Nordhausen shook his head as the elevator came to a halt. “You aren’t getting rid of me that easy,” he said. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m scared shitless right now, but I’m still going.” Then he thought about the prospect for a moment and asked another question. “I’ve never quite understood how the retraction sequence works. How do we get back?” The question underlined the fear they were both feeling now.
“What? Oh, it’s a bit complex. The infusion is going to permeate the Arch with a tachyon surge. We may even feel the whole thing when we get inside. No one knows yet. In any case, we can weave particles into the fiber of our quantum matrix and give them a designated half-life, in a manner of speaking. We set the spin resonance to respond to one of two events: the temporal signature of the target time, plus a given interval, or the final decay of the infusion. One way or another, we’ll be pulled back through the singularity in the Arch and return. That’s what happened to our visitor! I think he had a very brief time with us after he intervened to save Kelly. That was his mission, you see. Whether he was free-lancing with his coffee run is another question. Did you notice how he kept looking at his watch? He was very agitated, almost as if he expected something to happen to him at any moment.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Nordhausen. “We won’t have an Arch on the other side. How will we get pulled back?”
“Simple,” Paul smiled. “The door we’re about to open is going to remain open for us, Robert. Time may be a harsh mistress, to repeat that old cliché, but she’s also a tidy one.” The elevator doors slid open and they stepped out into another long metallic tunnel. Paul reached back and extended an arm to block the closing doors.
“You see?” He smiled at the professor. “Time will extend an arm and keep the portal open for us. She knows we don’t belong on this side of the door, and she won’t rest until we’re safe in our own Meridian again. You’ll see.”
A great oval door was waiting for them at the end of a short tunnel, much like the portal above. Paul keyed the entry code and looked for the intercom to the control console while the heavy door swung inward with the same snapping hiss as before. He thumbed the call signal on the intercom and spoke.
“We’re opening the outer lock, Kelly. You can ramp it up to full power and start the spin sequence.”
“Roger that,” Kelly’s voice was reassuring on the other end of the line. “Maeve says to check your pockets and all.”
“Tell her we’ll be very discreet campers.” Paul suddenly smiled with an inner recollection. “And we’ll spend a lovely couple of hours in the Arabian Desert.” He let a little southern twang into his voice, knowing that only Kelly would know what he was talking about.
Nordhausen gave him an odd look, and Paul explained.
“I took this camping trip once out on the Olympic Peninsula with Kelly. The park ranger was coming by to collect the camping fees, and these two old people were trying to pretend they were just day visitors… Oh, never mind. You had to be there.”
The professor patted his torso, compliant with Maeve’s abiding caution to the last. He was surprised to find something in a small cache pocket within his gown, and he reached inside to fondle it with his fingers. Beads, he thought? Then the a faint familiar odor came to him and he realized that Maeve had secreted a supply of loose coffee beans in a cloth pouch, along with a few other items that he did not have time to explore. He smiled.
They were in a small, spherical chamber, and the heavy door was already swinging shut behind them. The faint whir of spinning turbines came to them now, resonating from the bowels of the earth with a palpable vibration that gathered strength with each passing moment. A pump began to operate somewhere and they felt their ears pop as the outer door sealed behind them and the chamber added pressure. They instinctively turned to face the last barrier between them and the Arch. It was a another massive metal door, split down the middle with a single seam—the final safety lock. The two halves would slide open any moment now.
“Power at 100 percent,” said Kelly over the intercom. “Everything all right down there?”
“We’re all yours,” said Paul.
“Well don’t cause any trouble in the park. Got that?”
Paul smiled. It was another of their favorite catch phrases, the warp and woof of a long friendship. Kelly spoke again: “Spin configuration looks wonderful, Paul. I’m infusing the chamber now… On my mark… And you are good to go!”
The titanium-steel alloy split asunder as the two halves of the final barrier slipped open with a metallic whisk. They found themselves staring down an iridescent corridor, broken at intervals by gleaming arches of pulsating light. The final Arch was brilliantly lit with a chaotic radiance of color and movement.
“Put your headdress on, professor!” Paul had to shout over the torrential sound resonating in the narrow passage.
“What if we miss the target, Paul?” Nordhausen gave him a wide-eyed look. “What if we miss it by fifty years?”
“No time for that, Robert!” Paul squinted into the scintillating sheen of light and motion in the Arch. They started forward, eyes fixed on a thick yellow line painted in the place where the last metal barrier had stood. Once they crossed that line they would be a few short steps from the event horizon of a tiny black hole. The spin-out of the entire quantum phenomenon was the only thing keeping them from being sucked into oblivion now. It was an elegantly simple effect that seemed to hold true because of the odd interaction of gravity and centrifugal force. Just as one could put a finger into the heart of a whirlpool and not get wet, and again like the dead space of calm in the eye of a hurricane, the interaction of quantum gravity conferred the same benefit to a spinning black hole. Here, in the sacred sanctuary created by the Arch, the annihilating effects of the singularity at the heart of the black hole were tamed and rendered harmless. It was all in the spin; all in the incredible vortex of energy and light, that swirled around them as they stepped over the line.
Paul felt Robert groping for him in the whirling storm of light, and the two men locked arms. Somehow the simple grasp of another human being made the last few steps possible for them. The final, brilliant span of the Arch loomed ahead of them and they felt their skin tingling as with the prickle of a thousand needles. There was no pain—only the strange sensation that something was permeating the entire fabric of their being, rending them through with the cold, penetrating gaze of eternity. It was suddenly very cold, and a violet haze seemed to enfold them. They were under the Arch. Infinity yawned, and the two men slipped through into the void.
9
Maeve gave Kelly a furtive glance as she stepped past him to the Main console. Jen extended the telephone receiver, a question in her eyes when she saw how Maeve received it so tentatively, as if uncertain or fearful in some way. Maeve put the receiver to her ear, listening for a moment before she spoke.
“Mother?” she said at last, her voice breaking a bit, a look of anguish on her face.
“Is that you, Maeve?” The old woman’s voice seemed distant and remote, fading in and out as if it were carried on a wireless signal.