Down: Trilogy Box Set (57 page)

Ben shook his head in confusion. “I spent much of last night watching the tapes from the debriefing interviews the two of you did yesterday. It’s too fantastic for words—really hard to get one’s mind around all the implications. But here’s one thing I’m struggling to understand: why is the technology there so primitive? Moderns are flooding in all the time bringing knowledge of modern technology with them you would think.”

John and Emily exchanged glances before she handed him the honors.

“Here’s the thing,” John said. “Everyone who’s wound up in Hell for the last hundred years or more understands the modernity they don’t have. They know they don’t have an electric grid or the light bulb. They know they don’t have large-scale steam engines let alone the internal combustion engine. They know they don’t have repeating or semi-automatic rifles or machine guns. They know they don’t have plastics or synthetic materials, medicines, antibiotics. The problem for these individuals and for the collective society is that people know what’s not there but they don’t have the knowledge to bring these things into existence. Think about it. People who do things bad enough to punch a ticket to Hell generally aren’t the scientists, the engineers, the inventors, the creative thinkers and doers on Earth. I’m sure there’re exceptions but there isn’t a critical mass to move the technology needle. That’s why they’re mired in medieval technology.”

“I think that’s absolutely right,” Emily said. “In my interview yesterday I spent a lot of time describing my interactions with that loathsome character, Heinrich Himmler, who was quite obsessed with, as John put it, moving the technology needle. His goal in death as in life was military domination. He salivated at the thought of having the atomic bomb but seemingly had little insight into the hundreds of thousands of technology building blocks which had to be put in place before nuclear fission was doable.”

“The other problem they have,” John added, “is that each country operates like a feudal state with a privileged few on the top and the rest just trying to survive as serfs or slaves. There’s an absence of hope, there’s no children-are-our-future mentality. It’s a completely barren environment for innovation and enterprise.”

Ben nodded. “You both talked about this Garibaldi as being a different sort of leader.”

“He is,” John said. “Very different, a man with the unusual capacity to see light in a dark place. But who knows if he has any chance? The odds are stacked against him.”

“So what kinds of ideas do you have, guv?” Trevor asked.

John pointed to his laptop on the bedside table. “I’m doing research in a bunch of areas, you know, practical improvements to weapons that don’t involve huge advances in underlying technologies. Things we can implement quickly and trade for the assistance we’re probably going to need to find our people.”

Emily screwed up her nose in disgust. “I’m sorry, John, but what you’re offering is a way to help them destroy each other more efficiently. Why don’t we bring them things to help them elevate themselves? Loftier things?”

“Like what?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Literature, poetry, religion.”

He laughed. “Well, if you can memorize the Bible between now and next week then go ahead. You can dictate it when you get there.”

She blinked a few times, something she did when an interesting idea flooded her mind. “Why don’t we just bring books? My Caravaggio sketch made it through. Why not books?”

John was about to say something snarky about Caravaggio’s infatuation with her but he caught himself. “What are books made of?”

Ben volunteered the obvious—paper and ink.

“I know that,” John said quickly. “I mean what’s the paper made of? What’s the ink made of? Are they natural materials? Do they contain synthetic additives?”

Emily rose energetically to get John’s laptop and started searching. The others let her work in silence scanning articles for a few minutes before she said with disappointment, “It appears that paper and ink manufacturers use a witch’s brew of synthetic additives. Let me narrow the search parameters a bit.” She typed, read, and finally said, “Who knew? It seems there’s a whole world of all-natural, vegetable-based inks for commercial printing and additive-free paper products—and for real tree huggers, paperless paper made from cotton, bamboo or even stone.”

“What about the book you buy in a regular bookstore?” John asked.

“It seems most of them have additives somewhere in the manufacturing,” she answered.

“Are there any all-natural printers in the UK who can make books?” John asked, leaning forward, painfully testing the limits of his stitches.

She trolled around for another minute and replied, “Seems so. Special-order type of work. Most of them do work for green companies but we could make a few calls I suppose.”

