“Yes, surely, Woodrow.”
“But the history we researched shows that this could not have happened. The Luftwaffe won the Battle of Britain and there never was a Marseilles landing, much less an American training command in England. Instead, Germany was smashed from the air by atomic bombs delivered from North Africa by American B29 bombers. Friends and family, I was in that war. No atomic bombs were dropped on Europe in the war I remember.”
“Thank you, Lazarus. I was in that war, too, and in North Africa. No B29s operated from there as I recall it and no atomic bombs were used in the European theater—so this research startled me as much as it did Lazarus. This bad news changed Operation Johnson Prime—which had as its purpose locating and recovering Dr. Ira Johnson, the Prime of the Johnson family—to Operation Coventry Cusp…which includes Operation Johnson Prime as one of its phases, but has the far wider purpose of changing the outcome of that war through this one raid. The raid of April eighth, 1941, was selected not only because Dr. Johnson was known to have been in it, as an AFS surgeon in civil defense, but also because the four waves of bombers—giant Heinkels—that bombed Coventry that night were the largest number of Nazi bombers used in any one raid.
“The Circle’s mathematicians, working with Shiva, all agree that this is a cusp event, where a handful of people can turn the course of a history. So it will be the purpose of Major Gretchen’s ladies to destroy as many as possible of that air Armada—as near one hundred percent as superior technology can manage. With this one assist, the RAF can and will win the Battle of Britain. Without it, it can be—or was—too big a raid for the Spitfires to handle. An almost invisible additional purpose of Operation Coventry Cusp, three layers down, is to save the lives of Spitfire pilots, so that they will live to fight another day.
“This is the sort of nudge the Circle of Ouroboros specializes in, the minor assist that makes a major change in the outcome—and the Companions of the Circle feel sanguine about this one.
“Now please look at the picture behind me. Our view is from the spot in Greyfriars Green occupied by the dressing station where Johnson Prime served that night. Those three towers are all that was left standing in the central city after earlier raids—the towers of St. Michael’s cathedral, Greyfriars church, and Holy Trinity church. Off to the left is a lesser tower that does not show; that tower is the only original part of a Benedictine monastery built by Leofric, earl of Mercia, and his wife, Lady Godiva, in 1043. We have leased that tower from the earl, and the gate that will deliver Gretchen’s archers will be—has been—erected on it, as well as the time gate that will move them to 1941. It may amuse you to hear that, while the contract payment was in gold, a lagniappe was added, a magnificent white gelding that the Lady Godiva named ‘Aethelnoth’—and our gift to the Lady is the very mount she used in her famous ride through the town for benefit of her townspeople.”
Jubal cleared his throat and grinned. “Despite widespread popular demand coming mostly from Castor and Pollux, this operation will not be combined with a sightseeing trip to watch Lady Godiva ride through Coventry.
“That’s all today, friends. To take part in this operation you need to be convinced of three things: first, that the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler was so vile that it must not be allowed to win, and, second, that it is strongly desirable to defeat the Nazis without dropping scores of atomic bombs on Europe, and, third, that it is worth it to you to risk your neck to achieve the operation’s objectives. The Circle answers Yes to these questions, but you must weigh them in your own conscience. If your answer is not a whole-hearted Yes on all points, then please do not volunteer.
“After you have thought it over, the remaining Gideon’s Band will meet for first rehearsal at ten tomorrow morning at our Potemkin-Village Coventry. A transbooth shuttling directly to the practice village is located just north of this building.”
In Coventry, England, on Tuesday the eighth of April, 1941, at 7:22 P.M. the sun was setting, glowing red in smog and coal smoke. Looking at this city gave me a weird feeling, so exactly had Shiva’s simulation matched what I now saw. I was standing at the entrance of a civil-defense first-aid station, the one that research showed that Father had worked in (would work in) tonight. It was hardly more than walls of sandbags covered by canvas painted opaque to guard the blackout.
It had a jakes of sorts (Phew!), and an anteroom for the wounded, three pine tables, some cupboards, and duck boards on a dirt floor. No running water—a tank with a spigot. Gasoline lamps.
