“No, not really. Not at all, actually.”
“So it wasn’t an easy mistake to make, then?”
“No.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Yes, I would expect so.”
There was a silence between them for a time.
“Well?” said Lucy.
“Well,” said Samuel, “I was rather hoping that you might like to join me at Pete’s for a pie after school on Friday, if you weren’t busy.”
Lucy considered the offer, then smiled regretfully.
“I’m sorry. I’m busy on Friday.”
“Oh,” said Samuel. He bit his lip, and turned away. At least I tried, he thought.
“I’m not busy on Saturday, though…”
“How did it go?” asked Maria, when she encountered Samuel in the corridor later that day.
“She said yes,” said Samuel.
“Oh, good,” said Maria, and walked away, and Samuel thought that she seemed to be troubled by something in her eye.
Life can be difficult. In fact life is often difficult. It’s especially difficult when you’re young and trying to find your place in the great scheme of things, but if it’s any consolation, most people do find that place in the end.
In a basement deep in the headquarters of Spiggit’s Brewery, Chemical Weapons & Industrial Cleaning Products Ltd, Shan and Gath, dressed in pristine white coats, moved intently around a laboratory equipped with the latest in brewing technology. Beside the laboratory were their living quarters, with comfortable beds, seats, a television, and a pinball machine, a game at which Shan in particular was surprisingly adept, when he had the time and inclination to play it, which wasn’t very often. After all, Shan and Gath had discovered one of the secrets of happiness: find something that you would have done anyway as a hobby, and convince someone to pay you good money to do it instead.42 Their days were now spent developing Spiggitt’s new boutique range of beers: Spiggit’s Summer Rain Ale, Spiggit’s Gentle Sunbeam Amber, Spiggit’s Strawberry Sunrise Lager, that kind of thing, beers of subtle fragrance and delicate taste designed for the gentler, more discerning drinker.
Or big girlie men, as Shan and Gath liked to think of them.
They were also responsible for a separate line of beers for those with a more, um, “robust” constitution. These included Spiggit’s Very Peculiar, Spiggit’s Distinctly Unpleasant, and the notorious Spiggit’s Old Detestable, which now came in extra-thick glass bottles with a lock on the cap after the yeast in one batch tried to make a break for freedom. But there was always a place in their fridge, and in their hearts, for Spiggit’s Old Peculiar.
After all, there was no improving on perfect imperfection.
Some days later, in another, much larger, basement area, within sniffing distance of the chimneys of the Spiggit works, a sleek red sports car careened out of control and struck a brick wall with so much force that its rear wheels lifted from the ground as the hood crumpled and pieces of engine, car body, and possibly passenger body as well flew into the air. The back of the car seemed to hang suspended in its death throes, then fell back to the concrete with a bang.
For a time there was only silence.
A creaking noise came from somewhere in the mass of twisted metal. The driver’s door opened or, more correctly, the driver’s door fell off, and a dazed-looking Nurd staggered from the wreckage. Wormwood ran to him and helped him remove his crash helmet and gloves. Nurd gazed up uncertainly at a long window, behind which various engineers, designers, and safety experts sat, their heads craned to catch Nurd’s words. Samuel Johnson stood close to the glass, clearly relieved. No matter how often he watched this happen, he was always glad, and surprised, when his friend survived relatively unscathed.
“Well,” said Nurd at last, “the seat belt works, but you might need to take a look at the brakes …”
As I said, most people, and some demons, find their place in life in the end.
XXXVIII
In Which We Discover the Limitations of the Term Happily Ever After
PROFESSOR HILBERT, PROFESSOR STEFAN, Ed, Victor, and the senior Collider scientists were gathered in a meeting room at CERN as the Collider went about its business around them.
“And the boy says that he was dragged to Hell?” said Professor Stefan.
Professor Hillbert nodded. “The return of the Aston Martin, or what’s left of it, seems to support his story.”
“And he was there along with four dwarfs, two policemen, their patrol car, an ice-cream salesman, and an ice-cream van?”
Professor Hillbert nodded again.
“An ice-cream van? You’re sure it was an ice-cream van?”
“A Mr. Happy Whip ice-cream van,” confirmed Professor Hilbert.
“Mr. Happy Whip,” repeated Professor Stefan solemnly, as if this fact were particularly important.
“They didn’t bring any, er …”
“Demons?”
“Yes, demons, they didn’t bring any back, did they?”
“The policemen, Samuel Johnson, and Mr. Dan, Dan the Ice-Cream Man, who is now apparently managing the dwarfs, all confirm the general absence of demons from this world.”
“And the dwarfs?”
“The dwarfs are very unpleasant. In fact, for a time we thought that they were demons,” said Professor Hilbert. “One of them threw a beer bottle at Ed.”
Ed pointed to a large bump on his forehead. “He was nice enough to empty it first, though.”
“Have you examined the boy?” said Professor Stefan.
“His mother wouldn’t let us,” said Professor Hilbert. “She seems to think that we’re partly to blame for his disappearance, since we were the ones who turned on the Collider again. She was quite adamant about that, and used some very strong language to that effect.”
“And the policemen?”
