Down: Trilogy Box Set

by Glenn Cooper

  “At full power we can achieve 300 TeV,” she said. “Do you think that will do it?” she asked.

  “At that energy the strangelets will be smashed into their component quarks and the graviton-strangelet complexes will fall apart. That ought to slam shut the doors to Hell.”

  “Are you ready to get to work?” she asked.

  He pressed the heating button on the kettle and said, “I think we’ve already begun, don’t you?”

  33

  Emily and Loomis were so intently involved in their equations that the ringing of her office phone startled them.

  “Dr. Loughty, it’s Ben Wellington. In all the excitement I rather forgot something.”

  Emily took Loomis with her; she wasn’t about to let him out of her sight and there was safety in numbers. Along the way she opened a fire door and removed the metal axe.

  “You look rather fearsome,” Loomis said.

  “You have no idea, Paul.”

  They crept down the hallway with Emily and her axe at the fore. The first sounds that registered were so incongruous she didn’t trust her ears. She thought she heard cartoons. The closer they got to the open door, the more certain she was.

  Tom and Jerry.

  And then, full-throated laughter.

  “Did you see the way the little mouse crashed the cat?”

  “Burnt ’im to a crisp.”

  Emily stood at the doorway staring at the two young men lying side-by-side on the bed. The small room was littered with cereal boxes and candy wrappers and empty tubs of ice cream.

  Dirk saw her first and fell off the bed in shock.

  “Duck, look! It’s Miss Emily!”

  The last time they’d seen her was the moment she crossed over from Dartford village at the last MAAC restart.

  “She’s got an axe, Dirk,” Duck said.

  “Don’t be mad at us,” Dirk pleaded. “We only stole the grub ’cause we was ’ungry.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” she said. “Tell me, have you seen anyone else inside the building since you’ve been here? Any other Hellers?”

  “Just us,” Duck said. “We’ve only ’ad ourselves for company. Well, we’ve ’ad the cartoon vids too if they count as company. Dirk likes ’em as much as me.”

  “I do,” Dirk said. “Duck likes the Ariel fish-girl the best. I like this one with the cat and mouse.”

  “And you’ve been in this room for all this time watching cartoons?” she asked.

  “Not only this room, Miss Emily,” Dirk said. “There’s another room what’s got the grub. There’s plenty left if you’re ’ungry too.”

  “And we go to the room where you can press the silver bar and make your shits disappear,” Duck said.

  “Who’s the chappie there?” Dirk said, pointing at Loomis. “I reckon ’e’s one of us.”

  “I am one of you,” Loomis said. “Few more IQ points but one of you, nevertheless.”

  “He’s a friend,” Emily said.

  “Is Miss Delia going to come see us?” Duck asked. “I miss ’er, I do. She was always kind to me.”

  “I don’t think she’s coming right now,” Emily said. “I think we’ll leave you to your cartoons now. My friend and I have some work to do. Perhaps we’ll come by later to say hello and get some of the food.”

  “If you like, you can watch some vids with us,” Duck said. “We’ll let you sit on the bed while we sit on the floor.”

  “It’s a marvelous offer,” she said with a smile. “The best offer I’ve had in a good while.”

  During unguarded moments, it felt like old times, Emily and Loomis working side-by-side, grinding through equations and computer simulations, laying cables, descending into the MAAC tunnels from the subterranean level near the old control room to check and modify hardware settings on the particle guns.

  Right from the start, they collaborated with the technical staff at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva to work through the software and hardware modifications they needed to convert MAAC from accelerating lead protons to uranium protons. These were Emily’s colleagues; some were also close friends. Most had been made aware of her situation after the veil of secrecy was lifted and they had been tasked with trying to come up with a solution. Seeing her for the first time on videoconference had been an emotional experience. But many of the Geneva scientists had also been friends and colleagues of Paul Loomis and though they had been prepared in advance, their shock on seeing him had been visceral.

