by Glenn Cooper
“Too fantastic for words,” the prime minister muttered.
“In any event,” Emily said, “Dr. Loomis insisted he knew how to solve the problem.”
“And?” the deputy prime minister said.
“Unfortunately we were separated before he could tell us.”
“Well that’s no bloody help, is it?” the home secretary said.
“No, it isn’t,” Emily said.
“We’re prepared to go back and find him,” John said. “And while we’re there we can try to rescue as many people as possible.”
“But that would mean firing up the collider again,” the prime minister said. “That sounds most unwise.”
“My son is over there!” Slaine thundered.
“Jeremy yes, I’m sorry. We’re making no decisions today. You’ll appreciate we have to take into account the safety of not only your son and his schoolmates but potentially millions of people.”
“Dr. Loughty, as soon as you get some rest and a meal, I’d like you to liaise with scientific colleagues in Geneva and elsewhere and keep me informed.”
“Of course.”
“Now, what instructions should we give the populace?” the prime minister asked. “How much can we and should we say? This is more than an issue of public safety. We have matters of faith and spirituality to consider. We may be speaking about physics and extra dimensions but we also have fundamental religious matters at play. Surely we’ll need to consult with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Vatican, Muslim, and Jewish leaders. Craig,” he said to the deputy prime minister, “please lead this discussion until I return. President Jackson is standing by at the White House for a briefing.”
“We wouldn’t be in the soup if they’d built the bloody thing in America,” Slaine said bitterly.
On his way out the prime minister placed his hand on Slaine’s shoulder and said, “Yes, Jeremy, you’re certainly right about that.”
3
Thomas Cromwell, faithful advisor to King Henry VIII in life and in death, could only stare in disbelief.
It wasn’t the gaggle of blinking strangers a hundred paces away that seized his attention. It was one small item, a knife lying in the muddy road. An instant earlier, John Camp had been holding that knife to his monarch’s throat and now Henry was gone, along with Camp and his entire party of Earthers.
Duck was the first to speak. He cried to his brother, Dirk, “My Delia’s gone! And the children. All of them, gone.”
“Well, it’s best for them,” Dirk said. “They were in for it. You don’t take the king prisoner and hope to be spared. But that load of new ’uns over there. They’re up shyte’s creek.”
A moment earlier, Solomon Wisdom had been worried that an angry John Camp would demand his head in exchange for his treachery but now he seemed intent on his next challenge. He greedily eyed the strangers and muttered to himself that in the presence of Cromwell there was no way to monetize the rich bounty of all these new arrivals.
“Seize them!” Cromwell ordered, and the soldiers slopped double-time down the muddy road, brandishing swords and pistols.
The gaggle of bewildered MAAC employees and their VIP guests were too scared to do anything but stand fast. There were twenty-five of them. The men had fared better than the eight women as to clothing. Although they were missing plastic buttons and metal zips they could keep their modesty intact by holding onto jeans or suit trousers with both hands. The women with skirts had to choose whether to hold them up or clutch their blouses until they figured out how to do both with one hand on each garment. Some of them looked for missing eyeglasses and one young man said something about a painful hole in one of his teeth.
With the soldiers fast approaching, Stuart Binford, the head of public relations for the laboratory managed to say, “Are we where I think we are?”
Leroy Bitterman, the US energy secretary, looked down at his ample belly spilling from his open shirt and suit vest and said, “I’m afraid so.”
Karen Smithwick, the UK secretary of state for energy, reached for her absent necklace before realizing her bra was open. She grabbed at her silk blouse and began to cry. Bitterman used his free hand to touch her on the shoulder.
The captain of the guard, seeing that there would be no fight from this lot, ordered his men to surround them.
“Who is your leader?” he shouted.
The senior members exchanged glances. George Lawrence, the head of MI5 and Campbell Bates, the American FBI director, both hoary men, were about to claim the mantle when Anthony Trotter, the assistant chief of MI6 and acting head of the MAAC, declared that he was. As he did so he felt in vain for the pistol he always carried in a shoulder holster.
A leering young soldier got too close to Brenda, one of the female technicians prompting her to cry out in alarm. David Laurent, a French senior scientist, protectively stepped in and the soldier cocked his pistol.
Trotter addressed the captain pugnaciously, “Don’t you dare touch any of my people. Do you understand? Are you the man in charge here?”
Cromwell was making his way through the mud. He called out, “I am. What is your name, sir?”
“Anthony Trotter. Secret Intelligence Service.”
“Are all of you among the living?” Cromwell asked.
“Well I hope we are,” Trotter said.
Cromwell drew up close enough for the two men to sniff each other’s respective aromas. “No, you do not appear to be dead,” he said. “What manner of enterprise is the Secret Intelligence Service?” he asked.
“I work for the crown,” Trotter said. “I am responsible for collecting intelligence on her majesty’s enemies.”
“You are a spy?”
“You might call me that.”
“Are all of you spies?”
“Only these two,” Trotter said, pointing at Bates and Lawrence. “The rest are scientists.” He looked down his nose at Smithwick and added, “Well, most of them.”
“Are you compatriots of John Camp and Emily Loughty?” Cromwell asked.
