“In a minute,” she said. “Twelve December. Two AM. Six A.M.—”
“No!” I said, grabbing the ear of the console away from her. “Now!”
She stood up angrily. “If you do anything to jeopardize this rendezvous—”
Mr. Dunworthy and T.J. came in, their heads together worriedly over a handheld. “—another area of increased slippage,” T.J. was saying. “See, here it—”
“Give me that ear,” Warder said furiously, and they both looked up.
“Ned,” Mr. Dunworthy said, hurrying over. “How did Coventry go?”
“It didn’t,” I said.
Warder snatched the ear back and began feeding times into it.
“No Mr. C, no ‘life-changing experience,’ ” I said. “Verity tried to come through to tell you, but she didn’t make it. Tell Warder she’s got to find her.”
“I’m running the accelerated,” Warder said.
“I don’t care what you’re running,” I said. “It can wait. I want you to find out where she is now!”
“In a minute, Ned,” Mr. Dunworthy said quietly. He took my arm. “We’re trying to pull Carruthers out.”
“Carruthers can wait!” I said. “You know where he is, for God’s sake! Verity could be anywhere!”
“Tell me what’s happened,” he said, still calmly.
“The net’s starting to break down,” I said. “That’s what’s happened. Verity went through to tell you we failed at Coventry, and right after she’d gone through, Finch came through and said she hadn’t come through to the lab. So I tried to come through and tell you, but I ended up here in 2018, and then in Blackwell’s in 1933, and then in a—”
“You were in the lab in 2018?” Mr. Dunworthy said, looking at T.J. “That’s where the area of slippage was. What did you see, Ned?”
“—and then in the tower of Coventry Cathedral in 1395,” I said.
“Destination malfunction,” T.J. said worriedly.
“Two P.M. Six P.M.,” Warder said, her eyes on the screen.
“The net’s breaking down,” I said, “and Verity’s out there somewhere. You’ve got to get a fix on her and—”
“Warder,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Stop the accelerated. We need—”
“Wait, I’m getting something,” she said.
“Now,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “I want a fix on Verity Kindle.”
“In a min—”
And Carruthers appeared in the net.
He was wearing the same thing he’d been wearing last time I’d seen him, his AFS coveralls and nonregulation helmet, except that they weren’t covered with soot. “Well, it’s about time!” he said, taking his tin helmet off.
Warder ran over to the net, pushed through the veils, and flung her arms around his neck. “I was so worried!” she said. “Are you all right?”
“I nearly got arrested for not having an identity card,” Carruthers said, looking slightly taken aback, “and I was this close to being blown up when a delayed HE went off, but otherwise I’m fine.” He disentangled himself from Warder’s arms. “I thought something had gone wrong with the net, and I was going to be stuck there for the duration of the war. Where the bloody hell have you been?”
“Trying to get you out,” Warder said, beaming at him. “We thought something had gone wrong with the net, too. Then I thought of running an accelerated to see if we could get past whatever the block was.” She linked her arm through his. “Are you certain you’re all right? Can I get you anything?”
“You can get me Verity. Now!” I said. “I want you to run a fix right now.”
Mr. Dunworthy nodded.
“All right!” Warder snapped, and stomped over to the console.
“You didn’t have any trouble coming back, did you?” T.J. said to Carruthers.
“Except that the bloody net wouldn’t open for three weeks, no,” Carruthers said.
“I mean, you didn’t go to another destination before you came here?”
Carruthers shook his head.
“And you haven’t any idea why the net wouldn’t open?”
“No,” Carruthers said. “A delayed HE went off a hundred yards from the drop. I thought perhaps it had done something to it.”
I went over to the console. “Anything yet?”
“No,” Warder said. “And don’t stand over me like that. It keeps me from concentrating.”
I went back over to Carruthers, who had sat down at T.J.’s sim setup and was pulling off his boots.
“One good thing came out of all this,” he said, peeling off a very dirty sock. “I can definitely report to Lady Schrapnell that the bishop’s bird stump wasn’t in the rubble. We cleared every inch of the cathedral, and it wasn’t there. But it was in the cathedral during the raid. The Head of the Flower Committee, this horrible old spinster sort named Miss Sharpe — you know the type, gray hair, long nose, hard as nails — saw it at five o’clock that afternoon. She was on her way home after a meeting of the Advent Bazaar and Soldiers’ Parcel Effort Committee, and she noticed some of the chrysanthemums in it were turning brown, and she stopped and pulled them out.”
I was only half listening. I was watching Warder, who was hitting keys, glaring at the screen, leaning back thoughtfully, hitting more keys. She has no idea where Verity is, I thought.
“So you think it was destroyed in the fire?” Mr. Dunworthy said.
“I do,” Carruthers said, “and everyone else does, except for this dreadful old harpy Miss Sharpe. She insists it was stolen.”
“During the raid?” Mr. Dunworthy asked.
“No. She says as soon as the sirens went, she came back and stood guard, so it must have been stolen after five and before eight, and whoever took it must have known there was going to be a raid that night.”
Numbers were coming up rapidly on the screen. Warder leaned forward, tapping keys rapidly. “Have you got the fix?”
“I’m getting it,” she said irritably.
“She had an absolute bee in her bonnet about it,” Carruthers said, peeling off his other sock and dumping it in his boot. “Interrogated everyone who’d been in or near the cathedral during the raid, accused the verger’s brother-in-law, even wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper about it. Generally made everyone’s lives miserable. I didn’t have to do any detective work on it. She was doing it all. If somebody had stolen the bishop’s bird stump, you can be certain she’d have found it.”
“I’ve got it,” Warder said. “Verity’s in Coventry.”
“Coventry?” I said. “When?”
“November fourteenth, 1940.”
“Where?” I said.
She tapped the keys, and the coordinates came up.
“That’s the cathedral,” I said. “What time?”
She worked the keys some more. “Five past eight P.M.”
“That’s the raid,” I said and started for the net. “Send me through.”
“If the net’s malfunctioning—” T.J. said.
“Verity’s there,” I said. “In the middle of an air raid.”
“Send him through,” Mr. Dunworthy said.
“We’ve tried this before, remember?” Carruthers said. “Nobody could get near the place, including you. What makes you think—”
“Give me your coveralls and helmet,” I said.
He looked at Mr. Dunworthy and then started to strip them off.
“What was Verity wearing?” Mr. Dunworthy asked.
Carruthers handed me the coveralls, and I pulled them on over my tweeds. “A long white high-necked dress,” I said, and realized I’d made an erroneous assumption. Her clothes wouldn’t create an incongruity in the middle of an air raid. No one would even notice them. Or if they did, they’d think she was in her nightgown.
“Here, take this,” T.J. said, handing me a raincoat.
“I want a five-minute intermittent,” I said, taking the raincoat and stepping into the net. Warder lowered the veils.
“If you come through in the marrows field,” Carruthers said, “the barn’s to the west.”