“But you came through the gates with the others, didn’t you?” said Samuel.
“No, that’s just it,” said Nurd. “I came on my own. Like I told you before, I keep popping from one dimension into the next. One minute I was sitting on my throne in the Wasteland, hitting Wormwood on the head and minding my own business, and the next moment I was here. Now I appear to have ended up here permanently. I tried to make the best of it. In fact”- Nurd coughed slightly ashamedly into his hand- “I had hoped to rule the world. Oh, I’d have been very decent about it. None of this terrorizing and demonic nonsense. All I really wanted was a bit of adoration and a nice car. Apart from that, I’d hardly have bothered anybody. Unfortunately I think there’s going to be some competition for the position, so I’ve decided to abandon my hopes and go home.”
“So you just sort of teleported [26] here?” asked Tom, who was a big fan of Star Trek and quite fancied the idea of being transferred from one place to another instantly.
Nurd shrugged, not entirely understanding the question, then looked at Maria, who was still sucking her pencil and regarding him with an intense gaze.
“Why’s she looking at me like that?” said Nurd. “What’ve I done?”
“Apart from being a demon, and planning to rule the world, you mean?” said Tom.
“Yep, apart from all that,” said Nurd.
“Maria?” asked Samuel. “What are you thinking?”
“Nurd here said that he flipped back and forth between worlds. I’m just wondering what that might mean for our plan. It may be that we’re wrong about the nature of the portal.”
“Plan?” said Nurd. “What plan?”
Nobody spoke.
“Oh, I see,” said Nurd. “Don’t trust the demon.” He sighed. “Well, can’t say I blame you with that lot outside. And for your information, I didn’t just flip back and forth, happy as a demon with two tails. The first time I got crushed, and found myself back in the Wasteland, and the second time a big truck hit me, and the same thing happened. The third time I was with Samuel, and then I wasn’t with him. That was the only time that something bad didn’t happen.”
He gave Samuel a little embarrassed smile.
Maria looked pleased. “Oh, so the rest of the time you died. Sort of. That’s all right then.”
“Thanks very much,” said Nurd. “It wasn’t all right for me. You should try dying some time. I guarantee that you won’t care much for it.”
But now Maria was really interested. “What’s it like, traveling through a portal?” she asked Nurd.
“It hurts,” said Nurd, with feeling. “It’s like being stretched for miles, and then squeezed into a tiny little ball.”
“That’s because of this,” said Maria, pointing at a drawing she had made of an hourglass shape, her pencil poised where the hourglass was at its narrowest. “That’s the point of compression. You shouldn’t have been able to pass through it at all, because you should have been torn apart, or squashed to almost nothing. It sounds like this portal has some of the qualities of a black hole, and some of a wormhole. Theoretically, again, it shouldn’t exist, but then demons shouldn’t exist either, and yet one is drinking tea with us at this precise moment.”
“Your point being?” asked Tom, now getting somewhat impatient because he couldn’t follow most of what Maria was saying.
“My point being,” said Maria patiently, “that Nurd here may be the solution to our problems.”
“Solution?” said Nurd nervously. “This solution isn’t going to hurt, is it?”
“Might do, a bit,” said Maria. “Scientifically it has lots of holes in it. It may not work at all.”
“Well, it’s better than no plan,” said Samuel. “Assuming Nurd is willing to try.”
“It can’t be any worse than what’s happened to me already,” said Nurd gloomily. “Explain away.”
So they did.
“Right,” said Nurd, when they had finished, “that sounds so foolhardy, dangerous, and completely impossible that it just might work. Now, all we need is a car.”
He looked up from the table, and his expression changed.
“There is just one more problem,” he said.
“What’s that?” asked Samuel.
Nurd pointed a shaking finger at the window, to where a pair of demons, one a toad, the other a spider, now stood at the garden gate.
“Them!”
XXX In Which Mrs. Abernathy Loses the Battle, but Sets Out to Win the War
THE CHILDREN CROWDED AT the window, staring out at the demons.
“Ugh,” said Maria, wrinkling her nose at the sight of the ten-legged spider and the great toad. “They’re horrid.”
“The servants of Ba’al,” said Nurd. “They look awful, and they are awful, but Ba’al is like a thousand of them rolled into one, with added nastiness. I’m in trouble now.”
Samuel stared at the two demons. There was something strangely familiar about them. It took him a second to realize that they both still wore the remains of tattered black robes.
“They’re not after you,” he said to Nurd. “I’m not even sure they know you’re here.”
“Then who are they after?” asked Tom.
“Me, I think,” said Samuel. “They’re two of the people from the Abernathys’ basement, or they used to be. Mrs. Abernathy must have sent them.”
“Why?” asked Tom. “You didn’t even manage to stop her. The gates are open. She has what she wanted.”
“I got in her way. I don’t think she likes people crossing her. I’m not sure if anyone has ever crossed her before, not like that. She wants to punish me, and you lot as well if you’re caught with me.”
He turned to Maria and Tom. “I’m sorry. I should never have got you involved in all this.”
Tom patted him on the back. “You’re right, you shouldn’t have.”
“Tom!” said Maria, appalled.
“I was only joking,” said Tom. “I really was,” he added, as Maria continued to glare at him.
“So what do we do now?” asked Maria. “Run away?”
“Running away sounds good,” said Dr. Planck from somewhere beneath the blanket.
“No,” said Samuel. “We have to face them.”
“Look,” said Tom, “hitting little flying skulls was all very well, but I don’t think those two are going to let any of us get close enough to knock them on the head with a bat.”
“We go ahead with the plan,” said Samuel. “We send Nurd through the portal.”
“There is just one thing,” said Nurd. “I’d rather if they didn’t know it was me. Could create difficulties at the other end, assuming I don’t get spread over half the universe if the portal collapses. Perhaps you have a disguise of some kind that I could use?”
Mrs. Johnson whipped the blanket from Dr. Planck, made two holes in it with a pair of scissors, and handed it to Nurd.
“But where do we get a car?” asked Tom.
“Mum,” said Samuel. “Keep an eye on those things. Tom, stay with her. Nurd, Maria, come with me.”
“Where are you going?” asked Tom.
“To steal my dad’s car,” said Samuel, and saw his mum smile.
Samuel, Maria, and Nurd stood in the garage at the back of the house, looking at the car that Samuel’s father had spent years lovingly restoring.
“‘Aston Martin,’” read Nurd. He stroked the car gently. “It’s lovely. Is it like a Porsche?”
“No,” said Samuel. “It’s better than a Porsche, because it’s British.”
“Right,” said Nurd. He wasn’t sure that he agreed. He really had liked the Porsche, but this was still a splendid car.
“Are you sure you can drive one of these?” asked Maria.
“I drove a Porsche,” said Nurd. “I got the hang of that fairly quickly.”
Samuel was having second thoughts about letting Nurd have the car. Samuel’s dad would go crazy when he found out.
“You will look after it?” said Samuel to Nurd. “It’s such a beautiful car.”
[26] Actually, teleportation is not nearly as far-fetched as you might think. Scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute in Maryland recently managed to teleport the quantum identity of one atom to another a few feet away. However, teleportation of humans is a long way off, as the experiment only works once in every one hundred million attempts. Therefore the chances of you being teleported and arriving as interesting goo at the other end, if you arrive at all, are very high indeed. you don’t want to be the subject of the following conversation:
“Is he there yet?”
“Well, bits of him are…”