The Infernals (30 page)
Authors: John Connolly
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 DEMON.”
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 …
T
HANKS 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.
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 …
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.
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.
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.
“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!”
