The Doomsday Testament(103)
Jamie shrugged. ‘Vaguely.’
‘Christ, where have you been? Cern. A four-billion- dollar investment. A seventeen-mile tunnel dug through France and Switzerland to bury the biggest particle accelerator ever created so that they can mimic the conditions of the day the universe was born. The Big Bang. And if that bang isn’t big enough they’re also hoping to find the God particle and shed light on what we know as Dark Matter. Taken all together, it could open the door to what we’re talking about. Sustainable nuclear fusion.’
Jamie frowned. ‘So if they’re already doing this, what’s the big deal about it all?’
‘Because no one knows whether it will work and there’s that teeensy-weensy down side.’
‘Teensy-weensy?’
‘The very small matter of it going out of control and creating a Black Hole that could swallow the planet.’
‘And you really think that’s a possibility?’ Sarah demanded.
Mike smiled at her naivety. ‘The whole point of scientific experiment is to push back the boundaries of our knowledge. To do that, scientists have to stick their noses in some dark and sometimes dangerous corners. Just ask Marie Curie. How likely does a global catastrophe have to be for a scientist to back off from a big experiment? A couple of guys, including the president of the Royal Society, looked at the Collider and worked out that, based on astronomical evidence and assumptions about the physics of a few hypothetical particles called strangelets that we don’t really understand, the odds of turning the earth into a dead planet were about fifty million to one. Good odds, eh? About the same as my chances of winning the lottery. Only someone out there wins the lottery most weeks. Scientists are as fallible as the next man, Sarah. The Hadron Collider is playing with the building blocks of the universe, and the truth is that nobody has the slightest idea what the true risk is. Hell, they must cross their fingers every time they press Start.’
LI
THEY REACHED THE landing outside Jamie’s flat just as an elderly woman was disappearing through the door opposite and the atmosphere lay heavy with the scent of freshly sprayed air freshener.
‘Hello, Mrs Laurence,’ Jamie greeted his neighbour.
She turned to glare at him. ‘I don’t know how you dare show your face after all that noise the other night.’
‘What was that all about?’ Sarah said after the door had slammed shut.
Jamie shrugged. ‘Search me. I thought we’d always got on pretty well.’ As he put his key in the lock an unsavoury odour caught in his throat. He groaned. ‘The fish. That dozy bugger Simon has forgotten to feed them.’
The moment he pushed open the door the smell hit him like something solid, instantly reacting with his gut to fill his mouth with bile. Someone had closed the thick velvet curtains and it took time for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. When they did, they were drawn to a bulky object in the centre of the room that shouldn’t be there. His brain seemed to fragment into a thousand pieces, but somehow he managed to grope for the light switch and Sarah stifled a scream as the full horror of what they’d walked into dawned.
‘Oh, fuck.’ Jamie’s legs threatened to give way and he crouched down with his hand over his mouth. The sound of his thundering heart almost overwhelmed the buzz of the hundreds of flies that had risen from the alien object and now filled the room.
Blood everywhere. Old blood that stained the walls and the carpet a deep brown. But that must have come at the end.
He forced himself to study the scene as if the central figure was not his friend. They had tied Simon – yes, Simon was present somewhere in that bloated, heavily marbled caricature of a human being – to a kitchen chair. He was naked to the waist and his feet were bare. That must be one of his own socks stuffed into the thing’s mouth. Internal gases had inflated the body until the darkened skin threatened to split and vile black fluids flowed from his nose, ears and where the eyes should be. Despite the decomposition it was possible to work out what they had done to him. The faint cooked-meat smell just detectable beneath the overpowering stench of death must have been caused by the blow torch or soldering iron they had used on his nipples and chest. At least four toes, and as many fingers, were missing, which presumably meant they were lying around somewhere among the mess of papers and household items strewn across the carpet. Once they had what they’d come for they had slashed his throat with an obscene, terrible violence that had splattered his life blood across the room, but which must have come as a blessed relief to its victim.
‘They were looking for us.’ Sarah’s voice shook.