Muggles Bereaved Read online

  “So what do we do?” asked Lim.

  “With a left handed troll you move to the left as if complying, but quickly dive to the right and in a single move place you hand on the back of the bench the other hand on the seat and deliver a kick with your foot. But all three contacts must occur within the same second. The false bench will disappear and your chosen portal will open. I will then appear and deal severely with the Space-Time or Time-Space troll.” He smiled, “there is a simple procedure. If the Harbourmaster smells of oranges or lemons do exactly the opposite of what he tells you.”

  “What if we take more than a second to open the right, I mean correct, portal?” asked Lim

  “Well it gets very messy,” said the Harbourmaster. “But The Good usually lets me reverse the problems, in time. I can’t be more specific because it depends what spin the hackers have put on the troll. The problem may soon disappear as we have already tracked the hack down to a group of universes each having only a trillion planets. Our IT people are among the best. Former hackers to a man. Or woman.”

  The portal was still open, so Lim asked “are we visible to anyone around us now?”

  “Not until you close the portal. In an emergency, you can open a portal and thus hide yourself. I will have to appear but I won’t mind a bit. I am an avatar and I can be in several billion places at the same time.”

  “Awesome,” breathed Jim admiringly.

  “If you think I am awesome, wait until you meet an Archangel. Now, I think we should close the portal and get about our business, don’t you?”

  “Yes and thank you for all your help,” said Lim, wondering if it was necessary to be polite to an avatar.

  “Politeness,” said the Harbourmaster, “is of The Good.”

  Then they were alone and in the open, though offered some protection by the floral copse and by the giant hangar behind them. But not quite alone, for the Harbourmaster reappeared from the corner of the hangar and strove toward them.

  “Outward bound?” he asked, gesturing towards the two benches behind them with his left hand. There was an almost painful scent of lemon in the air.

  “We’ve just arrived, said Lim quickly, “we’ll be back in an hour or two.”

  The Harbourmaster grinned, “OK, well I will be waiting for you.”

  Lim led them quickly away.

  “Left handed, smelling of lemon, so when we get back we feint to the left then kick-start the right hand bench.”

  “Kick-start!” Jim was full of admiration for Tracy. More full than normal, if that was possible.

  “Now,” said Lim, “remember that this is the Open Day forced on the RAF by the media. So if there is anything to be discovered here it must be well hidden. But have some hope because CForceS are masterminding the removal of incriminating data files and equipment. So there should be plenty slipping through their hands.”

  “They couldn’t mastermind a rice pudding,” said Jim, once more quoting his father.

  They rounded the corner of the hangar and observed the scene. Crowds were milling around the Skylon shuttles parked outside, but in the distance was an administration block that seemed to be very heavily guarded. Nice of the RAF to identify a likely target.

  They walked across the front of the hangar and then Lim led them to one side of the administration block which was adorned with a fenced off compound crammed with transformers and terminals. The fencing signs said “Electrified Fences and Equipment, Danger of Death”.

  “That’s our way in,” said Lim.

  “Through the Valley of Death, the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” breathed Jim, half remembering the charge of the light brigade and mixing it with generous helpings of Psalm 23 and episodes of TV’s ‘Ancient Aliens’.

  “Except,” said Lim, “that we will be going over the valley and not through.”

  “Levitation!” said Tracy triumphantly.

  “Exactly. I will take you up onto the roof of the block one at a time, Tracy first and then Jim. But I want you, Jim, to be prepared to try your cloaking thing if we should come across any guards. We’ll use LED blinders and then you smother them in that excrescence stuff if you can. Failing that, I have my dad’s taser.”

  Jim, who was quietly pleased that Tracy was to be first over the sparking power lines and transformers was then wrestling with guilt about his putative girlfriend being put in harm’s way.

  “OK, but take me up first,” he said, “then I can mount a guard with an LED blinder and my cloaking thing, if I can get that to work.”

  “Right, lets use our belt carabiners so there’s no danger of me dropping you.”

  They clipped on and Jim clambered onto Lim’s back, arms round his leader’s neck. In the next instant Lim confidently tensed his muscles and propelled them into the air. So high did they go and so real was the risk of being seen from every direction, that Lim did a crash descent that almost put them into the forest of electrical cables and terminals below. Regaining control, Lim eased up more cautiously and slipped them over the wall and onto the flat roof. They dropped to their haunches and uncoupled their belts. Lim gave Jim his taser and a second LED blinder then slipped back over the wall. He was back in a split second having seen a perimeter guard approaching. Tracy had somehow hidden herself away. When the guard turned a corner, Tracy ran back from the hangar and Lim soared down to pick her up. They clipped on and ascended without further incident. On the roof, they joined Jim and keeping in a low crouch, they munchkin-with-scoliosis-walked over to the door in a brick shed-like structure. There was a padlock, but Lim’s bolt cutters made short work of it.

  “Strange to have a padlock on the outside of the door,” observed Tracy. If this is access to a stairwell, how do they come up and out?”

  “Good point,” said Jim, always ready to praise Tracy.

  Lim looked around the roof behind the shed and saw a lean-to with another door in it, “That must be the way down.”

