Coldbrook (Hammer)

by Tim Lebbon

  ‘And he’s the only one?’ Jonah asked.

  ‘Who knows?’ Moira asked. ‘Could be others on other continents. But we don’t travel. People came from France six years ago,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Three years before that, a group travelled up from South America. They brought news, but none of it good. So there are travellers, but not many. And their life expectancy is short. Knowledge is dying.’

  ‘But you have your casters,’ Jonah said.

  ‘Between veils,’ Drake said. ‘But not across oceans. That would be like you using your breach to travel to the next town – impractical and, so we found, impossible.’

  ‘How do they work?’ Jonah asked.

  ‘Our casting engines create mini-black holes, we stabilise them, and the casters move across the resulting Einstein-Rosen bridge.’

  ‘How do you deal with the Hawking radiation?’

  ‘Hawking?’

  Jonah frowned. ‘No Hawking? Well . . . the overflow radiation.’

  ‘Oh. We feed it back via a second black hole within the first.’

  ‘Neat,’ Jonah said. ‘But only their consciousness goes through?’

  ‘Of course,’ Drake said. ‘They want to come back.’

  ‘Jonah, the processes don’t matter!’ Holly said. ‘It’s sharing our knowledge of the furies that’s important.’

  ‘Mannan,’ Jonah said.

  ‘Yes,’ Drake said, pouring them all another drink. ‘We’ve tested his blood, transplanted his DNA, examined every part of him again and again. Brain scans, cell cultures. We regularly try to impregnate volunteers, but we fear he’s infertile. That could be bad luck, or something to do with his immunity.’

  ‘I want to meet him,’ Jonah said.

  ‘You’re a doctor?’ Drake asked.

  ‘No, but I know one. Marc Dubois, the best.’

  They drank. The air between Jonah and Drake was loaded, with positive potential rather than with tension.

  ‘I know something about your world,’ Jonah said softly. ‘More than Holly told me. I’ve been shown more.’

  Moira’s eyes went wide, but Drake only nodded.

  ‘We thought so,’ he said. ‘We believed it was Holly to begin with, hoped it was, because she’s so strong.’ Jonah sensed Holly absorbing the compliment, and he hoped she was buoyed by it. ‘But then she mentioned you, and I knew.’

  ‘The Inquisitor,’ Jonah said. ‘I thought perhaps I was going mad.’

  ‘Are you keeping a diary?’ Drake asked.

  ‘No. Never been much of a diarist.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Holly said.

  ‘Because the woman whom the Inquisitor took from our world kept a diary before she went. We’ve gleaned much from that.’

  Jonah looked past Drake at the other visitors poring over books, holding them like newborns as they turned the pages carefully. Perhaps they really were the most precious of things – their power could not be cut off, and their batteries would never run out.

  ‘He showed me things,’ Jonah said. ‘Holly, the morning we breached he showed me the death of the world we had just found our way to. I didn’t know it then, but now . . .’ He glanced from Drake to Moira. ‘It’s tragic.’

  ‘What did you see?’ Moira asked.

  ‘People dying. Being herded into trucks. An American flag with too few stars. Burning fields, black glass deserts. Stranger things, but all to do with the disease those furies are spreading, I guess. And the Inquisitor told me—’

  ‘“It is required that you accept”,’ Drake said.

  ‘From your woman’s diary?’ Jonah asked.

  Drake nodded, glanced at the bottle, and Holly poured some more.

  ‘But it’s not all our world,’ he said softly.

  ‘What?’ Holly gasped.

  ‘What it showed Jonah. Those sights. They weren’t all views of Gaia.’

  ‘But . . . how can you know?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Your casters,’ Jonah said, a dreadful realisation striking home. He felt weak, numb. ‘Not just our world, Drake. How many others do you watch?’

  Drake drained his whisky again, and his expression changed. Jonah had recognised his excitement at being there, and seen his own intelligence echoed in the man’s eyes. But now there was something else – something like fear.

  ‘Many. We don’t cast so much now. The energy levels required are massive, and our matter fields have been failing for years.’

  ‘But we’ve been watching your world, and it gave us hope,’ Moira said.

