All Clear
LAVISH PRAISE FOR THE BOOKS OF
CONNIE WILLIS
2010 RT Reviewer’s Choice Award Nominee for Career Achievement in Sci Fi/Fantasy
ALL CLEAR
Winner of the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Novel 2010 Locus Recommended Reading List for Best Science Fiction Novel
“The delights of Blackout and All Clear—which are, despite appearances, one novel—are hard to describe in a small space. The revivified history is beautiful. Connie Willis has always loved England and especially London during the Blitz, and she delivers here as rich and wide a picture of the time as anything I’ve ever read. She doesn’t merely do research, she inhabits it.… Beyond that, Willis’s trademark approach, time travel, lets her stack all this together with a minimum of fill that conveys the emotional density of the event. Also, it allows her to pursue dazzling games with time. People die before they’re born, remember events before they happen; there’s an astonishing temporal knot at the end that resolves the story that only Willis could bring off.… Blackout/All Clear is as big a book as there’s been all year, encompassing one of the greatest events in history, paying homage to the human spirit, and demonstrating Connie Willis’s mastery in a fabulous read.”
—The Historical Novels Review
“Willis can tell a story so packed with thrills, comedy, drama and a bit of red herring that the result is apt to satisfy the most discriminating, and hungry, reader.… Too much Connie Willis is like too much chocolate: Ain’t no such thing!”
—The Denver Post
“This is Connie Willis’s masterpiece. A heart-wrenching, uplifting, amazing work of historical fiction as well as a heart-wrenching, uplifting, amazing work of science fiction … This is astonishing work. Read it now.”
—KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH
BLACKOUT
2010 RT Reviewer’s Choice Award Nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel
2010 Locus Recommended Reading List for Best Science Fiction Novel
“With her trademark understated, eloquent style, Willis expands the conceit of her Hugo and Nebula winning 1982 story ‘Fire Watch’ into a page-turning thriller, her first novel since 2001’s Passage.… Willis uses detail and period language exquisitely well, creating an engaging, exciting tale.”
—Publishers Weekly
“On par with Doomsday Book, Blackout depicts the times and the spirit of the British people remarkably vividly, and bits of comic relief leaven any somberness. Characterizations of the historians and the Brits they become close to are multifaceted and believable, and the ending leaves us keenly primed for the sequel.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Blackout is big, muscular, thoughtful and altogether terrific: a novel quite worthy of the eight-year wait for the latest words from the six-time Nebula and ten-time Hugo Award–winning author. [A] book with something for everyone that ends up working on every level. It is adventure. It is history. It is science. It is, indeed, thrilling. And it is unforgettable.”
—January Magazine
“Willis’ sense of the absurd builds on life’s uncertainties. It’s a mad world, with wit our sole defense against destiny’s outrageous bombs and rockets. [Willis has] researched Blackout so thoroughly, her readers may imagine she had access to the time machine her characters use.”
—The Seattle Times
“As vivid an evocation of England during World War II as anyone has ever written … It’s hard to know what to praise more in Blackout.… Every detail rings true, with the kind of authority that only intense research can bring. Still, all of Willis’s knowledge is subsumed in her bravura storytelling: Blackout is, by turns, witty, suspenseful, harrowing and occasionally comic to the point of slapstick.… If you’re a science-fiction fan, you’ll want to read this book by one of the most honored writers in the field (ten Hugos, six Nebulas); if you’re interested in World War II, you should pick up Blackout for its you-are-there authenticity; and if you just like to read, you’ll find here a novelist who can plot like Agatha Christie and whose books possess a bounce and stylishness that Preston Sturges might envy.”
—The Washington Post
“Not all science fiction looks like science fiction. Connie Willis has won more Hugo and Nebula awards than almost anyone in the field, but her books are often set in the past, while her style is more Dorothy Sayers than Neil Gaiman. Still, she belongs in genre more than in literature, because genre fiction—SF, YA, mystery—is the traditional home of narrative pleasure, and Willis can tell a story like no other.… Willis’s evocation of wartime London sometimes feels romanticized.… But by the time the three historians and Mr. Dunworthy have unraveled the mystery and arrived at the full-on, three-hanky finale, you’ll no longer be a disinterested observer. Drawn in by Willis’s skillful storytelling, you’ll be back in 1941, wondering what’s about to happen next.”
—The Village Voice
“Heinlein’s heir has been writing widely published fiction since well before that great author’s demise: Her name is Connie Willis.… Blackout is a tour-de-force return to the novel form by a woman who is … one of America’s finest writers and who has more than earned her place among the greats of science fiction—Robert Heinlein included.”
—The Denver Post
“Willis is a consummate storyteller whose immersive style hooks readers from the start.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“I loved this book. It is informative, subtle, full of great characters and has a wonderful plot. Just as I felt during the London Blitz—I can’t wait for All Clear. It’s bound to be as intriguing a page turner as Blackout. Brilliant. Willis at her finest.”
—MICHAEL MOORCOCK
“This compassionate and deeply imagined novel … gives the reader a strong you-were-there feeling.”
—The Times-Picayune
All Clear is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Spectra Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2010 by Connie Willis
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s”
are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Spectra, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2010.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Willis, Connie.
All clear / Connie Willis.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52269-6
1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Historians—Fiction.
