well, your priority jump can jolly well wait for unmarried girls were constantly accompanied by chaperones, usually an older maiden aunt or cousin, and were never allowed to be alone with a man until after their engagement, Ned, pay attention.”

“I am,” I said. “Unmarried girls were always accompanied by chaperones.”

“I told you I didn’t think this was a good idea,” Finch, who was there, too, said.

“There’s nobody else to send,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Ned, listen carefully. Here’s what I want you to do. You’ll come through on June the seventh, 1888, at ten A.M. The river is to the left of the dessert fork, which is used for gateaux and puddings. For such desserts as Muchings End, the dessert knife is used with the…”

Knife. Nice. Naiads. That was what they were called. Hylas and the Naiads. He went to fill his water jug, and they pulled him into the water with them, down and down, their hair and their wet sleeves twining about him.

“As soon as it’s returned, you can do whatever you like. The rest of the two weeks is yours. You can spend it boating on the river or to the right of the dessert plate, with the blade pointing inward.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Have you got that?”

“What?” I said, but Mr. Dunworthy wasn’t listening. He was looking at the net. There was a loud hum that threatened to drown out the ack-ack guns, and the veils on the net began to lower.

“What’s that?” Mr. Dunworthy said to the seraphim.

“The rendezvous,” she said, pounding keys. “I couldn’t very well leave him there forever. I’ll do your drop as soon as I bring him through.”

“Good,” Mr. Dunworthy said. He clapped me on the shoulder. “I’m counting on you, Ned,” he said through the hum.

The veils touched the floor, draping gently. The hum rose in pitch till it sounded like the All-Clear, the air shimmered with condensation, and Carruthers appeared inside the net. He began fighting with the veils to get out.

“Stand still and wait till the veils have raised,” the seraphim ordered, pounding keys. The veils rose a foot and a half and stopped.

“Wait?” Carruthers said, ducking under them. “Wait? I’ve been waiting for two bloody hours!” He flailed at the fabric of the veils. “Where the bloody hell were you?”

He worked himself free and limped toward the console. He was covered in mud. He had lost one of his boots, and the front of his non-AFS uniform had a long, flapping tear in the back of one leg. “Why the hell didn’t you come get me as soon as you got the fix and saw where I’d landed?”

“I was interrupted,” she said, glaring at Mr. Dunworthy. She crossed her arms militantly. “Where’s your boot?”

“In the mouth of a bloody great mastiff! I was lucky to get away with my foot!”

“That was an authentic AFS Wellington,” she said. “And what have you done to your uniform?”

“What have I done to my uniform?” he said. “I’ve just spent two hours running for my life. I landed in that same damnable marrows field. Only I must have come through later than last time because the farmer’s wife was ready for me. With dogs. She’d recruited a whole bloody pack of them to aid in the war effort. She must have borrowed them from all over Warwickshire.”

He caught sight of me. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, limping over. “You’re supposed to be in Infirmary.”

“I’m going to 1888,” I said.

“I told that nurse she wasn’t to tell Lady Schrapnell you were back,” he said disgustedly. “Why’s she sending you to the Nineteenth Century? Is this about the great-grandmother?”

“Great-great-great-great,” I said. “No. The doctor prescribed two weeks’ uninterrupted bed rest, and Mr. Dunworthy’s sending me there for it.”

“He can’t,” Carruthers said. “You can’t. You’ve got to go back to Coventry and look for the bishop’s bird stump.”

“I was looking for it,” I said, “and you pulled me out. Remember?”

“I had to. You were a raving lunatic. Going on about dogs, man’s noblest ally in war and peace, his truest friend through thick and thin. Pah! Look at that!” He held up the long strip of torn coverall. “Man’s truest friend did that!” He showed me his stockinged foot. “Man’s noblest ally nearly took my foot off! How soon can you be ready to go?”

“The nurse said no drops for two weeks. Why did you send me to Infirmary if you wanted me to go back?”

