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Connie Willis

FIRE WATCH

To Ed Bryant

Time is the fire in which we burn.

— Delmore Schwartz

FIRE WATCH

History hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over.

— SIR WALTER RALEIGH

While I was writing this story, the one book I could not find was the one I most needed: the Reverend Dean W. R. Matthews’ book about the Fire Watch written just after the war called St. Paul’s in Wartime. It was referred to in every other book I read, and I knew it would have everything in it that I could not find anywhere else: where they slept in the crypt, what they had to eat, how long their shifts were, where the stairs to the roofs were, how the Watch was organized and run.

The book was out of print and not even available at St. Paul’s, though the lady assured me that it was a “wonderful book. ” A friend finally managed to get hold of it through a London book search service and sent it to me soon after “Fire Watch” came out.

It is indeed a wonderful book. It has, as I thought, everything I needed and could not find, but too late. Oddly enough, that’s what this story is about.

September 20—Of course the first thing I looked for was the fire watch stone. And of course it wasn’t there yet. It wasn’t dedicated until 1951, accompanying speech by the Very Reverend Dean Walter Matthews, and this is only 1940. I knew that. I went to see the fire watch stone only yesterday, with some kind of misplaced notion that seeing the scene of the crime would somehow help. It didn’t.

The only things that would have helped were a crash course in London during the Blitz and a little more time. I had not gotten either.

“Traveling in time is not like taking the tube, Mr. Bartholomew,” the esteemed Dunworthy had said, blinking at me through those antique spectacles of his. “Either you report on the twentieth or 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. Paul.

St. 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 conversation.

“Two days!” I had shouted at my roommate Kivrin. “All because some computer adds an ’s. And the esteemed Dunworthy doesn’t even bat an eye when I tell him. ‘Time travel is not like taking the tube, young man,’ he says. ‘I’d suggest you get ready. You’re leaving day after tomorrow. ’ 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 you should listen to what he says. ”

I had expected Kivrin to be at least a little sympathetic. She had been practically hysterical when she got her practicum changed from fifteenth-to fourteenth-century England, and how did either century qualify as a practicum? Even counting infectious diseases they couldn’t have been more than a five. The Blitz is an eight, and St. Paul’s itself is, with my luck, a ten.