  He had rehearsed a small speech but when the time came he broke down in tears and Emily had been left to fill in. She had said that it was obviously a strange and emotional time for everyone but they couldn’t let their emotions get in the way of the important tasks ahead.

  The Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island was the only facility in the world with an ample supply of the right kind of uranium gas. Brookhaven was contacted by the Geneva staff to prepare a large canister of U-238 gas. When it was ready, it was choppered to the Hanscom US Air Force base in Massachusetts and flown by jet to RAF High Wycombe for onward staging.

  After several days of around-the-clock work, an exhausted Emily declared they were ready to receive the gas and fill the particle guns. They had endlessly discussed how to get the canister delivered on site. The options were limited, so limited in fact that the consensus was that there was only one imperfect solution. The gas couldn’t be transported on the ground or via air into the MAAC complex without the transporting personnel getting shunted to Hell. Drone delivery was ruled out because the canister was too heavy, not to mention hazardous if there was a mishap.

  That left the tunnels.

  Outside of the Dartford complex, the MAAC tunnel was sealed. There were no routine or emergency access points anywhere else along the one hundred eighty kilometer oval running under the M25 motorway.

  The preparatory work began three miles southwest of Dartford along a stretch of the already-blockaded M25. A squadron of Royal Engineers dug a shaft to a depth of one hundred fifty meters beneath the motorway. Once they reached the concrete envelope of the tunnel a team of experts from Geneva supervised breaching the concrete and accessing to the oval.

  On the appointed day Emily and Loomis descended into the tunnels and used the best information available to get close, but not too close to the boundary of the Dartford hot zone.

  Wearing miner’s hats they made their way west approximately one hundred meters from the old control room.

  “This is as far as I’m comfortable with,” Emily said, stopping and shining a torch further west. “If we go one step too far we may not get back in.”

  “Worse mistake for the men coming the other direction,” Loomis said.

  For them, entering Hell wouldn’t be the worst of their problems. They’d be arriving there deep underground where it would be a short race between being crushed to death or suffocated.

  Her walkie-talkie crackled to life.

  “Dr. Loughty do you read? This is the delivery team,” an engineer said.

  “I read you. What is your name, please?”

  “Corporal Kessel here. Are you in position?”

  “Yes, as close as we dare,” she said. “What’s your position?”

  “We’ve covered about five kilometers from our entry point in Darent.”

  “Well please be careful,” she said. “Don’t get too close to the HZ.”

  “No kidding. Wish the GPS worked down here.”

  “Quite. How many are you?”

  “One other engineer besides me and a French scientist from Geneva who’s making sure we don’t break any of your gear. We’re going to need line of sight.”

  “I’m shining a torch,” Emily said. “Do you see it?”

  “Negative. Tell you what, could you switch off the walkie-talkie for a sec and give us a good loud shout?”

  She produced a loud hello. A moment later she heard a hello coming back at them.

  Back on walkie-talkie, the engineer said that he reckoned t
hey were within a half mile.

  “How close do you need to get?” she asked.

  “We can send line out five hundred meters. We’re on the move.”

  “Again, please be careful,” she implored.

  In a few minutes they saw a faint light approaching.

  “I see your light.” She waved her torch. “Can you see ours?”

  “Yeah, just about.”

  “Are you close enough to fire?”

  “Not quite. Don’t want to come up short, do we? I’d prefer to have a visual on your position.”

  Emily turned to Loomis and told him she was nervous.

  “Makes two of us,” he said.

  “There you are!” the engineer said over the radio. “I can just see the two of you. Close your eyes. I’m going to shoot you with a laser to get your distance.” In a few seconds he said, “Five hundred fifty meters. I’m going to get a little closer.”

  “Be careful, please.”

  “No worries.”

  She was relieved when he told her he was in position but he wanted them to retreat twenty or thirty meters to avoid getting hit by the projectile. The engineer put down his handset and shouted out the rest of it.

