To Say Nothing of the Dog (42 page)

He moved to a screen in the center. “In
this
one, we changed the circumstances at La Sainte Haye. The thatched roofs caught fire from the artillery shells, and a chain of men with soup kettles full of water managed to put the fires out.”

He pointed at a spot near the center. “I introduced an historian here to steal one of the soup kettles. It created a major incongruity, and the interesting thing is that the self-correction didn’t just involve increased slippage here and here,” the light pointed at the top of the screen, “but here, before 1814.”

“It went back in the past and corrected itself?”

“Yes,” he said. “In the winter of 1812, there was a bad snowstorm, which caused a deep rut in the road in front of La Sainte Haye, which caused an oxcart passing over it to lose part of its load, including a small wooden keg full of beer, which a servant found and carried home to La Sainte Haye. The keg, with the top hacked off, was substituted for the missing soup kettle in the bucket brigade, the fires were put out, and the incongruity was repaired.”

He went back to the comp, hit more keys, and brought up a new set of screens. “This one, where Gneisenau retreats to Liege, and this one, in which the historian helps push a cannon out of the mud, show self-corrections in the past, too.”

“That’s why you had Verity do drops in May?” I said. “Because you think the incongruity may have attempted to adjust itself before it happened?”

“But we haven’t found any slippage anywhere except for your drop,” he said, sounding frustrated. “Every one of these,” he waved at the screen, no matter how large or how small the self-correction, has the same basic pattern: radically increased slippage at the site, moderately increased slippage in the immediate area, and then isolated pockets of slippage farther from the site.”

“Which doesn’t match our incongruity at all,” I said, staring at the screen.

“No,” T.J. said, “it doesn’t. The slippage on Verity’s drop was nine minutes, and I haven’t been able to find any radical increase in slippage anywhere near the site. The only slippage at all is the cluster in 2018, and it’s much greater than it should be, that far from the site.”

He went to the comp, typed something in, and came back to the left-hand screen, which had changed slightly. “The only one that’s been close is this one,” he said. “We had the historian fire an artillery shell that killed Wellington.”

He felt in his pockets for the lightpen, couldn’t find it, and settled for his finger. “See this? Here and here, you have radically increased slippage, but it can’t contain the altering events and discrepancies which develop here and here and here,” he said, pointing at three spots close to the focus, “and the amount of slippage drops off sharply
here
, and you can see
here
,” he pointed farther out, “the backups start to fail, and the net begins to malfunction as history starts to alter course.”

“And Napoleon wins the battle of Waterloo.”

“Yes,” he said. “You can see the parallels to your incongruity
here,”
he pointed at darker gray, “where there’s a pocket of increased slippage nearly seventy years from the site, and here,” he pointed at a spot of lighter gray, “in the lack of slippage at a short distance from the site.”

“But there’s still radically increased slippage
at
the site,” I said.

“Yes,” he said grimly. “In every single incongruity we’ve tried. Except yours.”

“But at least you’ve been able to prove that incongruities are possible,” I said. “That’s something, isn’t it?”

“What?” he said blankly. “These are all just mathematical sims.”

“I know, but you’ve shown what would happen if—”

He was shaking his head violently. “What would happen if we really tried to send an historian to Waterloo to intercept a message or shoot a horse or give directions is that the net wouldn’t open. Historians have been trying for over forty years. No one can get within two years and a hundred miles of Waterloo.” He waved angrily at the banks of screens. “These sims are all based on a net without any safeguards.”

So we were right back where we started.

“Could something have overridden the safeguards on Verity’s drop?” I said. “Or made them malfunction?”

“That was the first thing we checked. There was no sign of anything but a perfectly normal drop.”

Mr. Dunworthy came in, looking worried. “Sorry I took so long,” he said. “I went to see if the forensics expert had made any progress on either the name or the date.”

“Has she?” I said.

“Where’s the recruit?” Warder cut in crabbily before Mr. Dunworthy could answer. “He was supposed to come back with you.”

“I sent him over to the cathedral to keep Lady Schrapnell occupied so she wouldn’t come over while Ned was here,” he said.

And I trusted him to do that about as much as I trusted him to find his way home, so we’d better make this short.

“Has the forensics expert decoded Mr. C’s name?”

