18. Mateo Gets a Date

“Fish and chips,” Captain Short said decidedly.

“I beg your pardon,” said Captain Goodacre.

“It’s the opposite of torture, old man. Or rather, the best food one can get in this sad smoking wreck of a country. I think I’ll order some for that Trappist Monk in cell 4.”

“Watch the paper,” Goodacre said.

“Not to worry, I’ll tell them to wrap it the local paper and the advertisements only. Not the Times.”

“Hey, Smith.” The door opened. Something was set on the floor and sneaker guy closed the door and left.

Mateo could smell it before he saw it. Fried fish, battered and breaded and still leaking steam, and big thick fries. Salt and oil glittered on them like stars.

He got off the cot and scooped it up. It was wrapped in a page of newspaper ads, which would have grossed him out a little back in Minnesota but now he just wanted to stuff the whole thing right into his pie-hole.

Silence? Sure. Skipping amazing food out of spite? Yeah right. He ate it all and licked his fingers, actually full and all heated up from inside.

He crawled under the two blankets they’d issued him. No point in wasting that good heat. Nothing like food to make everything seem better. Maybe that Richard guy had been a fluke and they weren’t going to wreck him! Maybe they’d even release him some day! Hey, ads! Something to read! He wanted to stuff anything new and ok into his bored brain like he’d wanted to stuff the food into his face.

So. They had newspapers here. No computers, but newspaper. And what’re they selling? Clothes, old-style clothes like what the Murder Amish were wearing, soap, no color pictures at all, most of them just drawings. Weird, but ok. Everything here sucked (ok, the tea was good and the land was pretty on the first day, and the buildings looked great, fine) and they don’t have any tech worth the name, checks out.

He’d made it halfway through the greasy page before he saw the date at the top.

Oh God.

No. No, no, no. No way, not real not real—

October 5, 1940, it said.

1940.

He sat back so fast he almost banged his head on the wall, paper in his lap, staring.

But no, it all checked out. It all fit. The clothes, the food, the technology, the classic cars, the ... war. The war they kept talking about. Suddenly a whole lot of weird stuff clicked into place, right down to the Murder Amish. They weren’t some kind of old-fashioned-on-purpose deal and they were only so trigger-happy because they thought he was —

“Why didn’t you TELL me?! You idiots!” That, plus an anguished wail, were loud enough to make the stenographer assigned to the bug in Smith’s cell flinch back.

“I’m in freaking England in freaking World War Two! Aaugh!”

The sound of someone kicking a cot.

“I knew it! Damnit, Avi, you can go back!”

Then, much quieter, almost sobbing either in relief or despair: “You can go back.”

***

“Hey!” Mateo yelled, rolling to his feet from where he’d been doing pushups when two of the sneaker guys came in to give him his food. “Let me talk to — who was it, Captain Short? I need to talk to Captain Short!”

They looked at each other, and one of them shrugged. They bailed and locked the door behind them. Mateo scarfed down the food, not in the mood to be a food critic. Yeah duh, they had food shortages and stuff back then, right? Back now? Come on! Hurry up! Don’t bring that creep Richard with you! Skip Monocle while you’re at it!

Eventually sneaker guys came back. They still cuffed him and bagged him up like a sack of groceries, which had gone from kinda freaky to freaking terrifying, for some reason, since that guy took a swing at him, but he didn’t argue. They wouldn’t listen and he was in a serious hurry anyway.

It was a pretty long walk, Mateo being driven a little crazy by how slow the sneaker guys were going, even though his knees felt weak. Then he dreaded what would happen when they got there, and pinged back and forth between those two takes until the bag was pulled off his head.

It was Captain Short and ... Goodacre, maybe that was his name. No Monocle, and thank goodness, no Richard.

“Captain!” he said, winded.

Short’s eyebrow went up as he strolled over to get a chair for him.

“I understand you wanted to speak with me.”

“Yeah, uh, it’s, uh, yeah. Important.” Right on the edge of it, Mateo was having trouble getting the words out. “I wanna tell you guys everything.”

Short nodded.

“But like, the truth is really crazy. And once I’ve told you, that’s it. That’s all there is. Beating me up won’t make anything else true,” he said nervously, feeling a edge creep into his voice like he was ready to take it outside. Oops.

“You mean—if you’re asking about the chap who struck you, he was thrown out and won’t be allowed back on the premises.”

“Huh?”

“It’s against regulations to strike a prisoner.”

“...huh? Really?”

Short nodded. “Under any circumstances. We’re here to get information, and Commandant Stephens strictly forbids anything that might interfere with that aim.”

That last part didn’t make much sense to Mateo, but the bottom line hit him like a truck. He was ok. He was gonna be ok. Well, sort of ok, stuck in the past, might get blown up or shot or something, but ... that was why the other guys stopped him. He hadn’t just made that up in his head. They really had.

“So I can assure you you’re in no danger of that sort of thing. Just tell your story as best you can.”

“Ok. Ok. I know this sounds crazy but ... I’m a time traveler.”

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