“We are. And who are you?” Trotter asked.
Cromwell raised his voice. “I have not finished my questions. Where is the king? What have you done with him?”
Trotter thrust out his chin but it was difficult to act the hard man with both hands engaged in holding up trousers. “We haven’t done anything with your king but if he’s missing then I expect he’s been caught up in all of this. He’s probably where we’ve just come from.”
“This would be King Henry the Eighth I presume,” Bitterman said.
“And you are?” Cromwell asked.
“One of the scientists, I suppose,” Bitterman said, “an old one.”
“You have an odd accent, like that of John Camp.”
“I’m an American too. Was Camp here?”
“He was but he is no longer.”
“And Emily Loughty?”
“She, as well. How do you know of King Henry?”
“When Camp returned a month ago he gave a full report,” Bitterman said.
“Tell me, scientist,” Cromwell said, “can you return our monarch to us?”
“I’ll be completely honest with you,” Bitterman said. “I don’t know. Most of the experts who would be working on the problem are standing in front of you. I expect our governments will try to work out a way to get us back and return your king. Right now, we’re all pretty scared. I’m not ashamed to tell you that. We’re at your mercy.”
Cromwell nodded and said more gently, “Thomas Cromwell.”
“Sorry?” Trotter said.
“I am Thomas Cromwell,” counselor to the king.
“How extraordinary,” Lawrence said. “When I was at university I fancied myself a bit of a Tudor scholar. I almost feel I know you.”
Cromwell permitted himself a thin smile. “What will they do with the king?”
Lawrence said, “I’m quite sure he’ll be treated with the utmost respect and care, although I’m sure he’ll be as sh
ocked and confused as we are.”
Cromwell took his captain aside and the two men discussed how they were going to transport all these people. The soldier dispatched some of his men to commandeer wagons and horses from Dartford and surrounding villages. In the meantime Cromwell bellowed at the curious villagers to bring out benches or chairs for the women and older men and while they were at it, wine and beer.
Duck and Dirk, ran inside their cottage and carried out all their chairs and Dirk reluctantly lugged out his barrel of ale he had brewed for John Camp.
“They’ll find it anyway,” he groused to Duck. “Don’t want to lose my ’ead.”
“I’ll help you make another cask,” Duck said. “Anyways, I feel bad for ’em. Especially the molls. It’s a frightening thing to get flung into a new world, believe you me.”
Henry Quint had lost a loafer in the mud and he dug it out with his hand. He came over to Trotter who was in whispered conversation with Bitterman, Lawrence, Smithwick, and Bates.
“Can I help you with something?” Trotter said testily.
“Whatever you’re planning, I thought I could be of assistance,” Quint replied.
“You’ve done enough,” Trotter said, spitting venom. “You’re the reason we’re in the muck. And by the way, you only have yourself to blame for being here today. I wanted you banished from the lab but Dr. Bitterman insisted we keep you on.”
Bitterman fingered his beard and said, “In science, you never know where the next good idea is going to come from. Henry was wrong to exceed the collider’s energy parameters but he’s an able physicist. He made a mistake.”
“It was more than a mistake. It was a goddamn calamity,” Bates said.
“I’ve done my mea culpas,” Quint said. “If you want me to go away, just say so.”
“Right, sod off,” Trotter said. “The grown-ups are talking.”
“For Christ’s sake, Anthony,” Lawrence said. “We don’t need any childish tiffs. We’re all in this together. Stay, Dr. Quint. We were just talking about our options.”
“I think our options are fairly limited,” Bitterman said. “We’re not fighters. We can’t resist. These are armed men.”
“We need to remain here,” Quint said. “When they power up the MAAC again, this is where the portal will be.”
Bates, a tall patrician-like American in his sixties with fine snowy hair and sunken cheeks, was about to say something when an insect buzzed his head. He swatted at it with both hands and his trousers promptly slid down his bony frame, taking his unelastized boxer shorts with them. Some of the soldiers pointed and laughed at his exposed genitals and Karen Smithwick looked away. Bates swore at the indignity and pulled himself together. “How are they going to do that?” he said. “The entire group of operating technicians is here.”
“They’ll bring in people from Geneva, from the Large Hadron Collider,” Quint said. “We were going to merge operations anyway. They know how MAAC works.”
“They’d be fools to do it,” Trotter said. “My recommendation was to shut the bastard down. They didn’t listen and now we’re here. They’ll listen now.”
“You don’t imagine they’re going to abandon us, do you?” Lawrence asked. Before taking the position as director of MI5 he had been the head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service and he still had the clipped speech of a copper giving a report.
“They won’t know what to do,” Smithwick said. “The prime minister will be cautious. He’ll convene a Cobra meeting. He’ll weigh all the options.”
“If you were there, what would you be advising him?” Bitterman asked.
“I really don’t know,” she replied stiffly.
“I’d say it depends on factors we’re unaware of,” Quint said. “Every time the collider’s been reactivated, the problem’s gotten worse with more point-of-contact nodes popping up. If there are more of them today then maybe Trotter’s right. Maybe they’ll shut it down for good and we’ll be trapped here forever. But if the nodes are stable then they’ll try to get us back. At least I hope so. But we’ll have no idea of when they’ll do it. So we need to stay right here for as long as we can. If that’s not possible, we need to escape from wherever we’re held and make our way back here.”
