“You can commandeer your own ice-cream van,” said Constable Peel.
“Really? And what do you think are the chances of another ice-cream van coming along anytime soon, then?”
“Somewhat slim, I would have said,” said Constable Peel. He did not look unduly troubled by this fact.
“Come on, you can’t leave us stuck here. Something might happen to us.”
“That’s what I was hoping.”
“That’s not very nice of you.”
“You should have thought of that before you encouraged Phil the Penguin to relieve himself in my hat.”
Sergeant Rowan intervened. “Constable, much as I am tempted to agree with you, I think we have a responsibility as policemen to ensure the safety of civilians, even ones as nasty and criminal-minded as this lot. All right, everybody in the back. I’ll take a seat up front with Mr. Dan here, and we’ll see about getting us home, shall we?”
Everybody did as Sergeant Rowan suggested, because the sergeant just had that way about him. Even though they were trapped in a region that was generally agreed to be the last place in which anyone wanted to end up, with no idea of how they had got there, and no idea of how they were going to get back, they were willing to follow Sergeant Rowan because he had Authority. He had gravitas, which means “seriousness” for those who don’t have a dictionary to hand.
And he had a big truncheon that he waved meaningfully at the dwarfs in order to encourage them to make the right decision. In these situations, Sergeant Rowan had found, waving a big stick always helps.
Meanwhile, back in that small room supposedly being used for the storage of cleaning products and brooms, Professor Hilbert was engaged in an animated conversation with Victor and Ed. He had just concluded a similar conversation with Professor Stefan, a consequence of the small loss of energy that had occurred shortly after the Collider had been turned on again. Professor Stefan, Hilbert felt, had become slightly hysterical at the possibility that all those demons might start popping up again, although this stemmed as much from his understandable fear of being eaten as from his concern that, if the gateway to Hell did open for a second time, someone would find a way to blame him for it. It had taken all of Professor Hilbert’s considerable diplomatic skills to convince Professor Stefan not to close down the Collider again, or not yet. Now, in the broom closet with Victor and Ed, he was using some of his other skills, namely the ones linked to bullying staff in a gentle manner in order to get his way.
Professor Hilbert was a believer in the “hidden worlds” theory, the idea that there might be universes other than our own somewhere beyond the realm of our senses. He also felt that particle physicists were spending far too much time worrying about the nature of atoms, and refracting light, and other relatively mundane matters related to this world that actually exists, and too little time speculating on the nature of worlds that might exist elsewhere.
Here’s the thing: We know that everything we can see around us is made up of some fairly elementary particles, and that various forces, like gravity, help to keep the whole process of existence moving along smoothly without people floating off into the ether or spontaneously collapsing into a muddle of atoms. But suppose that there were other particles, and other forces, operating alongside us, which we couldn’t perceive because they were beyond the limits of our powers? That would indicate that the cosmos was a great deal more complicated and interesting than it already appeared to be.
In one way, we already know that there are hidden forces at work in our own universe, because only 4 percent of the stuff of the cosmos is visible to us. Roughly 70 percent of what remains is labeled “dark energy,” and is the force causing our universe to expand, sending galaxies racing away from one another. The other 25 percent is called “dark matter,” detectable only by its effect on the mass and gravity of galaxies. Dark matter, then, could be part of the hidden world, and where you have matter, you can, in theory, have planets, and life—dark life—assuming that the forces involved are strong enough to hold them all together, as the forces in our own universe are. And what do we know about dark matter? Well, it doesn’t cool down, because if it did it would release heat, and we would be able to detect it.
