Marc Zicree - Magic Time

Nothing. Stillness.

She began to understand that what had happened was very different from what she had thought.

NEW YORK

The sky was clear now, save for a few twisting vapor trails, already dissipating, melting into the clouds.

Cal had not seen any of the planes hit ground; the buildings had blocked his view. But they had crashed; how could they not have? Most on the periphery of the city, away from its heart, so perhaps. . He caught himself trying to force the disaster into the smallest possible proportions.

As for the buildings, none had collapsed as far as Cal could see, though many were fractured and a few tilted at treacherous angles.

It’s omens, Cal, Goldie had said. Something’s coming.

Cal shuddered, and the desperate urgency to be on the move, to reach his sister, drowned all else.

The legal staff, drawn together in the dim light of the common room, had learned soon enough that, of all their technological marvels, only lighters still worked. Most of them had children, parents, spouses and others of variable significance. Despite their misgivings at leaving the relative safety of the building (now that it had stopped shaking), they, like Cal, were eager to brave the stairwells and be gone.

Only one question delayed them.

“What about Mr. Stern?”

He remained secluded in the conference room. Since Cal’s exchange with him, none had ventured to disturb him. Yet to leave without informing him, gaining his sovereign consent…

They milled uncertainly in the gloom, Janice Fishman and Paul Cajero and Tom Sammon and the others. The lowly ones who made the office go, the exalted few who jockeyed for position and coveted partnerships. Darkness veiled their expressions, but Cal could read their fear.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

As he cracked open the conference room doors, Cal could see in the weak light from the outer office that Stern had not moved. He sat slumped against the wall, eyes half-closed, a black stillness.

Cal entered, hunkered down. “Mr. Stern?”

Not looking at him, Stern said, “Hm?”

“How are you doing?”

“Got a bitch of a sinus headache. Tell Naomi to get me some Sudafed.” He scratched one arm languorously but relentlessly through the black fabric of his coat sleeve. Somehow, more than the planes careening out of the sky, the buildings drunkenly askew, this strange diffidence spoke most powerfully to Cal of calamity. Earlier, he had thought himself a rock perilously seamed and cracked, but it was Stern, not he, who had shattered.

“Looks like power’s out all over the city,” said Cal. No need to elaborate on the cars and planes, keep it simple. “Everyone wants to head out, find out what’s happened.”

“Not five yet,” Stern mumbled absently, still not looking at him.

No, it’s not five yet.

Cal visualized the vaulting, unreinforced brick walls of St. Augustine, tried not to picture his sister crushed beneath them. .

I’m not Mother Teresa. This is not Woodstock. But it was sure a hell of a lot like Mount St. Helens and Hurricane Andrew and Armageddon all rolled into one, so why aren’t you getting it?

Cal forced down his anger. Stern was clearly, however elusively, injured. The crackling blue lightning Cal had glimpsed about Stern as he himself had dived beneath the table could readily have been some electrical discharge spat from the wall sockets as the juice cut out.

“Come on now,” Cal said firmly, grasping Stern’s arm, hauling him up.

With a mad shout, Stern tore his arm free, so violently that Cal staggered, was nearly flung off his feet. Stern plopped down sullenly, staring at nothing.

“Your skin itch?” he asked idly.

Cal backed slowly to the doors. “No,” he said quietly. “Does yours?”

Still looking away, Stern muttered, “No.”

Cal’s back brushed the doors, and he stopped. He might get Paul Cajero and Ed Ledding and Chris Black in here to help deal with Stern, try to wrestle him down the stairs. But Stern would fight them every step of the way, he felt certain of it, and precious time would be lost.

“Look,” Cal sighed. “I’ll get someone to send back help for you, okay? I’ve got to go now.”

Stern didn’t turn, but something at last seemed to register. “Leave, and you’re terminated.”

Cal gave a mirthless laugh-the dreaded words at last.

The coffin-lid doors murmured softly against the carpet as they closed behind him.

Stern was glad Griffin was gone. His chatter had been irritating, almost as maddening as that damn itching. But it felt muted now, hushed in the darkness and the quiet. Calm descended over him as he floated on a gentle sea, its waters embracing him. All he wanted was to remain awhile, to let the feeling wash over him.

But then a dim memory came to him. The Bernero-Vivante deposition was later today. What time was it getting to be? Dreamily, he lifted the Piaget on his wrist to eye level, glanced at its face. In the gloom, he caught a reflection of his eyes in the glass.

I should be frightened by this , he thought. But he wasn’t, merely intrigued, and far removed. He continued to stare at his own eyes looking back at him, their irises no longer the familiar black. Vaguely, it occurred to him that his choice of clothing no longer matched the color of his eyes.

For that, he would need yellow.

“Easy there. Nobody’s got to hurry now.” Cal’s voice betrayed none of the sick urgency he felt. Cautiously, they descended the stairwell, Anita La Bonte and Barbara Claman and about ten of the others holding their lighters aloft, offering a timorous, close illumination. The fire doors at each floor blocked any light; other than the scant blue flames all was blackness. It lent their party a hushed intimacy. As they had ventured down, their group of thirty-odd had been joined by others with the same imperative, had swelled to more than seventy. On floors above and below them, they could hear similar parties, moving with the same blind tentativeness. Their feet shuffled on the steps, a dull thudding like an army of golems on the march. When they spoke, even in whispers, their voices echoed back, a loud, jarring assault. So they were quiet, by and large, their reeling thoughts held checked within.

Tina will stay at St. Augustine; she will wait for me. An image loomed before Cal of his sister fleeing into the streets for home, being swept up and lost in the mass of ten million souls vomiting from their buildings, flooding the thoroughfares and washing her hopelessly away.

No. She’ll know to wait. She’s level-headed, smart. He summoned the memory, three years back, of when, newly arrived from Hurley, Tina had tripped and burned herself on the radiator. She had cried out just once, then been quiet through the mad rush to the emergency room, the long, chaotic night. Silent and watchful and calm, far calmer than Cal had been.

But that had been an event prosaic and knowable, if unpleasant. This was something new.

And yet. .

The nightmare clamor in the dark, the feel of the sword hilt, so right, the invitation to know himself at last.

Your young men will dream dreams. It’s omens, Cal. Something’s coming. .

Cal’s Midwestern common sense rebelled. Disasters always pricked some feeling of deja vu. But that didn’t make those real premonitions, any more than some fake psychic on TV telling the viewers to-

Mike Covey suddenly cried out, missing a step. Anita La Bonte grabbed him.

Covey, who had taken credit for the brief that had been shipped in the night pouch to the Rome office, the brief Anita had sweated blood on till three A.M. four nights running all so he, and not Anita, might be the golden one to make the jump from fifth-year associate to contract partner.