62. All Circles Presuppose

Nigel wasn’t able to go back to the field until the war ended around a year later. Even then, he had some duties to be carried out before he could take a trip to the Cotswolds.

When he did arrive, Mateo’s campsite was weatherbeaten and nibbled at by animals, but looked to have been abandoned in haste. He could only hope that was a good sign. The copy of Three Men in a Boat he’d taken with him had an improvised calendar penciled on the flyleaf, ending in mid-July. Nigel packed it all up, took the arrow from the future with him, and came away.

It wasn’t as though a war that seemed more like an apocalypse, a secret computer bestriding this narrow battered earth, and a time traveler(!) who’d become like a brother to him could ever be forgotten. But the rest of his life, now that he definitely had one, continued, and even happenings that enormous shrunk, over time, in relative size.

There were deaths and births, grief and joy and quite a lot of ordinary days. A string of dogs and a few cats, days spent with his sister’s children, slowly increasing rations, political shifts, rebuilding, train delays, rain, sun, the threat of nuclear annihilation, a wrangle with the post office over a delayed package, Christmases and Bonfire Nights.

There was another degree in mathematics for good measure, and to his astonishment, a serious romance — it turned out another former codebreaker could be very tolerant of his tendency to neglect affairs of the heart in favor of affairs of the brain, and his fondness for privacy and discretion — then a leap into working with computers as they came back on the scene, one that turned out to be a career.

Politics washed back and forth across the globe, bringing peace to some and misery to others. Medicine improved, as did weapons, and computers slowly began to shrink. The world went mad for four lads sounding like they were half-out of a music hall act and half out of an American rock-and-roll group. Sometimes, as he was making the journey well along into middle age, some errant brand new song would sound hauntingly familiar. Once he caught himself singing along with one that was supposedly receiving radio play for the first time that morning.

Food became more varied, travel more common. The Empire had failed like so many empires before, but the little Island endured, and so did he. Nobody built Jerusalem, but maybe green and pleasant was an achievable goal.

He bought a personal computer as soon as that miracle came to pass, then another, then spent happy months failing at linking them together, and eventually succeeding, doubling the processing power. Thirty years had passed since his wartime career by then, so he was able to answer “What’s so funny?” when parallel processing came up in the discussion of the build. He bought a cell phone.

The new millennium came around, a very fine New Year’s party indeed, new wars in the Near East as the world re-adjusted to the new balance of empires after the end of the Cold War, a wonderful trip to Scotland, the wrenching proof in 2004 that his romance had indeed been the ‘til-death-do-us-part kind.

In the fall of 2006, he got a call with an American dialing code.

He picked up. “Hullo?”

“Uh, hey,” said an impossibly distantly familiar voice. “Is this, uh...” — a drawn breath — “...Nigel Bowyer?”

***

Nigel drove to Heathrow that winter to meet him. His height was less remarkable now, but Nigel caught sight of the wavy tufts of dark hair just over the heads of the crowd of passengers entering the terminal before he came into view. He was wearing dark jeans in the modern cut, a brown jacket and — yes. A Minnesota Vikings t-shirt, bright purple, with that yellow-mustached warrior. And those boots.

He was still scanning the crowd uncertainly, clearly not having spotted Nigel yet. He’d told him he’d be wearing a cream-coloured cap over the telephone, and Mateo had been amused.

“Hey! Mateo!”

His head came around, without any sign of real recognition on his face, although he noticed the cap. He walked over through the crowd, but looked uncertain. Heavens, he looked so young. Like a great-nephew. It seemed impossible that this was really him.

He saw the same bewildered uncertainty he was feeling written on the young man’s face.

“...uh, excuse me,” he began, with such an instinctive respect for an aged stranger that it crossed any number of wires in Nigel’s head.

“No, no, no, this won’t do. We need a proof-of-identity protocol or we’ll both be driven mad. Aha, you’re about to politely say no, that’s fine, but no, because we both want one.”

The young man shut his mouth.

“Here, let me offer you your private key. This is very NP indeed, I think.” He lowered his voice a little and leaned in. “Bite me, three-eyes.”

The young man startled — such a Mateo expression, it punched through the years like a bullet through tissue paper — and then hugged him fiercely. He was laughing. Nigel hugged him as fiercely back. The crowd flowed on around them, ignoring another airport reunion.

Eventually he held Mateo at arm’s length to look at him. Wildly, unnaturally young, yes, get beyond that. Think back. No, further back. He looked tanned, not so thin, hair longer and wilder and cut like a footballer’s.

