MARIA WAS FINDING IT difficult to keep the minds of the scientists on the problem in hand. As if suddenly finding themselves in the company of two demons from another realm—the scientists seemed reluctant to call it “Hell,” preferring instead to use the term climatically challenged dimension—wasn’t enough, they now had the bonus of Crudford, who was a gelatinous demon from the same place with a great fondness for hats. But the answers that Crudford was giving to their questions seemed to be causing them even more problems than the ones they had been receiving from Nurd and Wormwood.

“So,” said Professor Stefan, “have you always been a gelatinous mass?”

“Indeed I have,” said Crudford proudly. “I’ve been a billion years before the ooze. It trails behind me, you see.”

“Yes, I do see,” said Professor Stefan, who had slipped in some of Crudford’s ooze and almost landed on his head as a consequence. “And you say you work for a being called the ‘Great Malevolence’?”

“That’s right,” said Crudford, “the most evil being that the Multiverse has ever known. It is the source of all badness, the well from which the darkest thoughts and deeds spring. No single entity has ever contained so much sheer nastiness as the Great Malevolence. On the other hand, I work regular hours, get weekends off, and the cafeteria’s not bad.”

“And what does this Great Malevolence want?” said Professor Hilbert.

“Well, it would really like to see the Earth reduced to a burning plain, with all life on it either wiped out or left screaming in agony. That aside, it would probably settle for Samuel Johnson’s head on a plate.”

“Is that what you want?” asked Maria, who was quite shocked to hear Crudford speak of her friend in that way. Once you got over the fact that he was largely transparent, and clearly demonic,⁵⁵ Crudford appeared very good-natured.

“I don’t know Samuel Johnson personally,” said Crudford, “and he’s never done anything to hurt me. I wouldn’t like it if my head was lopped off, although I’m pretty sure that it would grow back again. But life is a lot easier when the Great Malevolence is happy, which isn’t very often. If you’re worried about me trying to cut Samuel Johnson’s head off, though, then don’t be. I’m not the head-cutting kind. Also, I’m here to help, because right now you have bigger problems than the Great Malevolence. In case you haven’t noticed, your town has been dimensionally shifted. It’s now stuck in the space between dimensions, and that’s somewhere you don’t want to be.

“In a way, it’s a bit like the Multiverse’s equivalent of the back of the sofa: all sorts of stuff gets lost down there, some of it sticky and unpleasant. But it’s also a place where things hide, things that aren’t supposed to be hanging around between dimensions but should be locked up nice and safe in dimensions of their own. The problem is that there are weak points in the Multiverse, and your experiments with Colliders and dark matter and dark energy have turned those weaknesses into actual holes. That was how the Great Malevolence nearly got through the first time, and it’s how the Shadows are trying to get in this time.”