He laughed again. “I think that sums up your plan very nicely, Abigail dearest. I don’t think I need explain my own little plan to break down your bridge, and close the Gates of Hell forever. As with every successful plan, much was thought out in advance, and much left to fortune. But I do think it’s turned out rather well.”
He glanced at Jennifer and Michael, who, with Count Robert, were edging slowly towards the door. “My dear and stupid children!” he beamed. “You couldn’t have done better if I’d coached you for a month of Sundays.”
He stopped at a sudden noise, as if of breaking wind. Everyone turned and looked at the other Hooper, who’d turned pale and was trembling. “What have you done to me?” she cried. As she spoke, there was another noise—now of tearing fabric—and the middle buttons of her blouse burst to reveal areas of grey flesh that seemed to expand by the moment. She reached up to wipe sweat from her brow. She tried to scream, but her voice died when she looked at her hands. Where she’d pressed hard, both eyebrows were now stuck to her palms. She opened her mouth to try harder for a scream. Instead of sound, light as if of a thousand LED bulbs streamed from the back of her throat. She collapsed slowly to the floor, and the hands she’d clasped together as if in prayer began insensibly to merge into one translucent mass.
“Help, help, I’m melting!” she found the strength at last to cry in a voice that was barely human. She tried to speak again. But some kind of seizure took hold of her limbs, and she sprawled on her back. More light streamed from her open mouth, and from her eyes, and a bright glow formed about an entire body that seemed to be swelling larger even as it dissolved.
“Kill her!” the main Hooper shouted. She grabbed at a chair and raised it over her head. “It’s souls, not bodies, that count. Let’s kill her!” She struck at her “sister” with frantic energy. She missed and lifted the chair again. The hit she managed this time reminded Jennifer of a hammer blow into putty.
Sweeting sat down on the floor, and put his head in his hands. “It doesn’t matter,” he said with quiet despair. “It’s at least an hour—maybe more—until death makes a body inert.” The main Hooper looked down at the silently writhing body. It was beginning to glow and flicker all over, and, with every shuddering spasm of the limbs, appeared to be spreading across the floor like an ice lolly left out in the sun.
“Help me!” the dissolving creature called again in a low buzzing voice. It tried to sit up, but was stuck where it had begun to dissolve. “I’m so cold!” Hooper dropped the chair and stepped over Rockville. No longer writhing, he was still conscious. He tried to clutch at Hooper’s ankle. She kicked his hand away, and looked wildly about the room.
Sweeting put his hands down. “Look, Basil,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady, “we’ve still time to mend things. We can use Hooper instead of the boy. It won’t reopen the Gateway. But, once she’s burned up, her counterpart’s presence here won’t matter. Do you understand what will happen if you don’t see reason?”
“Of course I know what will happen,” Radleigh smiled. “It’s mutual but disproportionate annihilation. Things are nicely set up to blow this project, and all knowledge of its working, to smithereens. I’m taking out the lot of you here in London—and now, I suppose, all your friends in Washington. What lucky worlds there will be on both sides of the Gateway! Now, my good man, make yourself useful, and tell me how long we’ve got.”
“May Jesus bring you to reason!” Rockville croaked with an attempt to sit up. His left hand slipped in the blood from his shoulder, and he fell down with a sharp cry of pain. “Use Abigail, for God’s sake,” he sobbed. “Just get me out of here.”
Radleigh glanced at the still chattering though incoherent thing that had been the other Hooper. She was steadily deflating into a pool of her own bright slime. The main Hooper had fallen to the floor, and was looking about like a caged animal. “Well, come on, Sweeting,” he prompted. “How long?”
Sweeting stretched his legs out and smiled feebly. “I really don’t know. We’ve never got this far until now. Besides, didn’t I say that the laws of physics are slightly different in this universe?” He watched the dissolving Hooper. “It is, of course, fascinating,” he added, his voice resigned to the inevitable—“Nobel Prize stuff at its best.” He stopped and looked at Radleigh. “Oh, if you can put up with an informed guess, I’d say forty five minutes. She ought to blow when she’s formed an undifferentiated pool on the floor. But I’m only extrapolating from her rate of dissolution. You never can tell—she might get a sudden move on.” He looked down. “Now, you really should stop talking about mutual annihilation of matter. That’s very loose stuff. What actually happens is vaporisation, followed by equidistant permeation….”
He fell silent and looked about. “Let’s assume her mass is seventy kilogrammes,” he went on thoughtfully. “You can multiply that by 2.17 x 104, and get a sphere with a volume of….” He stopped and grinned. “Give or take a few yards, there’ll be nothing left within a mile of here in all directions—nothing at all, and within forty odd minutes.” He stopped again, and waited for Hooper’s long wail to die away. “Do you know, Radleigh, how many people have had to die to get us to this point? Can you imagine how many will die, now you’re letting it all go up? It won’t just be the Gateway you’re destroying.” He looked at the reflection of everyone in the big mirror. “I do suggest you put that gun away, and let me do what I still can to stop the countdown.” He looked from one Hooper to the other.
Radleigh pursed his lips. “You’ve heard it from a good authority, Jennifer. Get yourself and that boy out of here. Get the other side of Westminster Bridge—or get beyond Trafalgar Square. Just run, and don’t stop running.” He waved his free hand at Robert, who was looking completely lost. “Take the oaf with you. He’s earned it. Besides, he’ll be a good exit permit if your badges fail.” He looked at his watch, and took out another cigarette. “If you can bear to touch it, there’s also what may have been the most useful part of young Wapping’s anatomy on the floor.” He looked again at Jennifer. “Go!” he ordered. “There’s much I’d like to say. But the clock’s against you.”
While she beckoned to Robert to help with Michael, Radleigh spoke again. “Something I can tell you, however, is that you’ll find your parents where I had them locked away. Unless your mother has finally murdered someone and broken free, they’re in the bridal suite of the Royal Hotel in Deal—not two hundred yards from your house!” Already outside the room, Jennifer stopped and looked back. Radleigh was out of sight, though she could see the smoke from his cigarette. Rockville was twisting about in another spasm of pain and terror. Hooper was on her knees, rocking backward and forward and staring at the big screen. Sweeting had scooped some of the other Hooper’s slime on to his ballpoint pen, and was holding it up to the light.