The Mammoth Book Of Science Fiction

by Mike Ashley (Editor)

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, and tried to raise himself on one elbow. “So much the worse for you.”

  He could not get up. He grunted with pain when he tried to shift his weight to his right side and lay back, the uneven rubble crunching sickeningly under him. I tried to lift him gently so I could see where he was hurt. He must have fallen on something.

  “It’s no use,” he said, breathing hard. “I put it out.”

  I spared him a startled glance, afraid that he was delirious, and went back to rolling him onto his side.

  “I know you were counting on this one,” he went on, not resisting me at all. “It was bound to happen sooner or later with all these roofs. Only I went after it. What’ll you tell your friends?”

  His asbestos coat was torn down the back in a long gash. Under it his back was charred and smoking. He had fallen on the incendiary. “Oh, my God,” I said, trying frantically to see how badly he was burned without touching him. I had no way of knowing how deep the burns went, but they seemed to extend only in the narrow space where the coat had torn. I tried to pull the bomb out from under him, but the casing was as hot as a stove. It was not melting, though. My sand and Langby’s body had smothered it. I had no idea if it would start up again when it was exposed to the air. I looked around, a little wildly, for the bucket and stirrup pump Langby must have dropped when he fell.

  “Looking for a weapon?” Langby said, so clearly it was hard to believe he was hurt at all. “Why not just leave me here? A bit of overexposure and I’d be done for by morning. Or would you rather do your dirty work in private?”

  I stood up and yelled to the men on the roof above us. One of them shone a pocket torch down at us, but its light didn’t reach.

  “Is he dead?” somebody shouted down to me.

  “Send for an ambulance,” I said. “He’s been burned.”

  I helped Langby up, trying to support his back without touching the burn. He staggered a little and then leaned against the wall, watching me as I tried to bury the incendiary; using a piece of the planking as a scoop. The rope came down and I tied Langby to it. He had not spoken since I helped him up. He let me tie the rope around his waist, still looking steadily at me. “I should have let you smother in the crypt,” he said.

  He stood leaning easily, almost relaxed against the wood supports, his hands holding him up. I put his hands on the slack rope and wrapped it once around them for the grip I knew he didn’t have. “I’ve been onto you since that day in the Gallery. I knew you weren’t afraid of heights. You came down here without any fear of heights when you thought I’d ruined your precious plans. What was it? An attack of conscience? Kneeling there like a baby, whining, ‘What have we done? What have we done?’ You made me sick. But you know what gave you away first? The cat. Everybody knows cats hate water. Everybody but a dirty Nazi spy.”

  There was a tug on the rope. “Come ahead,” I said, and the rope tautened.

  “That WVS tart? Was she a spy, too? Supposed to meet you in Marble Arch? Telling me it was going to be bombed. You’re a rotten spy, Bartholomew. Your friends already blew it up in September. It’s open again.”

  The rope jerked suddenly and began to lift Langby. He twisted his hands to get a better grip. His right shoulder scraped the wall. I put up my hands and pushed him gently so that his left side was to the wall. “You’re making a big mistake, you know,” he said. “You should have killed me. I’ll tell.”

  I stood in the darkness, waiting for the rope. Langby was unconscious when he reached the roof. I walked past the fire watch to the dome and down to the crypt.

  This morning the letter from my uncle came and with it a tenpound note.

  December 31 – Two of Dunworthy’s flunkies met me in St John’s Wood to tell me I was late for my exams. I did not even protest. I shuffled obediently after them without even considering how unfair it was to give an exam to one of the walking dead. I had not slept in – how long? Since yesterday when I went to find Enola. I had not slept in a hundred years.

  Dunworthy was at his desk, blinking at me. One of the flunkies handed me a test paper and the other one called time. I turned the paper over and left an oily smudge from the ointment on my burns. I stared uncomprehendingly at them. I had grabbed at the incendiary when I turned Langby over, but these burns were on the backs of my hands. The answer came to me suddenly in Langby’s unyielding voice. “They’re rope burns, you fool. Don’t they teach you Nazi spies the proper way to come up a rope?”

