Four Past Midnight Read online

Albert glanced unhappily at Bethany, at Laurel, and then back at Nick. A voice--not a very strong one--was whispering that he should have volunteered, that this was a job for a tough Alamo survivor like The Arizona Jew. But most of him was only aware that he loved life very much . . . and did not want it to end just yet. So he opened his mouth and then closed it again without speaking.

  "Why you?" Laurel asked again, urgently. "Why shouldn't we draw straws? Why not Bob? Or Rudy? Why not me?"

  Nick took her arm. "Come with me a moment," he said.

  "Nick, there's not much time," Brian said. He tried to keep his tone of voice even, but he could hear desperation--perhaps even panic--bleeding through.

  "I know. Start doing the things you have to do."

  Nick drew Laurel through the door.

  25

  She resisted for a moment, then came along. He stopped in the small galley alcove and faced her. In that moment, with his face less than four inches from hers, she realized a dismal truth--he was the man she had been hoping to find in Boston. He had been on the plane all the time. There was nothing at all romantic about this discovery; it was horrible.

  "I think we might have had something, you and me," he said. "Do you think I could be right about that? If you do, say so--there's no time to dance. Absolutely none."

  "Yes," she said. Her voice was dry, uneven. "I think that's right. "

  "But we don't know. We can't know. It all comes back to time, doesn't it? Time . . . and sleep . . . and not knowing. But I have to be the one, Laurel. I have tried to keep some reasonable account of myself, and all my books are deeply in the red. This is my chance to balance them, and I mean to take it."

  "I don't understand what you mea--"

  "No--but I do." He spoke fast, almost rapping his words. Now he reached out and took her forearm and drew her even closer to him. "You were on an adventure of some sort, weren't you, Laurel?"

  "I don't know what you're--"

  He gave her a brisk shake. "I told you--there's no time to dance! Were you on an adventure?"

  "I ... yes."

  "Nick!" Brian called from the cockpit.

  Nick looked rapidly in that direction. "Coming!" he shouted, and then looked back at Laurel. "I'm going to send you on another one. If you get out of this, that is, and if you agree to go."

  She only looked at him, her lips trembling. She had no idea of what to say. Her mind was tumbling helplessly. His grip on her arm was very tight, but she would not be aware of that until later, when she saw the bruises left by his fingers; at that moment, the grip of his eyes was much stronger.

  "Listen. Listen carefully." He paused and then spoke with peculiar, measured emphasis: "I was going to quit it. I'd made up my mind."

  "Quit what?" she asked in a small, quivery voice.

  Nick shook his head impatiently. "Doesn't matter. What matters is whether or not you believe me. Do you?"

  "Yes," she said. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I believe you mean it."

  "Nick!" Brian warned from the cockpit. "We're heading toward it!"

  He shot a glance toward the cockpit again, his eyes narrow and gleaming. "Coming just now!" he called. When he looked at her again, Laurel thought she had never in her life been the focus of such ferocious, focussed intensity. "My father lives in the village of Fluting, south of London," he said. "Ask for him in any shop along the High Street. Mr. Hopewell. The older ones still call him the gaffer. Go to him and tell him I'd made up my mind to quit it. You'll need to be persistent; he tends to turn away and curse loudly when he hears my name. The old I-have-no-son bit. Can you be persistent?"

  "Yes."

  He nodded and smiled grimly. "Good! Repeat what I've told you, and tell him you believed me. Tell him I tried my best to atone for the day behind the church in Belfast."

  "In Belfast."

  "Right. And if you can't get him to listen any other way, tell him he must listen. Because of the daisies. The time I brought the daisies. Can you remember that, as well?"

  "Because once you brought him daisies."

  Nick seemed to almost laugh--but she had never seen a face filled with such sadness and bitterness. "No--not to him, but it'll do. That's your adventure. Will you do it?"

  "Yes ... but . . ."

  "Good. Laurel, thank you." He put his left hand against the nape of her neck, pulled her face to his, and kissed her. His mouth was cold, and she tasted fear on his breath.

  A moment later he was gone.

  26

  "Are we going to feel like we're--you know, choking?" Bethany asked. "Suffocating?"

