40. Inter-Library Loan

“So Station X is requesting they take on Smith-Ramirez,” Captain Goodacre said.

“Yes.” Short leaned back. “It’s not unakin to handing a spy over to one of the lads who knows the right questions to ask, but... With the difference now that he’s eager to help.”

“That worries you too, Short? That he might let something slip about his origins. Corporal Bowyer is hardly a spy handler, and Smith-Ramirez is hardly a spy. Either of them could very well let something slip.”

“Well, yes. But who would believe it? It’s a long way from him whistling one of his future songs to a crack enemy commando team swarming the place in search of Mr. Wells, and it’s not as though he would be a very useful resource to the enemy. And frankly if crack enemy commando teams are swarming Station X, whatever exactly it is they do, we’re sunk as a nation with or without time travelers.”

Goodacre tapped the desk. “You have something there.”

“He’s a better resource for Station X than he is for 020. Look at how it took a month or more of really enthusiastic co-operation from him to even find the right questions to ask him. Station X can put him to good use, better than we can, and he’ll help them any way he can. And Station X is full of eccentrics, he’ll hardly stand out even if he does make a mistake.”

“Without his devices, though.”

“I agree. Let the only odd future thing he doesn’t leave at 020 be his tooth fillings. Shall we go speak with commandant Stephens?”

***

Mateo was dozing when a sneaker guy tapped on the door of his not-cell. He still jolted awake, like his going from spy suspect to ally had been a dream.

“Oh, hey.”

“Commandant Stephens wants to speak with you, mate.”

“You bet, just a sec—“ he reached for his jacket.

At least he phrased it like a request these days.

“Ok, let’s go.”

He walked off with sneaker guy, who was just a guide these days. He was still a little nervous though. Monocle Face was just intimidating and was still running the show for him. He hoped he wasn’t in some kind of trouble.

They passed a row of cells and he wondered who was in there and how they were doing. He’d been pretty surprised to learn spies came from a couple different places around Europe, and a lot of them were legit and hardcore, but sometimes they were blackmailed into spying or just so in over their heads that they’d turn themselves in. Crazy stuff, to his mind. It seemed like you could hire spies better than that. It did explain why they thought a twerp like him was one.

“Sit down,” Tineye said when he showed up. “Dismissed, private. Close the door,” he added to the sneaker guy. Even knowing they wouldn’t talk about mega-secret stuff that Mateo was hoping to hear in front of him, he was sorry to see him go.

He sat down as the door clicked shut. Even if it was phrased like an order, it involved a chair. And not even getting hit with one.

“Station X wants you,” Tineye said without preamble. “I’m going to send you there.”

Mateo lit up, even though he tried to stop it. That was the code place, right?

Tineye saw, of course. Mateo didn’t really care. He was already used to Magic Monocle, He Who Knows All and Sees All, and anyway, he was happy to finally get out of here and didn’t care who knew it.

“Ok, sir.” Some of the sneaker guys and him had hit it off, but it was SO WORTH IT to bail.

“There are some security issues to discuss. This is not a holiday. I understand you likely know more, in broad strokes, about the purpose of Station X than anyone else alive today. Certainly more than I do. You cannot talk shop, even in the broadest terms. Especially not in the broadest terms. Not with anyone at Station X. Not with me, not with the Prime Minister if he arrives. Excuses such as being drunk, enamored, or in a supposedly secure location are not acceptable. Even if you let something slip to an honest employee in a secure location, that could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I have deliberately refrained from asking you as to the complete purpose and significance of Station X, because you might tell me something.”

Mateo nodded, feeling chilly. “Yes, sir.”

“You will be swearing to abide by the Official Secrets Act and talk of what you see and do to nobody for the next thirty years, or to your grave, whichever comes first. A grave that, should we suffer a ground invasion thanks to an intelligence leak, will come sooner rather than later. Especially if someone were to consider future knowledge license to assume he knew it all in the present. Do I make myself clear.”

“Really clear, sir.” Mateo swallowed.