  I looked down at the test. It read, “Number of incendiaries that fell on St Paul’s. Number of land mines. Number of high explosive bombs. Method most commonly used for extinguishing incendiaries. Land mines. High explosive bombs. Number of volunteers on first watch. Second watch. Casualties. Fatalities.” The questions made no sense. There was only a short space, long enough for the writing of a number, after any of the questions. Method most commonly used for extinguishing incendiaries. How would I ever fit what I knew into that narrow space? Where were the questions about Enola and Langby and the cat?

  I went up to Dunworthy’s desk. “St Paul’s almost burned down last night,” I said. “What kind of questions are these?”

  “You should be answering questions, Mr Bartholomew, not asking them.”

  “There aren’t any questions about the people,” I said. The outer casing of my anger began to melt.

  “Of course there are,” Dunworthy said, flipping to the second page of the test. “Number of casualties, 1940. Blast, shrapnel, other.”

  “Other?” I said. At any moment the roof would collapse on me in a shower of plaster dust and fury. “Other? Langby put out a fire with his own body. Enola has a cold that keeps getting worse. The cat . . .” I snatched the paper back from him and scrawled “one cat” in the narrow space next to “blast”. “Don’t you care about them at all?”

  “They’re important from a statistical point of view,” he said, “but as individuals, they are hardly relevant to the course of history.”

  My reflexes were shot. It was amazing to me that Dunworthy’s were almost as slow. I grazed the side of his jaw and knocked his glasses off. “Of course they’re relevant!” I shouted. “They are the history, not all these bloody numbers!”

  The reflexes of the flunkies were very fast. They did not let me start another swing at him before they had me by both arms and were hauling me out of the room.

  “They’re back there in the past with nobody to save them. They can’t see their hands in front of their faces and there are bombs falling down on them and you tell me they aren’t important? You call that being an historian?”

  The flunkies dragged me out the door and down the hall. “Langby saved St Paul’s. How much more important can a person get? You’re no historian! You’re nothing but a . . .” I wanted to call him a terrible name, but the only curses I could summon up were Langby’s. “You’re nothing but a dirty Nazi spy!” I bellowed. “You’re nothing but a lazy bourgeois tart!”

  They dumped me on my hands and knees outside the door and slammed it in my face. “I wouldn’t be an historian if you paid me!” I shouted, and went to see the firewatch stone.

  December 31 – I am having to write this in bits and pieces. My hands are in pretty bad shape, and Dunworthy’s boys didn’t help matters much. Kivrin comes in periodically, wearing her St Joan look, and smears so much salve on my hands that I can’t hold a pencil.

  St Paul’s Station is not there, of course, so I got out at Holborn and walked, thinking about my last meeting with Dean Matthews on the morning after the burning of the City. This morning.

  “I understand you saved Langby’s life,” he said “I also understand that between you, you saved St Paul’s last night.”

  I showed him the letter from my uncle and he stared at it as if he could not think what it was. “Nothing stays saved forever,” he said, and for a terrible moment I thought he was going to tell me Langby had died. “We shall have to
keep on saving St Paul’s until Hitler decides to bomb the countryside.”

  The raids on London are almost over, I wanted to tell him. He’ll start bombing the countryside in a matter of weeks. Canterbury, Bath, aiming always at the cathedrals. You and St Paul’s will both outlast the war and live to dedicate the firewatch stone.

  “I am hopeful, though,” he said. “I think the worst is over.”

  “Yes, sir.” I thought of the stone, its letters still readable after all this time. No, sir, the worst is not over.

  I managed to keep my bearings almost to the top of Ludgate Hill. Then I lost my way completely, wandering about like a man in a graveyard. I had not remembered that the rubble looked so much like the white plaster dust Langby had tried to dig me out of. I could not find the stone anywhere. In the end I nearly fell over it, jumping back as if I had stepped on a grave.

