"Connie Willis - Fire Watch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

FIRE WATCH
by Connie Willis
"History hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over." -Sir Walte
Raleigh

September 20 -Of course the first thing I looked for was the fire-watch stone. And of cour
wasn't there yet. It wasn't dedicated until 1951, accompanying speech by the Very Rev-erend D
Walter Matthews, and this is only 1940. I knew that. I went to see the fire-watch stone
yesterday, with some kind of misplaced notion that seeing the scene of the crime would some
help. It didn't.
The only things that would have helped were a crash course in London during the Blitz and a
more time. I had not gotten either.
"Travelling in time is not like taking the tube, Mr. Bartho-lomew," the esteemed Dunworthy
said, blinking at me through those antique spectacles of his. "Either you report on the twentie
you don't go at all."
"But I'm not ready," I'd said. "Look, it took me four years to get ready to travel with St. Pau
Paul. Not St. Paul's. You can't expect me to get ready for London in the Blitz in two days."
"Yes," Dunworthy had said. "We can." End of conversa-tion.
"Two days!" I had shouted at my roommate, Kivrin. "All because some computer add
apostrophe s. And the esteemed Dunworthy doesn't even bat an eye when I tell him. `Time trav
not like taking the tube, young man,' he said. `I'd suggest you get ready. You're leaving the day
tomor-row.' The man's a total incompetent."
"No," she said. "He isn't. He's the best there is. He wrote the book on St. Paul's. Maybe
should listen to what he says."
I had expected Kivrin to be at least a little sympathetic. She had been practically hysterical w
she got her practicum changed from fifteenth to fourteenth century England, and how did e
century qualify as a practicum? Even counting infectious diseases they couldn't have been more
a five. The Blitz is an eight, and St. Paul's itself is, with my luck, a ten.
"You think I should go see Dunworthy again?" I said. "Yes."
"And then what? I've got two days. I don't know the money, the language, the history. Nothin
"He's a good man," Kivrin said. "I think you'd better listen to him while you can." Good
Kivrin. Always the sympa-thetic ear.
The good man was responsible for my standing just inside the propped-open west doors, gaw
like the country boy I was supposed to be, looking for a stone that wasn't there. Thanks to the g
man, I was about as unprepared for my practicum as it was possible for him to make me.
I couldn't see more than a few feet into the church. I could see a candle gleaming feebly a
way off and a closer blur of white moving toward me. A verger, or possibly the Very Reverend D
himself. I pulled out the letter from my clergyman uncle in Wales that was supposed to gain
access to the Dean, and patted my back pocket to make sure I hadn't lost the microfiche Ox
English Dictionary, Revised, with Historical Supplements, I'd smuggled out of the Bodlei
couldn't pull it out in the middle of the conversation, but with luck I could muddle through the
encounter by context and look up the words I didn't know later.
"Are you from the ayarpee?" he said. He was no older than I am, a head shorter and much thi
Almost ascetic look-ing. He reminded me of Kivrin. He was not wearing white, but clutching it t
chest. In other circumstances I would have thought it was a pillow. In other circumstances I w
know what was being said to me, but there had been no time to unlearn sub-Mediterranean Latin
Jewish law and learn Cockney and air-raid procedures. Two days, and the esteemed Dunwo
who wanted to talk about the sacred burdens of the historian instead of telling me what the aya
was.
"Are you?" he demanded again.