“And what did they change it to? Were Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor the only two they switched?”

“No, they switched them all around. After Pearl Harbor they wanted me to do El Alamein and then the Battle of the Bulge—”

I was right. They put them in chronological order. Polly felt the familiar flutter of panic. But El Alamein’s only eleven months after Pearl Harbor, and the Battle of the Bulge is only two years after that. It’s still not as great a length of time between as mine.

“—followed by the second World Trade Center attack—”

Which was nearly sixty years after the Battle of the Bulge.

“—and the beginning of the Pandemic in Salisbury,” Mike said.

Twenty years later.

But that didn’t prove anything. The lab might have put his assignments in chronological order because of Pearl Harbor, not the others.

I need to find out when the Reign of Terror began, Polly thought, and tried to think of who would know. Not Eileen. Polly didn’t want her to begin asking questions. And because Eileen was working in the book department, she couldn’t look it up in a book on the French Revolution.

Sir Godfrey would no doubt know—he’d almost certainly played Sydney Carton on the stage. But he’d ask questions as well, and he saw far too much as it was.

The librarian at Holborn, she thought.

When they got to Notting Hill Gate, she told Eileen she’d forgotten to give Doreen a message and had to go to Piccadilly Circus to tell her. Instead she took the train to Holborn.

“The Reign of Terror?” the ginger-haired librarian said promptly. “It began in September of 1793.” Four years and two months after the storming of the Bastille.

Don’t leave it to others.

AIR RAID PRECAUTIONS POSTER,
1940

Oxford—April 2060

MR. DUNWORTHY WENT OVER DR. ISHIWAKA’S CALCULATIONS again and then called, “Eddritch, come into my office, please.” When his secretary appeared in the doorway, he said, “I need you to ring up the lab and see why they haven’t sent over that slippage analysis yet.”

“They did send it, sir,” Eddritch said, and just stood there.

I should never have let Finch become an historian, Dunworthy thought, thinking longingly of his previous secretary. “Well, then, where is it?”

“On my desk, sir.”

“Bring it to me,” Dunworthy said, and when Eddritch came back with the file, he asked, “Has Research telephoned?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did they say?”

“They said they had the information you requested and that you were to ring them back,” Eddritch said. “Would you like me to ring them for you?”

No, because you would very likely fail to inform me you’d put the call through, Dunworthy thought. “I’ll do it myself,” he said, and rang them up.

“There were two hundred fatalities that night,” the tech who answered the telephone said. “Twenty-one in the area you asked about. But that figure doesn’t include those who might have been injured on that date and later died of their wounds.”