Greyfriars Green spread out around me, an untended park pocked with bomb craters. I could not see the monastery tower we had rented from Lady Godiva’s husband, Leofric, earl of Mercia, but I knew that it was north of me, off to my left. Field Agent Hendrik Hudson Schultz, who had conducted the dicker with the earl, reported that Godiva’s hair really was surprisingly long and beautiful but that it was inadvisable to be downwind from her, as she had apparently not bathed more than twice in her life. Father Hendrik had spent a hard sixteen months learning eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon and customs and medieval church Latin in preparation for the assignment—one he completed in ten days.
Tonight Father Hendrik was with Gretchen as her interpreter; it had not been judged cost effective to require the members of the military task force to learn an Anglic language a century older than Chaucer, when their working language was not English but Galacta, and their MOS involved shooting, not talking.
Northeast of me I could see the three spires that gave the city its nickname: Greyfriars, Holy Trinity, and St. Michael’s. Saint Michael’s and Greyfriars were gutted in earlier bombings and much of the center of the city was destroyed. When I had first heard of the bombing of Coventry, a century ago on my personal time line, I had thought that the bombing of this historic town was an example of the sheer viciousness of the Nazis. While it is not possible to exaggerate the viciousness of that regime and the stench of its gas ovens, I now knew that the bombing of Coventry was not simply Schrecklichkeit, as this was an important industrial city, as important to England as Pittsburgh was to the United States.
Coventry was not the bucolic town I had pictured in my mind. I could see that, if fortune favored us tonight, we might possibly not only destroy a major part of the Luftwaffe’s biggest bombers but also save the lives of skilled craftsmen as necessary to military victory as are brave soldiers.
Behind me I heard Gwen Hazel checking her communications: “Blood’s a Rover, this is Lady Godiva’s Horse. Come in, Blood.”
I answered, “Blood to Horse, roger.”
We had a uniquely complex communication net tonight; one I did not even try to understand (I’m a diaper engineer and a kitchen chemist—I’ve never seen an electron), a system that paralleled an even more astounding temporary time/space hookup.
Like this—From outside, the west end of the aid station was a blank wall of sandbags. From inside, that end was curtained off, a putative storage space. But push aside the curtain and you would find two time/ space gates: one from Coventry 1941 to the medical school hospital, BIT, Tertius 4376 Gregorian, and the other doing just the reverse, so that supplies, personnel, and patients could move either way without traffic problems—and at the Tertius end was another double set of gates to Beulahland, so that the worst cases could be shuttled to a different time axis for treatment, then returned to Coventry.
A similar but not identical double-gate arrangement served Gretchen’s command. She and her girls (and Father Schultz) were waiting in the eleventh century on the monastery tower. The gate that would place them in the twentieth century would not be activated until Gwen Hazel notified Gretchen that the sirens had sounded.
Gwen Hazel could talk to the twentieth century, the forty-fourth century, and the eleventh century, each separately or all at once, using a buried throat mike, tongue switches, and a body antenna, whether she was at the Tellus Prime end or the Tellus Tertius end of the aid-station gates.
In addition to these hookups she was in touch wi
th Zeb and Deety Carter, in the Gay Deceiver, at thirty thousand feet over the English Channel—too high for bombers, too high for Messerschmitts or Fokkers, too high for AA fire of that year. Gay had agreed to be there only if she was allowed to pick her own altitude. (Gay is a pacifist with, in her opinion, a deplorable amount of combat experience.) But at that altitude Gay was sure that she could spot Heinkels taking off and forming up long before the British coastal radar could see them.
As a result of rehearsals at “Potemkin Village,” drills involving every casualty we could think of, the surgical teams had been rearranged, with most of them held back on the Boondock side of the gates. “Triage” of a sort would be practiced; the hopeless cases would be rushed through to Boondock, where no case is hopeless if the brain is alive and not too damaged. There Doctors Ishtar and Galahad would head their usual teams (who need not be volunteers for combat; they would never be in Coventry). The “hopeless” cases, repaired, would be gated to Beulahland for days or weeks of recovery, then gated back to Coventry before dawn.