  ‘Not hope enough to stop something coming through,’ Jonah said.

  ‘And that guilt is on me,’ Drake said. ‘I should have posted more guards. Been more careful.’

  ‘But what of all the other Earths you’ve seen?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Over the past decade, I’d say that one in a hundred we’ve cast to is uninfected,’ Moira said.

  There was a stunned silence.

  ‘I assumed it started in Gaia forty years ago,’ Holly said softly. ‘So how was your world infected?’

  ‘A breach, similar to your own but more violent. It caused a quake. It was thought that our casting attracted that Earth’s attention, but I don’t know. Now we believe there are endless people like you and us across the multiverse, striving to explore, looking to travel. And chance dictates that such undertakings will cross paths, here and there.’

  ‘As we did with you,’ Jonah said.

  Drake nodded.

  ‘This breach into your world,’ Jonah said. ‘Something came through.’

  ‘We knew what it was. We’d been casting for ten years by then. The breach was half a mile from Coldbrook, and the army guarded it. It all went military very quickly.’

  ‘We should have guarded our Coldbrook better,’ Holly said, but Drake shook his head.

  ‘It would have made no difference. The breach remained static for almost a year. My father and his team experimented, sending in drones, animals. But it was solid, like a mirror. Everything I’ve read and the memory casts I’ve viewed . . . everyone thought it was benign. They built a structure to encase it, and closed it off from view. And then the fury came through. Chaos found a way’

  ‘It’s still there?’ Holly asked. ‘Their breach?’

  ‘Sealed up.’ Drake nodded.

  ‘And you never tried to go through?’ Jonah asked.

  ‘No,’ Drake said. ‘My father saw no point.’

  ‘So the Inquisitor,’ Jonah said, trying to take it all in, trying to absorb the end of everything when Coldbrook was always meant to be the beginning of something wonderful. ‘He spreads the plague?’

  ‘No, no,’ Drake replied. ‘There’s not one Inquisitor, but many. They oversee the spread, record it, and recruit a new Inquisitor for every world killed.’

  ‘And that means we now have a chance to fight back,’ Moira said.

  ‘But how do you know all this is true?’ Holly asked.

  Drake sighed. ‘It’s largely conjecture. But maybe now we’ll have the chance to test.’ For the first time he looked away from Jonah as he spoke. To Jonah, that didn’t bode well.

  ‘The woman,’ Jonah said. ‘The diaries.’

  ‘Her name was Kathryn Coldbrook,’ Drake said. ‘My father worked with her fifty years ago, just after she and her organisation had performed the first casting through the veils. The casters became very famous.’ He snorted. ‘I have her biography. Our world was open to wonder back then, so my father told me. Receptive to it.’

  ‘Not cynical,’ Holly said.

  ‘Well, I think we’d barely be human without healthy cynicism,’ Drake said. ‘I don’t think Kathryn was a very nice woman. Father told me she was an unpleasant genius – single-minded, arrogant, and didn’t suffer fools gladly.’

  Holly glanced at Jonah, one corner of her mouth turned up. He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘But she was brilliant,’ Drake continued. ‘My father worshipped her memory, and he must have read her diary a hundred times. The experiments, t
he celebration when they made their first cast. The Inquisitor visiting her. That came over as a madness, of course, but now we know better.’

  ‘She’s viewed as a monster now,’ Moira said. Jonah was taken aback by such a comment, and surprised at some of their almost mystical phraseology – veils, monsters.

  ‘That’s not her fault,’ Drake said. ‘Understand, this is all gleaned from her diaries, with plenty of guesswork thrown in. But my father always said Kathryn had a unique mind. He said she was able to embrace the imagination in her scientific studies. She was even . . .’ He frowned.

  ‘She had faith,’ Moira sneered, as if the word tasted foul. Jonah thought that he would have to ask about that.

  ‘Maybe that made it easier for the bastard thing to take her,’ Drake said. ‘I’ve always wondered. Though she was a woman of science, she was also a slave to mysticism.’

  ‘So what the hell is that thing haunting me?’ Jonah said.

  ‘Someone who perhaps has a sense of humour. Your world had the Spanish Inquisition?’

