The War of Immensities (9 page)

There was
little chance he would forget.

“You tell them
I’ve finally decided to get a life,” Thyssen said quietly.

Once he got the
door closed on her, he knew that her concern was probably genuine.
He always worked late and then went to campus bar for dinner and
had a few drinks with anyone interesting who might be there. If no
one engaged his interest, he made his way into town to visit the
strip joints and live out the death throes of his youth and
obliterate the reality of his life. This house terrified him and he
was never in it except to sleep from whatever hour he staggered in
until dawn. He did his ablutions at the gym after exercise sessions
of diminishing length and breakfasted in the cafe. This regime
existed seven days a week. Though it had not always been so. It was
just a phase he was going through. And going through.

There was a
time when this house rang with joy and laughter and it would have
been the last place where he would have sought solitude. That was
before the cancer devoured Karla, and the kids were home. Now
Elmore who was doing transport systems at the University of London,
and Anna doing anthropology in the wilds of the Andes. All gone
now—not even their ghosts remained to haunt him.

Thyssen sat at
his desk in what had become unfamiliar surroundings. The house was
bare—he had sold off everything he didn’t need. He didn’t even have
a computer and had brought this notepad home to work on. He turned
off the lights—Joanie wasn’t the only busybody in the street—and
the small screen became the only illumination by which he
worked.

He did not
pause to read what he had been writing—that train of thought was
broken and he was sure he had not got where he was going anyway.
Although it was hard to tell, because he didn’t really know where
he was going, and wasn’t sure he would recognise it when he arrived
anyway.

What he was
supposed to be doing was writing his funding submission to the
board, to get some money to pay for Jami Shastri’s research. But
every time he started he knew he was lying—telling them things they
might want to hear instead of the truth. That was common
enough—what occurred to him then was that he didn’t know what the
truth was.

And so he began
to play this little game with himself—just sitting and writing
whatever came into his head and then seeing if there was anything
of interest there. It was a useful tool at such times, provided he
remembered to delete it later, before anyone saw it. It opened up
his thoughts, allowing them to bound freely, unrestrained by the
usual faculty politics and the need to maintain some credibility
amongst his colleagues.

Where his
free-range thoughts took him was alarming.

He found he was
thinking about impossibilities. About things that could not happen,
and could not be proven if they did. He was thinking about things
that men could not know.

To comprehend
the incomprehensible. That was the challenge before him.

How to research
into matters that lie beyond our ability to understand them, even
if we could detect them?

It wasn’t the
simultaneous eruptions that bothered him. That was feasible. The
three volcanoes might have been three vents from a single magma
chamber—in fact probably were. Moreover, he discovered that two of
those three mountains had been in eruption at the same time in the
past. All quite likely.

The lack of
forewarning was harder to explain. Volcanoes erupted as the
consequence of geological events. This time there was no evidence
of any such occurrence. No build up—and just the single blast,
albeit huge. There were aftershocks but they were minor surface
tremors—the earth resettling as a result of the disturbance, and
not actually part of the disturbance itself. The volcanoes had
erupted for no apparent reason. Or at least, none that anyone could
find.

Still, if
unprecedented, it was imaginable. You could conceive how, in
certain extra-ordinary circumstances, something of the sort might
occur, however unlikely. He was okay with that.

What really
bothered him was the shock-wave, or whatever it was, that had
preceded the eruption and produced a definite physiological episode
in those people near the zone. It had preceded everything—it had
made them ill—then the eruption had occurred.

Now that was
inconceivable. But Jami had reported it and then the others,
independently. So it had to be real. But what could it be?

It was rendered
ridiculous by the matter of scale. This force gave people a slight
attack of nausea, and could disturb a giant magma chamber under
their feet, and yet affect nothing else and be completely
undetectable by state-of-the-art instruments. The answer was
simple—nothing could. Or perhaps, nothing known could.

Hearsay
evidence, the board would declare. No possible connection between
the two matters, they would be sure. He would look stupid, trying
to present something like that.