  “All right, I’m ready to fire the line thrower. Stand by in three, two, one, fire!”

  There was a loud, echoing blast from the smoothbore shotgun. They heard the brass projectile rattling against the concrete floor and coming to rest only a short distance from their position.

  Emily scrambled for it. The brass rod was attached to a nylon line.

  “Got it!” she shouted.

  A different voice cried out, “No!”

  “What’s wrong?” she yelled.

  “Kessel took one more step forward and he’s gone! For fuck’s sake, he’s gone!”

  Emily dropped to her haunches in shock. “My god, Paul, how awful.”

  Loomis took the brass rod from her clenched hand and said to her coldly, “People die all the time. Where I come from that would be considered an unimaginable blessing.” Then he shouted down the tunnel, “Is the line attached to the canister trolley?”

  “Yes!”

  He began pulling.

  34

  The soldiers guarding the gates at Whitehall Palace were astonished by the sight and began shouting as the group drew closer.

  Campbell Bates and the rest of the men raised their hands to demonstrate they were unarmed.

  Bates called out to the guards, “Would you kindly inform Chancellor Cromwell that he has visitors?”

  One of the soldiers replied. “He’s not chancellor no more. He’s the king.”

  All of the blast-furnace brigade were there: Bates, Quint, Bitterman, Laurent, Coppens, and the other male scientists who had been sent to Richmond to transform the forge into a steel-making colossus. But nestled among them were John and Trevor, trying not to draw attention.

  “Don’t make eye contact,” John warned Trevor. His AK-47 was hanging from his neck concealed by William the forger’s cloak.

  “I’m looking at my feet, guv,” Trevor replied.

  When one of Cromwell’s aides was summoned to the gate he asked Bates a few questions and allowed the men to pass inside. Walking through the extensive palace corridors on the way to a reception room, Matthew Coppens, according to plan, surreptitiously led John and Trevor down a different corridor from the rest of the group.

  Bates and the others nervously milled around the guarded reception room until Cromwell came in, not grandly and confidently as a king might, but with his same mincing gait. His mannerisms and demeanor were those of the bureaucrat he had been for centuries, not a monarch of a great state. The only nod to his elevated status was a heavy gold necklace draped over his chest.

  He eschewed the throne and stood before them.

  “Why are you here?” he demanded.

  Bates, as their spokesman, said, “Because you sent for us.”

  Cromwell looked astonished. “I did no such thing.”

  “Well, that’s what we were told.”

  “Who told you this?”

  Bates continued with his lies. He had told John that his background as a lawyer and FBI Director made him perfect for the assignment. “The fellow—I suppose he was a soldier—who came to the forge.”

  Cromwell searched the large room. “What was his name? Where is he now?”

  “I didn’t catch his name,” Bates said. “He sailed us to London downriver. He left us at the docks and told us to go directly to the palace, which we did.”

  “Were you accompanied by the forge guards?”

  “This fellow told them to stay there.”

  Cromwell sent one of his ministers to organize an immediate investigation. “Go to the docks. Find this man. Bring him to me.”

  The usual pair of guards was stationed outside the door of the Earther dormitory. They stiffened at the approaching men but relaxed a tad when they recognized Matthew. John took his man with a lightning takedown and a neck-breaking hold while Trevor resorted to a less artful knockout punch to the temple. Matthew opened the door and as the prisoners gathered around, John and Trevor dragged the guards in.

  George Lawrence stumbled toward them, wrapped in a blanket and weak as a kitten from dysentery. “My God. Have you come for us?”

  “Yes, sir, we have,” John said as he did a fast headcount. “Some of you are missing.”

  Stuart Binford had also been ill. His clothes hung loosely and he’d taken on the appearance of a bearded scarecrow. “Brenda Mitchell’s dead,” he said dully. “Suicide. Kelly Jenkins is missing. We’re thinking she was taken for the same reason Brenda was.”