3. World War, 1939–1945—England—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3573.I45652A79 2010
813′.54—dc22 2010030197
www.ballantinebooks.com
Cover design: FaceOut Studio, Charles Brock,
based on photographs © Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy (St. Paul’s Cathedral) and © Hulton Archive/Getty Images (spectators)
v3.1_r1
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
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
London—26 October 1940
London—7 May 1945
London—26 October 1940
Bethnal Green—June 1944
London—26 October 1940
Kent—April 1944
London—27 October 1940
London—November 1940
Kent—April 1944
Golders Green—July 1944
London—November 1940
Kent—April 1944
London—November 1940
London—November 1940
Oxford—April 2060
Bletchley—November 1940
Dulwich—Summer 1944
London—November 1940
Bletchley—December 1940
Dulwich—Summer 1944
London—December 1940
Oxford—April 2060
London—December 1940
Saltram-on-Sea—December 1940
London—December 1940
London—December 1940
London—29 December 1940
St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940
St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940
Ludgate Hill—29 December 1940
Blackfriars Tube Station—29 December 1940
St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940
The City—29 December 1940
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital—30 December 1940
St. Paul’s Cathedral—30 December 1940
Croydon—October 1944
London—Winter 1941
London—Winter 1941
Croydon—October 1944
London—Winter 1941
London—7 May 1945
London—Winter 1941
London—Winter 1941
London—Winter 1941
London—Winter 1941
Kent—April 1944
Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995
Dover—April 1944
Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995
Wales—May 1944
London—Spring 1941
London—May 1944
London—Spring 1941
Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995
Kent—June 1944
Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995
Kent—October 1944
London—Spring 1941
Croydon—October 1944
London—Spring 1941
London—Spring 1941
London—Spring 1941
Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995
London—19 April 1941
London—19 April 1941
Imperial War Museum, London—7 May 1995
London—7 May 1945
London—19 April 1941
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
Well, he hasn’t come yet, sir, he’s more than a bit late tonight.
—LONDON PORTER TO ERNIE PYLE, REFERRING
TO THE GERMAN BOMBERS
London—26 October 1940
BY NOON MICHAEL AND MEROPE STILL HADN’T 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 Michael—correction, Eileen and Mike; she had to remember to call them by their cover names—no way it could take them six hours to go fetch Eileen’s belongings from Mrs. Willett’s and come back to Oxford Street. What if there’d been a raid and something had happened to them? The East End was the most dangerous part of London.
There weren’t any daytime raids on the twenty-sixth, she thought. But there weren’t supposed to have been five fatalities at Padgett’s 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 fatalities—and civilians, at that—could 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 didn’t lose the war, Polly thought. And historians have been traveling to the past for more than forty years. If they’d been capable of altering events, they’d 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 Padgett’s Department Store weren’t a discrepancy either. Marjorie must have misunderstood what the nurses said. She’d admitted she’d 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, he’d demand to know why she hadn’t known St. George’s 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 Padgett’s till she’d had a chance to determine if there actually were that many.
Thank goodness he wasn’t here when Marjorie came, she thought. You should be glad they’re late.
And thank goodness her supervisor had taken Marjorie back to hospital, though it meant Polly hadn’t 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?”
“I’m sorry,” Marjorie had said contritely. “When I heard Padgett’s had been hit, I’m afraid I panicked and jumped to conclusions.”
Like Mike did when he saw the mannequins in front of Padgett’s, Polly thought. Like I did when I found out Eileen’s drop in Backbury didn’t open. And like I’m doing now. There’s a logical explanation for why Marjorie heard the nurses say there were five fatalities instead of three, and for why no one’s come to get us. It doesn’t necessarily mean Oxford’s 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 aren’t back yet doesn’t necessarily mean something’s happened to them. They might simply have had to wait till Theodore’s mother returned from her shift at the aeroplane factory. Or they might have decided to go on to Fleet Street to collect Mike’s things.
They’ll be here any moment, she told herself. Stop fretting over things you can’t do anything about, and do something useful.
She wrote out a list of the times and locations of the upcoming week’s raids for Mike and Merope—correction, Eileen—and 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 Europe—Italy had invaded Greece, and the Royal Navy had bombed the Italian fleet. What had happened here?
Coventry. But it couldn’t be that. It hadn’t been hit till November fourteenth, and an historian wouldn’t need an entire fortnight to get there.
The war in the North Atlantic? Several important convoys had been sunk during that period, but being on a destroyer had to be a ten. And if Mr. Dunworthy was canceling assignments that were too dangerous …
But anywhere in the autumn of 1940 was dangerous, and he’d obviously approved something. The intelligence war? No, that hadn’t really geared up till later, with the Fortitude and V-1 and V-2 rocket disinformation campaigns. Ultra had begun earlier, but it was not only a ten, it had to be a divergence point. If the Germans had found out their Enigma codes had been cracked, it clearly would have affected the outcome of the war.
Polly looked over at the lifts. The center one was stopping on third. They’re here—finally, she thought, but it was only Miss Snelgrove, shaking her head over the negligence of Marjorie’s nurses. “Disgraceful! I shouldn’t be surprised if she had a relapse with all her running about,” she fumed. “What are you doing here, Miss Sebastian? Why aren’t you on your lunch break?”
Because I don’t want to miss Mike and Eileen like I missed Eileen when I went to Backbury, but she couldn’t say that. “I was waiting till you got back, in case we had a rush.”
“Well, take it now,” Miss Snelgrove said.
Polly nodded and, when Miss Snelgrove went into the stockroom to take off her coat and hat, told Doreen to send word to her immediately if anyone came in asking for her.
“Like the airman you met last night?”
Who? Polly thought, and then remembered that was the excuse she’d given Doreen for needing to know the names of airfields. “Yes,” she said, “or my cousin who’s coming to London, or anyone.”
“I promise I’ll send the lift boy to fetch you the moment anyone comes. Now, go.”
Polly went, running downstairs first to look up and down Oxford Street and see if Mike and Eileen were coming, and then going up to ask the shop assistants in the lunchroom about airfields. By the end of her break, she had half a dozen names that began with the correct letters and/or had two words in their names.
She ran back down to third. “Did anyone ask for me?” she asked Doreen, even though they obviously hadn’t come.