Hmm. A hidden world. Dark life. Heat. See where Professor Hilbert was going with this? Ed and Victor could, and just in case they were in any doubt, he wrote the word in big letters upon a sheet of paper and showed it to them. The word was:
HELL
“Suppose,” said Professor Hilbert, “that the portal didn’t really connect us to Hell at all, because all that stuff about Hell and the Devil is just nonsense. It’s a myth. Hell doesn’t exist, and neither does this ‘Great Malevolence.’ What we could have instead is a dark matter world, filled with dark life, and the only way we can connect to it is through the Collider. If we turn the Collider off, we’ll be turning our backs on the greatest scientific discovery of this, or any, age, and endangering the future of the ILC.26 There’s a Nobel Prize in this, mark my words.”
“Will we get the Nobel Prize too?” asked Ed.
“No,” said Professor Hilbert, “but if I win it, I’ll give you a day off, and a muffin basket.”
“But what about the energy loss?” asked Victor, who knew that they had about as much chance of sharing in Professor Hilbert’s potential Nobel Prize glory as they had of growing feathers and winning first prize at a “Lovely Parrot” competition.
Professor Hilbert smiled in that mad way scientists have of smiling just before the lightning strikes and the monster made up of bits of dead people comes to life and starts looking for someone to blame for plugging him into the mains and lighting him up like a Christmas tree.
“But that’s the best part!” he said. “We should be losing energy!”
“From a vacuum?” Victor did not sound convinced.
“It’s like I told Professor Stefan,” said Hilbert. “We’re searching for the Higgs boson, right?”
“Right,” said Victor, thinking, he’s lost it.
“And we realize that the Higgs boson may be the theoretical link between our world and the hidden universe?”
“Okay.” Really lost it.
“And we’re assuming that the Higgs boson, if it does exist, is present somewhere in the aftermath of the explosions in the Collider?”
“Absolutely.” Look at him: nutty as a bag of hazelnut crackers.
“Well, what if the energy loss is natural? What if the Higgs boson is decaying in the Collider, but is decaying into particles of another world: dark matter. The Collider would register the decay as an energy loss, when in fact it’s the nature of the particles that has changed. There is no energy loss, because they’re still there. We just can’t see them.”
Victor stared at him, jaw agape. Professor Hilbert might have been mad, but Victor was starting to suspect that he was brilliantly mad, because this was a really, really interesting theory.
“Did you tell Professor Stefan all this?” asked Ed, who felt the same way that Victor did about Professor Hilbert’s ambitions, but was happy enough to be a cog in the wheel of this Nobel Prize–winning operation, in part because he was a modest, unassuming sort of chap, and also because he really liked muffins.
“Most of it,” said Professor Hilbert,27 and Victor and Ed knew that, in Professor Hilbert’s mind, there was only ever going to be one name on the citation from the Nobel Prize committee, and he wasn’t going to endanger that possibility by sharing too much of what he thought with anyone who might have too many letters after his name.
“So we shouldn’t worry about the energy loss?” said Victor.
“No.”
“And you don’t think the portal to He—er, this hidden world is in any danger of opening again?”
“The energy loss isn’t remotely comparable to last time,” said Professor Hilbert, which wasn’t really answering the question at all.
Ed and Victor exchanged a look.
“Two muffin baskets,” said Ed. “Each.?
??
Professor Hilbert smiled a shark’s smile. “You drive a hard bargain…”
XVII
In Which the True Faces of the Conspirators Are Revealed, and an Ugly Bunch They Are Too
MRS. ABERNATHY WAS IN her element: she sat in her chamber and listened as an array of demons fawned their way into her presence, attempting to find favor with her once again. Even Chelom, the great spider demon, and Naroth, the most bloated of the toad demons, who had fled after the failure of the invasion, now sought a place by her side once again. She wanted to punish them for their disloyalty, but she restrained herself. It was enough that they were coming back to her, and she needed them. She needed all of these Infernals. Later, she would violently dispense with some of those who had abandoned her, if only to remind the others of the limits of her tolerance.
Mrs. Abernathy’s original plan had been to target Samuel and Boswell, and bring them straight to her lair. Unfortunately she had reckoned without a number of factors, including:
a) the difficulty of a targeted acquisition between dimensions
b) an ice-cream salesman
c) a police car
d) a van filled with unknown little people.
