To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

the net to be prepped.”
    Finch walked me over to the lab, which I was grateful for, especially as it seemed to me we were going completely the wrong direction, though when we got there, the door looked the same, and there was the same group of SPCC picketers outside.
    They were carrying electric placards that read, “What’s wrong with the one we already have?,” “Keep Coventry in Coventry,” and “It’s Ours!” One of them handed me a flyer that began, “The restoration of Coventry Cathedral will cost fifty billion pounds. For the same amount of money, the present Coventry Cathedral could not only be bought back and restored, but a new, larger shopping center could be built to replace it.”
    Finch pulled the tract out of my hand, gave it back to the picketer, and opened the door.
    The net looked the same inside, too, though I didn’t recognize the pudgy young woman at the console. She was wearing a white lab coat, and her halo of cropped blonde hair made her look like a cherub rather than a net technician.
    Finch shut the door behind us, and she whirled. “What do you want?” she demanded.
    Perhaps more an archangel than a cherub.
    “We need to arrange for a jump,” Finch said. “To Victorian England.”
    “Out of the question,” she snapped.
    Definitely an archangel. The sort that tossed Adam and Eve out of the Garden.
    Finch said, “Mr. Dunworthy authorized it, Miss . . .”
    “Warder,” she snapped.
    “Miss Warder. This is a priority jump,” he said.
    “They’re all priority jumps. Lady Schrapnell doesn’t authorize any other sort.” She picked up a clipboard and brandished it at us like a flaming sword. “Nineteen jumps, fourteen of them requiring 1940 ARP and WVS uniforms, which the wardrobe department is completely out of, and all the fixes. I’m three hours behind schedule on rendezvous, and who knows how many more priority jumps Lady Schrapnell will come up with before the day’s over.” She slammed the clipboard down. “I don’t have time for this. Victorian England! Tell Mr. Dunworthy it’s completely out of the question.” She turned back to the console and began hitting keys.
    Finch, undaunted, tried another tack. “Where’s Mr. Chaudhuri?”
    “Ex act ly,”she said, whirling round again. “Where is Badri, and why isn’t he here running the net? Well, I’ll tell you.” She picked up the clipboard threateningly again. “Lady Schrap nell—”
    “She didn’t send him to 1940, did she?” I asked. Badri was of Pakistani descent. He’d be arrested as a Japanese spy.
    “No,” she said. “She made him drive her to London to look for some historian who’s gone missing. Which leaves me to run Wardrobe and the net and deal with people who waste my time asking stupid questions.” She crashed the clipboard down. “Now, if you don’t have any more of them, I have a priority fix to calculate.” She whirled back to the console and began pounding fiercely at the keys.
    Or perhaps an arch-archangel, one of those beings with enormous wings and hundreds of eyes, “and they were terrible to see.” What were they called? Sarabands?
    “I think I’d better go fetch Mr. Dunworthy,” Finch whispered to me. “You’d best stay here.”
    I was more than glad to comply. I was beginning to feel the drowsiness that the nurse at Infirmary had questioned me about, and all I wanted to do was sit down and rest. I found a chair on the far side of the net, took a stack of gas masks and stirrup pumps off another one so I could put my feet up on it, and stretched out to wait for Finch and try to remember the name of arch-archangels, the ones “full of eyes round about.” It began with an “s.” Samurai? No, that was Lady Schrapnell. Sylphs? No, those were heavenly sprites, who flitted through the air. The water sprites began with something else. An “N.” Nemesis? No, that was Lady Schrapnell.
    What were they called? Hylas had come upon them while he was fetching water from a pond,