  Jonah nodded.

  ‘We believe that they are Inquisitors of the multiverse, from a version of Earth so thoroughly obsessed by and convinced of their own exclusive holiness that they cannot allow any other.’

  ‘Cannot allow?’ Jonah said.

  ‘Maybe they found the fury disease in one reality, grasped its potential, and encouraged its spread,’ Drake continued. ‘Or maybe they conceived and released it themselves. Nurtured it from world to world to destroy everyone not of their Earth.’

  ‘That’s . . .’ Holly shook her head.

  ‘Genocide,’ Jonah said.

  ‘Billions killed across the multiverse,’ Drake said. ‘Trillions. Beyond counting. Infected, and waiting to rise again to attack those not infected. Every Earth explores, and when they break through to what they think will be somewhere similar they find furies.’

  ‘And there aren’t many worlds still holding out,’ Moira said.

  ‘Yours is!’ Jonah said. ‘Forty years you’ve been surviving, and—’

  ‘You can hardly call it surviving,’ Drake said, his composure slipping. ‘It’s barely existing.’

  ‘You said we might be able to fight back,’ Holly said. ‘What did you mean? How can you defeat something that’s already won?’

  ‘Kathyrn Coldbrook’s diaries,’ Drake said. ‘She sensed something observing her even before she and my father succeeded with their first casting. In later entries she reveals her belief that her Inquisitor guided her towards success, though not quite the success he intended. And following our eventual infection he courted her, preying on her guilt with nightmare images that she noted in her diary. Some of which you might recognise, Jonah, were you to read it.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to.’

  ‘The last few pages are very confused. Painful to read. So much self-doubt as she denied what she was seeing, what the Inquisitor was doing to her. As he was luring her. It’s as if she was trying to keep hold of herself, but also being torn in other ways. And one day . . . she vanished.’

  Silence descended, and Jonah glanced at the other three people around the table. Drake and Moira displayed a sadness that seemed to fit their hard faces well: a familiar emotion. Holly was staring down at her hands.

  ‘Bill Coldbrook died,’ Jonah said. ‘I took over his work.’

  ‘And have you ever felt watched?’ Drake said, leaning forward again.

  ‘Yes,’ Jonah said. ‘And so did Bill. I think that made him paranoid and drove him to suicide.’

  ‘And now an Inquisitor is after Jonah,’ Holly said.

  ‘They take you,’ Drake said. ‘That’s what Kathryn seemed to imply. Across secret bridges and through unknown wormholes those bastards have created with technology that must be so similar to yours, or ours. They take you back and convert you. And then you go out as one of them and oversee the destruction of another Earth.’

  ‘This was meant to be so special,’ Jonah said.

  ‘Countless Earths think that.’

  ‘So those things helped us to make the breach?’ Holly asked. She sounded hurt, and Jonah felt the same. He thought back to Bill before his suicide, what he had accomplished, the breakthroughs he had made, and Jonah tried to see where the tipping point had been. It had still taken them ten years after Bill died to complete the project, and there had been several failed attempts. But they could never have succeeded without Bill’s radical, groundbreaking work as their foundation. And somewhere in that foundation had been a rock cast by something alien.

  ‘It’s pure evil,’ Jonah said.

  ‘So you have to fight it!’ Holly said. ‘It might not be over.’

  Holly felt a rush of hope. Drake had shown her views of her own blighted world in the casting room, and Vic had confirmed those images in their short conversation. But now they had a chance – a challenge – and they had to grasp it and make it work.

  And Vic was coming back.

  ‘We need access to Mannan,’ Jonah said.

  Moira and Drake leaned in close to each other, whispered something that no one else could hear: urgent, serious. Then Drake stood and shook his head.

  ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘We can’t bring him here.’

  ‘We don’t need to.’ Jonah stood as well, walked around the table and stood in front of the man from another world.

  He held out his hand.

  After a moment’s hesitation Drake took it, and smiled. ‘That’s something I thought I’d never do,’ he said. ‘Shaking hands is so . . . mannered. It’s something we only ever see in memory casts.’