She had also exhausted herself bringing them all here, and had fallen into unconsciousness for a time. When she woke, she found that she was unable to locate any of them, at least until the insufferable A. Bodkin had tried to send a message to his superiors, a message that she had intercepted. She now knew roughly the area in which at least some of those whom she had accidentally targeted might be, and by extension where she might find Samuel Johnson, but since this was Hell, which, as we have established, tended to play a little fast and loose with concepts such as direction and geography, it was like being told that a needle is almost certainly in a haystack, and then being shown a very large field filled with very large haystacks. Oh, and the field goes up and down as well as across for very long distances. And it’s a bit diagonal as well.
Therefore Mrs. Abernathy required help if she was to search for the boy, which was why she had decided against immediately torturing those who had earlier turned their backs on her. Instead she listened to their pleas and their excuses before dispatching them to seek out Samuel Johnson. For the most part they had nothing of interest to tell her anyway, but there were certain exceptions. One of those exceptions was standing before her now. Actually, standing might be too strong a word for what it was doing, since it had technically oozed beneath her gaze and had now simply ceased oozing, although assorted substances still dripped from its pores in way that suggested further oozing could only be a matter of time. It resembled a transparent slug with aspirations to be something more interesting, hampered by the fact that it was, and always would be, made of gelatinous material and about three feet tall, and therefore only of interest to other things made of jelly and slightly smaller than itself. Two unblinking eyeballs were set into what was, for now, its front part, beneath which was a toothless mouth. It wore a black top hat, which it raised in greeting using a tentacle that slowly extruded from its body expressly for that purpose, and then was promptly reabsorbed.
“Afternoon, ma’am,” it said. “Happy to see you on the up again, as it were.”
“And you are?” said Mrs. Abernathy.
“Crudford, Esq., ma’am. I work in the Pits of Hopelessness. Don’t really fit in, though. Not the hopeless type. I’ve always been a hopeful sort of gelatinous mass, me. The glass is always half full, that’s what I say. When you’re made of jelly, and only have a hat to your name, it can only get better, can’t it?”
“Someone could take your hat,” said Mrs. Abernathy.
“Agreed, agreed, but it wasn’t my hat to begin with. I just found it, so technically that wouldn’t be much of a reversal, would it?”
“It would if I took it, forced you into it, then slowly roasted you, and it, over a large fire.”
Crudford considered this. “I’d still have my hat, though, wouldn’t I?”
Mrs. Abernathy decided that Crudford, Esq. might just have to be made an example of at some point in the near future, if only to discourage such a brightness of outlook in others.
“So what can you do for me until then?” said Mrs. Abernathy.
“Well, I can ooze. I’ve worked hard at it. Labored my way up from just dripping, through sliming, until I hit on a steady flow. You could say I’ve perfected it. But I appreciate that it’s a skill of limited applicability in most circumstances, if you catch my drift. Still, onward and upward.”
“Mr. Crudford, if I stood on you, would it hurt?”
“Yes. You’d get ooze on your shoe, though.”
“It’s a price I’m willing to pay, unless you give me a good reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Suppose I told you about Chancellor Ozymuth, ma’am, and how he’s been plotting against you,” said Crudford, and he was pleased to see Mrs. Abernathy’s expression of profound distaste change to one of mild distaste, coupled with a side order of interest.
“Continue.”
“As it happens, I was there the last time that you came to visit, when you were trying to see our master, the Great Malevolence. It’s one of the advantages of oozing, see: you can ooze just about anywhere, fitting into all kinds of small spaces, and nobody ever notices. Anyway, I was there, and I saw what happened after you’d gone.”
“Which was?”
“Someone emerged from the shadows, and it was Duke Abigor. He congratulated Chancellor Ozymuth on how well he was doing in keeping you away from the Great Malevolence, and on telling our master what a bad sort you are. Completely unjustified, I hasten to add. I mean, you are a bad sort, but in the best possible way. Then Duke Abigor slipped away, and having nothing better to do than a bit more oozing, I followed him deep underground, until we came to a meeting room, and they were all there waiting for him.”
