Coldbrook(101)

‘As we did with you,’ Jonah said.

Drake nodded.

‘This breach into your world,’ Jonah said. ‘Something came through.’

‘We knew what it was. We’d been casting for ten years by then. The breach was half a mile from Coldbrook, and the army guarded it. It all went military very quickly.’

‘We should have guarded our Coldbrook better,’ Holly said, but Drake shook his head.

‘It would have made no difference. The breach remained static for almost a year. My father and his team experimented, sending in drones, animals. But it was solid, like a mirror. Everything I’ve read and the memory casts I’ve viewed . . . everyone thought it was benign. They built a structure to encase it, and closed it off from view. And then the fury came through. Chaos found a way’

‘It’s still there?’ Holly asked. ‘Their breach?’

‘Sealed up.’ Drake nodded.

‘And you never tried to go through?’ Jonah asked.

‘No,’ Drake said. ‘My father saw no point.’

‘So the Inquisitor,’ Jonah said, trying to take it all in, trying to absorb the end of everything when Coldbrook was always meant to be the beginning of something wonderful. ‘He spreads the plague?’

‘No, no,’ Drake replied. ‘There’s not one Inquisitor, but many. They oversee the spread, record it, and recruit a new Inquisitor for every world killed.’

‘And that means we now have a chance to fight back,’ Moira said.

‘But how do you know all this is true?’ Holly asked.

Drake sighed. ‘It’s largely conjecture. But maybe now we’ll have the chance to test.’ For the first time he looked away from Jonah as he spoke. To Jonah, that didn’t bode well.

‘The woman,’ Jonah said. ‘The diaries.’

‘Her name was Kathryn Coldbrook,’ Drake said. ‘My father worked with her fifty years ago, just after she and her organisation had performed the first casting through the veils. The casters became very famous.’ He snorted. ‘I have her biography. Our world was open to wonder back then, so my father told me. Receptive to it.’

‘Not cynical,’ Holly said.

‘Well, I think we’d barely be human without healthy cynicism,’ Drake said. ‘I don’t think Kathryn was a very nice woman. Father told me she was an unpleasant genius – single-minded, arrogant, and didn’t suffer fools gladly.’

Holly glanced at Jonah, one corner of her mouth turned up. He raised an eyebrow.

‘But she was brilliant,’ Drake continued. ‘My father worshipped her memory, and he must have read her diary a hundred times. The experiments, the celebration when they made their first cast. The Inquisitor visiting her. That came over as a madness, of course, but now we know better.’

‘She’s viewed as a monster now,’ Moira said. Jonah was taken aback by such a comment, and surprised at some of their almost mystical phraseology – veils, monsters.

‘That’s not her fault,’ Drake said. ‘Understand, this is all gleaned from her diaries, with plenty of guesswork thrown in. But my father always said Kathryn had a unique mind. He said she was able to embrace the imagination in her scientific studies. She was even . . .’ He frowned.

‘She had faith,’ Moira sneered, as if the word tasted foul. Jonah thought that he would have to ask about that.

‘Maybe that made it easier for the bastard thing to take her,’ Drake said. ‘I’ve always wondered. Though she was a woman of science, she was also a slave to mysticism.’

‘So what the hell is that thing haunting me?’ Jonah said.

‘Someone who perhaps has a sense of humour. Your world had the Spanish Inquisition?’

Jonah nodded.

‘We believe that they are Inquisitors of the multiverse, from a version of Earth so thoroughly obsessed by and convinced of their own exclusive holiness that they cannot allow any other.’

‘Cannot allow?’ Jonah said.

‘Maybe they found the fury disease in one reality, grasped its potential, and encouraged its spread,’ Drake continued. ‘Or maybe they conceived and released it themselves. Nurtured it from world to world to destroy everyone not of their Earth.’

‘That’s . . .’ Holly shook her head.

‘Genocide,’ Jonah said.

‘Billions killed across the multiverse,’ Drake said. ‘Trillions. Beyond counting. Infected, and waiting to rise again to attack those not infected. Every Earth explores, and when they break through to what they think will be somewhere similar they find furies.’

‘And there aren’t many worlds still holding out,’ Moira said.

‘Yours is!’ Jonah said. ‘Forty years you’ve been surviving, and—’

‘You can hardly call it surviving,’ Drake said, his composure slipping. ‘It’s barely existing.’

‘You said we might be able to fight back,’ Holly said. ‘What did you mean? How can you defeat something that’s already won?’

‘Kathyrn Coldbrook’s diaries,’ Drake said. ‘She sensed something observing her even before she and my father succeeded with their first casting. In later entries she reveals her belief that her Inquisitor guided her towards success, though not quite the success he intended. And following our eventual infection he courted her, preying on her guilt with nightmare images that she noted in her diary. Some of which you might recognise, Jonah, were you to read it.’