  "No," Brian said. He had gotten up to see if Nick was coming; now, as Nick reappeared with a very shaken Laurel Stevenson behind him, Brian dropped back into his seat. "You'll feel a little giddy ... swimmy in the head ... then, nothing." He glanced at Nick. "Until we all wake up."

  "Right!" Nick said cheerily. "And who knows? I may still be right here. Bad pennies have a way of turning up, you know. Don't they, Brian?"

  "Anything's possible, I guess," Brian said. He pushed the throttle forward slightly. The sky was growing bright again. The rip lay dead ahead. "Sit down, folks. Nick, right up here beside me. I'm going to show you what to do ... and when to do it."

  "One second, please," Laurel said. She had regained some of her color and self-possession. She stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on Nick's mouth.

  "Thank you," Nick said gravely.

  "You were going to quit it. You'd made up your mind. And if he won't listen, I'm to remind him of the day you brought the daisies. Have I got it right?"

  He grinned. "Letter-perfect, my love. Letter-perfect." He encircled her with his left arm and kissed her again, long and hard. When he let her go, there was a gentle, thoughtful smile on his mouth. "That's the one to go on," he said. "Right enough."

  27

  Three minutes later, Brian opened the intercom. "I'm starting to decrease pressure now. Check your belts, everyone."

  They did so. Albert waited tensely for some sound--the hiss of escaping air, perhaps--but there was only the steady, droning mumble of the jet engines. He felt more wide awake than ever.

  "Albert?" Bethany said in a small, scared voice. "Would you hold me, please?"

  "Yes," Albert said. "If you'll hold me."

  Behind them, Rudy Warwick was telling his rosary again. Across the aisle, Laurel Stevenson gripped the arms of her seat. She could still feel the warm print of Nick Hopewell's lips on her mouth. She raised her head, looked at the overhead compartment, and began to take deep, slow breaths. She was waiting for the masks to fall . . . and ninety seconds or so later, they did.

  Remember about the day in Belfast, too, she thought. Behind the church. An act of atonement, he said. An act . . .

  In the middle of that thought, her mind drifted away.

  28

  "You know . . . what to do?" Brian asked again. He spoke in a dreamy, furry voice. Ahead of them, the time-rip was once more swelling in the cockpit windows, spreading across the sky. It was now lit with dawn, and a fantastic new array of colors coiled, swam, and then streamed away into its queer depths.

  "I know," Nick said. He was standing beside Brian and his words were muffled by the oxygen mask he wore. Above the rubber seal, his eyes were calm and clear. "No fear, Brian. All's safe as houses. Off to sleep you go. Sweet dreams, and all that."

  Brian was fading now. He could feel himself going . . . and yet he hung on, staring at the vast fault in the fabric of reality. It seemed to be swelling toward the cockpit windows, reaching for the plane. It's so beautiful, he thought. God, it's so beautiful !

  He felt that invisible hand seize the plane and draw it forward again. No turning back this time.

  "Nick," he said. It now took a tremendous effort to speak; he felt as if his mouth was a hundred miles away from his brain. He held his hand up. It seemed to stretch away from him at the end of a long taffy arm.

  "Go to sleep," Nick said, taking his hand. "Don't fight it, unless
you want to go with me. It won't be long now."

  "I just wanted to say ... thank you."

  Nick smiled and gave Brian's hand a squeeze. "You're welcome, mate. It's been a flight to remember. Even without the movie and the free mimosas."

  Brian looked back into the rip. A river of gorgeous colors flowed into it now. They spiralled . . . mixed . . . and seemed to form words before his dazed, wondering eyes: SHOOTING STARS ONLY

  "Is that . . . what we are?" he asked curiously, and now his voice came to him from some distant universe.

  The darkness swallowed him.

  29

  Nick was alone now; the only person awake on Flight 29 was a man who had once gunned down three boys behind a church in Belfast, three boys who had been chucking potatoes painted dark gray to look like grenades. Why had they done such a thing? Had it been some mad sort of dare? He had never found out.

  He was not afraid, but an intense loneliness filled him. The feeling wasn't a new one. This was not the first watch he had stood alone, with the lives of others in his hands.