“Good. To continue, you are allowed to assist with the current projects — indeed, you are required to do so. But you are not allowed to distract them or attempt to steer them into alternate projects beyond what is currently practical.” He sighed sharply. “It seems very possible from your reactions, even if I have chosen not to ask you directly, that Britain is on the winning side. Even if we suffer in the process that is preferable to future interference that somehow drives us to defeat.”

“I was thinking that,” Mateo admitted. It came out a lot quieter and squeakier than he wanted. As much as he disliked this guy, he wasn’t an idiot, and he wanted to talk about the crazy stupid responsibility of time travel tech consulting with someone who knew national security. The enemy of my enemy and all that stuff.

“Were you.”

“Yes, sir.” He shifted in his chair, frustrated. “But I don’t know if I can change anything. The past has already happened.”

“The past; certainly. We are discussing the present. And it is clear that you can have some effect — you proved that by arriving.”

Mateo sat back. “...huh. Yeah, I guess... It’s such a mess.”

“Yes, it is. It seems reasonable to assume you are unable to effect any change that would prevent you from being born or you would be unable to exist to prevent your own birth. And given that your country is unlikely to suffer an invasion, that seems hardly relevant to the situation at hand.”

“Yeah, but ... sir, what if it’s a stable time loop?” Mateo winced at the laser glare of the monocle. This was the kind of thing you talked about with Avi after a beer, not Freaky National Security Boss. He pushed on anyway. This was too important to phone in. “What if I already changed the past with something I’m going to do? What if my history turned out that way because of something I did and now I’m just ... doing it again?” Or for the first time, maybe. He didn’t have the words to explain what he meant. Tineye caught on anyway.

“In that case, that eliminates decision-making from us both and puts all this entirely in the lap of fate.” He glared. Not a fan of putting things entirely in the lap of fate, apparently. “Mr. Smith-Ramirez, I am going to proceed on the assumption that my actions are deliberately chosen and will have some effect. I expect you to do the same. If we are indeed fate-bound automata in the past relative to your birthtime, then no harm will have been done, assuming even that we could cause any. However, if you do have free will and can affect this time but fail to take this responsibility seriously, then I will personally abandon you to the enemy that you helped with your careless computational theorizing when they make landfall on our shores. I trust this is clear?”

Mateo took a breath.

“Help with vacuum tubes, don’t mess up our guys’ plans even with too much info, act like I have no real clue what Enigma is to anybody, don’t push the timeline around too much. Sir.”

“Good lad,” he said with a smile that Mateo wasn’t a huge fan of, even as he saw where he was coming from. “Dismissed. Go pack. Of your personal effects, you may take your boots, your knife and your shark’s tooth. The rest remains here until the end of the war. You’ll be issued additional civilian clothing before you go.”

Mateo didn’t argue, since that was technically smart, just held back a sigh. “Ok, sir.” Enjoy my Mp3 player, I guess. Except Simon and Garfunkel. Apparently. Weirdo. And he wasn’t wrong — well, about the time travel stuff, anyway. He’d go along with that. Dude was nutso, not stupid, and they both wanted the same win.

That evening Nigel showed up. Mateo was lying on his bed reading the paper, door cracked open to remind himself he could open it.

“Want to go on holiday?” Nigel asked breathlessly.

“Sure. Yes. Let’s go.”

“You’ll need a coat. I’ll put it on my expense report.”

“Really? Thanks. When are we leaving?”

“Tonight.”

“Get out!” he said excitedly, sitting up.

Nigel looked confused until he realized it was an expression. Then he grinned. “You can sleep on the way.”

***

He caught sight of himself in the shiny side of Nigel’s car outside, easy to see at night. It was amazing, he looked so legit. Nigel had set him up with a coat and hat and scarf, and he looked like a reporter from an old movie. A new movie. Nigel had pronounced him ready to go, but Short — who apparently had a better eye for this stuff — had rolled up with a jar of some weird hair oil and insisted he goop it flat to his skull. It did make him look old-school, he couldn’t deny that.

“I gotta say your weird old coats are actually really warm, fine. And they do keep your legs warm.”