“Who was waiting?”
“Most of the Grand Dukes of Hell. They were sitting at a big table, and Duke Abigor joined them at the head of it. They started talking about you. Funny thing is, ma’am, they’re back there again now. Just thought you might like to know. I was hopeful about it, you might say …”
Duke Abigor looked very unimpressed, a not inconsiderable achievement given that his standard expression veered toward the unimpressed, even when he was impressed, which wasn’t very often.
“Tell me again,” he said as Duke Duscias quivered before him.
“She has found a way to reach out to the world of men,” said Duscias. “She pulled something from their world into ours, and now she seeks it.”
Duke Abigor was no fool. You didn’t end up with sixty legions of demons at your command by being a dolt. Duscias, on the other hand, was a fool, but he was Abigor’s fool, and so Duscias’s twenty-nine legions were, to all intents and purposes, also under Abigor’s command.
“It’s the boy,” said Abigor. “That is the only reason why she would risk opening up a portal without the knowledge of our master. If she has the boy, she can present him to the Great Malevolence for his amusement, and she will be back at his left hand. Our chance to rule will vanish, and she will move against us.”
“But how?” said Duscias. “She cannot know of our plot. We have kept ourselves well hidden.”
“Because, you idiot, someone will tell her. If she finds a way to worm herself back into our master’s trust, then demons will be falling over themselves to betray us if it increases their chances of a promotion.”
Other figures began to file into the meeting room, their heads hidden by great black hoods that they let fall to reveal their faces: Duke Guares, commander of thirty legions; Duke Docer, commander of thirty-six legions; Duke Peros, also commander of thirty-six legions; and Duke Borym, commander of twenty-six legions. These were the ringleaders, the ones who had staked their reputations, and a potential eternity of pain if they failed, on Duke Abigor’s ability to convince the Great Malevolence that he should take over from Mrs. Abernathy as the Comma
nder of the Infernal Armies. The problem for all concerned was that Mrs. Abernathy had not technically been relieved of her post, since the Great Malevolence had simply refused to see her and was still lost in the madness of his grief. Therefore the dukes were engaged in an act of treason against not only their own general, but against the Great Malevolence himself.
“We should have arrested her long before now,” said Duke Docer, once the situation had been explained to him. “We left her in peace, and the result is that she has outmaneuvered us.”
“We couldn’t have arrested her,” said Duke Abigor with as much patience as he could muster. Duke Docer was a soldier, and without cunning. He had won every battle in which he had fought by charging forward and overwhelming his foes by sheer might, and now he spent most of his time looking for new foes so that he wouldn’t get bored, even if it meant alienating allies to do so.28 He wouldn’t have known a strategy if it bit him. “There are too many that we have not yet brought over to our side.”
“But the hordes of Hell have no love for her either,” said Duke Peros. “Most would be glad if she were gone.”
“They may not care for her, but they care as little for me,” said Duke Abigor. “They may fear her, and hate her, but she is a force that they know and understand. I am an unknown quantity, as are we all.”
“We are more than two hundred legions strong,” said Duke Docer. “That is all they need to know and understand.”
“It is not enough!” said Duke Abigor. “We will not go to war unless we are certain of victory, and we do not know which side the Great Malevolence will support once he emerges from his mourning. If we misstep, then we are in danger of being perceived as traitors, and I do not need to remind you what the punishment is for such a betrayal.”
At this the dukes were silent. They had all seen Cocytus, the great lake of ice far to the north in which traitors were kept frozen for eternity. If they were lucky, their heads might be permitted to protrude from the ice, but as traitors not only to the kingdom but also to their master, the Great Malevolence, it was more likely that they would be entirely immersed in the cold and darkness, not a fate any of them desired.