  Ahead of him, the rip neared. He dropped his hand to the rheostat which controlled the cabin pressure.

  It's gorgeous, he thought. It seemed to him that the colors that now blazed out of the rip were the antithesis of everything which they had experienced in the last few hours; he was looking into a crucible of new life and new motion.

  Why shouldn't it be beautiful? This is the place where life--all life, maybe--begins. The place where life is freshly minted every second of every day; the cradle of creation and the wellspring of time. No langoliers allowed beyond this point.

  Colors ran across his cheeks and brows in a fountain-spray of hues: jungle green was overthrown by lava orange; lava orange was replaced by yellow-white tropical sunshine; sunshine was supplanted by the chilly blue of Northern oceans. The roar of the jet engines seemed muted and distant; he looked down and was not surprised to see that Brian Engle's slumped, sleeping form was being consumed by color, his form and features overthrown in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of brightness. He had become a fabulous ghost.

  Nor was Nick surprised to see that his own hands and arms were as colorless as clay. Brian's not the ghost; I am.

  The rip loomed.

  Now the sound of the jets was lost entirely in a new sound; the 767 seemed to be rushing through a windtunnel filled with feathers. Suddenly, directly ahead of the airliner's nose, a vast nova of light exploded like a heavenly firework; in it, Nick Hopewell saw colors no man had ever imagined. It did not just fill the time-rip; it filled his mind, his nerves, his muscles, his very bones in a gigantic, coruscating fireflash.

  "Oh my God, so BEAUTIFUL!" he cried, and as Flight 29 plunged into the rip, he twisted the cabin-pressure rheostat back up to full.

  A split-second later the fillings from Nick's teeth pattered onto the cockpit floor. There was a small thump as the Teflon disc which had been in his knee--souvenir of a conflict marginally more honorable than the one in Northern Ireland--joined them. That was all.

  Nick Hopewell had ceased to exist.

  30

  The first things Brian was aware of were that his shirt was wet and his headache had returned.

  He sat up slowly in his seat, wincing at the bolt of pain in his head, and tried to remember who he was, where he was, and why he felt such a vast and urgent need to wake up quickly. What had he been doing that was so important?

  The leak, his mind whispered. There's a leak in the main cabin, and if it isn't stabilized, there's going to be big tr--

  No, that wasn't right. The leak had been stabilized--or had in some mysterious way stabilized itself--and he had landed Flight 7 safely at LAX. Then the man in the green blazer had come, and--

  It's Anne's funeral! My God, I've overslept!

  His eyes flew open, but he was in neither a motel room nor the spare bedroom at Anne's brother's house in Revere. He was looking through a cockpit window at a sky filled with stars.

  Suddenly it came back to him . . . everything.

  He sat up all the way, too quickly. His head screamed a sickly hungover protest. Blood flew from his nose and splattered on the center control console. He looked down and saw the front of his shirt was soaked with it. There had been a leak, all right. In him.

  Of course, he thought. Depressurization often does that. I should have warned the passengers . . . How many passengers do I have left, by the way?

  He couldn't remember. His head was filled with fog.

  He looked at his fuel indicators, saw that their situation was rapidly approaching the critical point, and then checked the INS. They were exactly where they should be, descending rapidly toward L.A., and at any moment they might wander into someone else's airspace while the someone else was still there.

  Someone else had been sharing his airspace just before he passed out . . . who?

  He fumbled, and it came. Nick, of course. Nick Hopewell. Nick was gone. He hadn't been such a bad penny after all, it seemed. But he must have done his job, or Brian wouldn't be awake now.

  He got on the radio, fast.

  "LAX ground control, this is American Pride Flight--" He stopped. What flight were they? He couldn't remember. The fog was in the way.

  "Twenty-nine, aren't we?" a dazed, unsteady voice said from behind him.

  "Thank you, Laurel." Brian didn't turn around. "Now go back and belt up. I may have to make this plane do some tricks."

  He spoke into his mike again.

  "American Pride Flight 29, repeat, two-niner. Mayday, ground control, I am declaring an emergency here. Please clear everything in front of me, I am coming in on heading 85 and I have no fuel. Get a foam truck out and--"

  "Oh, quit it," Laurel said dully from behind him. "Just quit it."

