Nebula Awards Showcase 2012 (21 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They
’
ve spotted the U-boat,
Mike thought, grabbing his shoes and wading over to the ladder. He clambered up it. Jonathan was leaning over the hatch, looking excited. “Grandfather needs you to navigate,” he said.

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

“He doesn’t,” Jonathan said. “He—”

“Now!” the Commander roared.

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

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

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

~ * ~

“Another part of the island.”

The Tempest

William Shakespeare

Kent—April 1944

Cess opened the door of the office and leaned in. “Worthing!” he called, and when he didn’t answer, “Ernest! Stop playing reporter and come with me. I need you on a job.”

Ernest kept typing. “Can’t,” he said through the pencil between his teeth. “I’ve got five newspaper articles and ten pages of transmissions to write.”

“You can do them later,” Cess said. “The tanks are here. We need to blow them up.”

Ernest removed the pencil from between his teeth and said, “I thought the tanks were Gwendolyn’s job.”

“He’s in Hawkhurst. Dental appointment.”

“Which takes priority over tanks? I can see the history books now. ‘World War II was lost due to a toothache.’”

“It’s not a toothache, it’s a cracked filling,” Cess said. “And it’ll do you good to get a bit of fresh air.” Cess yanked the sheet of paper out of the typewriter. “You can write your fairy tales later.”

“No, I can’t,” Ernest said, making an unsuccessful grab for the paper. “If I don’t get these stories in by tomorrow morning, they won’t be in Tuesday’s edition, and Lady Bracknell will have my head.”

Cess held it out of reach. ‘“The Steeple Cross Women’s Institute held a tea Friday afternoon,”‘ he read aloud, “‘to welcome the officers of the 21
^st
Airborne to the village.’ Definitely more important than blowing up tanks. Front page stuff, Worthing. This’ll be in the
times,
I presume?”

“The
Sudbury Weekly Shopper,
”
he said, making another grab for it, this time successful. “And it’s due at nine tomorrow morning along with four others
which I haven
’
t finished yet.
And, thanks to you, I already missed last week’s deadline. Take Moncrieff with you.”

“He’s down with a bad cold.”

“Which he no doubt caught while blowing up tanks in the pouring rain. Not exactly my idea of fun,” Ernest said, rolling a new sheet of paper into the typewriter.

“It’s not raining,” Cess said. “There’s only a light fog, and it’s supposed to clear by morning. Perfect flying weather. That’s why we’ve got to blow them up tonight. It’ll only take an hour or two. You’ll be back in more than enough time to finish your articles and get them over to Sudbury.”

Ernest didn’t believe that any more than he believed it wasn’t raining. It had rained all spring. “There must be someone else in this castle who can do it. What about Lady Bracknell? He’d be perfect for the job. He’s full of hot air.”

“He’s in London, meeting with the higher-ups, and everyone else is over at Camp Omaha. Come
on,
Worthing, do you want to tell your children you sat at a typewriter all through the war or that you blew up tanks?”

“What makes you think we’ll ever be allowed to tell anyone anything, Cess?”

“I suppose that’s true. But surely by the time we have
grand
children,
some
of it will have been declassified. That is, if we win the war, which we won’t if you don’t help. I can’t manage both the tanks and the cutter on my own.” “Oh, all right,” Ernest said, pulling the story out of the typewriter and putting it in a file folder on top of several others. “Give me five minutes to lock up.”

“Lock
up
?
Do you honestly think Goebbels is going to break in and steal your tea party story while we’re gone?”

“I’m only following regulations,” Ernest said, swiveling his chair to face the metal filing cabinet. He opened the second drawer down, filed the folder, then fished a ring of keys out of his pocket and locked the cabinet. ‘“All written materials of Fortitude South and the Special Means unit shall be considered ‘top top secret’ and handled accordingly.’ And speaking of regulations, if I’m going to be in some bloody cow pasture all night, I need a decent pair of boots. ‘All officers are to be issued appropriate gear for missions.’”

Cess handed him an umbrella. “Here.”

“I thought you said fog, not rain.”

“Light fog. Clearing towards morning. And wear an army uniform, in case someone shows up in the middle of the operation. You have two minutes. I want to be there before dark.” He went out.

Ernest waited, listening, till he heard the outside door slam, then swiftly unlocked the file drawer, pulled out the folder, removed several of the pages, replaced the file, and relocked the drawer. He slid the pages he’d removed into a manila envelope, sealed it, and stuck it under a stack of forms in the bottom drawer of the desk. Then he took a key from around his neck, locked the drawer, hung the key around his neck again under his shirt, picked up the umbrella, put on his uniform and his boots, and went outside. Into an all-enveloping dark grayness. If this was what Cess considered a light fog, he shuddered to think what a heavy one was. He couldn’t see the tanks or the lorry. He couldn’t even see the gravel driveway at his feet.

