The Gates (Samuel Johnson vs. the Devil #1)(54)

“Not exactly,” said Dr. Planck. “We were trying to discover something of the truth about the nature of the universe.”

“Well, now something has discovered you instead, and the truth is that it doesn’t like any of us. I hope you’re happy.”

“What can we do?” asked Samuel.

“If the phones were working, or I had access to a computer, I could contact CERN,” said Dr. Planck. “Unfortunately, the last I heard they were having troubles of their own.”

“What do you mean?” asked Samuel.

“I got a call on my way to the Abernathys’ house. It seemed that the collider had started up again, and they couldn’t shut it down.”

“Could Mrs. Abernathy have done that?”

“Mrs. Abernathy, or whatever this thing is whose will she is obeying,” Dr. Planck said. “Assuming the two events are linked, then if they can shut the collider down, it should close the portal as well.”

“So all we can do is wait?” asked Mrs. Johnson.

“I’m afraid so.”

“What if they don’t manage to shut it down in time?” asked Maria.

“We’ll just have to hope that they do.”

By now Maria had joined them, and it was she who spoke next.

“It can’t be very stable, though, can it?”

“What?” asked Dr. Planck.

“The portal,” said Maria.

“It’s not,” said Samuel. “The monster under the bed told me as much. He said that Mrs. Abernathy was expending a lot of power keeping it open.”

“Monster under the bed?” said Dr. Planck.

“It’s a long story,” said Samuel.

“I mean, there are only so many possibilities,” Maria continued. “It could be an Einstein-Rosen bridge, but that doesn’t sound likely given its size and duration, or a wormhole of some kind, or even a combination of both. Either way, its stability is dependent on the energy resulting from the explosions in the collider. And there was that wind we felt when we spied on the Abernathy house . . .”

“Wind,” said Dr. Planck thoughtfully. “Yes, I felt it too. It smelt of . . . elsewhere.”

“So perhaps it was coming from the other side of the portal,” said Maria. “But its force wasn’t very strong. You’re the expert, Dr. Planck, but isn’t it true that, in theory, a portal like that would allow only a one-way trip?”

“Well, according to some theories, yes, and assuming the portal was sufficiently stable. It’s to do with the force of gravity,” Dr. Planck added, to a confused-looking Mrs. Johnson, and an even more confused-looking Tom.

“But that kind of force would hurl the travelers out the far side, wouldn’t it?” said Maria. “There should be a howling gale tearing this town apart, but there isn’t.”

“You may be right,” said Professor Planck. “I mean, this is all speculative.”

“So there isn’t that force of gravity,” said Maria.

“It appears not. There’s some, but not sufficient to suggest a perfect balance between gravity and centrifugal force.”

“Then suppose that we collapse it.”

“But how?” asked Dr. Planck. Even as he asked the question, he seemed to come up with an answer, for his face cleared for the first time since he had arrived at the house. Nevertheless, it was Maria who was left to make the suggestion.

“By sending something in the opposite direction,” she said.

“Like two cars meeting on a bridge and destroying themselves, and the bridge,” said Samuel.

“Two cars meeting on a narrow, unstable bridge,” said Maria.

“You know,” said Dr. Planck, “that just might work. The questions are, where do we find our car, and who will drive it?”





XXVII

In Which We Meet Bishop Bernard the Bad at Last, and Constable Peel Enjoys Himself Immensely

OVER AT THE FIG and Parrot, Shan and Gath were having a rare old time. Someone had started playing the piano, and Shan and Gath were doing their best to grunt along to “My Old Man’s a Dustman.” Earlier, someone had sung “Danny Boy,” which, although they had never heard it before, Shan and Gath sensed was a very sad song. It had caused a tear to well up in Gath’s eyes, leading Shan to give him a consoling hug.

“One more for the road?” asked someone, waving a handful of beer vouchers in their faces.

Why, Shan and Gath thought, spying the vouchers, we don’t mind if we do . . .

? ? ?

Reverend Ussher and Mr. Berkeley were in real trouble. In the first place, the risen dead were proving to be a great deal cleverer than skeletons whose brains had rotted and turned to mush centuries before had any right to be. The main windows of the church were set about eight feet above the ground, which made them hard to reach without the aid of a stepladder. In the absence of said stepladder, some of the dead had formed a skeleton pyramid, with three corpses providing support for two further corpses, while a final corpse on top was using one of the stone gargoyles, which was complaining loudly, to break the glass. Two of the small panes had already broken, and Reverend Ussher could see a mouth grinning at him through the gap, a mouth with only a couple of broken black teeth still visible, which said a lot about dental care in olden days.