  It is all that’s left. Hiroshima is supposed to have had a handful of untouched trees at ground zero, Denver the capitol steps. Neither of them says, “Remember the men and women of St Paul’s Watch who by the grace of God saved this cathedral.” The grace of God.

  Part of the stone is sheared off. Historians argue there was another line that said, “for all time”, but I do not believe that, not if Dean Matthews had anything to do with it. And none of the watch it was dedicated to would have believed it for a minute. We saved St Paul’s every time we put out an incendiary, and only until the next one fell. Keeping watch on the danger spots, putting out the little fires with sand and stirrup pumps, the big ones with our bodies, in order to keep the whole vast complex structure from burning down. Which sounds to me like a course description for History Practicum 401. What a fine time to discover what historians are for when I have tossed my chance for being one out the windows as easily as they tossed the pinpoint bomb in! No, sir, the worst is not over.

  There are flash burns on the stone, where legend says the Dean of St. Paul’s was kneeling when the bomb went off. Totally apocryphal, of course, since the front door is hardly an appropriate place for prayers. It is more likely the shadow of a tourist who wandered in to ask the whereabouts of the Windmill Theatre, or the imprint of a girl bringing a volunteer his muffler. Or a cat.

  Nothing is saved forever, Dean Matthews; and I knew that when I walked in the west doors that first day, blinking into the gloom, but it is pretty bad nevertheless. Standing here knee-deep in rubble out of which I will not be able to dig any folding chairs or friends, knowing that Langby died thinking I was a Nazi spy, knowing that Enola came one day and I wasn’t there. It’s pretty bad.

  But it is not as bad as it could be. They are both dead, and Dean Matthews too; but they died without knowing what I knew all along, what sent me to my knees in the Whispering Gallery, sick with grief and guilt: that in the end none of us saved St Paul’s. And Langby cannot turn to me, stunned and sick at heart, and say, “Who did this? Your friends the Nazis?” And I would have to say, “No. The Communists.” That would be the worst.

  I have come back to the room and let Kivrin smear more salve on my hands. She wants me to get some sleep. I know I should pack and get gone. It will be humiliating to have them come and throw me out, but I do not have the strength to fight her. She looks so much like Enola.

  January 1 – I have apparently slept not only through the night, but through the morning mail drop as well. When I woke up just now, I found Kivrin sitting on the end of the bed holding an envelope. “Your grades came,” she said.

  I put my arm over my eyes. “They can be marvelously efficient when they want to, can’t they?”

  “Yes,” Kivrin said.

  “Well, let’s see it,” I said, sitting up. “How long do I have before they come and throw me out?”

  She handed the flimsy computer envelope to me. I tore it along the perforation. “Wait,” she said. “Before you open it, I want to say something.” She put her hand gently on my burns. “You’re wrong about the history department. They’re very good.”

  It was not exactly what I expected her to say. “Good is not the word I’d use to describe Dunworthy,” I said and yanked the inside slip free.

  Kivrin’s look did not change, not even when I sat there with the printout on my knees where she could surely see it.

  “Well,” I said.

  The slip was hand-signed by the esteemed Dunworthy. I have taken a first. With honors.

  January 2 – Two things came in the mail today. One was Kivrin’s assignment. The history department thinks of everything – even to keeping her here long enough to nursemaid me, even to coming up with a prefabricated trial by fire to send their history majors through.

  I think I wanted to believe that was what they had done, Enola and Langby only hired actors, the cat a clever android with its clockwork innards taken out for the final effect, not so much because I wanted to believe Dunworthy was not good at all, but because then I would not have this nagging pain at not knowing what had happened to them.

  “You said your practicum was England in 1300?” I said, watching her as suspiciously as I had watched Langby.

  “1349,” she said, and her face went slack with memory. “The plague year.”

  “My God,” I said. “How could they do that? The plague’s a ten.”

  “I have a natural immunity,” she said, and looked at her hands.

