“Don’t touch him!” Sweeting shouted. “Leave him where he is.” He would have pulled Jennifer away, but looked at Robert’s face and jumped quickly out of reach. He hurried back to his lever and, with a shouted warning across the void, stopped whatever process he’d started. Michael’s body went limp, and no one stopped Jennifer from taking him into her arms. He was still conscious, but was struggling to breathe properly from the shock of whatever had been put through him.
“You were right!” Sweeting cried at Hooper, his voice loud and exultant. “I’ve never seen a reaction so immediate or powerful.” He watched Jennifer and Robert get Michael to a chair. “Not there.” He looked through the glass wall to where Lieutenant Jones was holding up his arms in his tube and praying ecstatically. “Get him in there. No—just do it. The closer he is to its source, the better he’ll be shielded from the polarised emanation.” He turned to Jennifer and tried for a friendly smile. “Can you tell me about any strange behaviour he may have shown at the time of The Break?” he asked. “I mean anything like what we’ve just seen?” Bobbing and grinning, he stooped forward over her.
“You’re not putting him in that thing,” she said in a dull voice. She looked again at the still ecstatic American. Without warning, and with a strength she’d never noticed was hers, she clutched harder at Michael and made a rush for the door. She’d got it fully open, before the guards could grab her. They pulled Michael from her and forced her into a chair. “Keep yer hair on, love!” one of them grunted.
“Yes, you silly little girl,” Hooper laughed, “he will go in there.” She stood before Jennifer, breathing hard with excitement. She held up her glass pendant. Deep within, its colours writhed and twisted as if demented. Hooper deepened her voice. “The Force is strong within this one,” she intoned in a black American voice. She spoiled the effect by going directly into a giggle. But Wapping and Rockville made sure to laugh politely at the joke.
Speechless, Jennifer felt as if she’d known this was coming since the moment she’d perched listening outside the window of Radleigh’s flat. Or perhaps it was all a dream, and she’d wake in Ulm with Michael snoring contentedly beside her. She pressed her eyes shut. She opened them. Everything was as it had been. She looked about the room. No one moved.
“I think we can proceed with the demonstration,” Sweeting said. Together with his counterpart in Washington, he counted down again and pushed the lever. This time, the smaller mirror glowed brighter and brighter, until faint outlines could be seen. It was like looking at something through the jet from a boiling kettle, or perhaps at an almost familiar landscape through heavy fog. There was another flickering of lights, and Jennifer looked through the glass wall at Michael. Tarquin had been sent in to sit beside him. One hand on his shoulder, he was speaking to the boy. Still shaking, Michael stared back in silence. Behind them in his tube, the American had fallen to his knees, and seemed to be babbling incoherently with his eyes turned up. When she looked back to the panel, Jennifer was in time to see its bright blur resolve into a view of the President at his desk in the Oval Office, and a somewhat thinner Abigail Hooper leaning forward almost close enough to reach through into this universe.
“I believe we’ll have to call each other Sister!” one of the Hoopers cried girlishly. They both went into a shrill laugh, and they both stretched forward until their noses almost touched the barrier of the Gateway from each side. But it wasn’t a barrier in the sense that it could stop anything from passing through. A couple of men now came into view on the other side and laboriously moved a wooden crate closer and closer. Watching it come through was like seeing something jump from a television screen. No—the whole surface rippled like water as, making sure not to let their hands go though, Sweeting and Rockville pulled it into the room. Jennifer heard it scrape heavily on the floor and they pulled it out of the way. The whole screen now rippled until nothing but a glow of colours could be seen on the other side. Then, as if recovering from the effort of allowing a physical passage, the screen stabilised again.
“A case of Johnnie Walker, one can hope,” Radleigh said with a dry chuckle. While most attention was on the box, Wapping crept forward and put his face close to the Gateway. Jennifer wondered if he’d poke a finger through. But he thought better. He fumbled inside his jacket and took out one of the safety pins, and threw it across to the other side. Interested against her will, Jennifer watched as it passed through with no more deflection than if it had been thrown within the room. A fat man in a suit had stepped away from the group behind Hagen, and stood just on the other side. He turned and picked up the safety pin. Awe on his reddened, bleary face, he threw it back across, still without visible deflection. Wapping stared for a moment at the two inches of steel wire that had just passed and repassed a distance that had no physical reality and that might not be conceivable. Then he bent and picked it up. Holding it aloft like some holy relic, he carried it over to the far side of the room and showed it to Radleigh, who put his cigarette between his lips while be bent the pin back and forth, as if to see whether it had suffered from the journey.
“Come across, Mr President,” Rockville called. “This universe is wonderful. You can do anything you like over here.” He looked shyly at Hooper, and repeated the word “anything.”
“I’ll take your word, Madison,” Hagen said drily. “But you’ll sure forgive me if duty keeps me right here in Washington.” He twisted in his chair to face the men behind him. “Do I get full approval in the closed session?” he asked. “I don’t think we need concern ourselves with those notes from Moscow and Peking.” There was a subdued nodding of heads. He turned back, a thin, anticipatory smile beneath eyes that didn’t blink.
“Prevention’s sure better than cure!” Rockville laughed. “I’ve been told I’ll do all I can in the coming crisis to talk sense into our enemies. It still won’t be enough—not, that is, without the help of our good British friends here!”
Before he could finish his last sentence, there was a splutter from all about, and, without actually losing its translucency, the brightness went out of the colours on the other side of the Gateway. Rockville swore and turned to Sweeting. “Say, what’s going on?” he demanded. “It was longer than this the first time. Even that nigra woman lasted longer. The President or I might have been passing across.”
Sweeting lifted his eyebrows. “Oh, it’s purely down the quality of the specimen.” He played with his lever. “It’s enough to show, however, that everything is still working after the power loss.”
Jennifer looked at Lieutenant Jones in his glass tube. It was like watching a piece of fruit that, unobserved, had been rotting from within. One moment, Jones was still on his knees, resting against the wall of the tube. The next, he’d imploded into a shrivelled thing that no longer looked remotely human. There was a further crumbling into dust as his clothes fell in upon themselves.
She screamed and tried to get up. But she was held fast by the guards, and made to look in the direction of the Gateway. She tried to close her eyes and scream again, but Sweeting slapped her face twice and very hard. With a cocking of rifles, Robert was forced to stay where he was. Silent, she watched Rockville step forward and push his military cap at what had, a few minutes before, been permeable enough to let a safety pin fly through. For the first half dozen passes, the cap moved easily. Then as the colours on the other side began to blur and fade, the cap moved back and forth through a membrane with the quality of fast-setting toffee. Rockville let go of it for a few seconds, and it was held firmly in place. As he pulled it back, Jennifer could see her own face looking back at her.