Not that he
couldn’t bullshit them—in fact he often did.

But you could
only bullshit effectively when you had some idea of what the truth
was. And he had no idea.

On and on into
the night he wrote, searching his mind for a concept, an idea,
anything at all, in which to sow the germ of his research. He
wrote—

The imaginable
universe is mysterious enough, but although we lack many answers,
there has never been a mystery for which our minds have been unable
to account, however inadequately. Moreover, all scientific
mysteries possess calculable answers, even though some may be
wrong. But what of the unimaginable—even a divine entity and his
works can be fantasised. But are there forces that lie truly beyond
our imagination, perhaps which touch us all the time, but which our
senses ignore because they are completely incomprehensible to us?
Or if the senses are engaged, the brain ignores because it can make
no sense of the data—nor even conjure a foolish fantasy on the
subject.

Such fantasies
are the basis of all religions—answers provided by our minds at a
stage in our development when we lacked the data and wit to even
approach the truth. Our scope to imagine impossible answers has
always seemed infinitely broad, but from our lowly remote position
on Earth we cannot possibly perceive it all. There must indeed be
other, greater forces out there, that lie beyond that scope.

And perhaps
such forces within ourselves as well…

In the dark
lonely house, Thyssen leaned back and lit a cigarette. Yes, that
was what he was looking for. Something truly supernatural—not the
foolish stuff of ghosts or demons or aliens in flying saucers, but
something that could be proven to exist with all scientific rigour
and yet defy all possibility of an answer. And was this the Shastri
Effect? Had that cheeky Indian girl accidentally stumbled upon the
gateway to the new universe? Thyssen was unsure, but what he did
know was that his former life was ended, that phase passed through,
and his new existence was underway. The ghosts of Karla and the
children had vanished from the house—finally he was able to come
home.

She awoke being
lightly shaken and joggled and gazing at the grey sky through the
window. She was upside down and her neck was hurting—it was that
pain that dragged her back to consciousness. In a car, the sky
rushing overhead, she assessed. Dull day. It was Lorna’s car, she
realised and she was lying in the back seat. In her pyjamas and
dressing gown with a travel-rug thrown over her. She groaned.

“Ho, back in
the land of the living, are we?” came a cheery voice from the front
seat.

They hit a bump
and Chrissie’s neck almost snapped. Moving her head to a more
comfortable position was seemingly dangerous. It felt as if the
skull bone was paper thin and would crack like an egg shell.

“Lorna, what’s
going on?” she attempted to say—her thick tongue would not form the
words properly.

“We’re nearly
there,” Lorna replied.

Nearly where?
It was plain that she would not get any sense out of Lorna and was
going to have to look for herself. She gripped the seatback and
hauled and her arms found enough strength to drag her body into a
sitting position. She was so bloody stiff. Had they had an
accident? Had she fallen? Her eyes slowly focused and she looked
all around. They were out in the country, for God’s sake, and she
was still dressed for bed.

“Lorna? Where
are we?”

“The coast is
just ahead. When we get there, we’ll have coffee. I did a thermos.
Then you’ll be fine.”

She would never
be fine.

“I’m sick,
Lorna. What have you done to me?”

“It’s just the
sleeping pills wearing off, Chrissie. Coffee, a sandwich, a bit of
a walk around and you’ll be feeling terrific.”

Almost
everything Lorna said was unbelievable.

“Walk around.
In daylight. In my jim-jams?”

“I packed your
clothes, and everything.”

“Did you?
Where?”

“They’re in the
boot.”

“Lorna. You
told me to sleep. I remember this distinctly. You gave me sleeping
pills. Now you kidnap me and drag me way out here in the
provinces.”

“You said you
wanted to go.”

“That was...
whenever it was.”

“Come on, you
were bumping into the walls in your desperation to go places.”

“Yes, okay. But
you could have waited until I woke up first.”

“Oh yeah? Wait
til you hear what I did.”

“You mean
before you took to kidnapping invalids?”