But he could hear an engine. He felt his way toward it, his hands out in front of him till they connected with the side of the Landrover. “What took you so long?” Cess asked, leaning out of the fog to open its door. “Get in.”

Ernest climbed in. “I thought you said the tanks were here.”

“They are,” Cess said, roaring off into blackness. “We’ve got to go pick them up in Tenterden and then take them down to Icklesham.”

Tenterden was not “here.” It was fifteen miles in the opposite direction from Icklesham and, in this fog, it would be well after dark before they even got to Tenterden.
This
’
ll take all night,
he thought.
I
’
ll never make that deadline.
But halfway to Brede, the fog lifted and when they reached Tenterden, everything was, amazingly, loaded and ready to go. Ernest, following Cess and the lorry in the Landrover, began to feel some hope that it wouldn’t take too long to get unloaded and set up, and they might actually be done blowing up the tanks by midnight. Whereupon the fog closed in again, causing Cess to miss the turn for Icklesham twice and the lane once. It was nearly midnight before they located the right pasture.

Ernest parked the Landrover in amongst some bushes and got out to open the gate. He promptly stepped in mud up to his ankles and then, after he’d extricated himself, in a large cowpat. He squelched over to the lorry, looking around for cows, even though, in this foggy darkness he wouldn’t see one till he’d collided with it. “I thought there weren’t supposed to be any cows in this pasture,” he said to Cess.

“There were before, but the farmer moved them into the next one over,” Cess said, leaning out the window. “That’s why we picked this pasture. That, and the large copse of trees over there.” He pointed vaguely out into the murk. “The tanks will be hidden out of sight under the trees.”

“I thought the whole idea was to let the Germans see them.”

“To let them see
some
of them,” Cess corrected. “There are a dozen in this battalion.”

“We’ve got to blow up a
dozen
tanks?”

“No, only two. The Army didn’t park them far enough under the trees. Their rear ends can still be seen poking out from under the branches. I think it’ll be easiest if I back across the field. Help me turn around.”

“Are you certain that’s a good idea?” Ernest said. “It’s awfully muddy.”

“That’ll make the tracks more visible. You needn’t worry. This lorry’s got good tyres. I won’t get her stuck.”

He didn’t. Ernest did, driving the lorry back to the gate after they’d unloaded the two tanks. It took them the next two hours to get out of the mudhole, in the process of which Ernest lost his footing and fell flat, and they made a hideous rutted mess out of the center of the field.

“Goering’s boys will never believe tank treads did that,” Ernest said, shining a shielded torch on the churned-up mud.

“You’re right,” Cess said. “We’ll have to put a tank over it to hide it, and—I know!—we’ll make it look as though it got stuck in the mud.”

“Tanks don’t get stuck in the mud.”

“They would in this mud,” Cess said. “We’ll only blow up three quadrants and leave the other one flat, so it’ll look like it’s listing.”

“Do you honestly think they’ll be able to see that from fifteen thousand feet?”

“No idea,” Cess said, “but if we stand here arguing, we won’t be done by morning, and the Germans will see what we’re up to. Here, lend me a hand. We’ll unload the tank and then drive the lorry back to the lane. That way we won’t have to drag it.”

Ernest helped him unload the heavy rubber pallet. Cess connected the pump and began inflating the tank. “Are you certain it’s facing the right way?” Ernest asked. “It should be facing the copse.”

“Oh, right,” Cess said, shielding his torch with his hand and shining it on it. “No, it’s the wrong way round. Here, help me shift it.”

They pushed and shoved and dragged the heavy mass around till it faced the other way. “Now let’s hope it isn’t upside down,” Cess said. “They should put a ‘this end up’ on them, though I suppose that might make the Germans suspicious.” He began to pump. “Oh, good, there’s a tread.”

The front end of a tank began to emerge out of the flat folds of gray-green rubber, looking remarkably tank-like. Ernest watched for a moment, then fetched the phonograph, the small wooden table it sat on, and its speaker. He set them up, got the record from the lorry, placed it on the turntable, and lowered the needle. The sound of tanks rolling thunderously toward him filled the pasture, making it impossible to hear anything Cess said.

On the other hand, he thought as he wrestled the tank-tread cutter off the back of the lorry, he no longer had to switch on his torch. He could find his way simply by following the sound. Unless there were in fact cows in this pasture—which, judging by the number of fresh cowpats he was stepping in, there definitely could be.

Cess had told him on the way to Tenterden that the cutter was perfectly simple to operate. All one had to do was push it, like a lawnmower, but it was at least five times as heavy as the lawnmower at the castle. It required bearing down with one’s whole weight on the handle to make it go even a few inches, it refused to budge at all in grass taller than two inches, and it tended to veer off at an angle. Ernest had to go back to the lorry, fetch a rake, smooth over what he’d done, then redo it several times before he had a more-or-less straight tread mark from the gate to the mired tank.