“No. She’s narrowed the number of letters down to eight, and she’s located the Coventry entry, and is working on the date.”

Well, that was something. “We need it as soon as possible,” I said. “Terence and Tossie got engaged yesterday.”

“Oh, dear,” Mr. Dunworthy said, and looked around as if he would have liked to sit down. “Betrothal was a very serious matter in Victorian days,” he said to T.J.

He turned back to me. “Ned, the two of you still don’t have any leads as to Mr. C’s identity?”

“No, and we still haven’t been able to get hold of the diary,” I said. “Verity’s hoping Mr. C comes to the church fête today.”

I tried to think if there was anything else I should tell or ask them. “T.J., you said something about slippage on the return drops?”

“Oh, yes. Warder!” he called across to the console, where she was violently pounding keys. “Have you figured the slippage yet?”

“I am
trying
to—”

“I know, I know, you’re trying to get Carruthers out,” T.J. said.

“No,”
she said. “I am trying to bring Finch through.”

“It can wait,” T.J. said. “I need the slippage on Ned’s return drop.”

“All
right!”
she said, her seraphim’s hundred eyes flashing. She beat on the keys for half a minute. “Three hours, eight minutes.”

“Three hours!” I said.

“It’s better than Verity’s last drop,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “That was two days.”

T.J. held his hands out, palms up, and shrugged. “There hasn’t been any on any of the sims.”

I thought of something. “What day is it?”

“Friday,” T.J. said.

“It’s nine days till the consecration,” Mr. Dunworthy said, thinking. “The fifth of November.”

“Nine days!” I said. “Good Lord! And I don’t suppose the bishop’s bird stump has turned up?”

Mr. Dunworthy shook his head. “Things don’t look good, do they, Ensign Klepperman?”

“There’s one thing that does,” T.J. said, darting back to the comp and hitting keys. “I did a bunch of scenarios on the Berlin bombing.” The screens changed to a slightly different pattern of gray blurs. “Missing the target, plane getting hit, pilot getting hit, even eliminating the pilot and plane altogether, and none of them affects the outcome. London still gets bombed.”

“That
is
good news,” Mr. Dunworthy said wryly.

“Well, it’s something anyway,” I said, wishing I could believe it.

The net shimmered, and Finch appeared. He waited for Warder to raise the veils and then came straight over to Mr. Dunworthy and said, “I have excellent news regarding the—” He stopped and looked at me. “I will be in your office, sir,” he said and went out hastily.

“I want to know what Finch is up to,” I said. “Did you send him back to drown Princess Arjumand?”

“Drown—?” T.J. said, and started to laugh.

“Did you?” I demanded. “And don’t tell me you’re not at liberty to say.”

“We are
not
at liberty to tell you what Finch’s mission is,” Mr. Dunworthy said, “but I can tell you, Princess Arjumand is perfectly safe, and that you will be pleased with the results of Finch’s mission.”

“If Henry’s going back,” Warder said irritably from the console, “I need to send him now so I can start the half-hour intermittent on Carruthers.”

“We need the forensics expert’s information as soon as you have it,” I said to Mr. Dunworthy. “I’ll try to come through tonight or tomorrow.”

Mr. Dunworthy nodded.

“I don’t have all day,” Warder said. “I am
trying—”

“All
right,”
I said, and went over to the net.

“What time do you want to be sent back to?” Warder asked. “Five minutes after you left?”

Hope suddenly leaped up like one of Wordsworth’s rainbows. “I can go back to whenever I want?”

“It’s
time travel,”
Warder said. “I haven’t got all—”

“Half-past four,” I said. With luck, there would be twenty minutes’ slippage, and the fête would be completely over.

“Half-past four?” Warder said, looking belligerent. “Won’t someone have missed you?”

“No,” I said. “Terence will be delighted he doesn’t have to go back to the Pony Ride.”

Warder shrugged and began setting up the coordinates. “Step in the net,” she said, and hit the “send” key.

The net shimmered, and I straightened my boater and tie and strode happily back to the fête. It was still overcast, so I couldn’t see the sun to tell what time it was, and my watch was useless, but the crowd seemed a bit thinner. It must be at least half-past three. I went over to the jumble sale stall to report to Verity that I had nothing to report.