(Tomorrow there would be miracles to be explained. But we would be long gone.)
Cas and Pol had been volunteered (by their wives, my daughters Laz and Lor) as stretcher bearers, to move the worst cases from Coventry to gurney floats on the Boondock side.
It had been decided that too many surgical teams and too much equipment showing up out of nowhere as soon as the sirens sounded would alert Father unnecessarily, make him smell a rat. But, when the wounded started pouring in, he would be too busy to notice or care.
Jubal and Gillian were a reserve team, and would go through when needed. Dagmar would go through when Deety in Gay Deceiver reported that the bombers were on their way, so that Dagmar would meet Father—Dr. Johnson—as he first poked his head in. When the sirens sounded, Lazarus and I would go through, already masked and gowned, with me as his scrub nurse. I’m an adequate surgeon but I’m a whiz as an operating nurse—much more practice at it. We figured that three of us could do what might have to be done at “all clear,” the end of the raid: Grab Father and kidnap him—drag him through the gate, sit him down in Boondock, and explain things to him there…including the idea that he could have the works—rejuvenation and expert tutoring in really advanced therapy and still be returned to Coventry April eighth, 1941. If he insisted. If he had any wish to.
But by then I hoped and expected that, with Tamara’s help, Father could be made to see the Quixotic futility of going back to the Battle of Britain when that battle had been won more than two millennia earlier.
With Tamara’s help—She was my secret weapon. By a concatenation of miracles I had married my lover from the stars…and thereby married my son, to my amazement and great happiness. Could more miracles let me marry the only man I have always loved, totally and without reservation? Father would certainly marry Tamara, given the chance—any man would—and Tamara would then see to it that Father married me. I hoped.
If not, it would be enough and more than enough simply to have Father alive again.
I had gone back through the gate to Boondock when I heard Gwen Hazel’s voice: “Godiva’s Horse to all stations. Deety reports bandits in the air and forming up. Expect sirens in approx eighty minutes. Acknowledge.”
Gwen Hazel was standing beside me by the gates in the hospital, but this was a communication check as much as an intelligence. My own comm gear was simple: a throat mike not buried but merely under a bandage I did not need; a “hearing aid” that was not one and an antenna concealed by my clothes. I answered, “Blood’s a Rover to Horse, roger.”
I heard, “British Yeoman to Horse, roger. Eighty minutes. One hour twenty minutes.”
I said, “Blood to Horse. I heard Gretchen’s roger. Should I?”
Gwen Hazel shut off transmission and spoke to me, “You shouldn’t hear her until you both shift to Coventry 1941. Mau, will you please go through to Coventry for a second comm check?”
I did so; we established that Gwen Hazel’s link to me, 44th C to 20th C, was okay, and that I now could not hear Gretchen—both as they should be. Then I went back to Boondock, as I was not yet gowned or masked. There was one point in the transition where something tugged at one’s clothes and my ears popped—a static baffle against an air-pressure inequality, I knew. But ghostly, just the same.
Deety reported that the bombers’ fighter escort was becoming airborne. The German Messerschmitts were equal to or better than the Spitfires, but they had to operate at the very limit of their range—it took most of their gasoline to get there and get back; they could engage in dogfighting only a few minutes—or wind up in the Channel if they miscalculated.
Gwen Hazel said, “Dagmar. Take your station.”
“Roger wilco.” Dagmar went through, gowned, masked, and capped—not yet gloved…although God knows what good gloves would do in the septic conditions we would experience. (Protect us, maybe, if not our patients.)
I tied Woodrow’s mask for him; he did so for me. We were ready.
Gwen Hazel said, “Godiva’s Horse to all stations, sirens. British Yeoman, activate gate and shift time. Acknowledge.”
“Yeoman to Horse, roger wilco!”
“Horse to Yeoman, report arrival. Good hunting!” Hazel added to me, “Mau, you and Lazarus can go through now. Good luck!”
I followed Lazarus through…and swallowed my heart. Dagmar was gowning Father. He glanced at us as we came out from behind that curtain, paid us no further attention. I heard him say to Dagmar, “I haven’t seen you before, Sister. What’s your name?”