“So you think you could carry books across?” Ben asked.

“If they’re all-natural, I don’t see why not,” John said.

“All right then, which books?” Trevor asked.

John and Emily looked at each other and laughed.

“I guess she’s going to be favoring books on how to reach out and touch someone and I’ll be going for books on reaching out and crushing someone. Let’s make our own lists and narrow them down to just a few. We can’t take a whole library. We’re going to have to travel fast and light.”

“I’ll have my research people find a printing company that can securely and quickly do a job for us,” Ben offered.

John raised another of his agenda items. “Trevor, tell me about any unconventional weapons experience you might have.”

“How do you mean unconventional?”

“Hand-to-hand fighting, knives, swords, axes, bow and arrow, that kind of unconventional.”

Trevor shrugged. “I mean we had a bit of close quarter combat practice in the army though I probably did more of that in the police. I can probably get by in a pinch. Swords, axes—you must be joking.”

“Believe me, where we’re going it’s no joke. A week isn’t much time but I’d suggest finding you an instructor for some intensive training. Anyone have a recommendation.”

“Funnily enough,” Ben said, “the chap we use at MI5 for unconventional fighting skills is a bit of a celebrity. Ever hear of Brian Kilmeade?”

“The guy who does a medieval weapons show on the tele?” Trevor asked.

“The very one.”

“Is he any good?” John asked.

“I’ve heard good things,” Ben said. “I’ll make a call to see if we can get him.”

“Okay, last item,” John said. “From what I saw on the battlefield in France, King Henry survived. If he made it, my guess is he’d be sailing back to Brittania to regroup. If that’s the case we’re probably going to have to deal with him again. I need to know more about him to understand which buttons to push and which ones to avoid. I need a resource.”

Emily sounded skeptical. “I take your point, John, but he was alive for what—fifty or sixty years?—and dead for over five hundred. That experience must have shaped him more than his brief spell on Earth.”

“Maybe,” John said, “but your personality gets set early on and I don’t think you shed it so easily. He was the big dog on the porch before and he’s still the big dog. I’m just looking for an edge.”

“I can have our researchers send over a selected number of biographies,” Ben offered.

“I don’t have time to read,” John said. “I need to spend a few hours with an historian who knows Henry intimately, really understands the man.”

Ben shook his head. “I’m struggling to imagine how MI5 would describe this assignment to an historian.”

“How about tying him up under the Official Secrets Act just in case and I’ll bullshit him as best I can,” John said.

“All right. I’ll identify the best Henry authority in England and run the idea up the flagpole.”

A nurse came in, removed his spent antibiotics bag, and reminded John that it was time for his dental appointment. When she left John asked Trevor if he had any fillings or crowns.

“Why do you ask?”

“Synthetics. Your fillings won’t be there on the other side. I had a big issue with one of my teeth. I’m getting a root canal or an extraction today.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a couple.”

“Make sure you’ve got room on your dance card to visit a dentist before we’re off.”

“What do I tell the dentist?”

“That you’re off to someplace really remote for a very long time and won’t have any access to medics or dentists.”

“Got it. What about you?” Trevor asked Emily. “How were your pearly whites?”

John grinned and answered for her. “Miss Perfect never had any cavities, did she?”

Emily heard a knock on her office door and looked up. Henry Quint came in with a hat-in-hand kind of a look and asked if she had a minute. She coolly pointed at a chair.

“I know what you think of me,” he said.

“Do you? I wonder if you have any idea?”

“I thought I was doing the right thing for the good of the project by exceeding the energy protocols. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been tortured over the problems I created. I’m sorry, but you must realize that we would have taken the collider up to 30 TeV eventually.”

“Would we? My firm belief is that strangelet production is not an all-or-none phenomenon. I strongly suspect we would have seen a correlation with higher collision energies and as a result we would have been warned off going to thirty.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Pushing the boundaries of science has always been risky. Once the atom was split we could never go back. It was up to society to decide how we used the technology.”