She wasn’t there. The stall was being tended by Rose and Iris Chattisbourne, who tried to sell me a silver sugar hammer.

“She’s in the tea tent,” they said, but she wasn’t there either.

Cyril was, hoping against hope someone would drop a sandwich, and giving the impression that he’d been there all day. I bought him a currant bun and myself a rock cake and a cup of tea and took them back over to the Treasure Hunt.

“You weren’t gone very long,” Terence said. “I told you to take as long as you liked.”

“What time is it?” I said with a sinking feeling. “My watch—stopped.”

“ ‘It was the very best butter,’ ” Terence quoted. “It’s five past twelve. I don’t suppose
you’d
like to take the Pony Ride for a bit?” he said hopefully.

“No,” I said.

He wandered morosely off toward the drive, and I sipped my tea and ate my rock cake and thought about the unfairness of Fate.

It was a very long afternoon. Eglantine, who had cadged another fivepence from one of her sisters, spent most of the afternoon squatting next to the sand, plotting her strategy.

“I don’t think any of the squares has the Grand Prize in it,” she said, after she’d squandered tuppence on Number Two.

“It does,” I said. “I put it in there myself, whether you believe me or not.”

“I do believe you,” she said. “The Reverend Mr. Arbitage saw you do it. But someone might have stolen up and taken it when nobody was here.”

“Someone’s been here the entire time.”

“They might have sneaked in and out the back way,” she said. “While we were talking.”

She went back to squatting, and I went back to my rock cake, which was even harder than the rock cake I’d had at the Prayers for the RAF Service and Baked Goods Sale, and thought about the bishop’s bird stump.

Had someone sneaked it out the back way when nobody was looking? I had said no one would want it, but look at the things people bought at jumble sales. Perhaps a looter had taken it out of the rubble, after all. Or perhaps Verity was right, and it had been taken out of the cathedral sometime before the raid. Either it had been in the cathedral during the raid, or it hadn’t, I thought, looking at the squares of sand. Those were the only two possibilities. And either way it had to be somewhere. But where? In Number Eighteen? Number Twenty-five?

At half-past one the curate came to spell me so I could “have a proper luncheon” and “have a look at the fête.” The “proper luncheon” consisted of a fish paste sandwich (which I gave half of to Cyril) and another cup of tea, after which I made the rounds of the stalls. I won a red glass ring at the fishing pond, bought a quilted tea cozy, a pomander made from an orange stuck full of cloves, a china crocodile, and a jar of calves’ foot jelly, told Verity I hadn’t got the date or Mr. C’s name, and went back to the Treasure Hunt. When Eglantine wasn’t looking, I buried the crocodile in Number Nine.

The afternoon wore on. People chose Four, Sixteen, Twenty-one, and Twenty-Nine, and actually found two of the shillings. Eglantine spent the rest of her fivepence to no avail and stomped off in a huff. At one point, Baine came up with Princess Arjumand and dumped her in my arms.

“Could you possibly watch her for a bit, Mr. Henry?” he said. “Mrs. Mering wishes me to run the coconut shy, and I fear Princess Arjumand
cannot be left alone even for a moment,”
he said, looking hard at her.

“The globe-eyed nacreous ryunkin again?” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

A large box full of sand didn’t seem like a terribly good place for her either. “Why can’t you spend the entire day sleeping on the fancy goods display like that calico cat at the Nativity of the Virgin Mary jumble sale?” I said.

“More,” she said, and rubbed her nose against my hand.

I petted her, thinking what a pity it was that she hadn’t drowned and achieved nonsignificance, so that the net would have slammed shut when I tried to return her, and I could have kept her.

Of course, I couldn’t really have kept her. Some billionaire would have snapped her up, and one cat couldn’t replace an entire extinct species, even with cloning. But still, I thought, scratching her behind the ears, she was a very nice cat. Except, of course, for the nacreous ryunkin. And Professor Peddick’s double-gilled blue chub.

Finch came hurrying up. He looked hastily round and then leaned forward and said, “I have a message for you from Mr. Dunworthy. He said to tell you he spoke to the forensics expert, and she’s deciphered the date of the trip to Coventry. He said—”

“Mama says you’re to let me have three more tries,” Eglantine said, appearing out of nowhere, “and she will give you fivepence when the fête closes.”