Return of the Ancients (19 page)

From a window of the castle, a dark-furred Wolfen watched, his lips curling back in disgust at their familiarity with each other.

Jim Takada paced the floor of the command room, his arms folded and his face pulled into a frown. He stopped and turned. ‘But if it’s still open, then what’s to stop more . . . objects falling through?’

Albert Harper shrugged. ‘What’s to stop them falling back? Might be a revolving door, rather than a one-way exit only.’

‘Do you think the boy could return with the diamond, or at least be retrieved?

‘Good question. I hope so, but from where? He might be as close as tomorrow, but in a different dimensional slice of the universe. He could also be standing in a Cretaceous swamp – we can’t know from here. But I think we should try and find out, don’t you?’

Takada nodded. ‘Gets my vote.’

There was a buzz from the communication panel beside Harper’s hand, and he looked down at the flashing light. ‘Front gate,’ he grunted, flicking a switch. ‘Harper here.’

‘Dr. Harper, it’s the girl, Rebecca Matthews. I guess she’s come to check on our progress again.’

Harper sighed and looked at the security monitor for the front gate, where the girl stood beside a car, in which sat a middle-aged man and woman – probably her parents.

‘Tell her I’m not . . .’ He thought for a moment.
If we’re going to find Singer, we first need to understand him . . . and she could help
. He shrugged.
Couldn’t do any more harm
, he thought.

A news blackout, and a selective misinformation leak had thrown the press off for now. Most of the scientists and technicians required on the emergency project were flown in and out by helicopter, and stayed on the Fermilab grounds.

‘Sure, Bob, let her through. I’ll send a cart to pick her up. Just make sure one of the guards checks to make sure she doesn’t have a pocket camera . . . And get her to turn her phone off immediately.’

Harper flicked off the communication feed, but continued to watch as the gates slid back and the girl was waved through. Bob Menzies leaned in through the car window and spoke to the parents for a minute, then stood back to wave as the car backed away.

The gate slid closed, and Bob chatted with the girl until another guard appeared, walking beside a dog that was unleashed. He spoke a few words to the animal and it immediately circled the girl, sniffing intently, and then froze to stare into her face. It held that position, simply starring into the girl’s eyes.

What do they see when they do that?
Harper wondered.

After a few seconds more, the animal returned to sit by the guard.

The guard and the dog wandered away, leaving Bob to chat with the girl for a few more moments until a golf cart pulled up beside them. She climbed in for the several mile trip to the head office, where the rescue attempt was being coordinated.

Harper looked at his watch. He had a few minutes until she arrived, so he turned to the bank of screens, now focused permanently on the sealed acceleration chamber. The small dot of instability hovered in the air like a smudge on each monitor – like something that needed no more than a quick wipe with a damp cloth to make it disappear. But it was much more than that; it was a continuing distortion in their universe – not opening any further, but not closing either. A distortion that one young person had already fallen through, taking with him the only thing that may be able to close it.

That the distortion refused to evaporate and disappear worried the lead scientist immensely. He was right to call the work now being undertaken a
rescue attempt
. And though he had said it was for Arnold Singer, secretly he knew the young man was insignificant – that the actual rescue might be for the laboratory and its grounds, or perhaps even the entire world.

Dark matter and black holes were insatiably hungry creatures, and the Tevatron continued to suck power at a geometrically increasing rate. They had to succeed.

*****

Becky sat in the cart as it passed under the huge three-legged, metal structure on their way  towards the administration building – ‘an optical illusion’, Arn had said to her only a few weeks ago. She smiled at his dumb humour. Already talking to him seemed like a distant dream.

She couldn’t stop accusing herself, and still didn’t know if she was feeling guilty about her treatment of him, or whether she really cared for the nerd. Arn’s parents had suddenly left town, which seemed strange to her, and the college acted like he was not even enrolled there anymore. Mr. Beescomb had asked her to leave it up to
the powers that be
, but she and Edward had refused to drop it, and while he banged away searching the internet for clues, she kept an eye on Dr. Harper. She felt she needed to know every day what they were doing to bring Arn home.