“I thought they’d give you an injection or a pill or something,” he said, “not forbid you to do drops. Now how are we supposed to find the bishop’s bird stump?”

“You didn’t find it after I left?”

“I can’t even find the cathedral. I’ve been trying all afternoon, and the marrows field was the closest I got. The bloody slippage—”

“Slippage?” Mr. Dunworthy said alertly. He came over to where we were standing. “Has there been more slippage than usual?”

“I told you,” I said, “the marrows field.”

“What marrows field?”

“The one halfway to Birmingham. With the dogs.”

“I’m having trouble getting back to Coventry Cathedral on the fifteenth, sir,” Carruthers explained. “I’ve tried four times today, and the closest I can get is the eighth of December. Ned’s got the closest of anyone so far, which is why I need him to go back and finish searching the rubble for the bishop’s bird stump.”

Mr. Dunworthy looked puzzled. “Wouldn’t it be simpler to look for the bishop’s bird stump before the raid, on the fourteenth?”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to do for the past two weeks,” Carruthers said. “Lady Schrapnell wanted to know if it was in the cathedral at the time of the raid, so we arranged a jump to the cathedral at a quarter till eight, just before the start of the raid. But we can’t get near the place. Either the date’s off, or if we do come through at the target time, we’re sixty miles away in the middle of a marrows field.” He indicated his muddy uniform.

“We?” Mr. Dunworthy said, frowning. “How many historians have tried?”

“Six. No, seven,” Carruthers said. “Everyone who wasn’t off doing something else.”

“Carruthers said they’d tried everybody,” I put in, “and that was why they’d pulled me off jumble sales.”

“What about the jumble sales?”

“They’re a sale where they sell things they want to get rid of, things they bought at the last jumble sale, most of it, and things they’ve made to sell. Tea caddies and embroidered needle cases and penwipers and—”

“I know what a jumble sale is,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Was there any slippage on those jumps?”

I shook my head. “Just the usual. Mostly spatial, so no one would see me come through. Behind the rectory or back of the tea tent.”

He turned abruptly to Carruthers. “How much were the Coventry drops off by, the ones in which you came through in Coventry?”

“It varies,” he said. “Paulson came through on the twenty-eighth of November.” He stopped and calculated. “The average is about twenty-four hours, I’d say. The closest we’ve been able to get to the target is the afternoon of the fifteenth, and now I can’t even get there. Which is why Ned needs to go. The new recruit’s still there, and I doubt if he even knows how to get back on his own. And who knows what trouble he’s likely to get into.”

“Trouble,” Mr. Dunworthy murmured. He turned to the tech. “Has there been increased slippage on all the drops, or just the ones to Coventry?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m a wardrobe tech. I’m only filling in for Badri. He’s the net tech.”

“Badri, yes,” he said, brightening. “Good. Badri. Where is he?”

“With Lady Schrapnell, sir,” Finch said. “And I’m afraid they may be on their way back by now,” but Mr. Dunworthy didn’t seem to hear him.

“While you’ve been filling in,” he said to Warder, “have you run any jumps that weren’t to the cathedral on November 14th, 1940?”

“One,” she said. “To London.”

“How much slippage was there?” he persisted.

She looked like she was going to say, “I don’t have time for this,” and then apparently thought better of it and began pounding keys. “Locational, no slippage. Temporal, eight minutes.”

“So it is Coventry,” he said to himself. “Eight minutes which way? Early or late?”

“Early.”

He turned back to Carruthers. “Did you try sending someone to Coventry earlier and having them stay till the raid?”

“Yes, sir,” Carruthers said. “They still ended up after the target time.”

Mr. Dunworthy took off his spectacles, examined them, and put them back on. “Does the amount of slippage seem to be random or is it getting progressively worse?”

“Worse,” he said.

“Finch, go ask Kindle if she noticed any coincidences or discrepancies while she was at Muchings End. Ned, you stay here. I’ve got to talk to Lewis.” Mr. Dunworthy went out.

“What was that all about?” Carruthers said, looking after him.