Maybe it was national (or temporal) pride, but they’d gotten into a small snit fight about whether ripstop parkas or big wool coats were better.

“I thought so!”

“But they’re way heavier and harder to move around in.”

“You expect me to believe that in sixty years everyone’s going to be wearing brilliant-colored ski jackets to the shops?” Nigel shook his head. He was a lousy nerd dresser, as far as Mateo could tell, but he apparently had some limits.

“Look man, I’m from La Crescent, not New York!”

“I can’t believe it,” Nigel said, getting into the car. “La Crescent, which is across the river from La Crosse. Was the place settled by Crusades enthusiasts? You’re lucky —“ he waited for Mateo to shut his own door “— Tineye didn’t pick you up on that.”

“Well, it’s true! He probably looked it up. Had somebody look it up.”

“Is there a La Om in the next county? How about a La Wheel of Dharma? Men of Minnesota, I perceive you are very religious.”

“Aw, shut up and drive.”

Nigel seemed to be packed to ditch 020 for good as well and just about as relieved about it as Mateo. He had a big suitcase in the back seat. It clanked suspiciously when Mateo put his borrowed army backpack with his few earthly goods in it back there next to it. Nigel didn’t say what he was lugging around and Mateo didn’t ask.

Mateo felt like something would happen as the car approached the wall. Somebody would decide it wasn’t cleared after all, or Nigel would get slapped with some extra task. They’d been worried about the security, that was for sure. He’d been sternly reminded he had no other options as far as countries to bail to. That was true. He wasn’t even a legal American back now. And even if switching sides wasn’t the ultimate in dickweed moves under the circumstances, it’d get him killed. Eventually.

Nothing happened, though. The sneaker guy who whipped him at Texas Hold ‘Em, Derek, was on duty and waved as they drove out.

Really out! He almost started giggling like a total idiot. Outside it was less built up than he expected, some houses but also a lot of trees and open ground. Even at night and hardly able to see anything, he wanted to stick his head out the window like a dog.

“Huh?”

Nigel must have been talking to him for a minute. It’d be polite to look at him, but that would involve not looking at the outside. What he could see of it.

“I said I’m afraid I can’t really tell you where we’re going in terms of location.”

“Smart,” Mateo admitted, too drunk on open air to be too disappointed by anything. Blurs in the dark rolled by, distracting him. They even went through forest for a few hundred yards. “So that’s why we’re going at night?”

“It’s that or black out the windows.”

“Gotcha.”

They drove in silence for a while.

“Oh. Hey.” He turned to look at Nigel’s profile. He was watching the road nervously, made sense with this death trap of a car. “This is important. Message from the future about strategy and all that jazz. I don’t remember the deets, but Turing is going to get in some kind of hardcore legal troubles.” Now that they believed him, he could fudge the truth if he had to. “Might be after the war ends assuming I don’t screw up the timeline somehow. You gotta let him off. He’s not causing anyone any trouble but it‘s going to cause you guys a lot of trouble if he does get in the deep end with the cops. Got it?”

Nigel looked at him sidelong like a spooked horse. Must have been something a little creepy about getting a warning from a time traveler. Mateo had never broken out a weird message like a prophet telling you to repent before you were totally toast instead of just info.

“O-ok. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll talk to Tineye and the captains if I see them before you do — maybe they can find a way to pass it along.” He sighed. “The problem is, we can explain you as an American computing expert, or just another one of the commandant’s information sources. It’s harder to explain to the right people if you start acting like a sybil.”

“What did you call me?” There were so many weird British slang words, he couldn’t keep track of them.

“A seer, a...you know, like those girls from Delphi. A prophet.”

“Oh. Uh. Then maybe just tell Turing to keep a low profile. Warning from a friend with an inside scoop. Really. It’s important.”

Nigel frowned, troubled. “I’ll do what I can,” he promised. “But he’s his own man, you know. He’s hardly a shrinking violet.”

They drove in silence for a while.

“Sorry, no radios allowed in the car,” Nigel said. “Makes it a bit boring.”