“I went out to
lunch and started walking blindly. West. Remember what you said
about wrong directions?”

“Yes,
but...”

“So now we’re
going west. Right direction. Okay?”

“West
where?”

“We’re through
Waimauku. Coast coming up. You can get glimpses of the sea out
there now.”

“Yes, I can see
it. I can’t imagine why I’m so surprised.”

“So you were
right. We had to go places. Right away. And west is the way to
go.”

“Oh, I get it.
So it’s all my fault.”

“Of course not.
Here we are. Look at this. Perfect.”

Chrissie
looked. She supposed, in the right circumstances, it might have
been perfect. The sea. The surf rolling in onto a wide beach. A
parking area with toilet facilities. Anyway, before she had time to
protest, Lorna was out of the car and fussing.

Chrissie crept
forth. Fortunately, there was no one else around. She rummaged in
her suitcase in the boot and ducked into the toilet to get dressed
and by the time she returned, Lorna had coffee and sandwiches
spread out on the bonnet of the car.

“Isn’t this
great?” Lorna enthused.

“No,” Chrissie
sighed. “But it is nice, I suppose.”

The sandwiches
were good—Lorna sure had gone to a lot of trouble over this.

“Feeling better
now?”

“Slightly. But
I also feel very upset.”

“Yes, I know.
So do I. It’s just this overwhelming feeling that you’ve got to go
and this is the way to go.”

Now that the
effects of heavy sleep were wearing off, Chrissie had to admit her
state of agitation was returning. “Yes, okay then. But
consider—it’s nearly sunset. What plans have you concerning where
we will stay?”

“There’ll be
somewhere.”

They sipped and
munched. The breakers roared and the sea gulls swooped and called
to them, beckoning them out to sea. The gentle breeze tantalised
their hair. Chrissie chuckled and shook her head but then got
serious and eyed her friend, so called. “So you feel it too?”

“Oh, yes. I
guess I’m not as sensitive as you, but, yes, it got to me as well.
I just had to go. That’s all. I was telling you what happened to
me.”

“You mean
there’s more?”

“Is there ever.
I caught the bus down to Herne Bay and went out on the pier and
walked right off the end of it.”

“Really?”

“Honestly. I
was so oblivious to the surroundings that I went off the end and
into the water before I knew what was happening.”

“Oh my God.
Tell me you didn’t really. Did anyone see?”

“Did they ever.
A bunch of blokes, fishing. When they pulled me out, my clothes had
gone completely see-through. They got a big eyeful of everything I
have.”

“Oh Lorna, how
awful. So what happened then?”

“I got a taxi
home. You should have seen the look on the driver’s face when he
saw me. And then I had to empty the water out of my handbag before
I could pay him. Everything was soaked.”

“You’ll catch
pneumonia, swimming at this time of year.”

“I took a
handful of Vitamin C as soon as I got home. Then I knew what I had
to do. I rang them at work and told them I was sick. Packed, drove
over and grabbed you and here we are.”

By then,
Chrissie was so full of giggles she could hardly speak. Finally,
she got herself under control enough to look around and ask. “Okay.
So we are here, after many adventures, but where are we?”

Lorna too,
needed to survey the scene. She balled her sandwich wrapped and
threw it in the nearby bin, and looked again. “We’re not there yet,
are we?” she said solemnly.

“No,” Chrissie
said. “I don’t know how I know that but I do. We’re not even
close.”

“Well, this is
as far as we can go in this direction without getting wet and one
dunking a day is enough for me, thank you very much.”

“But we must to
go on,” Chrissie said and even as she did she sensed the agitation
growing, her whole body agreeing with her. “What can we do? Get a
boat?”

“I think it’s
further than that,” Lorna said thoughtfully. “I think we have to go
over to Australia.”

Felicity
Campbell stood by the glass, regarding Barbara Crane and Dr James
Turley with quiet dismay. In the room, they could observe the
figure of Kevin Wagner, with both arms and legs in traction.