  Brian wheeled around then, ignoring the fresh bolt of pain through his head and the fresh spray of blood which flew from his nose. "Sit down, goddammit!" he snarled. "We're coming in unannounced into heavy traffic. If you don't want to break your neck--"

  "There's no heavy traffic down there," Laurel said in the same dull voice. "No heavy traffic, no foam trucks. Nick died for nothing, and I'll never get a chance to deliver his message. Look for yourself."

  Brian did. And, although they were now over the outlying suburbs of Los Angeles, he saw nothing but darkness.

  There was no one down there, it seemed.

  No one at all.

  Behind him, Laurel Stevenson burst into harsh, raging sobs of terror and frustration.

  31

  A long white passenger jet cruised slowly above the ground sixteen miles east of Los Angeles International Airport. 767 was printed on its tail in large, proud numerals. Along the fuselage, the words AMERICAN PRIDE were written in letters which had been raked backward to indicate speed. On both sides of the nose was a large red eagle, its wings spangled with blue stars. Like the airliner it decorated, the eagle appeared to be coming in for a landing.

  The plane printed no shadow on the deserted grid of streets as it passed above them; dawn was still an hour away. Below it, no car moved, no streetlight glowed. Below it, all was silent and moveless. Ahead of it, no runway lights gleamed.

  The plane's belly slid open. The undercarriage dropped down and spread out. The landing gear locked in place.

  American Pride Flight 29 slipped down the chute toward L.A. It banked slightly to the right as it came; Brian was now able to correct his course visually, and he did so. They passed over a cluster of airport motels, and for a moment Brian could see the monument that stood near the center of the terminal complex, a graceful tripod with curved legs and a restaurant in its center. They passed over a short strip of dead grass and then concrete runway was unrolling thirty feet below the plane.

  There was no time to baby the 767 in this time; Brian's fuel indicators read zeros across and the bird was about to turn into a bitch. He brought it in hard, like a sled filled with bricks. There was a thud that rattled his teeth and started his nose bleeding again. His c
hest harness locked. Laurel, who was in the co-pilot's seat, cried out.

  Then he had the flaps up and was applying reverse thrusters at full. The plane began to slow. They were doing a little over a hundred miles an hour when two of the thrusters cut out and the red ENGINE SHUTDOWN lights flashed on. He grabbed for the intercom switch.

  "Hang on! We're going in hard! Hang on!"

  Thrusters two and four kept running a few moments longer, and then they were gone, too. Flight 29 rushed down the runway in ghastly silence, with only the flaps to slow her now. Brian watched helplessly as the concrete ran away beneath the plane and the crisscross tangle of taxiways loomed. And there, dead ahead, sat the carcass of a Pacific Airways commuter jet.

  The 767 was still doing at least sixty-five. Brian horsed it to the right, leaning into the dead steering yoke with every ounce of his strength. The plane responded soupily, and he skated by the parked jet with only six feet to spare. Its windows flashed past like a row of blind eyes.

  Then they were rolling toward the United terminal, where at least a dozen planes were parked at extended jetways like nursing infants. The 767's speed was down to just over thirty now.

  "Brace yourselves!" Brian shouted into the intercom, momentarily forgetting that his own plane was now as dead as the rest of them and the intercom was useless. "Brace yourselves for a collision! Bra--" American Pride 29 crashed into Gate 29 of the United Airlines terminal at roughly twenty-nine miles an hour. There was a loud, hollow bang followed by the sound of crumpling metal and breaking glass. Brian was thrown into his harness again, then snapped back into his seat. He sat there for a moment, stiff, waiting for the explosion ... and then remembered there was nothing left in the tanks to explode.

  He flicked all the switches on the control panel off--the panel was dead, but the habit ran deep--and then turned to check on Laurel. She looked at him with dull, apathetic eyes.

  "That was about as close as I'd ever want to cut it," Brian said unsteadily.

  "You should have let us crash. Everything we tried . . . Dinah . . . Nick . . . all for nothing. It's just the same here. Just the same."

  Brian unbuckled his harness and got shakily to his feet. He took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and handed it to her. "Wipe your nose. It's bleeding."