Magic Time

Chapter Six

NEW YORK-8:52 A.M. EDT

Cal Griffin was drowning.

The multitudes surged about him, overwhelming, pressing in, jostling him as he struggled along Fifth, a phantom mirrored in the dispassionate glass of Saks and Versace and Dior. The unseen, massed humanity of his dream was garishly replicated in the morning sun. Snatches of Italian, French, Japanese and every mutant strain of English whipped by amid an endlessness of Carnegie Tech T-shirts and Bernini, body piercings and haute couture. The delicate, luxuriant weather had proved fleeting; the humidity was coming on now, air thick as tar, pregnant with the promise of storm. Cal felt sapped, every breath a labor.

He remembered a time when, newly arrived from Hurley, he had acknowledged all who met his gaze with a smile and nod of greeting. Recently and so long ago. When, how, had it faded to anonymity and silence?

Now, today, he searched the faces hungrily for connection as they blurred past. But their eyes evaded, and in their kaleidoscopic jumble of dress and manner, their forced hilarity and dynamism, he read artifice and fear.

He thought again of the dream, the screaming ones in the blackness. If light were suddenly to flash bright across that scorched plain, what might those faces reveal?

When Cal had delivered his sister to the nuns at St. Augustine, set incongruously in the Village, the ancient walls seemed to whisper “citadel… sanctuary.” A grim contrast to the dark tower of Stern, Ledding and Bowen to which he now strode.

The machine will stop; it will come to a grinding, shrieking halt. And then what? The dream mocked him. The un-spoken certainty of the ones in the dark that he could aid them if only he would, the unassailable power in the sword and himself. It was absurdity. He had no power, only expenses, debts, obligations and a queasy moral sense that had suddenly kicked in to yank the rug from under his feet. As heat shimmered off the concrete, Cal’s head swam. He was seized by a sensation of inexorable velocity, of something uncontrollable racing toward him.

The Stark Building, that Deco-Nouveau-Gothic monstrosity of steel ornament and worked stone that looked blue or black or green depending on the light, loomed ahead at Fifty-sixth like an executioner.

Cal regarded it uncertainly and slowed, shrank from the coming moment. He scanned the masklike faces for a spark of recognition, found none. Then turning, he saw, beyond the clamor and haste, a still, lean figure that met his gaze and knew him.

“Calvin, my friend!” The shout was exuberant. “No rest for the wicked, eh?”

Late or not, Cal headed for him, a candle in the storm. “Doc” Lysenko grinned from behind his gleaming aluminum cart as he slathered mustard on a bun.

“What have you got for a condemned man?” Cal fished out limp singles as he neared, not caring about the food-the churning in his stomach negated any hunger he might have felt-but eager for the word of cheer, the balm to his spirit.

Doc nodded at the steaming array of franks turning on the grill. “Here? Atherosclerosis.” His vocabulary, as always, was good but the accent-Odessa by way of Kiev and Afghanistan-thick. As ever, he moved with precision and ease, the smooth, unthinking routine of assembling the dogs, handing them off, making change for customers who often didn’t say a word, miss a step, even look at him.

The herd bulled past, the swarm blind to the mysteries around them, the wonders. To step out of its rush, to be still a moment, to see. .

“Being a physician isn’t helping you as an entrepreneur,” Cal ventured.

“In Leningrad-sorry, St. Petersburg-I’m physician. Here, my degree’s toilet paper.”

Cal scrutinized him as for the first time, the secondhand jeans and condiment-spattered apron, the Yankees cap turned backward. What chance, what calamity had washed Doc here? The question, when asked, would invariably be dismissed with a laugh and an evasion. But no camouflage could belie the refined complexity of that face, the probing glance like a scalpel. His cheeks were pale and smooth, his eyes so weary and lined, a face at war with itself. And those astonishing hands with their long, delicate fingers. Surgeon’s hands, slopping mustard and kraut.

Cal felt a swell of kinship. Aliens, the two of them, in lives too small, on the run. But from what? To what?

He became aware that Doc was staring at him, his head cocked questioningly. “Condemned for what crime?”

It took Cal a moment to comprehend, but before he could answer, a blare of horns shrilled over the buzz of the crowd.

Cal looked up to see the mass of pedestrians sweeping through the crosswalk, narrowly avoiding the onrush of traffic, a screaming chaos of taxi, truck and bus-and one individual mid-street, trailing the others, strolling unaware.

Cal dove through the obstacle course of bodies, grabbed the tall, rangy figure and quick-stepped him onto the opposite curb. A semi dopplered behind them, wind wake tousling Cal’s hair.

Cal stood trembling, sucking in air. Unable to speak, he gestured wildly behind them at the diesels and SUVs and taxis hurtling past. The other glanced about, seeming to see the street for the first time. Only then did Cal recognize him. A street character. “Goldie,” the shopkeepers called him, no name beyond that. They’d spoken, the man refusing Cal’s proffered coins, explaining in a patient, patronizing tone that he was a scavenger, not a beggar.

