Connie Willis - All Clear

ALSO BY CONNIE WILLIS

Lincolns Dreams
Doomsday Book
Impossible Things
Uncharted Territory
Remake
Bellwether
Fire Watch
To Say Nothing of the Dog
Miracle and Other Christmas Stories
Passage
Blackout

All Clear is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Connie Willis

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Spectra,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

S PECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed s
are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Willis, Connie.
All clear / Connie Willis.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52269-6
1. Time travelFiction. 2. HistoriansFiction.
3. World War, 19391945EnglandFiction. I. Title.
PS3573.I45652A79 2010
813.54dc22 2010030197

www.ballantinebooks.com

v3.1

You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her .

WINSTON CHURCHILL

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to say thank you to all the people who helped me and stood by me with Blackout and All Clear as one book morphed into two and I went slowly mad under the strain: my incredibly patient editor, Anne Groell, and my long-suffering agent, Ralph Vicinanza; my even longer-suffering secretary, Laura Lewis; my daughter and chief confidante, Cordelia; my family and friends; every librarian within a hundred-mile radius; and the baristas at Margies, Starbucks, and the UNC student union who gave me teawell, chaiand sympathy on a daily basis. Thank you all for putting up with me, standing by me, and not giving up on me or the book.

But most especially, I want to thank the marvelous group of ladies who were at the Imperial War Museum the day I was there doing research on the Blitzwomen who, it turned out, had all been rescue workers and ambulance drivers and air-raid wardens during the Blitz, and who told me story after story that proved invaluable to the book and to my understanding of the bravery, determination, and humor of the British people as they faced down Hitler. And I want to thank my wonderful husband, who found them, sat them down, bought them tea and cakes, and then came to find me so I could interview them. Best husband ever!

London26 October 1940

BY NOON MICHAEL AND MEROPE STILL HADNT RETURNED from Stepney, and Polly was beginning to get really worried. Stepney was less than an hour away by train. There was no way it could take Merope and Michaelcorrection, Eileen and Mike; she had to remember to call them by their cover namesno way it could take them six hours to go fetch Eileens belongings from Mrs. Willetts and come back to Oxford Street. What if thered been a raid and something had happened to them? The East End was the most dangerous part of London.

There werent any daytime raids on the twenty-sixth , she thought. But there werent supposed to have been five fatalities at Padgetts either. If Mike was right, and he had altered events by saving the soldier Hardy at Dunkirk, anything was possible. The space-time continuum was a chaotic system, in which even a minuscule action could have an enormous effect.

But two additional fatalitiesand civilians, at thatcould scarcely have changed the course of the war, even in a chaotic system. Thirty thousand civilians had been killed in the Blitz and nine thousand in the V-1 and V-2 attacks, and fifty million people had died in the war.

And you know he didnt lose the war , Polly thought. And historians have been traveling to the past for more than forty years. If theyd been capable of altering events, theyd have done it long before this . Mr. Dunworthy had been in the Blitz and the French Revolution and even the Black Death, and his historians had observed wars and coronations and coups all across history, and there was no record of any of them even causing a discrepancy, let alone changing the course of history.

Which meant that in spite of appearances, the five fatalities at Padgetts Department Store werent a discrepancy either. Marjorie must have misunderstood what the nurses said. Shed admitted shed only overheard part of their conversation. Perhaps the nurses had been talking about the victims from another incident. Marylebone had been hit last night, too, and Wigmore Street. Polly knew from experience that ambulances sometimes transported victims to hospital from more than one incident. And that people one thought had been killed sometimes turned up alive.

But if she told Mike about having thought the theater troupe was dead, hed demand to know why she hadnt known St. Georges would be destroyed and conclude that was a discrepancy as well. Which meant she needed to keep him from finding out about the five casualties at Padgetts till shed had a chance to determine if there actually were that many.

Thank goodness he wasnt here when Marjorie came , she thought. You should be glad theyre late .

And thank goodness her supervisor had taken Marjorie back to hospital, though it meant Polly hadnt had a chance to ask her what exactly the nurse had said. Polly had offered to take Marjorie there herself so she could ask the hospital staff about the fatalities, but Miss Snelgrove had insisted on going, So I can give those nurses a piece of my mind. What were they thinking? And what were you thinking? she scolded Marjorie. Coming here when you should be in bed?

Im sorry, Marjorie had said contritely. When I heard Padgetts had been hit, Im afraid I panicked and jumped to conclusions.

Like Mike did when he saw the mannequins in front of Padgetts , Polly thought. Like I did when I found out Eileens drop in Backbury didnt open. And like Im doing now. Theres a logical explanation for why Marjorie heard the nurses say there were five fatalities instead of three, and for why no ones come to get us. It doesnt necessarily mean Oxfords been destroyed. Research might have got the date the quarantine ended wrong and not arrived at the manor till after Eileen had left for London to find me. And the fact that Mike and Eileen arent back yet doesnt necessarily mean somethings happened to them . They might simply have had to wait till Theodores mother returned from her shift at the aeroplane factory. Or they might have decided to go on to Fleet Street to collect Mikes things.

Theyll be here any moment , she told herself. Stop fretting over things you cant do anything about, and do something useful .

She wrote out a list of the times and locations of the upcoming weeks raids for Mike and Meropecorrection, Eileenand then tried to think of other historians who might be here besides Gerald Phipps. Mike had said there was an historian here from some time in October to December eighteenth. What had happened during that period that an historian might have come to observe? Nearly all the war activity had been in EuropeItaly had invaded Greece, and the RAF had bombed the Italian fleet. What had happened here?

Coventry. But it couldnt be that. It hadnt been hit till November fourteenth, and an historian wouldnt need an entire fortnight to get there.