“Huh? Oh — oh, it’s fine.” He was entertained enough just looking out the window, and nervous-excited to meet the codebreakers and the old cutting-edge computers. “We call it ‘airgap’ in my time.”

“I’m sorry it took so long to get you out,” Nigel said. He really did sound contrite.

“Not your problem, man.”

“Still.”

“I bet I looked like a paratrooper to guys back now, though.”

Nigel cracked a smile. “You really kind of did.”

He didn’t think about the past or the future, except to ask Nigel how long the drive would be.

“A ... few hours, sorry.”

“Sorry? That’s great!”

“You do like being out and about, don’t you?”

Mateo nodded. “Yeah.” He would have said more, about camping and hiking trips, but that was past and future stuff, and he didn’t want to think about that now.

They couldn’t talk about the route or where they were going, and didn’t really want to talk about war or time travel or computers or anything like that. Chatting defaulted to science stuff that was known to both their times so it didn’t remind them of either. For a while, all they did was lazily bicker over if laminar or turbulent flow looked cooler. Mateo getting distracted at everything he saw out the window didn’t help. History that was old to both of them was fair game too.

“I can say this, I think: southern England still has some Roman roads.”

“No way!”

“Yes...er, way! They’ve mostly been paved over lots over the years.”

“You really know the area.”

“Well, I was born here. And I — I actually worked at Station X — until you turned up. They don’t generally keep computer scientists on call at 020. Until you turned up with ...”

“Weirdass tiny computers.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“I had no idea you weren’t a regular. You seemed pretty settled in.”

Nigel made a face. “Oh, that thing with Richard?”

“I meant your lab work, but sure.”

“Labs work is similar everywhere.” He steered carefully around a curve.

“Get over it,” Mateo said after a minute.

“Over what?”

“The thing with that hothead guy. Yeah, it sucked bigtime but it’s not your fault. Heck, I’m just lucky you and the grunts felt bad for me.”

Nigel looked uncomfortable. Mateo wasn’t sure if it was a Brit thing, or just the whole setup was weird to talk about. He decided to let it drop, change the subject or something.

“I didn’t feel sorry for you,” Nigel said, clearing his throat. Oh boy, Avi was the same way sometimes. You spend all your time being 100% clear with computers, it was bound to leak into how you talked to people. Even people who were willing to let it drop.

“Hey man, it doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, but point of order. I won’t hide information from allies.”

“Ok, fine.”

“I frankly doubt I’d have the stomach for whatever he planned to do next, but I ...” he sighed. “I wanted to give you a good clip around the ear myself. But then, I wasn’t going to, because I couldn’t begin to understand your computers. And if the only way to understand them was being hands-off and tricking you into letting something slip, I was all for it. And while I’m at 020, Tineye is my commanding officer.” He sighed again. “Richard and I were at school together. He’s always been headlong, I suppose. In a hurry. Thinking he knows the best way to do everything himself. I admit I was afraid you might be the spearhead of some highly technological invasion, and I despised you for being part of a force that thinks themselves lords of the earth while playing such an innocent game with us.” He laughed awkwardly. “It made a bit more sense when I found out it wasn’t a game.”

“Who cares why you bailed me out? It worked for me.”

“I suppose that makes some sense.”

“I’d be pissed if somebody was lobbing bombs into Minnesota. I still wanna throw down with this Richard guy though. See how tough he is when I’m not cuffed.”

Nigel glanced sidelong at him. “Very understandable, but maybe ... hold off, just for now?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a job to do.”

They drove on past fields and farms. Probably.

“I could be a lot worse off,” Mateo said after a while. “I could have come out in the Hadean Era. Or the last ice age. Or just in space.”

“Maybe it’s affected by gravity somehow. That would stop you coming out in space.”

“Yeah, maybe. There’s still coming out over the ocean, or so far in the past I couldn’t talk to anyone.”

“Or across the Channel.”

“What’s so bad about France? I could make it work, I speak Spanish.”

“Usually? Nothing’s wrong with France, although as an Englishman I’m not supposed to admit it. At the moment, though...”

“Oh. Right.”

“Yes.”