“I’m glad you’re here.” Goldie pulled the straw cowboy hat with the five aces in the brim low over lamplight-auburn eyes, high Cherokee cheekbones, as cool as if he stood in a park. “We need to talk.”

Cal’s gaze darted to the Stark Building, its revolving door a summons. “Listen,” he said, not unkindly, “there’s somewhere I need to be.” He nodded toward the thirty-fifth floor.

Goldie craned his neck, then gestured offhandedly toward a steam grate. “Personally, I prefer the subterranean.”

A subway roared by below, shoving air before it like the howl of a beast. Cal felt a tremor of unease. He’d heard of the Mole People, the pale outcasts who inhabited the less-traveled corridors of subway and sewer, the dark city under the bedlam of the city he knew.

Cal offered, “Maybe later.”

“Later will not do.” Goldie stepped in abruptly, political buttons, free promo pins and other pop-culture accretions clattering on his padded electric blue vest. “Be gone to ground then, man, we all will. Been reading the paper lately? Fire, flood, earthquake. Scary times.”

“Yeah, pretty scary,” Cal agreed, trying to ease past. Goldie cut him off, sliding sideways, staring down at him with jangly intensity.

“I will show wonders in heaven and signs in the earth,” Goldie’s voice exploded into a shout as he switched from Cal to the studiously not-looking pedestrians rushing past. “Blood, fire, vapors of smoke! Your old men will see visions!” It was Revelation, of course. What other book did lunatics read?

Cal seized the moment to duck under Goldie’s outstretched arm toward his office. But steely fingers clamped on his coat sleeve and yanked him back, nearly off his feet. Goldie shoved his face ominously close. The smell of him was musty and thick, his gaze lucid and dazzling. In a whisper like a talon strike, he warned, “Your young men will dream dreams. . ”

Cal felt unaccountably stripped of all defenses, seen. It wasn’t just the words or the look, but something deep and enigmatic behind them.

“I’m telling you this ’cause you talk to me, don’t just look through.” Goldie brought his lips to Cal’s ear. “No such thing as coincidences. It’s omens, Cal. Something’s coming.” His eyes suddenly went flat and distant, as if his mind had disengaged from the street and was plugged into some other landscape, some other time. “Metal wings will fail, leather ones prevail.”

Bad poetry now, Cal thought, uncomprehending. Where did that come from?

Goldie’s eyes returned to him now, back in the moment. He released Cal and stepped aside. “You keep your head low.”

Cal nodded mutely, turned to the doors. Just before he entered, he glanced back. Goldie was still there, watching him.

“I’ll see you later,” Cal murmured.

“If there is a later,” Goldie replied, still and gray for all his outrageous color. Cal faltered, missing the revolving door, and had to wait for it to come around again.

Herman Goldman watched the young man vanish into the building, lost among all the identically suited men. He doubted he’d been believed, certainly not fully, not enough. It didn’t surprise him, but how could he not have tried? He wiped a bit of powdered sugar from his stubbly chin. Time to find another Gillette in the endless cornucopia of trash receptacles.

How much they discarded, he thought. How little they saw. The street was emptying as the Others fed themselves into the towers like so many termites. He hardly ever thought of when he’d been one of them. He hadn’t known himself then, hadn’t known the many worlds that made up the one world. But which was better, he wondered, knowing or not knowing? Blindness could be a blessing, sight a terrible burden.

His legs suddenly felt watery. He reached for a nearby wall. Heat radiated off the pavement, and the din of the city hammered at him. What a world, what a world. Who would’ve thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? No, that wasn’t right, get a grip. He envisioned the sturdy brown tomes of the Britannica from his childhood, opened Volume One and began reading. This letter has stood at the head of the alphabet during the whole of the period through which it can be traced historically. It was all there, all still in his mind. Mother and father might shriek their invective at each other, a bruising clash of legalese and psychobabble, an endless verbal car wreck, but he was safe in his fortress, perched on the closed lid of the toilet under the sixty watt, big book on his lap, transported. Order from chaos. It had saved him, made him a survivor. Words had power.

Time to get home, to hunker down and wait. There was still time, at least a little. He turned into a narrow alley that shielded him a bit from the noise. His nostrils flared at the hot garbage smell emanating from the dumpsters. Funny how, even now, he had such an acute sense of smell, how easily his nose was offended. Shambling along, feet cushioned in his over-large New Balances by wadded newspapers, he mentally ran over the possible routes home, discarding Rockefeller Center for Grand Central. This time of day there’d be less scrutiny, easier to slip into the darkness. Just be careful not to touch the third rail.