Her voice rose. “So far we’ve been able to control that particular genie. I’m not nearly as confident we can wrestle this one back into the bottle.”

“I didn’t come here to argue.”

“Why did you come?”

“As you’re aware, my role has been considerably diminished. They’re keeping me around only to make sure I don’t go off the reservation. My one real task is to convene a panel of scientists to help us determine how to eradicate the extra-dimensional nodes. I’d like to show you my preliminary list.”

She took the paper and read it. “It’s a good group,” she said. “My only suggestions would be to add Anton Meissner from MIT and Greta Velling from Berlin.”

“Good ideas.”

“I only wish …” She paused, blinked, and seemed to lose her train of thought.

“Wish what?”

“That we could ask Paul Loomis. His papers on strangelets are still the best work ever done.”

“Well we can’t, can we?”

She burned him with her fiery eyes.

“You must really hate me,” he said, reaching for the paper and rising.

“Put it this way, if John hadn’t punched you silly, I would have.”

Cameron Loughty put down his pipe to answer the front doorbell.

“Are you expecting someone?” he asked his wife.

“What?”

He hadn’t realized she had gone upstairs so he tried again louder.

She shouted down the stairs, “No. Who is it?”

“I’ll be sure to let you know once I’ve got the door,” he yelled back.

Their house was a comfortable Georgian in the Newington district of Edinburgh, an easy walk to the university where Cameron had taught engineering until retirement. He opened the door a cautious crack, then wider at the benign sight of a slight young man with a full mop of hair and a messenger bag across his shoulder.

“Yes?”

“Is this Professor Loughty?” the young man asked.

“It is.”

“My name is Giles Farmer. I wonder if I might have a word with you about your daughter, Emily?”

Cameron became instantly cross. “Who did you say you were?”

“Giles Farmer. I’m a blogger.”

Cameron leaned in, distrustful of his hearing. “A logger? You seem quite small for that kind of work.”

“No, a blogger. I write about physics on the web.”

“I see. And are you a colleague or an acquaintance of my daughter?”

“Not exactly, you see …”

“I’m sorry. I have nothing to say.”

“I won’t take but a minute. I came all the way from London to talk to you.”

“You might have phoned first.”

“I can’t tell you how many times I tried.”

“We don’t generally answer the phone unless we recognize the number. What is it you want?”

“I write about the potential dangers of high-energy colliders like the MAAC in Dartford. When they had their incident last month I emailed and rang your daughter countless times but they kept telling me she was unavailable. Yesterday I tried again because I heard from people who monitor the greater London power grid that there’d been another brief MAAC start-up. Thing is, she answered her phone straight away but hung up on me when I told her who it was.”

“I am about to do the equivalent with this door.”

“What’s so funny about it is that she and I‘ve spoken on many occasions in the past and though we’ve never met in person she’s always been friendly, very collegial. I know she respects at least some of my reporting. I read physics at university. The information blackout from MAAC is deeply disturbing and now this. I was hoping …”

“Look, we’ve been told not to talk to anyone about Emily or about the collider so I’m going to have to go now.”

The professor firmly shut the door but through it he heard the young man calling out, “Who told you not to talk about MAAC? What are they trying to hide?”

Two constables from the Essex Police Firearms Unit stood outside the detached house in relaxed postures. The police armed response vehicle turned the corner and drove down the deserted road that bisected the now-evacuated South Ockendon estate. When the large van pulled up near them their sergeant hopped out. The droning traffic from the nearby M25 forced him to raise his voice.

“What’s the hold-up?”

“You do realize we’ve searched this one twice,” one of the constables said.

“Well, search it again,” the sergeant said. “I have my orders and you have yours, all right?”

The other constable said, “I’ve asked before but do we have any further information on who exactly we’re looking for?”

“I only know what I’ve been told and I’ve been told fuck all. Just search this one and the next three on the west side of the road then report back. Clear every room, every cupboard, every closet.”