Smithwick’s eyes had gotten moist when she heard the word, forever. “Forever,” she repeated numbly, as if she hadn’t listened to anything else Quint had said. “I’d kill myself if I thought we were permanently trapped. Look at this place. It’s filthy and disgusting. Look at these people, if you can call them people. They’re all dead for God’s sake.”
“I’ll not listen to talk about suicide or giving up,” Bitterman said. “We’ll be fine. It might not be easy but we’ll be fine. There’s a lot of brainpower among us, especially from our young colleagues. They’ll be looking to us for strength and we’ve got to come through for them.”
“I really need to find a way to keep my pants up,” Bates said.
The MAAC scientists were huddled together, watching the VIPs confer. Brenda Mitchell, a spectroscopy technician in David Laurent’s group sat on one of Dirk and Duck’s chairs in the middle of the road and held her head in her hands. Matthew Coppens, the acting head of the Hercules Project who had stepped into Emily’s shoes in her absence knelt beside her.
“You all right?” he said.
“No I’m not. I’m not all right. I’m bloody awful.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” she said, looking up with a glare. “Or rather, did you? Did you know that what we were doing was dangerous? Did you know we were at risk of getting sucked through the portal?”
“I don’t think we ever discussed it,” he admitted. “I mean we relocated the control room. We just assumed it was far enough away from the nodal activity.”
“Assumed. And here we are,” she said icily. “And my children have lost their mother, my husband has lost his wife, and I have lost everything. You assumed. Jesus, Matthew.”
“We’re all in the same boat,” he said. “I’ve got a family too, you know. We’ll make it back. You’ve got to believe that. It looks like Emily made it home. She’ll know what to do. We rescued her and she’ll rescue us. We’ll be okay.”
Brenda pointed at a couple of soldiers who were staring at her like starving dogs. “You’re not a woman. Maybe you’ll be okay, Matthew, but I won’t.”
Trotter separated himself from the other Earthers and under the watchful eyes of two soldiers found a less muddy patch of road to pace a circle. He had always been a quintessentially self-reliant man. His journey up the ladder of MI6 had been unconventional. The senior ranks of the Service were populated by well-connected public school types with a heavy helping of Oxbridge graduates. He had no such pedigree. His childhood in a council house and his weak second in economics from a middling university were hardly the tickets for a glittering career in the clubby world of MI6. But he was smart, pugnacious, had a facility for languages, and had distinguished himself in a series of postings in the Middle East, including a stint as station chief in Istanbul where he had set up a legendary network of assets in Turkey and Syria. Radical Islam came along just in time to propel his career forward. He was tapped to pull the organization out of its post cold-war doldrums and refocus it on non-state threats. By dint of his outsider’s chip-on-shoulder zeal, he rode roughshod over anyone standing in his way and rose to become acting chief of the service. He did it alone, his way. A confirmed bachelor, he didn’t even want or need the baggage of a spouse to accompany him on his journey through life.
Now he found himself in a stinking village in a hideous world in desperate straits. He suspected they were well and truly buggered. There would be no rescue. He saw a version of the future play out with icy clarity. The others were weak and they would perish at the hands of brutish men or by their own. He was strong and he was clever. He would survive. But he would have to act quickly.
A soldier drove an empty dray with a tandem of horses down the muddy road. Cromwell
inspected it and approached Trotter to tell him that it would hold half of them. Another wagon would be along soon enough.
“Where are you taking us?” Trotter asked.
“Whitehall Palace in London.”
“You keep the same place names, I see,” Trotter said.
“It is a way for us to remember our happier past,” Cromwell said. “Do not expect it to look like the original palace. We suffer from a dearth of craftsmen and artisans. It is a pale imitation.”
“May I speak freely?” Trotter said, leading Cromwell away from the others.
“You may.”
“We were told by Camp and Loughty that you have a need for expertise in science and technology.”
“True enough. Every realm covets new arrivals who possess useful skills. We live in fear of subjugation by foreign powers with superior weaponry.”
“Those people over there are some of the finest scientists in the world.”
“Are they?”
“Yes they are. Camp brought books with him on his last crossing. Did he give them to you?”
“To the king, yes. Henry greatly valued them.”
“I think I can be useful to you, Mr. Cromwell.”
“Can you?”
“As you can see, I’m in charge of these people. I can get them to help you. I can get them to apply the knowledge in those books and help you build powerful new weapons.”
“I rather think we are capable of compelling their assistance,” Cromwell said dismissively.
“Persuasion will work better than threats with this lot.”
“And you can persuade them?”
“I’m sure I can. I can also discourage any attempts to defy you or to escape from your hospitality. I know the potential troublemakers.”
“And why would you do this?”
“I want special treatment. I want the best quarters, the best food. If we have the chance to go home, I’ll gladly go. But if we have to stay here permanently, which I see as a possibility, then I want rank, position, and authority.”
“You wish to feather your nest.”
