‘Long enough to move enough soldiers on board to take all of the crew hostage.’
Primo concentrated for a moment and I sensed him communicating with someone outside the room. ‘All right, that’s arranged. Does your healthy state of paranoia suggest any other risks?’ His humour was becoming strained by anxiety.
I ran possibilities through my head, testing them for weaknesses. ‘Do you have any weapons?’
Universal astonishment. ‘Of course not, whatever for?’
‘I’d be willing to bet that the representative, even if he has no weapon – which he may well have, I know you haven’t searched him and he could hide a gun under those robes – is fully trained in the unarmed combat skills they impart to their soldiers. Furthermore, I’ll bet he is trained to resist any attempt to use mental powers to suppress him; in fact, I suspect that he’s a lot better at mental combat than I am, let alone you peaceniks. Suppose he held one of you hostage and threatened to kill you if a hole was not opened to let in his soldiers, who then threatened to kill everyone in Laketown if the power wasn’t kept on. What would you do?’
They sat stunned, mouths literally open, a part of me noticed with amusement. ‘Never mind, I have an idea. How do I set about communicating with Richards?’
They guided me through the mental process of using the headnet to access the communication machine which enabled direct mental contact with headnet-equipped people on a parallel world, then showed me how to search for Richards. Eventually I made contact with him. I spent a few minutes briefing him on the situation. He thought for a moment, then sent; ‘as it happens, I have just the thing for you- we have one for evaluation.’ He showed me an image and explained the workings to me, and I grinned, impressed.
‘Sounds just the ticket! I’ll get it collected.’
Then followed a brief three-way link between Richards, Primo and myself, while arrangements were made to send the beam ship with the slider machine across to the location of London to make the collection.
Later that evening, I waited out in the open a discreet distance from the town. It was dark, the usual starlit blaze of the heavens obscured by a thick layer of cloud. A steadily growing murmur of sound announced the arrival of the unseen airship, and after a few minutes my enhanced night vision picked up the shape of a lift cabin descending to earth a few yards away. I walked over to it, opened the door and retrieved the heavy black plastic case lying inside. The cables tautened again and the cabin lifted into the sky. I turned and walked back to Laketown, feeling a little more reassured but still tense and nervous.
Once in my room, I opened the case and checked the contents, before closing it and sliding it under my bed. Not that the S1 saurians would dream of opening it even if they found it, but I would prefer not to answer questions about it. Sleep came tardily that night.
The next morning all seemed well and the Representative’s personal airship appeared, its power drone in tow. He was seen off with due formality, and I heaved a sigh of relief. Perhaps I was being overly suspicious. Then I recalled the mental signatures of the Representative and the Primary, and decided that I was not.
As we returned to the town, Primo paused for a moment, concentrating on an incoming message. Then he stopped dead, radiating amazement and wonder.
‘What gives?’
‘The combined team of saurian and human scientists working on the slider technology have made another breakthrough. They have found a way to detect and lock on to parallel worlds without requiring them to be transmitting radio or TV signals.’
‘Good for them. And?’
‘They have found another world. A formerly human one, but with no remaining signs of human life. It is standing empty, waiting for occupants!’
13
It turned out that the new Earth was not entirely new; after some research and comparisons with their records, the saurians determined that it was H11, contact with which had been abruptly lost in mysterious circumstances over a century before. The beam ship with the slider machine took Primo, Secundo, Tertia and myself the short hop across the southern North Sea, and slowly cruised up the Thames while I attempted to get my bearings. In my time the river and its tributaries had been so channelled – and in some cases buried under buildings – that this was not an easy task. I had to visit the slider machine and examine the viewer, locked onto the same scene in H11, to check that I was in the right place. Although it was less than a month since I had last been in London – my own London – I felt a pang of nostalgia to see a familiar sprawl of docks and buildings lining the river, instead of the almost uninhabited broad, marshy estuary visible from the observation deck. A closer inspection started to reveal differences. This really wasn’t my London, although superficially similar. According to the saurians, this world had diverged from my own branch several centuries ago, although they were uncertain exactly what had prompted the departure – they had lost contact before they could pin it down. However, it seemed likely that the language would still be close enough to English that we could make some sense of any records left behind.
I didn’t really expect what I was looking for to be in exactly the same location but I had to start somewhere, so after some cross-checking with maps of my London and carefully positioning the airship, the four of us got into the slider machine cabin and rode silently down. As we approached, I paid close attention to the viewer. The streets and buildings were similar to the ones I would have expected to see in late Victorian times, but they had clearly been long abandoned. Trees had burst through the roads and plants of all kinds sprouted from the buildings, some of which were in a state of collapse. Parts of the City were flooded where the water had breached the embankments. On the south bank, a large area appeared to be have been gutted by fire. The cabin gently stopped as we reached the level of the street visible on the viewer. I looked out of the cabin’s window and realised that we had not yet reached the ground of the saurian world – or to be precise the water, as we were hovering over a tributary. Centuries of human development had raised the level of the land in London and this river had been covered over, in both this world and mine. The slider machine powered up, and we looked through the hole at the desolate street scene. I took a breath and stepped through first, feeling the same brief nausea and seeing the bright, blurry flash once more; Secundo stunned first Primo then Tertia before pushing them through for me to revive. He would be staying behind to operate the machine on our return. The three of us started to walk or hop down what had, in my time, been known as Fleet Street.
It was like walking through some film set showing the ruin of a Dickensian city. Whatever had happened here had not involved physical violence. Most of the buildings still stood, although many looked dangerous to enter. Birds sang their joy at springtime, a couple of cats were seen skulking at a safe distance. Rather to my surprise, we did manage to locate the offices of a newspaper, in a building which still looked reasonably intact, although signs of water pouring down the inside walls showed that the roof had given up the struggle. Damp, yellowed papers were stored in rotting wooden cupboards, but it was simple enough to locate the final editions. It was much more difficult to read them, as the language had shifted in various ways and the meaning of many words was unclear. We collected what seemed relevant and carried it back to Secundo and the saurians’ world.