Robert Sawyer - Hybrids

The white light-the perfect white light-was shimmering now, prismatic scintillations along its edges. Mary felt her heart expanding, her soul soaring, her Gunshots!

Mary looked off to her right. A white man of about forty had a pistol out and was firing it at some unseen demon, his face contorted in terror. In front of him, people were dying, but Times Square was too crowded for them to fall. Mary saw the faces of first one person, then another, as bullets tore into them.

Screams went up, rivaling the shouts of rapture.

“Bandra,” yelled Ponter. “Clear the way! I’ll get Mare. Adikor, get Lou!”

Mary felt sweat pouring down her face, despite the cold. Ponter was going to try to take her away from No, thought the rational part of Mary, fighting its way to the front of her consciousness. The Virgin is not here.

Yes! screamed another part of her. Yes, she is!

No-no. There is no Virgin! There is no But there was-there must be! — for suddenly, Mary felt herself rising up off the ground, flying up…

Because Ponter was lifting her, high, higher still, swinging her up on his broad shoulders. Bandra, in front of them, was pushing people aside as though they were bowling pins, parting the sea, forcing an opening in the crowd. Ponter barreled forward, occupying the space Bandra was clearing before it was filled again by the crushing humanity. There were still a few areas of lower density-what was left of the lanes that had originally been set aside for emergency vehicles-and Bandra was heading for one of them.

Mary looked left and right, trying to spot the light of the Virgin again-and saw that Louise was now high up on Adikor’s shoulders, and that the two of them were right behind, following Mary and Ponter.

A man came toward them, a crazed look on his face. He swung at Ponter, who easily deflected the blow. But then another man came at Ponter, shouting, “Begone, demon!”

Ponter tried to deflect his blows, as well, but it was no use. The attacker was like- exactly like, Mary realized-a man possessed. He smashed a fist into Ponter’s broad jaw, and Ponter finally struck back, lashing out with the flat of his hand, connecting in the middle of the man’s chest. Even over the cacophony, Mary heard the sound of ribs cracking, and the man went down. The crowd surged in to fill the space cleared by Bandra, and it looked as though the attacker was being trampled, but within seconds Ponter had pushed far enough ahead that Mary could no longer see what was happening to the fallen man.

Mary’s perspective was bouncing wildly as Ponter surged ahead, but suddenly she caught sight of the giant lighted ball starting its descent down the flagpole-a geodesic sphere, six feet wide, covered with Waterford crystal, lit from within and without. Mary couldn’t imagine that anyone had had the presence of mind to send it on its way down; there must have been a computer controlling it.

Strobe lights. Searchlights. Lasers crisscrossing through dry-ice clouds.

More screams. More gunshots. Shattering glass. Alarms wailing. An NYPD officer being bucked by his horse.

“Mary!” shouted Mary. “Save us!”

“Ponter!” Adikor’s voice, from behind them. “Look out!”

Mary could feel Ponter swinging his head. Another crazed person was pushing toward him, this one brandishing a crowbar. Ponter moved to his right, knocking people over as he did so, to avoid being brained.

Bandra turned around and seized the man’s wrist, closing her hand. Again, Mary heard the ricochet crack of breaking bone, and the crowbar crashed to the pavement.

Mary swung her head, searching for the Virgin. The giant ball was almost all the way down-and they were almost out of Times Square, making their way east on 42nd Street.

Suddenly the sky exploded Mary looked up. The heavenly host! The But no. No, just as the dropping of the ball must have been computer-controlled, so, too, apparently, was the fireworks display. A great peacock’s tail of light was opening up behind them, followed by red, white, and blue skyrockets rising toward the heavens.

Ponter’s legs were pounding up and down, muscular pistons. The crowd was thinning, and he was making good progress now. Bandra remained out in front; Adikor, with Louise still on his shoulders, fell in beside them, and they continued on, running into the night, into the new year. “Mary,” called Mary Vaughan. “Blessed Mary, come back!”

United Nations headquarters was just over a mile east of Times Square. It took ninety minutes to get there on foot, fighting traffic and crowds all the way, but at last they made it, and got safely inside-a Gliksin security guard recognized Ponter, and let them in.

The visions had ended shortly after midnight, stopping as abruptly as they had begun. Mary had a splitting headache, and felt empty and cold inside. “What did you see?” she asked Louise.

Louise shook her head slowly back and forth, clearly recalling the wonder of it all. “God,” she said. “God the Father, just like on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. It was…” She sought a word. “It was perfect.”

They spent the rest of the night on the twentieth floor of the Secretariat Building, sleeping in a conference room, listening to the wild sounds and sirens far below-the visions were over, but the chaos had only just begun.

In the morning, they watched the sporadic news coverage-some stations weren’t operating at all-trying to piece together what had happened.

Earth’s magnetic field had been collapsing for over four months now-for the first time since consciousness had emerged on this world. The field’s strength had been fluctuating, lines of force converging and diverging wildly.

“Well,” said Louise, hands on hips, staring at the TV set, “it wasn’t exactly a crash, but…”

“But what?” said Mary. They were both exhausted, filthy, and badly bruised.

“I’d told Jock the biggest problem related to the magnetic-field collapse wouldn’t be ultraviolet radiation getting through, or anything like that. Rather, I said it would be the effects on human consciousness.”

“It was like what I’d experienced in Veronica Shannon’s test chamber,” said Mary, “only much more intense.”

Ponter nodded. “But, as in Veronica’s chamber, neither I nor, I’m sure, any other Barast experienced anything.”

“But everyone else,” said Mary, and she gestured at the television set, “across the whole damn planet it seems, had a religious experience.”

“Or a UFO abduction experience,” said Louise. “Or, at least, some sort of encounter with something that wasn’t really there.”

Mary nodded. It would be days-months! — before they had accurate death tolls and damage estimates, but it seemed clear that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, had perished on New Year’s Eve-or New Year’s Day, in time zones east of New York.

And, of course, the debates would continue for years about what the experience-at least one commentator was already calling it “Last Day”-had meant.

Pope Mark II was to address the faithful later today.

But what could he possibly say? Would he validate the sightings of Jesus and the Holy Virgin while dismissing the reported encounters with deities and prophets and messiahs sacred to Muslims and Mormons, to Hindus and Jews, to Scientologists, Wiccans, and Maori, to Cherokees and Mi’kmaqs and Algonquins and Pueblo Indians, to Inuit and Buddhists?

And what about the UFO sightings, the gray aliens, the bug-eyed monsters?

The Pope had some ’splainin’ to do.

All religious leaders did.

Adikor, Bandra, and Louise were absorbed by a report from the BBC, covering events that transpired yesterday in the Middle East. Mary tapped Ponter on the shoulder, and when he looked at her, she motioned for him to come to the far side of the conference room.