59. Negligent Discharge

Nothing of historical importance happened the next day, unless you counted Mateo being so giddy from success and lack of sleep that he tried to quote passages from Three Men in a Boat from memory and wound up getting fits of the giggles instead. Maybe that was why he didn’t remember the date.

“Go to bed,” Nigel said.

“I can quit wheneverrrrr I want!”

“Maybe you want to now, then, all right? Come on.”

“Fiiiiine.”

At least he was dead to the world as soon as he sprawled on his bunk like a dead starfish abandoned by a seagull, as opposed to telling everyone about M.P.3. players or something like that. Nigel sighed with relief and went back to Block H.

And on the way over, he realized it was time. It was unlikely Mateo would pull another rabbit out of his hat and anyhow, he deserved a chance to go home. He might have time now to squeeze in a day or two off since they’d hit the mystery deadline. He would go to the Cotswolds and stay in Northwick and see if he could run down another message. And maybe he could nail down some certainty and tell Mateo.

***

In his rare moments of spare time at 020 over the past few years, commandant Stephens had sometimes wondered what had become of their time traveler. He’d vanished into the secretive fastness of Station X and nothing had leaked, which was absolutely essential. But while he would never so much as attempt to work it out, he did sometimes wonder if any of his future knowledge had proved useful to whatever they did there. The devices were still at 020, locked away. Despite his interest, he left them untouched. His focus was required elsewhere.

He had a good grasp of quite a few things the enemy mistakenly believed to be secret, but respected the wise divisions between the various need-to-know operations of his fellow Britons. So it was that the BBC news broadcast on the morning of the 6th caught him as much by surprise as any civilian and drove idle curiosity about the time traveler right out of his head.

At least until he received a telephone call two days later.

“Good morning, sir, this is Corporal Bowyer. I, er, need to speak with you about Drift.”

“Drift?” The timing was suspicious and he was a suspicious man — it had served him well. Had their time traveler done something connected with the great combined landings at Normandy two days before? Bowyer probably didn’t even realize what his timing implied.

“Very well, take the morning train down here tomorrow.”

“The train?”

“Do you imagine I’m going to discuss this over the telephone? Are you free tomorrow?”

“I mean, I can make ti—“

“Excellent. I will see you then.”

He hung up.

***

Bowyer was in civilian clothes, as he had been the first time Stephens saw him, complete with a faintly absurd pale fedora he held before him like a shield. It was inexplicable to Stephens, but boffins would be boffins.

“Sir, the distortion of space-time that Mateo passed through is still ... er, not open, but openable,” he said as soon as the door of the office closed behind him. “I believe that it may be possible to return him to his own time, and that I have a duty to try.”

“You have a duty to put his future knowledge to good use.”

“Yes, sir, and he agrees.”

Stephens could see him pause, searching for how best to describe the situation while keeping the work of Station X appropriately secret.

“But it seems as though he’s ... possibly contributed all that he would be able to contribute at this point. He’s been...ah, very helpful and had some valuable insights. But he’s not an ... it seems that at this point the skills we need are ones he’s far less unique in being able to contribute.” He took a breath. “Also I’m afraid that time may be of the essence. For Mateo, not for Station X.”

“How so?”

“Well, my — my own time is probably going to be shortly very limited again, and ... I get the impression that the gateway to the future is less than a stable, controlled thing. I’m afraid that it may become impassable.”

“You’ve been there?” That hit a clear mark so he followed up with “Have you communicated with Smith-Ramierez’s associates in the future?”

Nigel flinched. A hit, a palpable hit. Then, like the more sensible spies, he decided to make a clean breast of it.

“Yes. I haven’t had much free time, but we’ve exchanged several notes over the past two years. I visited the field on impulse when I was passing through the Cotswolds on the way home from a family visit and found a note.” He sighed shakily. “There seems to be some difficulty with predicting exactly when the gate will open, so they asked me for some dates to calibrate it.”

Which he’d helpfully contributed. Of course. But perhaps that was the correct course of action, or at least the one that carried the least risk. On the one hand, opening a portal from a country with which they had no diplomatic relations (because it didn’t yet, in some sense, exist) was wildly foolish, but on the other hand, simply having a time traveler and his time-traveling devices in the present was an appalling security risk. If he’d contributed to the mysterious work of Station X, let him take his evidence and be gone. And let as few people know of his passage as possible.

“Have you had any success? More saliently, has this student in the future had any success?”

“Some, sir. I think so. I think they need more feedback to calibrate a passage, though.”