“The policemen wouldn’t let us examine them. They also presented us with the bill for a patrol car, with thirty days to pay.”
“And the dwarfs?”
“We tried to examine them, but it didn’t go well. Suffice it to say that those dwarfs are very unhygienic.”
“But despite all that they say, you claim they weren’t really in Hell?”
“Wherever they were, it wasn’t Hell,” said Professor Hilbert. “Hell doesn’t exist. Where they were was simply another world, another universe. I believe it to be a dark-matter universe. We’re close, Professor, very close. We can’t shut down the Collider, not now. Our understanding of our place in the Multiverse is about to change utterly. The answer to whether or not we are alone in the Multiverse has been answered. Now we are duty bound to explore the nature of the life-forms with which we share it.”
“What do you suggest that we do?”
“Nothing. We say nothing. We do nothing. We ignore the boy and his story. We continue with the experiment.”
“What if they go to the newspapers?”
“They won’t.”
“You seem very certain of that.”
“I am. The mother is frightened enough for her child as things stand. She won’t want the media camped on her doorstep, assuming they believe the boy’s story, and we can make sure they do not. The policemen have been warned by their superiors not to say anything to anyone about what they experienced, and the ice-cream salesman just wants his insurance money. As for the dwarfs, they’re not the most reliable of witnesses.”
Professor Stefan still looked uneasy.
“What are the risks?”
“Five percent. At most.”
“And that five percent contains the threat of invasion, possible consumption by unknown entities, and the potential destruction of the entire planet?”
“Possibly.”
Professor Stefan shrugged. “I can live with that. Anyone for tea?”
Deep in the heart of the Mountain of Despair, the Great Malevolence brooded. The time of his madness had passed. Now his mind was clear again.
“A BOY. A BOY, AND A DEM
ON.”
The Lord of all Evil spoke as though he could not quite believe his own words. The Watcher stood silently at his feet, awaiting its master’s command. Above it, the great bells, the bells that had pulled its master from his madness, were silent once again. The portal was gone. Mrs. Abernathy was gone. Duke Abigor and his allies were frozen in the Lake of Cocytus, where they would remain for eternity. Only the Great Malevolence prevailed.
“DOES THE COLLIDER STILL RUN?”
The Watcher nodded.
“GOOD.”
The Watcher frowned. The link between Hell and the world of men was no more. Whatever power Mrs. Abernathy had harnessed to create the gateway had vanished with her. It would take time to find a way to access the Collider’s power again, and surely the men and women responsible for it would be more careful this time. As far as the Watcher was concerned, the kingdom was once more isolated.
The Great Malevolence, seeming to read his servant’s thoughts, spoke again.
“THERE IS ANOTHER KINGDOM.”
And the Watcher, almost as ancient as the one it served, understood. There was a kingdom that existed alongside the world through which men walked, a kingdom filled with dark entities, a kingdom of beings who hated men almost as much as the Great Malevolence himself.
The Kingdom of Shadows.
“PREPARE THE WAY.”
The Watcher departed, and the Great Malevolence closed his eyes, allowing his consciousness to roam across universes, touching those who were most like himself, evil creatures intent upon doing harm to others, and in each mind he left a single order.
SEEK THE ATOMS. SEEK THE ATOMS WITH THE BLUE GLOW. FIND HER …
Acknowledgments
THANKS TO MY EDITORS and publishers at Simon & Schuster and Hodder & Stoughton, my agent Darley Anderson and his staff, and to Dr. Colm Stephens, administrator of the School of Physics at Trinity College, Dublin, who was kind enough to read the manuscript of this novel and correct my errors. Any that remain are entirely my own fault. Finally, love and thanks to Jennie, Cameron, and Alistair.
1. Not to be confused with St. Nick’s Place, which is the North Pole. You don’t want to make that mistake, and end up selling your soul to Santa.
2. And by the way, what kind of person are you, reading the second part of a series before the first? I mean, really? Do you put on your shoes before your socks, or put your pants on before your underwear? Now the rest of the readers have to hang around, whistling and examining their fingernails in a bored manner, while I give you special treatment. I bet you’re the sort who arrives halfway through the movie, spilling your popcorn and standing on toes, then taps the bloke next to you on the shoulder and says, “Have I missed anything?” It’s people like you who cause unrest …
3. Duke Kobal was officially the demon of comedians, although only the really unfunny ones, with additional responsibility for the jokes in Christmas crackers. You know, like What’s the longest word in the English language? Smiles, because there’s a “mile” between the first and last letters. A mile. No, a mile. Yes, as in distance. Yes, I know there’s not really a mile, but—okay, stop talking. I’m serious, you’re starting to annoy me. No, I don’t want to wear a paper hat. I don’t care if it’s Christmas, those hats make my head itch. And I don’t want to see what you’ve won. No, I don’t. Seriously. Fine, then. Oh great, a compass. If I take it away, will you get lost? See, that’s funny. Well, I thought it was.
Christmas: Duke Kobal loves it.