She tried to relax her face – once again, it had pulled into a frown without her realising. She reached up and touched the skin between her eyes, feeling the crease that was beginning to form there.
Damn you, Arnold Singer, you’re giving me wrinkles
.

Becky looked across to where the dogs were housed. The white-domed buildings looked more like landed spaceships than regular kennels. The huge animals sat silently and watched her as she passed. From within the domes came the sound of barking – sort of. She saw that the dogs outside the kennels swung their heads at the weird noise. It was like a dog barking, but the cadences were different, almost like . . .

The driver, who noticed her confusion, chuckled. ‘Sounds like talking, doesn’t it? The lab boys have been genetically engineering the animals for size and intelligence. Even strengthened their cell structures to deal with high doses of ionising radiation. I think it’s some sort of sponsored military sub-project.’

Becky frowned at him, and he chuckled again. He took her look of distaste to be a sign to carry on talking.

‘Hey, you think
they’re
smart? You should see the new dog, Fen. That’s him you can hear making all the racket. The keepers say he can actually understand them.’ He looked at her, taking his eyes off the narrow road. ‘I mean
really
understand them. It’s true! Weird, huh?’

The driver slowed as they neared the entrance to the Administration Centre.

‘Okay miss, here we are, and right there waiting is Dr. Harper. I’ll be back to take you to the front gates when you’re ready.’

Becky craned her neck to look back to the kennels. The dogs were ruturning to the kennels by themselves as if they’d all been summoned. She turned to the driver. ‘Why did you do it? Train them to try and talk, I mean.’

The driver looked quickly over to the kennels, and then back to her. He hesitated.

‘But we didn’t. They taught themselves to do that all on their own.’

It must be fun to play God,
she thought, now feeling even more unsettled by the weird animals.

Climbing out of the cart, Becky headed over to the waiting scientist. She noticed that in the last few weeks he had aged considerably – he looked more beaten down and weary.
Things cannot be going well
, she thought, and felt immediately depressed.

‘Hello Dr. Harper. I’m sorry to bother you again, but I had a dream . . .’ She let her voice trail off, not really wanting to go into any more details.

Harper grabbed her hand and shook it. ‘You’re welcome any time, Rebecca. As long as you understand that anything you see or hear must be kept confidential.’ He smiled and kept shaking her hand, pressing it for emphasis. Then he turned and waved her inside.

Becky noticed that there were now dozens of guards in every corridor of the facility, and many of the personnel wandered around in varying types of contamination suit.

‘Is there more radiation?’

Harper walked to the large elevator doors at the far end of the reception area. He shook his head. ‘Not really. The anomaly has stabilised, and is giving off mild gamma radiation and traces of X-rays, but nothing that needs any more than normal shielding.’

Becky looked back at the spacesuits and raised her eyebrows. Harper avoided her stare.

She followed him along the sterile corridor to the observation room – a room that she was growing to loathe. There were significantly more military personnel, scientists and equipment than last time.
Things are finally happening
, she thought.

From somewhere below them there was an irritating grinding, which sounded like a giant getting some dental work. Harper pushed open the observation room’s door, and Becky entered, nodding and mouthing
hello
to the technicians and scientists she recognised.

The sound of the grinding was muffled inside the room, but she was still aware of it, and could even feel the mechanical vibrations beneath her feet.

Harper motioned to two chairs set up in front of a bank of screens. One was focused on the accelerator’s particle collision point; through a cloud of concrete dust, the next screen showed a wall into which a machine was drilling a hole five feet in diameter. Its movements mirrored the vibrations.

Harper motioned with his head. ‘That’s what you can feel beneath your feet. We can’t wait for something to happen anymore, when there is a real and imminent threat from the anomaly.’

