knocked, and after a long minute a harassed-looking Linna let her in. “I’m on the phone,” she said and hurried back to it. “No, I know you were scheduled to do the Battle of the Somme first,” she said into it.
Polly went over to Badri at the console. “Sorry to bother you. I was wondering if you’d found a drop site for me yet.”
“No,” he said, rubbing his forehead tiredly. “The problem’s the blackout.”
Polly nodded. The drop couldn’t open if there was anyone nearby who might see it. Ordinarily the faint shimmer from an opening drop wasn’t all that conspicuous, but in blacked-out London, even the light from a pocket torch or a gap in a house’s curtains was instantly noticeable, and ARP wardens patrolled every neighborhood, looking for the slightest infraction. “What about Green Park or Kensington Gardens?”
“No good. They’ve both got anti-aircraft batteries, and the barrage balloons are headquartered in Regent’s Park.”
There was an angry knock, and when Linna went to the door, a man in a fringed suede jacket and a cowboy hat stormed in, waving a printout. “Who the bloody hell changed my schedule?” he shouted at Badri.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve found something,” Badri said to Polly, and this obviously wasn’t the time to ask them to please hurry.
“I’ll come back later,” she said.
“You can’t cancel it!” the man in the cowboy hat shouted. “I’ve been prepping to go to the Battle of Plum Creek for six months!”
Polly ducked past him and started for the door, waving at Linna, who was still on the phone. “No, I realize you’ve already had your implants-” she was saying. Polly opened the door and went out.
And nearly fell over Colin, who was sitting on the pavement, his back to the lab’s wall. “Sorry,” he said and scrambled to his feet. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over Oxford for you.”
“What are you doing out here?” Polly asked. “Why didn’t you come in?”
He looked sheepish. “I can’t. It’s off-limits. Mr. Dunworthy’s being completely unreasonable. I asked him to let me go on an assignment, and he phoned the lab and told them I wasn’t to be allowed in.”
“Are you certain you didn’t attempt to sneak into the net while someone else was going through?”
“No. All I did was say that on certain assignments someone my age could provide a different point of view from an older historian-”
“What assignment?” Polly asked. “The Crusades?”
“Why does everyone keep bringing up the Crusades? That was something I wanted to do when I was a child, and I am not-”
“Mr. Dunworthy’s only trying to protect you. The Crusades are a dangerous place.”
“Oh, you’re a fine one to talk about dangerous places,” he said. “And Mr. Dunworthy thinks every place is too dangerous, which is ridiculous. When he was young, he went to the Blitz. He went all sorts of dangerous places, and back then they didn’t even know where they were going. And the place I wanted to go wasn’t remotely dangerous. It was the evacuation of the children from London. In World War II.”
Where she was going. Perhaps Merope was right.
“Speaking of dangerous,” he said, “here are all the raids. I didn’t know when you were coming back, so I did them from September seventh to December thirty-first. The list’s awfully long, so I recorded it as well, in case you want to do an implant.” He handed her a memory tab. “The times are when the bombing began, not when the air- raid alert sirens went. I’m still working on those, but I thought I’d better get the raid times to you in case you were going soon. And if you are, the raids generally began twenty minutes after the sirens sounded. Oh, and by the way, if you’re on a bus, you may not be able to hear the sirens. The noise of the engine drowns them out.”
“Thank you, Colin,” Polly said, looking at the pages. “You must have put in hours and hours of work on this.”
“I did,” he said proudly. “It wasn’t easy to find out what had been hit. The newspapers weren’t allowed to publish the dates or addresses of specific buildings that were bombed-”
Polly nodded, still looking at the list. “They couldn’t print anything which might aid the enemy.”
“And a lot of the government’s records were destroyed in the war and afterward, with the pinpoint and then the Pandemic. And there were lots of stray bombs. It’s not like the V-1 and V-2 attacks, where they have the exact times and coordinates. I’ve listed the major targets and areas of concentration,” he said, showing her on the list, “but there were lots of other things hit. The research said over a million buildings were destroyed, and this only lists a fraction of those. So just because the list says Bloomsbury, it doesn’t mean you’re safe wandering about some other part of London. Particularly the East End-Stepney and Whitechapel and places like that. They were the hardest hit. And the buildings on the list are only ones that were completely destroyed, not those that suffered partial damage or had their windows blown out. Hundreds of people were killed by flying glass or shrapnel from anti-aircraft shells. You need to keep as close to buildings as you can for protection if you’re out during a raid. Shrapnel-”
“Can kill me. I know. You’ve been spending too much time with Mr. Dunworthy. You’re beginning to sound just like him.”
“I am not. It’s just that I don’t want anything to happen to you. And Mr. Dunworthy’s right about its being dangerous. Thirty thousand civilians were killed during the Blitz.”
“I know. I’ll be careful, I promise.”
“And if you do get hit by shrapnel or something, don’t worry. I promise I’ll come rescue you if you get in trouble.”
Oh, dear, Merope was right. “I promise I’ll stay close to buildings,” she said lightly. “Speaking of Mr. Dunworthy, you haven’t told him I’m back, have you?”
“No. I haven’t even told him I’m here. He thinks I’m at school.”
Good, then she needn’t worry about him giving her away. “Thank you for the list. It’s enormously helpful.” She smiled at him, then remembered that wasn’t a good idea under the circumstances. “I’d best get on with my prep,” she said and started across the road.
“Wait,” he said, running to catch up with her. “Is there any other research you need me to do? Besides the siren times, I mean? Do you need a list of the other shelters in case you can’t get to an Underground station?” he asked eagerly. “Or a list of the types of bombs?”
“No. You’ve spent too much time helping me already, Colin, and you’ve your own schoolwork to do-”
“We’re out on holiday all this week,” he said, “and I don’t mind. Truly. It’s good practice for when I’m an historian. I’ll go do them straightaway,” and he loped off down the street.
Polly went over to Research and had Colin’s list of raids implanted so she wouldn’t have to waste time memorizing them, picked up her papers and letters from Props, and then went over to the Bodleian to study. She’d already memorized all this material once before, when she’d thought she was going to the Blitz first, but she’d forgotten most of it in the interim. She went over rationing, the blackout, the events a contemp in the autumn of 1940 would know about-the Battle of Britain, Operation Sealion, the Battle of the North Atlantic-and then committed the map of Oxford Street to memory. She debated doing the same with the Underground map, but those were posted in every tube station. Instead, she’d better memorize the numbers of the buses and-
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Colin said, flopping down in a chair across the table from her. “I forgot to ask you, where will you be living while you’re there? There are thousands of shelters in London.”
“Somewhere in Marylebone, Kensington, or Notting Hill. It depends on where I can find a room to let.” She told him about Mr. Dunworthy’s mile-and-a-half-from-Oxford-Street restriction.
“I’ll begin with the shelters inside that radius, then,” he said, “and if there’s time, I’ll map the rest of the West End. Oh, and when are you coming back? So I can mark the shelters you should stay out of.”
“October twenty-second,” she said.
“Six weeks,” he repeated thoughtfully. “And then you’re doing the zeppelin attacks. How long will you be in 1914?”
“I don’t know. It hasn’t been scheduled yet. I can’t afford to think about it just now. I’ve got to concentrate on making it through this one. Look, Colin, I’ve got a lot of studying to do. Were the dates all you needed?”
“Yes. No. I need to ask a favor of you.”
“Colin, I’d be glad to put in a good word for you with Mr. Dunworthy, but I doubt very much if he’ll listen. He’s adamant about not letting anyone go to the past until they’re twenty. And I know you’ve already been to the past and probably one of the most dangerous places you could ever go, but-”
