60. If God Wills, This Time Tomorrow

Mateo realized he was gripping Nigel’s jacket pretty hard and Nigel hadn’t been speaking for a while, and he was looking pretty scared but also pretty tough, in a weird nerd way. Like he expected Mateo to hit him but also thought maybe he deserved it, so he’d just stand there and take it.

Mateo let go. His fingers were a little cramped up, like he’d been carrying grocery bags.

“So you knew about this for ... what, two years?” His throat felt clogged up. He wasn’t sure if he was angry or about to laugh or cry or what.

“I’m really sorry, I ... I knew it was a possibility for two years. I was trying to help your friend calibrate the wormhole, when — when I could get away and go to the Cotswolds. I wanted to make sure before I told you. And —“ Nigel took a breath “—I thought maybe Station X needed you.”

He still wasn’t ruling out getting punched and he still hadn’t tried to back away.

“I understand if this makes no difference, but I went to the Cotswolds the day after ... the machine produced a serious effect. And then I told you the day after that, now that I have a real reason to believe it might work.”

Mateo put his hands over his face. Things were moving just a little too fast for a normal person to keep up. He sat down in the grass. Was he angry? He wasn’t sure. He did know he’d’ve probably acted just about like Nigel if they’d been in opposite spots. Did it matter? He might get to go home.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Thanks?” Nigel said like he didn’t believe it.

“Well —“ he kind of laughed. “— I might be hacked at you too. I haven’t decided yet.” He laughed again, at least he was pretty sure that’s what that was. Then he scrambled up and hugged Nigel, who really wasn’t expecting that and froze up like a deer on the highway.

Mateo let go. “Ahaha, sorry, call it a weird future American thing —“

“Not at all,” Nigel said, all intense, patting him on the shoulders. “You’re a soldier getting to go home. You’ve every right.”

“Oh man. I have to break up with Nia.”

Nigel flinched. “Are you ... are you very serious with her?”

Mateo groaned. “I mean ... kind of. But I think we both were planning on dating just while we both worked here and then we’d figure out what happened later ... later.”

“So you weren’t ... planning to get engaged or anything?”

Mateo shook his head. “If anything serious was gonna happen, it was gonna happen after she was off active duty. I mean, we’re both kind of married to Colossus and just fooling around on the side.” He still felt lowkey like he was going to black out. He must have looked like it too, because Nigel started to reach towards him for a sec like he was afraid he’d fall over.

“...what’re we gonna tell the bosses?”

Nigel shrugged. “Your air force wants you back. At least Flowers left to work on ... something else.”

“You won’t get in trouble, man?”

“No. I went and picked up your stuff, too.”

“You went back to Monocle Man?!”

“He doesn’t actually bite. ...I’m almost sure, anyway. Anyhow, he’s all for a weird secret like you packing up your weird secrets and going home.”

Mateo hugged him again. He couldn’t help it.

***

Nia took it well, he guessed. She’d been kind of expecting him to get shuffled around by military stuff so she wasn’t really surprised and didn’t take it personally. She did discreetly pull him behind some trees by the lake to take a minute to kiss him goodbye, which was A. great and B. messed him up a little. Not because of her, but just because time travel was a real jerk that messed with your head.

“I’m gonna miss you so bad.” He wound up kind of mumbling it into her hair.

“Well, I’ll never have a message tape snag but I’ll think of you.”

“Well, geez, thanks a lot.”

She laughed, a little weird sounding, but she made him laugh too.

“That aside, I’m glad we met.”

“Me too.”

The bosses were ok to deal with. If the US air force wanted him, well, he had to go. No spilling, though. Not for thirty years minimum.

Anyhow, it was a week later that he was on a train with Nigel, heading for the Cotswolds. His stuff was in a backpack between his feet, and they took turns sleeping so they could watch it. Mateo hadn’t looked inside the cloth bag at the bottom of it that held his future stuff. Nigel had told him he’d charged both devices, then took the batteries out so nothing would run down or send off radio signals, and taken apart the charging cables he built.