He looked at her with sad eyes. ‘To be candid, if we could simply close the distortion hole, we would. If we thought we could pour a thousand tons of concrete over it, we would. Neither option is possible. You see, one of the reasons we think the anomaly will not close is due to the theory of universal balance. Matter cannot be destroyed; it can only be transferred into a different state – solid to liquid, liquid to gas. Even ripping and shredding particles like we do here only creates different types of particles. What we think has happened is that Mr. Singer has been ejected from our dimension. To where or when, we don’t know. But because he no longer exists in
our
universe, there was an imbalance created . . . and the anomaly wouldn’t close until that balance had been restored.’

Becky searched his face. ‘So you need to bring him back? You
have
to bring him back?’

Harper shook his head. ‘Maybe if we brought him back within the first few seconds he disappeared. But now, the more matter that passes through, even if that matter is dust or even particles of light, the less chance of ever correcting the imbalance. Instead we believe we need to refire the laser . . . but first we need to find the laser acceleration diamond and we think Mr Singer has it with him. We just need to find him first.’

He examined her face. ‘Tell me. If Arn found himself in a strange place, maybe somewhere totally alien, what do you think he’d do?’

Becky snorted. ‘He’d go exploring.’

Harper exhaled wearily. ‘Oh great; so the sooner we find him the better.’ He pointed at the screen. ‘The acceleration chamber has become magnetically sealed by the disturbance, so we’re cutting our way in – right through eight feet of reinforced concrete. Once that’s done, we’ll fire a probe into the hole and try to take some readings.’

‘Can I be here when you do?’

Again, Harper looked at her sadly. ‘I’m sorry, Rebecca, but that’s something that will be restricted.’

Becky’s mouth dropped open in surprise. ‘Are you kidding? I need to be here! I’m his friend . . .’ She reached into her pocket and switched on her phone.

Harper had already turned away. ‘It’s because you’re his friend that you can’t be here. We must face the fact that where he went might be an airless vacuum, or hotter than hell, or have a crushing gravity . . . For all we know, Arnold Singer may have been dead for weeks.’

Harper watched the test with bated breath.

The bicycle-wheel-sized craft lifted from the ground on four rotational fans, like a miniature hovercraft – noiseless and sleek. The aerial mobile camera was modelled on deep-sea technology, except its housing didn’t need to be armour-plated against water pressure, so strength and durability could be traded off for mobility and speed.

Harper almost applauded as the machine remained suspended about six feet from the ground.

The four near-silent fan-blades were recessed in a broad, flat housing that made it look like a bulbous stingray. Gyroscopic assistance gave it incredible stability – it could hover motionless, even in a near hurricane, and bank and fly as swiftly as a bird of prey . . . well, a very fast pigeon, anyway. The front housed a large glass lens behind which sat the camera with an illuminated ring around it. It looked like a floating eye, in which a bottomless glass pupil was ringed by an iris of light.

Its miniaturised battery pack contained enough energy to run a small building, and allow the craft to run for at least forty-eight hours. It also powered the digital image feed and recorders. There was no guarantee anything at all would be delivered back to them, or for that matter that the device would survive the trip, but they didn’t have a lot of options. This would have to do.

Harper grunted his approval. ‘Ready as we’ll ever be. Okay, let’s take her in.’

The pilot ran his hand over his keyboard, giving each of the fans some extra thrust, and the craft lifted higher into the air. He turned one of the twin joysticks slightly and it spun slowly to line up with the freshly cut hole in the wall, now a dark tunnel leading to a lighter exit. Another technician focused the camera, and the image zoomed to the far end of the small tunnel. The craft entered, navigating the space with ease, emerging to hover just beside the smudge that hung in the air like steam over an air vent.

‘On your order, sir.’

Harper rubbed his hands together and leaned forward on the desk. ‘Proceed, four knots.’

The small craft glided to within an inch of the smudge of nothingness. Harper held his breath. A slight push on the joystick . . . and the craft leapt forward, as if being snatched up and swallowed. The data screens showed the device was still moving at a leisurely four knots, but the image feed indicated acceleration that was beyond comprehension.