  Holly found Drake compelling, almost hypnotic. He carried himself well, and had a natural grace and intelligence. But she realised now that there was something else – he was completely out of place here, no matter how relaxed he seemed.

  ‘You must go through,’ Holly said. ‘You have to, Jonah. I’ll stay here and wait for Vic and the others. I can check the systems, make sure the repair holds, run some diagnostics on the core. And I’ll try and figure out how to get them down here when they arrive.’

  ‘Perhaps Moira can stay with you?’ Drake suggested. ‘She services our casting-field generators. I’m sure she’d be fascinated with your technology.’

  ‘Yes!’ Moira said.

  ‘Of course,’ Holly said. ‘She saved my life. I owe her a tour, at least.’

  ‘I’ll leave this with you,’ Jonah said, placing his satphone on the table. ‘Marc thinks they’re three or four hours out.’ He waved her over and they embraced. ‘Get them in safe and sound. The girl’s precious. She might be priceless.’

  3

  Jayne felt the churu settling into her joints and bones, seizing them, a shadow in her mind that was grinning in anticipation at her having to move again. Worse, they were now all talking about her. Sean had tried slipping off her headphones, thinking she was asleep. But she’d slapped his hand away, felt his chest moving as he laughed softly, realising more and more how strong she was. Or, at least, how strong she wanted to be. Leaning against him was the only thing that made her feel remotely safe, and she sensed their mutual respect growing. She knew what he had seen of France on the guy’s laptop screen. And he was still trying to protect her.

  ‘Because Jonah said they have someone immune on their side, too,’ Marc said. ‘That’s why we need to get to Coldbrook.’

  ‘So what happens when we get there?’ Sean asked.

  Marc was silent for a while and Jayne lifted her head to look back, grimacing against the pain. Marc had turned in his seat and was looking down at her, tapping one finger against his headphones.

  ‘Fuck you all!’ Jayne said. ‘You talk about me, I’m gonna hear it. You have no idea what the fuck I’ve been through, and who I’ve seen die, and thanks for rescuing us and everything, but you are not gonna talk about me as if I’m not here. Or as if I’m a . . . a fucking animal, to be experimented on.’

  ‘Oh, hey,’ Marc said, and even through the electronic c
rackle she could hear the shame in his voice. ‘I meant nothing, Jayne.’

  ‘I got a question,’ Sean said. ‘What the fuck is going on? And that’s just for starters. To follow that one up, what the fuck is a “breach”? And who is on the other side? Is this a war?’

  ‘The man said “fuck”,’ the little girl said, opening her eyes, and Jayne couldn’t hold back a laugh. Her mother quickly plucked the headphones from her daughter’s ears and hugged her.

  ‘Vic, you want to give them the quick version?’ Marc said.

  ‘Well . . .’ Vic said, and he glanced nervously between Jayne and Sean. She tried to sit up straighter, then actually cried out in pain as her hips flared in agony, and growled against the fire searing through her veins.

  Vic’s wife let out a startled cry.

  ‘Hey, no, I was like this long before I was bitten,’ Jayne said, remembering the passengers on the plane – their fear, their pack mentality. This was a much smaller aircraft, with nowhere to run. ‘I have a disease called churu. It’s not contagious, and—’

  ‘Churu?’ Marc said. ‘You have that?’

  ‘Since birth. It sucks.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ he said, thoughtful. ‘Tell them, Vic. Then Jayne and I need to talk.’

  ‘Zombies are a disease, and I’m the cure, is that it?’ she asked, only half joking. Nobody laughed.

  ‘Well, here’s the idiot’s guide,’ Vic said. ‘Coldbrook is a big experimental complex built beneath the Appalachians.’

  ‘Very James Bond,’ Sean said.

  ‘My boss Jonah Jones has been there since it began over twenty years ago, and he’s been running it for ten, trying to create a path between this world and another. Across the multiverse. Find an alternate Earth.’

  ‘I take it back,’ Sean said. ‘It’s Stargate.’

  ‘It’s neither,’ Vic said defensively. ‘It’s the most important scientific experiment for decades. It’s SETI, with proper funding. It’s the Large Hadron Collider, five steps on.’