Biggin Hill Airfield, which this obviously wasn’t. He glanced cautiously up the narrow wooden stairs and then picked up the letters and shuffled through them. They were all to Saltram-on-Sea, and, clinching it, one of them was addressed to the Crown and Anchor.
Jesus, that meant there’d been locational slippage, and he’d have to take the bus, which meant he had to find out immediately when it went and where it stopped. “Hello?” he called loudly up the stairs and into the pub room. “Anyone here?”
No response, and no sound of any movement overhead. He listened for another minute, then went into the semi-dark pub room to look for a bus schedule or the local newspaper. There wasn’t one on the bar and the only thing on the wall behind the bar was another movie schedule, this one for Lost Horizon, which had come out in 1936 and was playing from June fifteenth through the thirtieth. Christ, has there been temporal slippage, too? he thought, going around behind the bar to see if there was a newspaper there. He had to find out the date.
There was a newspaper in the wastebasket, or a part of one. Half the sheet—the half with the name of the paper and the date, naturally—had been torn off, and the remaining half had been used to mop up something. He unwadded it carefully on the bar, trying not to tear the damp paper, but it was too dark in here to read the wet, gray pages.
He picked it up by the edges and carried it back out to the hall to read. “Devastating Power of the German Blitzkrieg,” the headline said. Good. At least he wasn’t in 1936. The main story’s headline was missing, but there was a map of France with assorted arrows showing the German advance, which meant it wasn’t the end of June either. By then, the fighting had been over for three weeks and Paris was already occupied.
“Germans Push Across Meuse.” They’d done that on May seventeenth. “Emergency War Powers Act Passed.” That had happened on the twenty-second, and this had to be yesterday’s newspaper, which would make this the twenty-third, which would mean the slippage had sent him through a day early, but that was great. It gave him an extra day to get to Dover, and he might need it. He read farther down. “National Service of Intercession to Be Held at Westminster Abbey.”
Oh, no. That prayer service had been held on Sunday, May twenty-sixth, and if this was yesterday’s paper, then it was Monday the twenty-seventh. “Damn it,” he muttered. “I’ve already missed the first day of the evacuation!”
“The pub doesn’t open till noon,” a female voice said from above him.
He whirled, and his sudden jerk tore the wet newspaper in half. A pretty young woman with her hair in a pompadour and a very red mouth stood halfway down the stairs, looking curiously at the torn newsprint in his hands. And how the hell was he going to explain what he was doing with it? Or what he’d said about the evacuation. How much had she heard?
“Was it a room you were wanting?” she asked, coming down the rest of the stairs.
“No, I was just looking for the bus schedule,” he said. “Can you tell me when the bus to Dover is due?”
“You’re a Yank,” she said delightedly. “Are you a flyer?” She looked past him out the door, as if expecting to see an aeroplane in the middle of the street. “Did you have to bail out?”
“No,” he said. “I’m a reporter.”
“A reporter?” she said, just as eagerly, and he realized she was much younger than he’d thought—seventeen or eighteen at the most. The pompadour and the lipstick had fooled him into thinking she was older.
“Yes, for the Omaha Observer,” he said. “I’m a war correspondent. I need to get to Dover. Can you tell me what time the bus comes?” and when she hesitated, “There is a bus to Dover from here, isn’t there?”
“Yes, but I’m afraid you’ve only just missed it. It came yesterday, and it won’t come again till Friday.”
“It only comes on Sundays and Fridays?”
“No. I told you, it came yesterday. On Tuesday.”
An’ if thou seest my boy, bid him make haste and meet me.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
Oxford—April 2060
POLLY HURRIED OUT BALLIOL’S GATE, UP THE BROAD, AND down Catte Street, hoping Mr. Dunworthy hadn’t glanced out his windows and seen her standing in the quad talking to Michael and Merope. I