“...plus side, if Ol’ Three-Eyes is right, they wouldn’t’ve found out anything handy! And not because I’m so tough.”

Nigel made a noise between a laugh and a shudder. “Oh God!”

They drove on for a while.

“You might find this interesting,” Nigel said after a while when Mateo had said he was impressed by how fancy 020 had been from the outside. “Speaking of poshness, there’s another mansion set up for prisoners.”

“Can’t be that posh if they’re locked up,” Mateo said doubtfully. 020 was only fancy if you weren’t in a cell and even then it felt more like Dickens designed an army base.

“Oh, but it can.” Nigel grinned evilly, as much as Mateo could see in the dark of the car. Crazy expression to see on him.

“Oh yeah?” This sounded like a good story for a boring stretch of a road trip.

“Yes, it’s a huge posh mansion calll...it’s a huge posh mansion. There’s a chap called ... —Wallace who runs it, and they keep important prisoners there. Generals and so on.”

“What, they say they have to get locked up somewhere fancy because they’re bigshots?” Mateo couldn’t not rib him about this Brit habit of making over old fancy houses for war stuff.

“Funny you should ask! That’s what they think.”

“Huh?”

“They treat them like absolute kings. Wine and dine them and let them live in the lap of luxury and treat them like honored guests and tell them the king himself wants them treated as generals should be. They certainly don’t keep them in cells. They even get to go out on day trips to the Ritz.”

Not what Mateo was expecting.

“Why? Just because they’re high ranking?” Why the heck was Nigel not embarrassed to tell him that? Was it some sucky British thing, suck up to your fellow big shots even when they were trying to take over the world? He’d thought they were better than that.

In answer, Nigel’s grin got a little wider and a little eviler in the orange glow from his cigarette.

“Because the whole place is bugged. You can’t breathe a word there but it’s listened to around the clock. In the walls, in the furniture, in the potted plants.”

“...dang.”

“And they chat with each other about all the secrets they’re masterfully not revealing to us.” Nigel was starting to crack up. Holy cow. Of course Mr. Hacker Spirit liked it.

“You’re pulling my leg!”

“No! It’s true. They spray state secrets about the place like a fire hose!”

Mateo started to snicker too. “So you’re telling me I could’ve wound up in a mansion instead of a cell?”

“I doubt anyone was going to mistake you for a general, sorry.”

“Ok, fine.”

“If it’s any consolation, I also doubt you’d enjoy the company.” Nigel had to pause to sigh and wipe his eyes. “Would the caviar make up for it?”

“Yeah, ok, nah.”

Even with lousy suspension back now and his excitement, Mateo eventually fell asleep. It was midnight and pitch dark and cold and damp and the big coat made a good blanket. He didn’t wake up until the car stopped.

It was some kind of checkpoint, complete with guys with those weird hunting military rifles, but they let Nigel and him on through after shining some flashlights into the cab (and into his face). Really put the ‘alarm’ into ‘alarm clock.’

“Almost there,” Nigel said as the lights receded on the road — driveway? — behind them.

“Ok. Cool. That’s cool. If this codebreaking thing doesn’t work out you can always be a long-haul trucker.” He yawned, which got Nigel doing it.

“Damn, this is all your fault!” He laughed and yawned again.

Mateo laughed too. “You can sleep in a few, right?”

“Yes—“ another yawn “—true.”

They kept driving, though. This place must have a lot of land. Maybe that’s why they called it Bletchley Park, that had to be what Station X was. A park in the English sense, not like a State Park or something. There were lawns and trees and a lake and stuff, he could barely make out in the foggy dark. There was also the kind of security that would make Air Force One go “ok, dial it back, guys.”

Eventually they slowed down, when the brightening sky was starting to turn the mist gray instead of black. Nigel squared his shoulders.

“Here we are. Remember, American, air force, valve computing advisor, when in doubt keep your mouth shut. Don’t wear your hat indoors. Stop looking surprised by ashtrays. Don’t quote movies that haven’t come out yet — better yet, don’t quote movies at all. Am I missing anything?”

“No, I think that’s it.”

“Anything strange can be chalked up to being an American.”

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