‘Of course. What we’ve been trying to do for two decades – form a route from this Earth to another. We’ve tapped the multiverse.’ He laughed softly. ‘Vic, what’s happened here might echo across reality. Somewhere so many miles away there’s not enough room in our universe to write down the distance, there’s another you, toasting our success with another me, and the other you is pleased and happy and confident that—’
‘Don’t give me that bullshit!’ Vic snapped. And Jonah could see that he was genuinely scared. He has family up there, he thought, and for a second he tried to put himself in the other man’s place. Yes, with the enormity of what they’d done he could understand the worry, the tension.
But there were safeguards.
‘Remember Stephen Hawking’s visit?’ Jonah asked.
‘How could I not?’
‘He and Bill admired each other greatly, and he gave us his blessing. Said we were the sharpest part of the cutting edge.’
‘You say that as if you were proud.’
Jonah laughed softly. Vic above everyone knew that Jonah’s pride was a complex thing, untouched by fame or its shadow and more concerned with personal achievement.
‘He said we were the true explorers, and gave that plaque as Stephen Hawking’s stamp of approval. We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something special.’
‘Just because we pretend to understand doesn’t mean we’re special. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be scared.’
‘You should be pleased,’ Jonah said, sounding more petulant than he’d intended. But damn it, down here in the facility they weren’t walking in the footsteps of giants. They were making the footsteps.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Vic said, sounding tired rather than bitter. ‘It’s something I’ll be able to tell my grandkids.’
‘If you’re lucky enough to have them,’ Jonah said, ‘then yes, of course. You can tell them you were part of the most startling, audacious experiment in history. At Fermilab and CERN they’re knocking protons together to look for the Higgs boson particle and mini black holes. Theorists discuss Planck energies, and waste time arguing about Copernican and anthropic principles with those possessing narrow vision or blind faith. But here . . . here, we’ve made much of theoretical physics redundant. Here, we have proof.’
Vic remained silent, turning his glass this way and that, catching the light and perhaps trying to see what Jonah saw in it.
‘What were you doing here, Vic?’ Jonah asked. ‘If what we’ve done makes you like this, why were you even here?’
‘I wanted it as much as everyone else did,’ Vic said. ‘But the reality is . . . more massive than I ever imagined. The impact of what we’ve done here . . .’ He trailed off, still staring into his glass.
‘Will be felt for ever,’ Jonah said.
‘We’ve changed the whole fucking world,’ Vic said softly. Then he put the glass down without drinking, stood, and leaned in close to Jonah as if to look inside him.
‘Vic?’ Jonah asked, for the first time a little unsettled.
And before leaving Vic Pearson spoke the stark truth. ‘Things can never be the same again.’
2
Holly Wright should have gone to bed hours ago. It had been like this since breach three days before, with her desire for sleep driven out by the unbridled excitement at what had happened. They would sit here together when others were sleeping, her and Jonah, analysing and theorising, speculating and sometimes just staring at the thing. But most of the time Control was buzzing, there was still much to be done, and staring had to be kept to a minimum.
She missed that time. For her, being a scientist was all about dreaming. Which was how she survived on two hours of sleep per night, and why she was here now. Staring and dreaming.