“Dagmar Dobbs, Doctor. Call me ‘Dag’ if you like. I just came up from London this morning, sir, with supplies.”
“So I see. First time in weeks I’ve seen a clean gown. And masks—what swank! You sound like a Yank, Dag.”
“And I am, Doctor—and so do you.”
“Guilty as charged. Ira Johnson, from Kansas City.”
“Why, that’s my home town!”
“I thought I heard some tall corn in your speech. When the Heinies go home tonight, we must catch up on home town gossip.”
“I don’t have much; I haven’t been home since I got my cap and pin.”
Dagmar kept Father busy and kept his attention—and I thanked her under my breath. I didn’t want him to notice me until the raid was over. No time for Old Home Week until then.
The first bombs fell, some distance away.
I saw nothing of the raid. Ninety-three years ago, or eight months later that same year, depending on how you count it, I saw bombs falling on San Francisco under circumstances in which I had nothing to do but look up and hold my breath and wait. I’m not sorry that I was too busy to watch the bombing of Coventry. But I could hear it. If you can hear it hit, it is too far away to have your name on it. So they tell me. I’m not sure I believe them.
Gwen Hazel said in my ear, “Did you hear Gretchen? She says they got sixty-nine out of seventy-two of the first wave.”
I had not heard Gretchen. Lazarus and I were busy with our first patient, a little boy. He was badly burned and his left arm was crushed. Lazarus got ready to amputate. I blinked back tears and helped him.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
Eternal Now
I am not going to batter your feelings or mine by describing the details of that thousand-year night. Anything agonizing you have ever seen in the emergency room of a big-city hospital is what we saw, and worked on, that night. Compound fractures, limbs shattered to uselessness, burns—horrible burns. If the burns weren’t too bad we slathered them with a gel that would not be seen here for centuries, put dressings over the affected areas, and had them carried outside by civil-defense stretcher bearers. The worst cases were carried in the other direction by Cas and Pol—behind that curtain, through a Burroughs-Carter-Libby gate, to Ira Johnson Hospital in Boondock, and (for burn cases) shifted again to Jane Culver Burroughs Memorial Hospital in Beulahland, there to spend days or weeks in healing, then to be returned to Coven
try at “All Clear” this same night.
All of our casualties were civilians, mostly women, children, and old men. The only military (so far as I know) around or in Coventry were Territorials manning AA guns. They had their own medical setup. I suppose that in London a first-aid station such as ours would probably be in the underground. Coventry had no tube trains; this aid station was merely sandbags out in the open but it was safer, perhaps, than it would have been in a building—one that might burn over it. I’m not criticizing. Everything about their civil defense had a make-do quality about it, a people with their backs to the wall, fighting gallantly with whatever they had.
In our aid station we had three tables, operating tables by courtesy, in fact plain wooden tables with the paint scrubbed right off them between raids. Father was using the one nearest the entrance; Woodrow was using the one nearest the curtain; the middle one was used by an elderly Englishman who was apparently a regular for this aid station: Mr. Pratt, a local veterinary surgeon, assisted by his wife, “Harry” for Harriet. Mrs. Pratt had unkind things to say about the Germans during the lulls but was more interested in talking about the cinema. Had I ever met Clark Gable? Gary Cooper? Ronald Colman? Having established that I knew no one of any importance she quit trying to draw me out. But she agreed with her husband when he said it was decent of us Yahnks to come over and help out…but when were the States going to come into the war?
I said that I did not know. Father spoke up. “Don’t bother the Sister, Mr. Pratt. We’ll be along a bit late, just like your Mr. Chamberlain. In the meantime please be polite to those of us who are here and helping.”
“No offense meant, Mr. Johnson.”
“And none taken, Mr. Pratt. Clamp!”
(Mrs. Pratt was as good an operating nurse as I’ve ever seen. She was always ready with what her husband needed without his asking for it—long practice together, I suppose. She had fetched the instruments he used; I assume that they were tools of his animal practice. That might bother some people; to me it made sense.)