“Lady Windermere’s fan,” I said, and sat down.

“Stand up,” the seraphim said. “The drop’s ready. Get in place.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Mr. Dunworthy?” I asked.

“I have nineteen drops scheduled, not to mention another priority jump for Mr. Dunworthy, and—”

“All right, all right,” I said. I gathered up the satchel, portmanteau, Gladstone, and wicker basket, and went over to the net. The veils were still only a foot and a half from the floor. I set down one armful on the floor, lifted the veil, ducked under, and began pulling the bags in after me.

“The Victorian era was a time of rapid technological and scientific change,” the headrig said. “The invention of the telegraph, gas lighting, and Darwin’s theory of evolution were significantly altering the fabric of society.”

“Pick up your luggage and stand on the X,” she said.

“Travel in particular was changing rapidly. The invention of the steam locomotive, and, in 1863, the first underground railway, made it possible for Victorians to go faster and farther than ever before.”

“Ready?” she said, her hand poised over the keyboard.

“I think so,” I said, checking to make sure everything was inside the veils. One corner of the covered wicker basket was sticking out. “Wait,” I said, and scraped it inside with my foot.

“I said, ready now?” she said.

“Easy and affordable travel had the effect of broadening the Victorians’ horizons and breaking down the rigid barriers of class which—”

The seraphim flung the veils up, yanked the headrig out of my ear, and went back to the console.

“Ready now?” she said.

“Yes.”

The seraphim began tapping keys.

“Wait!” I said. “I don’t know where it is I’m going.”

“June seventh, 1888,” she said, and resumed tapping.

“I mean, after that,” I said, trying to find an opening in the veils. “I didn’t hear all of Mr. Dunworthy’s instructions. Because of the time-lag.” I pointed at my ear. “Difficulty in Distinguishing Sounds.”

“Difficulty in evidencing intelligence,” she said. “I don’t have time for this,” and flounced out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

“Where’s Mr. Dunworthy?” I heard her say in the corridor, probably to Finch.

Mr. Dunworthy had said something about Muchings End, and about a boat, or was that the headrig? “It’s a perfectly straightforward job,” he’d said.

“Where is he?” I heard the seraphim say again, and her voice sounded uncomfortably like Lady Schrapnell’s.

“Where is who?” Finch said.

“You know perfectly well who,” she said in stentorian tones. “And don’t tell me he’s in hospital. I’ve had enough of your wild goose chases. He’s here, isn’t he?”

Oh, Lord.

“Come away from that door and let me pass,” Lady Schrapnell roared. “He is here.”

I dropped the luggage with a thud and looked wildly about for somewhere to hide.

“No, he’s not,” Finch said bravely. “He’s over at Radcliffe Infirmary.”

There was nowhere to hide, at least in this century. I ducked under the veils and sprinted for the console, praying the seraphim had truly made all the necessary preparations.

“I said, let me pass,” Lady Schrapnell said. “Badri, make him come away from the door. Mr. Henry’s here, and I intend to see that he goes to look for my bishop’s bird stump instead of malingering in the present, pretending to have time-lag.”

“But he does have time-lag,” Finch said. “A very serious case. His vision’s blurred, he has Difficulty Distinguishing Sounds, and his reasoning faculties are severely impaired.”

The console screen said, “Ready. Hit ‘send.’ ” I measured the distance to the net.

“He’s in no condition to make any drops,” Finch said.

“Nonsense,” Lady Schrapnell said. “Now come away from that door this instant.”

I took a deep breath, punched “send,” and dived head-first for the net.

“Please believe me,” Finch said desperately. “He’s not here. He’s over at Christ Church.”

“Get out of my way!” she said, and there was the sound of a scuffle.

I skidded face-first onto the X. The veils lowered on my foot. I yanked it inside.

“Mr. Henry, I know you’re in here!” Lady Schrapnell said, and the door burst open.

“I told you,” Finch said. “He’s not here.”

And I wasn’t.