Blackout by Connie Willis Read Free Book Online Page A

You’ve got to—”
    “I think you’d better speak to Badri,” Linna said. “If you’ll wait here—” and walked quickly over to Badri at the console. He was busily typing figures into the console, glancing up at the screens, typing again. A young man Michael didn’t know stood behind him watching, obviously the historian who was going to be sent through. He was dressed in threadbare tweed flannels and wire-rimmed spectacles.
A 1930s Cambridge don
, Michael thought.
    Linna leaned over Badri briefly and came back. “He said it will be at least another half hour,” she reported. “If you don’t want to wait, he can ring you up at—”
    “I’ll wait.”
    “Would you like to sit down?” she asked, and before he could say no, the telephone rang, and she went to answer it. “No, sir, he’s sending someone through right now,” he heard her say to the person on the other end. “No, sir, not yet. He’s going through to Oxford.”
    Well, he’d been close. He wondered what he was researching inOxford in the 1930s. The Inklings? The admission of women to the university?
    “No, sir, it’s just a recon and prep,” Linna said. “Phipps doesn’t leave for his assignment till the end of next week.”
    A recon and prep? Those were only used for especially complicated or dangerous assignments. He looked interestedly over at Phipps, who’d moved to the net. What could he be observing in 1930s Oxford that was that complicated? It couldn’t be anything dangerous—he looked too pale and spindly.
    “No, sir, he’s only going to one temporal location,” Linna said into the phone. A pause while she consulted her console. “No, sir. His only other assignment was to 1666.”
    “Stand in the center,” Badri said, and Phipps stepped under the draped folds and stood on the positioning marks, pushing his spectacles up on his nose.
    “You want a list of all the historians currently on assignment and scheduled to go this week and next?” Linna asked the person on the telephone. “Spatial locations or just temporal?” A pause. “Historian, assignment, dates.” She scribbled it down, he hoped more legibly than Shakira had with the note she’d left him. “Yes, sir, I’ll get that for you straightaway. Do you wish to remain on the line?” she asked, and he must have said yes, because she laid the receiver down and scurried over to Badri, who was still getting Phipps into position, then over to an auxiliary terminal.
    “All set?” Badri said to Phipps.
    Phipps reached into his tweed jacket, checked something in the inside pocket, then nodded. “You’re not sending me through on a Saturday, are you?” he asked. “If there’s slippage, that will put me there on a Sunday, and—”
    “No, a Wednesday,” Badri said. “August seventh.”
    “August seventh?” Phipps asked Badri.
    “That’s right,” Linna said, “1536,” and Michael looked over at her, confused, but she was back at the phone, reading off a printout. “London, the trial of Anne Boleyn—”
    “Yes, the seventh,” Badri said to Phipps. “The drop will open every half hour. Move a bit to the right.” He motioned with his hand. “A bit more.” Phipps shambled obediently to the right. “A bit to the left. Good. Now hold that.” He walked back over to the console and hit several keys, and the folds of the net began to lower around Phipps. “I need you to note the amount of temporal slippage on the drop.”
    “October tenth 1940,” Linna said into the phone, “to December eighteenth—”
    “Why?” Phipps asked. “You’re not expecting more slippage than usual on
this
drop, are you?”
    “Don’t
move,” Badri said.
    “There shouldn’t be any slippage. I’m not going anywhere near—”
    “Cairo, Egypt,” Linna said into the phone.
    “Ready?” Badri asked Phipps.
    Phipps said, “No, I want to know—” and was gone in a shimmer of light.
    Badri came over to Michael. “I assume you received my message?”
    “Yeah,”