Tarquin looked defiantly round at him. “But what about the Norman? You still need me for that.”
“The girl can interpret for him,” Hooper said. “If he makes any trouble, he can be shot.” She bared her teeth at Jennifer. “Now we’ve got everything we want, his usefulness is at an end.”
Sweeting waited for Tarquin to shuffle reluctantly from the room, and then for the clatter of far off lift gates and the whine of electric motors, before hurrying back to his terminal. “I think I can now show you how this thing really works,” he cried. Trembling with excitement, he finished his countdown and pushed a second lever. At once, both mirrored panels began to glow.
With a visible effort, Radleigh pulled himself together. “Something you haven’t got round to telling me,” he asked Hooper, “is why you need the Greek boy for this. Can’t you make do with an endless succession of local specimens?” He flicked more ash onto the rubber floor.
Another happy smile spread over Hooper’s face. “Dearest Basil,” she said, “I can answer that.” She walked over to the panel and poked at her makeup in the reflection. She stared at herself until she was replaced in the panel by gradually solidifying shapes beyond. She turned back and spread her arms. “We need a long and stable connection, so we can bring masses of equipment through. We need materials from America, and from Germany and Japan. We need things that couldn’t be made on this side in a hundred years. We haven’t found anyone else to guarantee the continuity that we need. We think the boy will last for two weeks. By then, we should have everything we need to stabilise the connection on other principles. Long before then, we’ll have the means to end the extremist attacks that your own negligent sloth has allowed to run out of control. Oh, just a few days, I think, and we’ll be set up on both sides to do everything that needs to be done.”
Radleigh looked at the glowing tip of his cigarette, and waved it in the direction of General Rockville, who grimaced and fanned away any stray wisp of smoke that might drift in his direction. “I suppose we can all rejoice that, with a bound, you’ll soon be free of Cardinal Lawrence,” he said. “However, you still haven’t fully explained what it is you have in mind.”
“Full spectrum domination of two worlds,” Rockville broke in fiercely—“that’s the name of the game!” He went and stood beside Hooper and glanced suspiciously at the smoke from Count Robert’s cigarette. “Look,” he said to Radleigh, suddenly more reasonable, “we’ve got ourselves an absolutely virgin planet here. Our corporations know exactly where to drill or dig for everything we could ever need. We can use this to bring peace to a suffering world on the other side. Just imagine—we can perform full geological surveys here, and use the data to cause devastating and apparently natural earthquakes in Moscow, in Peking, and anywhere else where democracy is under threat. We can develop weapons here, safe from any spies. We can test them without threat to the lives of our own people. Think how the discovery of America allowed Europe to fight off the threat of Islam. This is our new and bigger America. It means permanent victory for peace and human rights throughout the world.”
He stopped and turned to look at the restored view of the Oval Office. “Mr President,” he cried thrillingly, “we have lift off!” The President opened his mouth in a silent howl of joy, and got up from his desk and came forward. Keeping just on his own side gave him an oblique view of the larger Gateway. Flickering, and just sufficiently misted to close off any sense that the room had opened out, this showed a vast warehouse heaped up with crates, and an army of men at the ready to start moving them across. The men stared back. At a command from someone out of sight, they went into a round of cheered applause in the American fashion.
The President waited for the applause to finish, then returned to his desk. “And I can promise, on behalf of the Government of the United States,” he said with silky insincerity, “that our Special Relationship with Great Britain has moved to the forefront of our foreign and domestic policies. He turned to the man with the red face. “I don’t think we can see any objections to that, can we, O’Halloran?” He turned back and smiled. “We can take it as read that this is the final End of History,” he took up again. “On both sides of the void that separates us, this is our moment of triumph—a triumph that will never end.” Hooper gulped loudly, and looked about to start jumping up and down. She was stopped by the sight of the flag that the President had produced. It showed a Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes, held apart and joined by a bolt of lightning. “Mighty fine, don’t you think?” Hagen asked with a flash of expensive dentistry. “Vice-President Candyburg designed this himself.” He turned again to his Congressmen and stared their protests into silence. Somewhere else in America, the men who were to carry out his instructions began another round of applause.
Jennifer had been let out of her chair. Ignored by people who were more interested in the goodies about to be handed across the void, she stood looking at Michael. Eyes pressed shut, he was still on his feet. Two weeks, it had been said he’d last in there. She looked at the crumbled remnants of the American “specimen.”
She felt someone touch her sleeve. “Little Bear,” Robert whispered, “let’s get out of here. Michael wouldn’t want you to watch to the end.” He leaned closer. “Give the boy his dignity. I don’t know how we’ll get out of here. But we can at least leave this room of devilish magic.”
Jennifer looked again at Michael. There was a brightening halo about his head and upper body, and she could see his hands stretched out and trembling from the strain of the energy that, little by little, was stealing his soul. She could have given way again to helpless tears. She could have thought of many things. Instead, she recalled how he hadn’t so much as twitched when he took that bayonet through his arm at Oxford Circus. Suddenly, her mind was clear. “You go,” she said. “I’m getting him out of that thing.”
Chapter Forty Six
Robert put his big hands on her shoulders. “My oath to that boy is absolute.” He looked carefully into her face. “This isn’t like France, Jennifer. It isn’t a game. If I don’t get you out of here now, they’ll kill you.”
“Then I’ll die where I belong,” she said. She looked about. Still, no one was paying attention. The guards were watching the President hold up the new compound flag for everyone to salute. She stepped quickly across the room. She pushed the glass door open. It was only as she turned to close it that she realised Robert had followed her. He gave one of his black smiles and closed the door. All was suddenly quiet. Even by comparison with what she’d just left, the room was cold. There was a faint but omnipresent hum of something powerful. Michael had turned again, and, eyes still shut, was facing in her direction. She looked through the glass wall. The President had begun a speech, and was waving a handgun to emphasise his points. Rockville was in conversation with someone across the bigger Gateway. She reached for the metal handle on the door of the tube.
Her impact on the floor knocked all the breath out of her lungs. For a moment, she lay shaking as if she’d just laid hands on a live mains cable. She got up dazed and made again for the tube. She’d been noticed. Hooper was rapping frantically on the wall. The impact of her rings on the glass made a dull and repeated click. Jennifer looked left to see both guards beating their hands on the door. Behind them, Sweeting was shouting with a passion she couldn’t hear. In the second that she gave to looking at it, the bigger Gateway dissolved into a patchwork of interference. Hagen had put his head through his Gateway, and was looking at her with cold fury. But Robert had shoved his dagger across the inner handle of the door. For the time being, it was locked shut. Jennifer looked again at Michael, unmoving in the tube, and nerved herself for another attempt. She noticed the faint shimmering of a field she hadn’t before seen about the tube.