Stephens frowned. “Have you told Smith-Ramirez any of this?”

He shook his head. “No, sir. I wanted to ... well, I wanted to know if it had a chance of working before I brought it up. And he ... I didn’t want him leaving while he could assist with the — with the work of Station X and the war effort.” He looked torn, and guilty, and very determined.

“I see. So you find it appropriate to try and return him now.”

“Yes.”

“And the devices he brought with him?”

Bowyer squirmed. “I ... I think them too, sir. At least let him take his money and his bank and identity cards back. Robbing him is hardly a decent reward, and that stuff is no benefit to us.”

“The devices? In your opinion, can they be reverse-engineered?”

“Ahhhh...well, I’m not entirely sure they can be, sir. At least not for some time. Decades, possibly.”

And there was no guarantee that unleashing future technology would benefit British hegemony, let alone security. It might distract scientists and engineers from vital war work, or it might spread wildly, like weeds, to future enemies. Let him bundle his time bombs up and take them back into the future where unremarkability had de-fused them. He’d been a resource; there was no need to risk him becoming a liability despite (or because) of his dedication. And let things be arranged so that future mad scientists stopped opening gates to the future on English soil.

“Very well. Can you secure his personal effects at Station X until you return him to his own time? I advise you to be certain.”

Bowyer paled a little, thought, then nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“And if returning him to his own time turns out to be impossible, you will return them to me so that I can destroy them.”

An actual pause, then “...yes sir.”

***

There was an arrow waiting for him in the field near Northwick. The note on it this time was green, but a completely different colour than the grass around it. It looked less weather-beaten than the previous two. Even while he raced to unpick the selotape, it struck him that the future seemed to have produced entirely new colours.

“Thanks for your help,” the note said. “I think this is working. Give me another date/time?”

He did. He waited for a few hours, but nobody came barreling through the walls of the world to grab the arrow, so he left to walk back down to Northwick. He’d spend the night there and return to the field early the next morning before his train left for Bletchley, although he doubted anything would have changed.

It hadn’t. The arrow was at the same angle, the same colors of notes on it.

“Fine then,” he said aloud, crankily. It was only just now after dawn, and chilly. He had a two-hour walk down to Northwick again, just after his two-hour pre-dawn walk up here. He couldn’t believe Mateo did this for fun. And he wasn’t sure if he could sleep on the train, with Mateo’s personal effects — including the devices — in a haversack.

Then the world ripped open. Not in a line, like cloth, but from a central point like a toy balloon suddenly inflating. It was dark inside the bubble, like the interior of even a brightly lit room seen through a window from outside, and then a fair young woman came hurtling through, stumbled and went to one knee, then reeled upright and seized the arrow. Then she saw Nigel and her eyes got huge, even as she was wheeling to run back.

“Go!” he found himself yelling. “It’s all right!”

She raced back to that distorting bubble, arrow in hand, and hurled herself through. She almost fell on the landing, and was caught hastily by a dark man about Nigel’s age. Both of them were staring out of the bubble at him.

“Is Mat ok?” the man yelled. His voice was slightly and oddly distorted. Not like radio, but how plane engines changed pitch depending on if they were coming towards you or away.

“He’s fine!” Nigel choked out, almost too frozen to speak at the sheer unnaturalness of what this thing was doing to time and space and possibly causality.

“Good! I think I can reduce slipping and then we c—“

The distortion shrank to nothing and vanished.

***

“So glad to see you’re going on a walk after lunch,” Nigel said to Mateo as soon as he laid eyes on him. “Good for the digestion.” He looked nuts. Wow dude, subtle. Please tell me nobody tried to hire you as a spy.

“Yeah, well, it’s warming up a lot,” Mateo said, trying to be normal for two.

A few tea mugs were drifting on the lake when they passed it. Mateo looked but Nigel just blazed on by and headed southwest off the property into the country.

“The wormhole has opened up again,” he said as soon as they were out in the middle of the nearest field.

“It — what?”

“I was in the Cotswolds. I saw —“ he licked his lips and gave it another shot “— I saw it.”

“You saw it?” Mateo vaguely realized he’d grabbed Nigel by the jacket.

“Yes, I — I saw your friends. I think.”

“You WHAT?”

“I ... er — they’re working to get you back.”

“They can’t be,” he said, feeling numb.

“They ...” Nigel sighed and didn’t try to pry him off. “I owe you an apology. I haven’t told you everything.”

Then he told him everything.

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