4. Actually, the decision on whether to go backward or forward in time might well tell you something important about the person in question. The English writer Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) was reputed to have said that “The people who live in the past must yield to the people who live in the future. Otherwise, the world would begin to turn the other way around.” What Bennett was saying is that it’s better to look forward than to look back, because that’s how progress is made. On the other hand, George Santayana (1863–1952), an American writer, said that ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ In other words, it’s a question of balance: the past is a nice country to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
5. There is also the small matter of what is known as the “Grandfather Paradox”: What would happen if you went back in time and killed your grandfather before your mum or dad was born? Would you then cease to exist? But the argument is that you’re already in existence, as you were around to travel back in time, so if you do try to kill your grandfather then you’ll obviously fail. Hang on, though: Is it possible that you might just “pop” out of existence if you did manage to kill your grandfather? No, because that would imply two different realities, one in which you exist and the other in which you don’t exist, which won’t do at all. This has led the eminent physicist Professor Stephen Hawking to come up with the Chronology Protection Conjecture, a kind of virtual ban on time travel. Professor Hawking believes that there must be a rule of physics to prevent time travel, because otherwise we’d have tourists from the future visiting us, and people popping up willy-nilly trying to shoot grandparents in order to prove a point. In the end, though, if you’re the kind of person who, at the first mention of time travel, brings up the possibility of killing your grandfather, then you’re probably not someone who should be allowed near time machines or, for that matter, grandfathers.
6. “What do you mean, you’re giving me a small anesthetic? I want a big anesthetic. I want the kind that they give to elephants before they operate on them. I want my chin to feel like it’s been carved from rock, like it’s part of Mount Rushmore. I don’t want to feel ANY pain at all, otherwise there’ll be trouble, you hear? Why did you become a dentist anyway? Do you like hurting people? Well, do you? You’re a monster, that’s what you are, a monster!”
Sorry about that, but you know what I mean …
7. Just one more thing about time travel, while we’re on the subject. Quantum theory suggests that there is a probability that all possible events, however strange, might occur, and every possible outcome of every event exists in its own world. In other words, all possible pasts and futures, like the one where you didn’t pick up this book but read something else instead, are potentially real, and they all coexist alongside one another. Now, let’s suppose that we invent a time machine that allows us to move between those alternative time lines. Why, then you could set about killing grandfathers to your heart’s content by moving back on one time line, indulging your inexplicably murderous grudge against your granddad, and then proceeding forward on another.
And if you think all of these notions of parallel worlds and other dimensions are nonsense, please note that Jonathon Keats, a San Francisco–based experimental philosopher, has already begun selling real estate in those extra dimensions of space and time. In fact, he sold 172 lots of extradimensional real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area in one day. I’m not sure what that proves, exactly, other than the fact that there are people in San Francisco who will pay good money for things that may not exist, which perhaps says more about San Franciscans than about scientific theory. Also, I’d pay good money to see those people try to enforce their property rights when faced with a ray-gun-wielding monster from another dimension. “Now look here, I paid good money for this piece of land and—” Zap!
8. Lest anyone start getting offended on behalf of women everywhere, let me just stress that vanity is not unique to the fairer sex. “Vanity,” according to the poet and essayist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), “is the food of fools;/Yet now and then your men of wit/Will condescend to take a bit.” Vanity can best be defined as taking too much pride in yourself, and the opposite of pride is humility, which means seeing yourself as you are, and not comparing yourself to other people, even bad ones or, indeed, other demons in dresses, should you happen to be a dress-wearing demon yourself.
9. The chancellor is the secretary and adviser to a ruler, or a king. It’s a risky profession, as rulers with great power often tend to
react badly to people who try to tell them what to do, or who suggest that they may be wrong about something. Thomas Becket (1118–1170), the chancellor to Henry II of England, was hacked to pieces by knights after he and the king differed over how much power the king should have over the church. Famously, Henry VIII of England had his chancellor, Thomas More (1478–1535), beheaded because More didn’t approve of the king’s desire to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry the younger and prettier Anne Boleyn. Eventually, Henry VIII ended up having Anne Boleyn beheaded too. The lesson to be learned here is not to work for any kings named Henry who seem to have a fondness for lopping off heads. It’s a good idea to watch how they take the tops off their boiled eggs: if they do it with too much ferocity, then it might be a good idea to apply for a job somewhere else.
10. Interestingly, this might be viewed as a variation on a principle of physics known as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which states that there is no way to accurately pinpoint the exact position of a subatomic particle—a very small particle indeed—unless you’re willing to be uncertain about its velocity (its speed in a given direction), and there is no way to accurately pinpoint the particle’s exact velocity unless you’re willing to be uncertain about its position. It makes sense, when you think about it: on a very basic level you can’t tell exactly where something very, very small is if it’s moving. To do that, you’d have to interfere with its motion, thus making your knowledge of that motion more unclear. Similarly, observing its velocity means that the precise position will become more uncertain. Actually, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is a bit more complex than that, but that’s the essence of it. Still, if you’re asked if you understand Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, just say that you’re not sure, which will be considered a very good scientific joke at the right party. Incidentally, Werner Heisenberg, the German physicist who formulated the principle, was convinced that it was correct, which makes him someone who was not uncertain about certain uncertainties.