  This door was clearly locked from below and it took some time to figure out how to jemmy it open. Luckily, it was only secured by a bolt and the jemmy soon prised away the bolt hoops, allowing them to lift the door open. The word ‘steps’ did not dignify what was a fairly rickety metal ladder, but it sufficed to allow them access to the floor below.

  They stood and listened for a while, then, hearing no noise, they moved out into a corridor with glass walled offices. Luck was again with them and the staff who might have been at their desks were being used to help manage the Open Day crowds and security. But with so many offices and so many desks, the question was, where on earth should they begin?

  “Read the door signs,” said Lim in a whisper, “They appear to indicate function. This one says ‘Traffic Control’.”

  Tracy was further down the corridor, “This one says ‘Strategy.’”

  “What are ‘incursions’,” asked Jim.

  “Incursions? That sound promising,” said Lim, “pity it doesn’t say alien incursions or portal incursions.”

  They slipped the lock on the door easily enough and wandered around the office looking for any revealing paperwork. It was of course filed away and had the kind of security classification that required a certain level of authority for access. But the CForceS book for signing in and out was very stupidly open on a desk. And on the far wall was a very imposing door to a safe with combination lock, spin-wheel handles and all. Jim kneeled on a chair protruding from the wall the better to read a sign giving security access directions. It was placed rather high up for a chair, and was possibly a shelf. As he placed his hand on the wall while his other hand was on the seat, he trod on the wall skirting. The Harbourmaster appeared beside him.

  “Now I know you haven’t forgotten the combination to the safe,” he said, but oddly enough, you are authorised to go inside. A slit the size of a letterbox opened level with Jim’s middle and he folded into it with a faint gasp. The Harbourmaster ushered Lim and Tracy forward.

  “This portal stays open for 20 seconds, which is time
enough.”

  Tracy and Lim folded in with alacrity. Lim was carrying the signing in and signing out log.

  The room inside the safe was enormous and filled with racks of document boxes all carefully labelled. Each rack had a high signpost. Tracy was already in amongst the box-files in an alleyway labelled ‘Photographs’. She pulled down a box labelled ‘Vehicles”. It was full off photographs of silvery craft just like the ones that had been removed from RAF Sculthorpe ahead of the Open Day. There were some descriptions too; ‘slip-slider from F345, non-hostile’; ‘Apparator from S222, surveillance drone’; ‘Refractor from H556, Folder drone’, and so on. She picked out a photo that gripped her attention; Hunter-killer from Proxima Centauri b, universe 633S-B25Z.

  “Lim,” she called, oblivious to her own shouting, “Jim, you too, come and see.

  They joined her and the three of them stared at the photograph. It was either the saucer they had seen being towed away from RAF Sculthorpe under wraps or its twin.

  “Time to use your eidetic memory Tracy,” said Lim, grimly, “those markings; are they the same as on the Sculthorpe saucer?”

  Tracy fished out her cellphone and thumbed through her photos, “There,” she said, “Look for yourself, the markings are identical.”

  And they were.

  “Right,” said Lim, “we’ll take that photo and you keep looking, Tracy. There’s a rack that says ‘Threats’ further down. You look down there, Jim and I will just take some shots of all the rack labels and see what else emerges from an overview.”

  They spent a good hour looking for information and at the end of that time had a dozen photos and some sheaves of documents. Among the haul were papers referring to thwarted threats and lists of ‘near miss’ incidents. There was also a paper headed ‘Reverse Engineering Prospects’. Plenty of reading to be done. They packed up their treasures and made for the exit.

  They were pleased to find that there was only one shelf-seat by the vault door and that the Harbourmaster who responded to the trigger smelled of nothing at all. Perhaps just a whiff of that static electricity smell, imagined or not. But the bells of St Clements were definitely silent and not singing “Oranges and Lemons.”

  They folded out of the vault and into the empty office. Thanking the Harbourmaster, they fled from the office, down the corridor and up onto the roof. A few minutes more and ‘Levitating Lim’, as Jim called him, delivered them safely to ground level. Jim was all for examining the Skylon shuttles, but Lim tugged him away. They were carrying too much classified data to expose themselves to even the slightest risk.

  Round the back of Hangar 3, after kick-starting the portal on the first bench, they called forth the Harbourmaster, the one smelling of oranges. Jim had already planned his exit strategy based on the lemon smelling Harbourmaster of two hours before. But Lim dragged him back and feinting right, kick-started the left-most bench, opening its portal. Three folds later and they were back in the Walks watching the good and faithful Harbourmaster side-slipping back into the hedgerow.

  “We need somewhere to review all this stuff,” said Tracy, raising her bulging rucksack.

  “What about the library,” said Jim.

  Lim shook his head, “I think it is only a matter of time before Margery the Librarian links you to the stinks and stains. And stinks-links is not what we need. We’ll use my father’s shed on his allotment. It’s pretty spacious because it was a disused chalet from Pentney caravan park. Its got a kettle and the makings too. And a wok and a gas ring.”

  “What if your dad turns up?”

  “He won’t. He has a schedule and today is not his allotment day. Creature of habit, my dad.”