On the train they didn’t talk about it, or in the farm cart they managed to hitch a ride in up to Northwick from the town with the train station. Mateo brought some extra stuff with him, bought closer to Bletchley. He might have to camp out for a while in the field. Neither of them said it might be years or just might not happen.

They walked together up to the field. Nigel could have skipped the hike, but he said he was coming and Mateo didn’t argue.

They didn’t really say anything the whole way. Birds sang in those weird dense hedges, the sky was blue, and it was almost hot. They went down little trails through bands of forest and patches of little flowers, white and purple and gold, and the land got hillier.

They stopped in the field.

“Really?” Mateo said. “You saw them?”

Nigel nodded, eyes a little big. “I spoke to them.”

“You wh— hey! Hey! That’s one of —“ He went racing over to the arrow. “These are — these are post-it notes! Nigel! Man! These are post-it notes! Oh God, it’s real, it’s really real!”

“The purple one is new! Let me see it!”

It was Avi’s handwriting. Mateo had to stop and squeeze his eyes shut. Then he could get a grip, and read:

“To M’s friend: I think I can open the gate some time within the next three months on your end. Please be ready. I’m getting lower energy readings. Thanks again for all your help.”

“Oh God.” It wasn’t swearing.

“You’re going home, then,” he eventually heard Nigel say. “Let’s get your stuff set up. There’s an old farm well about two hundred yards that way. It’s been boarded over, but it seems clean enough. You might be able to buy food from the surrounding farms when your supply runs out if it does before you can get home. If not, I suppose you’ll have to go down into Northwick. And never, never, never leave your haversack unattended.”

Mateo managed to pull himself together and nod. “I’ll sleep on top of it and I won’t put the batteries back in until — unless — yeah.”

“I’ll come back in three months and collect whatever you leave behind,” Nigel said tightly.

Mateo nodded.

“If I make it back, I’ll look you up, ok? You gotta live to be old, ok man? Stop smoking and don’t get murdered by sickos, ok?”

Nigel gave him a weird but real smile.

“The former I can’t promise, but the latter seems increasingly unlikely these days.”

They stood there for a while. A few birds wheeled overhead and then flew off to do bird stuff.

“Well...” Mateo said.

Nigel nodded tightly.

“Well, I suppose...this is it. Good luck, then.” He stuck out a hand.

Mateo was glad he did, because he couldn’t talk for a sec. He gripped his hand and patted him on the back with his free hand, and after a moment of cross-cultural fumbling, Nigel did the same. Then he walked away, and Mateo watched him until he was out of sight.

***

He set up his campsite. A canvas groundsheet, and a kind-of tent folded over a central rope and pegged down, like in a cartoon. Food rigged up in a tree — he didn’t know what kind of animals there were out here, but old habits died hard — and the matches and stuff that needed to stay dry in a bag in the tent. His future stuff was by itself in his borrowed army backpack — all the clothes he’d landed in, smelling clean but a little musty since he hadn’t worn them since leaving 020, his wallet with all the cash and cards, the miscellaneous junk from his pockets, and a tightly sealed raincoat-fabric bag that held his little computers. The boots he wore, like he had been, off and on, for the past two years. He’d be ready to grab all that stuff he couldn’t leave and jump through if the wormhole really showed.

The first night he didn’t sleep at all. The second night was better, mostly because he was just tired. Going and getting more water was scary, but he couldn’t just not drink for three days, let alone three months. He filled up some buckets and kept them in the tent, but still. He tried to go easy on the food, so he’d need as few refills as possible. And every little sound woke him up.

June ended. He kept track of the days with a pencil in the front of a book he’d brought. They were getting into mid-July. That didn’t mean they weren’t able to open the wormhole, he reminded himself. He’d barely been here a month and a half. Avi had to be guessing, it wasn’t like you could measure this stuff, not really.

The next week it rained. Not thunderstorms, thank goodness. Not even really hard rain. But mist and haze and enough to keep him mostly in his tent. It stayed dry better than he expected. He stayed in his bedroll and read and napped a lot, trying to put off when he’d run out of food and have to leave the field to go buy more. At least he could get some good out of it by leaving a water bucket where the rain ran off the tent roof.

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