"What's wrong with you, Cam?"
"Nothing," she says, sitting in the middle of the vast acreage of their room, on the king-sized bed, sumptuous with pillows; the white sheets crisp and fragrant. But where's Noreen, with her humble, hungry eyes? "I think I'll have a shower."
She went into the bathroom.
As long as you can look at yourself in the mirror, you're not too far gone. That's what Sheridan says. One day all the mirrors will be empty, and sometimes, tired of the endless repetitive toil of her delicate feeding, she has looked forward to the day when there will be no more subtlety, when they will have no choice but to be monsters. Really, neither of them wants to cross that borderline. It will be a kind of death. It's a fate they prefer to put off as long as possible. But this is something else.
A fair-haired woman's face looks back at her, naked and weary: a little pale, a few fine lines, a few faint broken veins in the cheeks. There's nothing unusual about this reflection. It's neither old nor very young, neither beautiful nor ugly: there's certainly no mark of immortal evil. Oh, God, she whispers — the redeemed, the newly mortal. What's happened to me? She turns her face, she turns her face. It's no use. Wherever she looks, every light is coming, pure and clear, straight from the north.
Jack
Connie Willis
Connie Willis was named by Locus magazine as the Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Writer of the Nineties. She made her debut in 1971 in the magazine Worlds of Fantasy, but only began appearing regularly in the genre in the early 1980s. The author of such novels as Lincoln's Dreams, Doomsday Book, Uncharted Territory, Remake, Bellwether, To Say Nothing of the Dog and Passage, plus the collections Fire Watch, Impossible Things and Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, she has won six Nebula Awards and eight Hugo Awards .
About the following novella, she reveals: "I became fascinated by the Blitz the first time I went to St Paul's in London. It seemed impossible to me that the cathedral hadn't burned down that night in December (it still seems impossible), and I began doing research for the story that eventually became 'Fire Watch' (1982).
"In the course of my reading, I kept seeing references to body-sniffers, people who worked on the rescue squads who had an unusual knack for finding bodies. On a rational level, I knew that this was probably because they had exceptional hearing (everybody was practically deaf from the continuous din) or were good guessers, or else were exceptionally lucky. It did occur to me, though, that there might be another, more sinister reason"
The night Jack joined our post, Vi was late. So was the Luftwaffe. The sirens still hadn't gone by eight o'clock.
"Perhaps our Violet's tired of the RAF and begun on the aircraft spotters," Morris said, "and they're so taken by her charms they've forgotten to wind the sirens."
"You'd best watch out then," Swales said, taking off his tin warden's hat. He'd just come back from patrol. We made room for him at the linoleum-covered table, moving our teacups and the litter of gas masks and pocket torches. Twickenham shuffled his paper into one pile next to his typewriter and went on typing.
Swales sat down and poured himself a cup of tea. "She'll set her cap for the ARP next," he said, reaching for the milk. Morris pushed it towards him. "And none of us will be safe." He grinned at me. "Especially the young ones, Jack."
"I'm safe," I said. "I'm being called up soon. Twickenham's the one who should be worrying."
Twickenham looked up from his typing at the sound of his name. "Worrying about what?" he asked, his hands poised over the keyboard.
"Our Violet setting her cap for you," Swales said. "Girls always go for poets."
"I'm a journalist, not a poet. What about Renfrew?" He nodded his head towards the cots in the other room.
"Renfrew!" Swales boomed, pushing his chair back and starting into the room.
"Shh," I said. "Don't wake him. He hasn't slept all week."
"You're right. It wouldn't be fair in his weakened condition." He sat back down. "And Morris is married. What about your son, Morris? He's a pilot, isn't he? Stationed in London?"
Morris shook his head. "Quincy's up at North Weald."
"Lucky, that," Swales said. "Looks as if that leaves you, Twickenham."
"Sorry," Twickenham said, typing. "She's not my type."
"She's not anyone's type, is she?" Swales said.
"The RAF's," Morris said, and we all fell silent, thinking of Vi and her bewildering popularity with the RAF pilots in and around London. She had pale eyelashes and colourless brown hair she put up in flat little pincurls while she was on duty, which was against regulations, though Mrs Lucy didn't say anything to her about them. Vi was dumpy and rather stupid, and yet she was out constantly with one pilot after another, going to dances and parties.
"I still say she makes it all up," Swales said. "She buys all those things she says they give her herself, all those oranges and chocolate. She buys them on the black market."
"On a full-time's salary?" I said. We only made two pounds a week, and the things she brought home to the post — sweets and sherry and cigarettes — couldn't be bought on that. Vi shared them round freely, though liquor and cigarettes were against regulations as well. Mrs Lucy didn't say anything about them either.
She never reprimanded her wardens about anything, except being malicious about Vi, and we never gossiped in her presence. I wondered where she was. I hadn't seen her since I came in.
"Where's Mrs Lucy?" I asked. "She's not late as well, is she?"
Morris nodded towards the pantry door. "She's in her office. Olmwood's replacement is here. She's filling him in."
Olmwood had been our best part-timer, a huge out-of-work collier who could lift a house beam by himself, which was why Nelson, using his authority as district warden, had had him transferred to his own post.
"I hope the new man's not any good," Swales said. "Or Nelson will steal him ."
"I saw Olmwood yesterday," Morris said. "He looked like Renfrew, only worse. He told me Nelson keeps them out the whole night patrolling and looking for incendiaries."
There was no point in that. You couldn't see where the incendiaries were falling from the street, and if there was an incident, nobody was anywhere to be found. Mrs Lucy had assigned patrols at the beginning of the Blitz, but within a week she'd stopped them at midnight so we could get some sleep. Mrs Lucy said she saw no point in our getting killed when everyone was already in bed anyway.
"Olmwood says Nelson makes them wear their gas masks the entire time they're on duty and holds stirrup-pump drills twice a shift," Morris said.
"Stirrup-pump drills!" Swales exploded. "How difficult does he think it is to learn to use one? Nelson's not getting me on his post, I don't care if Churchill himself signs the transfer papers."
The pantry door opened. Mrs Lucy poked her head out. "It's half past eight. The spotter'd better go upstairs even if the sirens haven't gone," she said. "Who's on duty tonight?"
"Vi," I said, "but she hasn't come in yet."
"Oh, dear," she said. "Perhaps someone had better go look for her."
"I'll go," I said, and started pulling on my boots.
"Thank you, Jack," she said. She shut the door.
I stood up and tucked my pocket torch into my belt. I picked up my gas mask and slung it over my arm in case I ran into Nelson. The regulations said they were to be worn while patrolling, but Mrs Lucy had realized early on that you couldn't see anything with them on. Which is why, I thought, she has the best post in the district, including Admiral Nelson's.
Mrs Lucy opened the door again and leaned out for a moment. "She usually comes by underground. Sloarie Square," she said. "Take care."
"Right," Swales said. "Vi might be lurking outside in the dark, waiting to pounce!" He grabbed Twickenham round the neck and hugged him to his chest.