He heard a rustling behind him, an odd, whispery sound, and turned, intrigued. Wadded candy wrappers, stained sheets of the Post and bits of excelsior that had tumbled out of the dumpster were starting to swirl about in a mini-tornado, gathering speed. But where was the wind? They seemed to be moving of their own volition. With shocking abruptness the force grew, edging the dumpsters back and forth on their wheels, their heavy metal lids rising and then banging down, again and again. His skin pricked, and he noticed a smell of ozone in the air. Not yet; please, not yet. Although he had been expecting it, he found that he was terrified. Above him, he heard a crackling, snapping noise- and it ain’t Rice Krispies-and looked up to see blue electrical discharges whipping about in the sky. Dark clouds roiled, casting a yellow-gray pall. He felt incredibly small and, worst of all, observed.

The blue lightning was increasing in ferocity, slashing in all directions, with a sound like ice sheets splintering. And behind it, another, greater sound, a low roar that vibrated through him and grew in power, rumbling the ground. He wanted to run, to hide. A desire that seemed to come not from him but to drive him overwhelmed him. A compulsion to emerge from the shelter of the alley, to see.

The pavement beneath his feet was heaving now, buckling, as if some massive serpent below were struggling to burst forth. He fought his way to the alley mouth, peered out.

The sky was alive with blue lightning. It spat its hatred down at the city, frenzied wild fingers reaching out to every spire. The roar was deafening now, a spike through his head. He clapped his hands to his ears, but it did nothing. The roar changed pitch, rose higher, became a scream.

The buildings, the buildings were melting. Like ice cream cones on a hot day, dripping down, the entire city was liquefying. Proud towers turned to slag as the lightning danced its mad dance and the clouds enfolded it like a shroud.

Goldie’s mouth was open, and he was screaming, too, though he could not hear it against the shriek of the city. He folded in on himself, arms covering his eyes, rocking, all armor torn away. In what he knew were his last moments, he surrendered to it, realizing that no matter how much he prepared, how much he might know, in the end it would do with him whatever it wished.

He opened, and the world fell away.

There was a jolt, and he heard that he was the only one screaming. He clamped his mouth shut and cautiously opened his eyes.

The buildings stood upright; the men and women went about their business; the cars surged and huffed, going nowhere.

“Your old men will see visions. .,” Goldie murmured, shakily finding his feet again. He wasn’t that old, not really. But Jehovah, Moloch and Jupiter-not to mention Jerry Garcia, his personal god-he felt old.

The lobby was hell. Or, more accurately, purgatory.

As Cal entered, he found himself jammed up against a throng of dark-suited men dragging on cigarettes, women hopping from foot to foot, exchanging Nikes and Reeboks for heels-all crowded riotiously together, buzzing discontent and impatience.

He quickly saw the reason: a bank of elevators lay inoperative, a workman bent over the maw of one with a lamp, the top of the cab visible at floor level. A litter of tools lay near an open red toolbox, along with big metal hooks and blocks of wood.

Cal scanned the opposite row of elevators. They were working, but the lights above revealed them on distant floors-twenty-seven, thirty-two, thirty-five-tauntingly static, as though nailed there.

“What’s up with this?” “This fucking city. .” “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. .” The angry, brittle voices swirled about Cal. But one voice held sway.

If there is a later. .

It was the kind of apocalyptic ranting you heard on New York streets every day, but the words dogged him, lodged in him with rough conviction.

And resonating within him, too, in a voice his and not his, a response.

There would be a later, cast in darkness and blood and screams. And a sword. And he would rise to it.

Or not rise. .

Cal thought of Stern, thirty-five floors above, all fang and claw, waiting, and a sudden thrum of passion flared in him, a determination to stand in opposition.

Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. .

“Hey, asshole, how ’bout you play with that later and let the rest of us do some real work?”

The words seized Cal’s attention. He saw that a lean executive was standing over the workman, red-faced, fists balled in challenge. The suit was Cal’s age, had the same hair, the same clothes, might well have been Cal.

The day before.

For a moment, the crouched figure didn’t move, and Cal wondered if the man had heard. Then he set down the work lamp and turned. With surprise, Cal saw that it was a woman with shaggy, short-cropped hair and a grease stain on one cheek. Even through the scuffed brown trousers and baggy denim shirt, Cal could discern a slender form with broad, muscular shoulders. Her face was all strong lines and clear, disdainful eyes. The patch on the front of her shirt read “Colleen.”

“Hey, cut the lady some slack.” Cal was surprised that it was his voice. Without intending, he had spoken.

The young woman turned on him. “Listen, hotshot, I need a personal savior, I’ll ask for one, okay?”

Derisive laughter bubbled from the crowd. Cal flushed hot embarrassment. An elevator opposite dinged, and its doors slid open. Cal was carried along with the press of bodies into the car, the mass that needed to be somewhere, whether they wanted or not. He saw the young woman over their heads for just a second, turning back to her labors. Then the doors slid shut, and she was gone.

