‘I thought you said that was a metaphor.’
‘It is, but look, it’s obvious,’ Sophie replied, confused.
‘Nothing is obvious.’ As Mallory walked towards the stone dais at the end of the chamber, the torches in that area burned more brightly to reveal a space beyond.
‘If there’s no hero waiting to come back when England really needs him, what does that mean?’ Sophie said, oblivious to Mallory. ‘Has something happened to him? Is there no hope?’
‘Look at this.’ Mallory was supporting himself on the raised dais, one hand clutching his injured side. He was looking into the area beyond where a brazier burned with the cool blue flames of the earth energy. In the middle of the flames lay a stone, round and grey with no discernible markings.
‘Is that why we were brought here?’ Sophie said, disappointed. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Never judge a book by its cover. See, I have a cliche for every occasion.’ Mallory steeled himself. Although he knew the blue flames didn’t burn like ordinary fire, it still took a leap of faith to plunge his hand into their depths. As he leaned in, a column of blue fire surged up to the ceiling high overhead. For the briefest instant, Mallory saw a face in that blazing pillar, but it was gone before he could register its features. But it left him with one piece of knowledge: the object in the fire was called the Wish Stone. Mallory retrieved it quickly and the column of fire instantly died away.
At the same moment, the Wish Stone came to life on his open palm. Crackling blue light sprang out of it, forming an image in the air of two men crouching next to a stone tomb with a woman standing nearby. The picture, which Mallory thought resembled a hologram, hung over the stone for a few seconds and then winked out.
‘What’s that all about?’ Mallory said.
‘No idea. But it’s got to be important.’ There was a note of doubt in Sophie’s voice.
‘I think that just about defines anti-climax. Night of the living dead outside. Throat nearly ripped out in here. Almost fall to my death down the crack of doom. The prize: a fucking rock.’
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Sophie said. ‘We can sort out what this means later.’
Mallory slipped the Wish Stone into his pocket. ‘I’m going to get my sword back now, and if that big mouser is sitting on it, I’m going to use this stone to-’
‘All right, so you’re a big man,’ Sophie said. ‘Let’s go.’
The day after briefing Hunter and his team, the General moved along the corridors of Brasenose with a renewed vigour. Ever since the Fall, it had all been about logistics — getting the supply lines in place, ensuring that the base was secure, developing policies and plans. Finally he felt as if they were in a position to take the first steps towards a campaign that would drive out the invaders.
He marched into Kirkham’s suite of laboratories and eventually found the scientist in a darkened room far away from the main area of activity, labouring over a model of a town laid out across a large map table, illuminated by a single light overhead.
‘So this is where you get away from it all to play with your toys,’ the General said sarcastically.
Kirkham was unruffled. ‘It’s a model.’
‘I can see that.’
‘A model of reality.’
The General masked his puzzlement in case it was construed as a mark of weakness and leaned over the table to get a better look. It was a facsimile of any small town — central shopping area, streets of suburban semis, rows of terraces, a few mansions and grand residences dotted here and there.
‘I created it for my next briefing to the Joint Board. The concepts are quite difficult to communicate to…’ He paused to find the right word.
‘The uneducated? Thick soldiers?’
‘No-’
‘Try it on me.’
Kirkham blinked through his thick glasses, clearly uneasy about going down that route.
‘Go on. Tell me about reality.’
Kirkham could see that the General had the bit between his teeth; there was no backing down. He began hesitantly. ‘As I said, these are difficult concepts. Understanding the nature of reality is key to the situation we now find ourselves in. I talked earlier about branes and String Theory, and their possible relationship with parallel universes — that’s one view. There are others. You’ll forgive me if I begin by delving into what seems to be mysticism-’
‘Just get on with it.’ The General continued to be engrossed by the model town.
‘Reality… material reality, such as you see around you, is regarded as an illusion in the Hindu religion,’ Kirkham began. ‘They have a word for it: maya, the veil of illusion. Ironically, many of the ancient spiritual philosophies are actually quite close to current scientific thinking.’ He peered at the General. ‘Do you understand that?’
‘Of course,’ the General said curtly. ‘“ All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.” Go on.’
Kirkham relaxed a little. ‘Then let’s take things a step further. A hypothesis. What we perceive as reality is, in scientific terms, a network of quantum waves which have become phase-locked and act as a single entity — in the same way that a group of photons become phase-locked in a laser.’
‘Yes — random light particles frozen so that they appear to be one object. You’re saying that everything we see around us is not in its natural state. It’s just become locked in this form and we accept that as the norm. But it’s not.’
‘Exactly.’ Kirkham couldn’t contain his excitement at the General’s receptiveness. ‘Now imagine if this phase- locked system could be affected as a whole by a human mind concentrating on one small part of it, in the same way that all systems are affected by a change of one tiny aspect. That could be perceived as magic by those who do not understand the system that lies behind the illusion.’
‘So you’re saying that one mind could therefore alter the whole reality?’
‘In this hypothesis.’
The General picked up one of the houses from a suburb. ‘So where does the town fit in?’
Kirkham took the house from him and carefully replaced it. ‘All that I’ve said so far is background. This is a model of our phase-locked reality. Consider that every house is a universe, or a dimension. Some are mundane, others… ornate. In some, little happens that we would consider unusual — the father comes home from his day at the factory, his dinner is on the table. In others, the family has access to technology the previous father cannot begin to comprehend from his limited life experience. We know from our intelligence there are at least two adjoining dimensions-’
‘This one and the Otherworld.’ The General began to see the model in a new light as the ramifications of Kirkham’s hypothesis began to reveal themselves to him.
‘The place the Celts called T’ir n’a n’Og, exactly,’ Kirkham continued. ‘The two are apparently very different places. But consider this: what if there are other dimensions just like our own, so alike that you can barely tell the difference.’ He tapped a row of terraced houses. ‘The only differentiating factors being a picture here, an ornament there. You could go from one to another and not realise you were in a different place.’
‘Perhaps that’s what happens when you die.’
‘I think that would be delving too far into the realms of mysticism.’ Kirkham wandered around the table, looking at the town from different angles. ‘But who knows? Really, when you get to this level, who knows anything? We have our hypotheses, but no way to test them.’
The General examined some of the imposing mansions on the edge of town, one of which had the creepy appeal of the Addams Family home. Then he looked towards the edge of the table and the gloom that lay beyond, and shivered.
Kirkham, however, wasn’t finished. ‘What if someone decided to knock down his house and rebuild it in a different way, or add an extension, as we discussed earlier-’
‘One mind concentrating on a part of the phase-locked system, thereby altering the whole of it?’
Kirkham nodded encouragingly.
‘You know, sometimes I get the strangest feeling that the world wasn’t meant to be the way it is,’ the General mused. ‘It’s odd… unnerving. I have this idea that I was living another life, and then everything changed. Do you ever get that?’
Kirkham didn’t answer.