  John and Trevor looked at each other in disgust.

  “Karen Smithwick also disappeared a few days ago,” Binford said.

  “That leaves Anthony Trotter,” Lawrence said. “He among us has fared well. The guards tell us that Cromwell declared himself king after the Duke of Suffolk took ill. One guess who’s the new chancellor.”

  “Unbelievable,” John said. “Okay, everyone, get your shoes on. We’re getting you out of here.”

  “Is it just you two?” Chris Cowles asked.

  “Just us here,” Trevor said. “But the SAS is waiting for us in Dartford.”

  “Did you say the SAS?” Binford asked, sounding animated for the first time in weeks.

  “Yeah,” Trevor said. “The heavy mob.”

  Matthew had been keeping watch by the door.

  He slid into the room and whispered, “Someone’s coming.”

  John and Trevor dragged the guards’ bodies behind the privy screen and hid there with them. They heard the forge brigade entering and greeting their companions then heard one of the guards who escorted them ask what happened to the men guarding the door.

  “Why are you asking us?” Chris answered defiantly. “We’re the prisoners, you’re our bloody keepers. I am so bloody tired of the incompetence of you lot …”

  She continued haranguing them while Binford made his way behind the privy screen and flashed three fingers.

  The three guards, distracted and bemused by Chris’s tirade, didn’t see John and Trevor coming. A frenzied attack left the men groaning on the floor. The youngest guard escaped serious injury and when he saw the broken bodies of his two mates beside him, he begged for mercy.

  “Please don’t crash me worse,” he moaned.

  John stood over him and told him not to move. “If you don’t want your neck broken help us find two of our women.”

  “One’s in the dungeons,” the man croaked.

  “Which one?” Chris said.

  “The old bag.”

  “Can you take us there?” John asked.

  “If you promise not to hurt me worse.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “Where’s the younger one?” Chris demanded. “Her name’s Kelly.”

  The guard winced and pushed his hand against his broken ribs. “I don’t know nothing ’bout a young one.”

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p; John helped the guard to his feet. “Is there a way out of the palace from the dungeons?” he asked.

  “Yeah, goes straight to the river.”

  Without warning, Trotter opened the unguarded door and took a step into the dormitory where he froze.

  “If it isn’t the chancellor,” Lawrence said contemptuously.

  Trotter’s eyes darted around the room and he seemed to be struggling to come to grips with the situation. It reminded John of the old flashing tube computers that needed a good while to spit out the answer to a complex calculation.

  “Are you alone?” John asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then close the fucking door.”

  Trotter shut the door behind him and licked his lips. “I heard that you lot came back from the forge. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Disappointed?” John asked.

  “Hardly,” Trotter said. “Can you get us back to Earth?”

  “That’s the plan,” Trevor said.

  Campbell Bates stepped forward. “We’re not sure if you’re one of us or one of them.”

  Lawrence started to say something but was racked with a paroxysm of coughing. When he recovered he said, “Ask me what I think.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Trotter said. “I’m one of you. I’ve been working tirelessly behind the scenes to improve everyone’s circumstances. I’ve been your channel to Cromwell. I know there’s been some misunderstanding of my role but no one wants to get out of here more than I do.”

  Chris came right up to Trotter and stuck a finger in his chest. “Where is Kelly Jenkins?” she asked.

  “I have absolutely no idea. I’ve made multiple inquiries and can only assume that Cromwell had something to do with her disappearance. He’s a man of appetites.”

  “How did you know she was missing?” Binford asked. “You haven’t even been around here lately.”

  Trotter didn’t miss a beat. “Karen Smithwick told me. Where is Karen?”

  “You don’t know?” Lawrence said.

  “I don’t,” Trotter insisted. “She came to see me a few days ago asking for help in finding Kelly. I told her I’d do my best and she left in the presence of a guard. Last I saw of her. She didn’t return?”