Fire Watch by Connie Willis Read Free Book Online Page A

from the beginning. You cannot save St. Paul’s.
    I went back out onto the platform and stood behind the yellow line until a train pulled up. I took my ticket out and held it in my hand all the way to St. Paul’s Station. When I got there, smoke billowed toward me like an easy spray of water. I could not see St. Paul’s.
    “The tide’s out,” a woman said in a voice devoid of hope, and I went down in a snake pit of limp cloth hoses. My hands came up covered with rank-smelling mud, and I understood finally (and too late) the significance of the tide. There was no water to fight the fires.
    A policeman barred my way and I stood helplessly before him with no idea what to say. “No civilians allowed here,” he said. “St. Paul’s is for it.” The smoke billowed like a thundercloud, alive with sparks, and the dome rose golden above it.
    “I’m fire watch,” I said, and his arm fell away, and then I was on the roofs.
    My endorphin levels must have been going up and down like an air raid siren. I do not have any short-term from then on, just moments that do not fit together: the people in the church when we brought Langby down, huddled in a corner playing cards, the whirlwind of burning scraps of wood in the dome, the ambulance driver who wore open-toed shoes like Enola and smeared salve on my burned hands. And in the center, the one clear moment when I went after Langby on a rope and saved his life.
    I stood by the dome, blinking against the smoke. The City was on fire and it seemed as if St. Paul’s would ignite from the heat, would crumble from the noise alone. Bence-Jones was by the northwest tower, hitting at an incendiary with a spade. Langby was too close to the patched place where the bomb had gone through, looking toward me. Anincendiary clattered behind him. I turned to grab a shovel, and when I turned back, he was gone.
    “Langby!” I shouted, and could not hear my own voice. He had fallen into the chasm and nobody saw him or the incendiary. Except me. I do not remember how I got across the roof. I think I called for a rope. I got a rope. I tied it around my waist, gave the ends of it into the hands of the fire watch, and went over the side. The fires lit the walls of the hole almost all the way to the bottom. Below me I could see a pile of whitish rubble. He’s under there, I thought, and jumped free of the wall. The space was so narrow there was nowhere to throw the rubble. I was afraid I would inadvertently stone him, and I tried to toss the pieces of planking and plaster over my shoulder, but there was barely room to turn. For one awful moment I thought he might not be there at all, that the pieces of splintered wood would brush away to reveal empty pavement, as they had in the crypt.
    I was numbed by the indignity of crawling over him. If he was dead I did not think I could bear the shame of stepping on his helpless body. Then his hand came up like a ghost’s and grabbed my ankle, and within seconds I had whirled and had his head free.
    He was the ghastly white that no longer frightens me. “I put the bomb out,” he said. I stared at him, so overwhelmed with relief I could not speak. For one hysterical moment I thought I would even laugh, I was so glad to see him. I finally realized what it was I was supposed to say.
    “Are you all right?” I said.
    “Yes,” he said, and tried to raise himself on one elbow. “So much the worse for you.”
    He could not get up. He grunted with pain when he tried to shift his weight to his right side and lay back, the uneven rubble crunching sickeningly under him. I tried to lift him gently so I could see where he was hurt. He must have fallen on something.
    “It’s no use,” he said, breathing hard. “I put it out.”
    I spared him a startled glance, afraid that he was delirious and went back to rolling him onto his side.
    “I know you were counting on this one,” he went on, not resisting me at all. “It was bound to happen sooner or later with all