“You made it back.”

“I made it back.” He ducked his head to rub his face vigorously with both hands. “Oh man. It’s been a minute. Dang.”

“Why don’t we head on back to the house.”

***

“Go on,” said the old guy — Nigel. “I can see you thinking it.”

They were sitting in his living room. It wasn’t hoardery or anything, but it looked like a place somebody had been living for a long time and had kind of settled into. It was a mix of techy — some kind of half-done soldering job taking up half of the kitchen table that he and his grand-niece were working on — and old person, old furniture and photos of tons of people, a whole life that felt like it happened in a year and a half from Mateo’s point of view. He had to keep reminding himself that Nigel hadn’t been ripped off, he’d lived a whole solid long life with no fast-forwarding.

“Uh...”

“Go on.”

“Dang man, you’re so old!” He shook his head.

“I seem to remember you telling me to live to be old.” He grinned.

“I know! I have to keep telling myself you lived through all ... this!” Mateo waved a hand at the rows of photos. “Like, you didn’t just zap ahead in a year.”

“Heavens. It really has been ... when did you get back?”

“November 2005.” He looked up and saw Colette’s arrow jammed into the wall where it met the ceiling. The post-it notes and tape were yellowed. Nigel looked too, then back at his tea.

“November 2005. So you saw me last two years ago.”

“Yeah.” Mateo shook a little like a wet dog. “Wild.”

“I’m so glad you made it, you old devil.”

“I’m so glad you made it.” Mateo grinned, and Nigel answered with his kinda crazy one, like when he’d wanted to touch a hot vacuum tube. And it was him, it was so him, and he was getting to see him again.

“Dang man, it’s so good to see you.”

Nigel gave him a slantwise grin. “Worried to look me up?”

“Ok, a little. I mean, a lot can happen in sixty years!”

“A lot did happen.” Nigel was definitely yanking his chain.

“You know what I mean!”

Nigel laughed. “I do.” Then he got a little serious.

“Did you ever try to find out what became of your girlfriend?”

Mateo winced.

“Sorry, I —“

“No, no, it’s ok. Yeah, Colette looked her up. The one with the arrows.” He pointed at the arrow stuck in the wall. “She’s an archivist. She actually found me, while I was stuck in the past. That’s how Avi was able to dial things in. Too many factors to brute-force.”

“Ah!”

“Yeah, she found my code name in some archives that got declassified in the 80s and took a guess.”

“Remarkable. She’s a very fast runner, too.”

“Oh yeah! Wow. You’ve seen her.”

Nigel nodded. “She’s a time traveler too, I suppose.”

Mateo sighed, and there was silence for a minute aside from the clock ticking and the hum of a bunch of computers upstairs, Nigel had told him.

“Well, she — Nia, I mean — she died two years ago.”

“I’m so sorry, I know you w—“

“No, no, don’t be. She was ...” He rubbed his face again. “She was old, and I think she had a happy life. It’s just...weird.”

“The weirdest.” Nigel paused, respectfully. “What became of her?”

“Uh, left the Navy after the war, moved back home to Wales, married a musician, got a job as a CPA. Designed crosswords for the paper.”

“Mm.”

“...I’d pour one out but I don’t think your carpet would be better off for it.”

“I suppose not.”

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

“So, did you change — I mean, was your time — this time — that you went back to different than what you remember leaving?” Nigel said.

Mateo hesitated.

“Maybe. I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure I remember the war lasting longer in Europe than in Asia.”

Nigel straightened up.

“Really?”

“Hey, man, you ... you know I wasn’t great at remembering historical stuff. Maybe I just messed up which was first in my own head.”

“Maybe,” Nigel said. “Anything else?”

“I don’t remember some weird Fifties pocket calculator that Avi apparently wouldn’t shut up about in our senior year of high school, but that might just be that nobody can keep up with all the stuff Avi knows.”

“The Curta?” Nigel looked a little thoughtful and maybe a little spooked.

“Yeah! Has everybody heard of this thing but me?”

“Well, I have one. I bought one when they first came out. Hold on, I’ll get it.”

They wound up dorking around with the thing for an hour. It was beautiful.

“Wow,” Mateo mumbled, still turning it over really gently in his hands. “Look at it.”

“Totally sick, I think you would say.”

Mateo laughed. “Man, that is so weird to hear from you!”