  Because I could not think of anything to say, I opened the other piece of mail. It was a report on Enola. Computer-printed, facts and dates and statistics, all the numbers the history department so dearly loves, but it told me what I thought I would have to go without knowing: that she had gotten over her cold and survived the Blitz. Young Tom had been killed in the Baedaker raids on Bath, but Enola had lived until 2006, the year before they blew up St Paul’s.

  I don’t know whether I believe the report or not, but it does not matter. It is, like Langby’s reading aloud to the old man, a simple act of human kindness. They think of everything.

  Not quite. They did not tell me what happened to Langby. But I find as I write this that I already know: I saved his life. It does not seem to matter that he might have died in hospital next day; and I find, in spite of all the hard lessons the history department has tried to teach me, I do not quite believe this one: that nothing is saved forever. It seems to me that perhaps Langby is.

  January 3 – I went to see Dunworthy today. I don’t know what I intended to say – some pompous drivel about my willingness to serve in the firewatch of history, standing guard against the falling incendiaries of the human heart, silent and saintly.

  But he blinked at me nearsightedly across his desk, and it seemed to me that he was blinking at that last bright image of St Paul’s in sunlight before it was gone forever and that he knew better than anyone that the past cannot be saved, and I said instead, “I’m sorry that I broke your glasses, sir.”

  “How did you like St Paul’s?” he said and, like my first meeting with Enola, I felt I must be somehow reading the signals all wrong, that he was not feeling loss, but something quite different.

  “I loved it, sir,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “So do I.”

  Dean Matthews is wrong. I have fought with memory my whole practicum only to find that it is not the enemy at all, and being an historian is not some saintly burden after all. Because Dunworthy is not blinking against the fatal sunlight of the last morning, but into the gloom of that first afternoon, looking in the great west doors of St Paul’s at what is, like Langby, like all of it, every moment, in us, saved forever.

  At The “Me” Shop

  Robert Reed

  Robert Reed (b. 1956) is another of those writers, like Greg Egan and Peter Hamilton, whose imagination works on a vast scale. His ninth novel Marrow (2000) is written on a huge canvas of worlds within worlds. The Dragons of Springplace (1999) is an excellent showcase of his mind-expanding short fiction. It does not include the following, which is one of his lesser-known stories. In some ways it’s a further aspect of time travel, and
though it may seem a very moderate story by Reed’s standards, in another way it is of infinite possibilities.

  The first customer was a small man, old but in a lean, muscled way. He wore fluorescent shorts and a self-cooling shirt, gel socks and bright scarlet shoes. He came through the door smiling – like someone familiar with this place, thought the boy – then stopped in front of the counter, the smile brightening.

  “Hello, sir,” said the boy. “How are you this morning?”

  “Warm, thanks.”

  “I bet.” The boy spread his hands on top of the glass counter. “Are you a runner?”

  “Sometimes. And I bet you’re new here, am I right?”

  “This is my first day,” the boy agreed. “I came here early, in order to learn –”

  “– the particulars.”

  The boy blinked. “Yes. The particulars.”

  “Your very first day. Congratulations.” The customer nodded with gravity, bright eyes dancing beneath the white sweatband and silver-white hair. Then came a noise from the back – a single wet cough – and the man said, “I’ve already got an appointment. Actually it’s my birthday. Bennett?”

  The boy touched the light-sensitive keys on the old terminal, reading what appeared on the yellowed screen. “Mr Willard Bennett?”

  “In the flesh.”

  There were standing appointments for today and the next twenty years. Had the owner mentioned Mr. Bennett? He must have, thought the boy. It seemed familiar – the name; the circumstance – yet he couldn’t recall the specifics.

  “How’s your first day going? Anything eventful?”

  Eventful? Not particularly. But these first hours had been pleasant, the boy sitting alone inside a little room next to the workshop, watching old digitals that taught him the basics of this job. The owner had said no more than a dozen words to him. A quiet man, and gruff, he believed. But someone worthy of respect. An eventful first day? Starting now, he told himself. My first customer . . .!