Marc Zicree - Magic Time

“But what is it?” asked Dr. Perry, the stout, normally jovial physicist who headed up McKay’s recently revived Science Advisory Board. His voice cut across the gasp and stammer of panic that Christiansen’s announcement had triggered. “The things I’ve been hearing are absurd. There’s no way-”

“Once you’ve eliminated the impossible,” Christiansen cut in, “then whatever’s left is probable… only maybe we’d better not eliminate the impossible just yet.” A riff on Conan Doyle and not bad for a crisis, Shango thought. He hadn’t known Christiansen had it in him. He noted, however, that while the general’s mouth formed the ghost of a smile, his eyes stayed cold.

“All right, gentlemen,” McKay jumped in. “Here’s what we have to ascertain, right now or sooner-”

A babble of conflicting opinions, defensive statements erupted, which McKay’s voice rose over, forcing silence. “Is this a natural disaster or man-made? If man-made, is it deliberate attack or accident? From within the U.S. or elsewhere? Is it worldwide, with the same effects? And are those effects strengthening or easing?” He addressed Christiansen. “Ed, with the reports you’re getting in, try to nail down specific times the alteration occurred in the various locales; maybe it’ll help us track its locus, which direction it spread and how fast.”

Christiansen nodded, whispered something to an aide, who jotted a note. McKay opened his mouth to add something, then thought better of it, Shango saw.

And just what aren’t you saying? Shango wondered, dogged by the certainty of the words under the words, the poker hand held but not yet played. His eyes moved from face to face as they responded with the familiar round of finger pointing, before McKay again corralled them back to order.

It was Shango’s job not to have an opinion, but a childhood of watching his mother and her church-lady pals in the tenants association and various neighborhood committees had left him with an insatiable curiosity about unspoken truths, hidden alliances-about who they’d run to and whisper once the meeting let out. His mind touched this and from long practice dodged away again, concentrating on the task at hand.

Watching the men in the room. Never mind that these were the highest brass in the DoD, watch ’em anyway. Watch the windows, the backs of the National guardsmen visible through them. Something massive had happened, and there was no guarantee what was next, and this man, this paunchy balding white guy with the pleasant Oklahoma drawl, was his responsibility.

He knows something .

Shango perceived that McKay was searching the faces of the men and women who flowed in succession into the Oval Office-group after group-for some sign as to who else knew.

The lights weren’t on by noon. The White House command post sent over every available agent as soon as they showed up-most had started walking toward Foggy Bottom the minute the ground quit shaking-and there were anti-sniper posts in every building that overlooked the White House, but it still put Shango’s teeth on edge when McKay insisted on opening the windows. The men loosened their ties and took off their jackets and the women looked like they wished they could shed their pantyhose. Having grown up in New Orleans without benefit of air-conditioning-or indoor plumbing, until he was five-Shango wasn’t much bothered by the heat. But while mentally calculating sight-lines from the windows every time McKay moved and watching each flicker of motion outside, he was deeply conscious of time’s passage. The emergency generators should have come on-line long before this. First in the White House, then in the government buildings all around it.

He didn’t hear helicopters, sirens, nothing, though the humid air was laden with the far-off tang of smoke. Only the voices of the National Guardsmen and a growing clamor of distant voices in the Mall and in the streets.

Things were down too long. Way, way too long.

The gang from FEMA came and went, then came back with horrifying preliminary reports typed on old manual typewriters or printed by the clerk with the neatest handwriting. A squad of reporters, who asked every kind of damn-fool question and had the frightened look of people who didn’t want to believe what they’ve been hearing. Lobbyists from two major oil companies and a multinational arms firm demanding explanations right now . The House Majority Leader and two or three senators who, Shango knew, were high up in the councils of McKay’s party, responsible for his election-the men who truly set party policy, who pulled the strings. Anyone who could possibly work himself into the schedule did: Al Guthrie and Nina Diaz were worn to a frazzle, trying to triage priorities when everything was vital. McKay listened to them patiently: baffled, angry men, men deeply concerned with the long-term goals they’d worked all their lives to achieve. The heat became unbearable. Someone came in with jugs of water that tasted like metal and the unwelcome information that there wasn’t a toilet in five miles that would flush.

And everything the President said, every plan and motion he requested, was aimed at stockpiling, digging in, guaranteeing stores and supplies. In the eighteen months McKay had been in the White House, Shango had observed that he wasn’t a survivalist and wasn’t inclined to panic.

Yet he had the air of a man who knew for certain that the lights weren’t going to come back on.

NEW YORK

She had been there, on the broken curb in front of St. Augustine, solemn and watchful. As Cal had prayed.

Tina lifted her head at his approach, and he read in her eyes not relief but confirmation. She knew he would come. Wordlessly, she rose swanlike and fell into step with him for the long walk home.

From block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood, the city rearranged and reasserted itself. Those newly returned home assayed the damage, cleared out shattered crockery and picture frames, righted rockers and bureaus. TVs that had pitched off tables and stands or had remained stock still, undamaged, were unresponsive and mute. As was every automobile, refrigerator, light bulb, electrical device of any kind.

Against their silence, a deluge of voices roiled up and overflowed onto the streets, full of shaky speculation, edged with fear and bafflement, leavened by uneasy, occasionally boisterous humor.

As they reached Eighty-first and Amsterdam, Cal felt the tension in his shoulders ease, the tightness of breath release. It was a scene they had encountered on dozens of blocks, but the faces here were familiar, the buildings known.

At the crown of the street, Elaine Jamgotchian was sweeping litter and dead leaves out to the gutter, while Sylvia Feldman leaned on her walker in the shade of an anemic maple, complaining (as she had on so many thousand other days) that her useless son Larry hadn’t yet shown up where could he be no doubt with that useless half-blind mulatto wife of his what did he see in her.

Cal smiled at the prosaic simplicity of it, and the toughness underlying it. He murmured greetings, received assurances they were all in one piece. Tina stood by, all huge eyes and attentive distance. Like heat-seeking grandmother missiles, the women turned their attention on her. Under prodding that brooked no evasion, she finally offered the intelligence that, while she herself was unmarked by the day’s experience, Mallory Stein had suffered three broken ribs and several other students had gone MIA.

And you couldn’t tell me this? Cal thought fretfully but said nothing.

He had gotten her home.

Mr. J., Elaine’s husband, sidled up in the standard-issue workpants and pajama tops he’d worn ever since they’d downsized him from the dockyard. His deep-grooved face was brown and sweaty, which accentuated the white of his beard and thinning hair. “We’re doing all right, God bless you,” he told Cal in his soft Armenian accent. “It will all be fine soon as they get everything going again.”