“It is, though. You can’t deny it.”

“I can’t.”

“Well, let’s have some dinner,” Nigel said. “I’m starved. Finally I can offer you some decent food. I believe you asked about spotted dick and toad in the hole last time we met.”

“Wait. That first one was real?”

“It’s an old word for pudding.” Nigel was pulling his leg and pulling it real hard, but he was doing to by telling the honest truth, which was just cheating. “I notice you don’t doubt toad in the hole.”

“Yeah, because I asked about that one!”

“But not the other.”

“I was like 99% sure it was fake and I was scared to ask.”

“Wise. If it helps, it’s just steamed pudding with raisins in.”

Mateo grinned. “And you made them both.”

“Well yes, it was too good to pass up.”

Dinner was good. He couldn’t deny it. It was a lot like the food from last y—sixty years ago, but a lot better.

“So you were missing for three months,” Nigel said eventually. “What did people say?”

Mateo made a face. “My parents freaked. Of course.”

Nigel winced. “What did you tell them?”

So did Mateo. “The truth. I uh, I told my bosses and everybody else I was on my way to hike in a park across the border and got in a car wreck while I was in Canada. You know, that I got a head injury and stuff so I wasn’t able to call them, and they didn’t find my ID at first because I’d stashed it someplace weird in my van and was walking when I got hit.”

Nigel sucked some air between his teeth.

“They believed it?”

Mateo nodded. “I said Canada because I didn’t want to get my job insurance involved. I know it’s kinda crazy, but I’d never lied to them before so they bought it.”

“So you didn’t get sacked?”

Mateo shook his head. “No. I’m cool. Coming back like twenty pounds lighter helped sell it.”

Nigel gave him a twisted grin. “Ouch. You’re welcome, I guess.” Then he got serious.

“Your parents believed it?”

Mateo nodded, looking at his plate. “We...showed them.”

“The wormhole? Er, are we on the edge of some brand-new time-traveling era, where our bosses will want us in the office before we left?”

“Ahaha, no, I sure don’t think so. Avi hasn’t been able to open it since, uh, December of last year. And it was getting less and less stable before that. He’s thinking it was basically just a really weird freak accident, like yelling setting off an avalanche. Like maybe the earth was passing through some weird region of space with a lot of negative energy, who knows what.”

“Maybe it’s just as well.”

“Maybe so. I guess it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, because it’s not happening now. So long as nothing weird happens with CERN.”

They sat there a minute.

“Were you jet-lagged?” Nigel wanted to know.

“You bet. I came through at night, I guess around eight local time. ...I guess I was just lucky I came out around the same local time the first time I came through.”

“Hm. If you can call that lucky.”

“Well, it kept me from freaking out hardcore for a few hours, hah.” It felt like afternoon to him now, but it was good and dark outside.

“You’ve never seen London, have you?” Nigel asked.

“Nah, unless you count the trip from the airport to your place.”

“I hardly think that counts. I’ll get to show you around, then, tomorrow.”

“That would be great,” Mateo said, and meant it. “The biggest city I’ve ever been to was Minneapolis. I’m looking forward to it.”

“It’s about time we went out on the town, isn’t it? And now we can talk about any computers we like.”

Mateo laughed, then remembered.

“Oh, hang on! I brought you something.”

He jogged upstairs to the spare room under the eaves where his backpack was — his backpack and a bunch of junked computers Nigel was playing with, spread neatly out on a workbench by the window — dug around in an inner zippered pocket, and jogged back downstairs.

“Here. I dunno if you’ve already got one, since you’re such a gadgeteer, and I guess maybe you like different music now than you did then, but— I guess you can just use the charging cable it came with, this time, instead of making one.” He held out the Mp3 player.

Even though it couldn’t have been new to him now, Nigel handled it with the same wonder he had back in the makeshift lab at 020. His eyes shone, and it was the same shine.

“Well. Let’s hope I can offer you better hospitality in trade now than then.”

“Dude. You maxed out both times.”

Trying to fall asleep and hurry up and get on GMT that night in the spare room bed, Mateo could see the parts on the workbench outlined in the glow from the streetlights outside. Hi guys, I knew your granddad.

He did fall asleep eventually and dreamed about Nigel working on strings of binary code on a back porch of a mountain cabin in the Driftless. He couldn’t tell if it was years ago, or now, or in the future. They were all so old and so young, like the spring coming around again every year, changing while staying the same thing, reaching forward into the future and backward into the past.