IN THE AIR

Nobody asked her questions at the car rental return.

Nobody asked her questions at check-in.

Nobody asked her questions at security.

(Am I really going to get away with this?)

It was part of Jerri Bilmer’s job to look unconcerned, to blend in with other caffeine-deprived morning travelers jostling along the concourse. To stand in line in the Kigali airport or at a bus stop in Baghdad without even a quickening of breath while RPF or Republican Guard came around checking papers and ransacking luggage at random. To appear, not innocent-they always go for those who look innocent-but simply as part of the background. To appear like nothing, no one, with microdots or little rolls of fiche burning holes in her purse strap or shoes.

Thinking about something else helped.

But this wasn’t like Kigali or Baghdad or Port Sudan. For the first time since she was a recruit, Bilmer felt a skittery sense of being out of control, of waiting for something to happen and not knowing what the hell it would be.

Bilmer floated restlessly, uneasily in the vicinity of the gate without sitting down, listening for boarding, watching the standbys. Pretending to look at magazines, books, candies, souvenir-covered wagons and shot glasses inscribed with the Royals’ logo. Straining all her senses, without the slightest idea what she was looking for.

She didn’t wear the sunglasses that so many of her colleagues favored-I mean, how obvious can you be? — so it was more difficult to scan the concourse around her, but she saw no threat.

Or at least, saw nobody who looked like Russian mafia or Serbian nationals.

But what would this threat look like?

Stay cool. Stay cool and you can get away with anything.

Jetway.

Boarding pass.

Seat 12-A.

If the plane should lose cabin pressure during flight, these oxygen masks will drop down. .

One of the most useful talents in an agent, some friend in the department had told her once, is the ability not to sweat. Taking her seat, she mentally tagged the possibles, the ones to watch out for: the guy in the green T-shirt with the computer, maybe. Not your typical businessman. Or maybe one of the businessmen with laptops? Clones of one another, easy disguise. The old dude with the cane, maybe. Had she seen that woman with the backpack before?

Follow the rules and be ready, she thought. Be ready for anything.

Takeoff. Square brown fields with the green circles of center-fed automatic watering equipment. Gray-white roads and cars like hurrying bugs. Coffee service.

At least lifting off from Basra or Beirut you could exhale and lean back and think, safe. (Well, if you weren’t flying Aeroflot anyway.) Could these people get her at Dulles? On the taxi into D.C.? McKay said he’d send someone to pick her up if she wanted, and she’d told him what she’d wear, but she had no intention of doing so. Not after what she’d seen at the Source.

She angled her foot so her toe was always in contact with her purse under the seat ahead of her and tried to look interested in the copy of People she’d bought, while the men in suits read their reports or worked on their laptop computers and the guy in the green T-shirt got out his Powerbook and started to play hearts.

For all his reputation as an idealist, Stuart McKay was a President who worked well with Congress, who knew the shortcuts and could get things done in a hurry. Bilmer had heard him described as a mixer, a pourer of oil on troubled waters, or, if you listened to his enemies, a compromiser. And he’ll need it, thought Bilmer. He’ll need to pull all the strings, to call in all the favors, he can, if he’s going to cut off Sanrio’s power before. .

Before what?

It scared her, that she didn’t quite know. Nor had she any clear idea of what McKay might be able to do against the little group of physicists in their South Dakota fastness. Call them back to Washington on a pretext and arrest them at the airport? Cut off the electricity to the installation in the Black Hills? Nuke the place before they got their field, or whatever they called it, into place?

She settled back in her seat and turned pages, pretending to read.

The old dude with the cane fell asleep, or pretended to. The broad with the backpack read a book. What else was in the backpack? The Mississippi River below, then the Ohio, then the Appalachians. Stroller Mom in the seat behind Bilmer read The Velveteen Rabbit to one child-the more you love and are loved, the more real you become-while another squalled endlessly, peevishly. A man two rows in front of Bilmer kept up a loud-voiced catalogue of the Hollywood celebrities with whom he’d worked, to the intermittent gasped punctuation of a sweet female voice.

Nothing.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the captain’s voice from the cockpit, “we’re starting our descent into Dulles International Airport. The time in Washington is approximately 9:17, eastern daylight time. Your flight crew will be coming by to collect cups and napkins. Please bring your seats and your tray tables back to full upright and locked position.”

The plane tilted, banked. Below, the green-dotted sprawl of streets, brick houses, parks, baseball diamonds. The glitter of water of the Chesapeake country. To the west the low green ripple of the Alleghenies, and beyond them. .

“Hey,” said Bilmer’s seat mate, sitting up and looking past her at the windows. “What’s that light in the sky?”