  Once ensconced in the chalet, Lim produced the wok, dug up some fresh vegetables and knocked up a stir fry seasoned with coconut milk, five spice powder, fresh coriander and lemon grass. His father set great store by having the ability to cook his lunch with fresh vegetables straight from the allotment. The others began the work of reading the papers and reviewing the photographs.

  “Ahah! Said Lim, “good old dad. He has a tin of Spam in his cupboard and if you have not tasted stir fried Spam you haven’t lived. He’s even got a can of pickled mustard greens to go with it.”

  They continued reading while Lim cooked and then they ate. And read some more. It became clear that the RAF was engaged in a battle with an enemy incomer from one or more alternate universes. The likelihood was also that the incomer was not from Rowling World or its alter egos, but from a planet called Alpha Centauri Bb. Somebody could use portal travel between paired universes, but also across interstellar space.

  It was getting late and they decided to stash their finds in Lim’s dad’s shed and make their way home. No-one had any idea what they should do next.

  “Why not ask the Harbourmaster,” said Jim, “If he can dial up a portal in Sculthorpe, maybe he can dial up this Alpha Centauri Bb place.”

  “Good thinking, Jim,” said Lim, “ and if he says that it is not possible or is prohibited, we might find out something from that negative evidence.”

  Tracy gave them a grim look. “Going to Sculthorpe is one thing, but I am not going to a planet round a star 4.3 light years away from Rowling. I just Oogled it on my phone.”

  “Think about it, Tracy,” said Lim, “if interplanetary travel or interstellar travel was universally available, we would be colonising Mars right now, and Alpha Centauri Bb too. So there’s no risk of us making a light speed jump.”

  “So that is it!” exclaimed Jim, “the saucer was a captured Time-Space craft and the RAF are trying to reverse engineer it!’

  “Could be a Space-Time craft with left handed crew with mirrored faces,” said Tracy sarcastically. “my head is aching and I need to sleep.”

  “Things are looking up,” said Jim, “You used to claim that the only cure for a headache was a hearty meal.”

  “OK, let’s get some rest. I suggest we meet tomorrow on The Walks and ask the Harbourmaster some questions. Our stuff is safe on the allotment because dad doesn’t go there until the weekend. Luckily we have weeks of holiday left.” Lim was in leadership mode again.

  They said their goodnights and went on their separate ways.

  Chapter Eight – Interstellar, Interplanetary Travel

  Answering Lim’s text messages, Jim and Tracy joined him on The Walks and Jim casually triggered the bench portal. What had been an alarming slash in the space-time continuum, now seemed somehow commonplace. Like the opening of a taxi door.

  The Harbourmaster was something else and was never commonplace. He was too thin for that, but without the knobbliness of most thin people. His smoothness and lack of blemish was unnerving. “Where to, today, my friends?” he asked.

  As Leader of the Companions, Lim was their spokesman, or should we say ‘spokesperson’, in deference to Tracy’s constant feminist alertness.

  “We want to know about interplanetary travel,” he said.

  They had agreed to talk about a trip to Mars, before broaching the subject of travel to and from Alpha Centauri. It seemed sensible to go for the ‘short’ 40 million mile trip, or 100 million mile trip depending on Mars’ current orbit. Travel to a star 4.4 light years away was in a different league. Robert Burnham Jr, author of Burnham’s Celestial Handbook has an ingenious way to portray the distance of one light-year. and ultimately of expressing the distance scale of the universe. And he can do it in understandable terms. He relates a light year to the Astronomical Unit, or the distance from Rowling World to the sun, 93 million miles or about 8 minutes away at light speed. Burnham noted that there are 63,000 astronomical units in one light-year, and 63,000 inches in one mile. So if we scale down the Rowling-sun distance down to 1 inch, then the light year would scale down to 1 mile and Alpha Centauri would be over 4 miles distant. More difficult to comprehend is the distance in actual miles to Alpha Centauri. 24 trillion miles. Burnham’s analogue makes travelling to Alpha Centauri seem oddly more reasonable.

  The Harbou
rmaster understood the question, but gave it serious contemplation. For all of the 5 seconds during which the light reflected from his cap badge would have travelled over 900,000 miles. In the same period, the computer system circuits driving the galaxy’s Harbourmasters would have executed a conservative 101000 quadrillions of Floating Point calculations or FLOPS. The Harbourmaster could afford a FLOP hungry, languid glance at his perfectly manicured, non-growing fingernails.

  “Well,” said the Harbourmaster, wasting zillions more FLOPS, “I am, afraid I cannot help you. In fact no-one can help you. Current research has not located Space-Time folds which bring Rowling close to the red planet, or to any other planet for that matter. I believe Mr Isaac Newton is working on ways of locating touching fabricata. ‘Fabricata’ is what he calls points at which different parts of space come into near contact. What he really intends to do is to create a Space-Time folding machine. He calls that a ‘mangle’ for some reason. After a primitive washing dryer, apparently. You can imagine that picking two locations in space and dragging them together is a bit of a stretch, stretch being an appropriate noun. It might also need huge amounts of energy.”