Four Past Midnight

  Who knows how the fish captured in one of those deep trenches and brought swiftly toward the surface--toward the light of a sun it has never suspected--may feel? Is it not at least possible that its final moments are filled with ecstasy rather than horror? That it senses the crushing reality of all that pressure only as it finally falls away? That it thinks--as far as fish may be supposed to think, that is--in a kind of joyous frenzy, I am free of that weight at last! in the seconds before it explodes? Probably not. Fish from those dark depths may not feel at all, at least not in any way we could recognize, and they certainly do not think ... but people do.

  Instead of feeling shame, Craig Toomy had been dominated by vast relief and a kind of hectic, horrified happiness as he boarded American Pride's Flight 29 to Boston. He was going to explode, and he found he didn't give a damn. In fact, he found himself looking forward to it. He could feel the pressure peeling away from all the surfaces of his skin as he rose toward the surface. For the first time in weeks, there had been no paper-ripping. He had fallen asleep before Flight 29 even left the gate, and he had slept like a baby until that blind little brat had begun to caterwaul.

  And now they told him everything had changed, and that simply could not be allowed. It must not be allowed. He had been firmly caught in the net, had felt the dizzying rise and the stretch of his skin as it tried to compensate. They could not now change their minds and drop him back into the deeps.

  Bangor?

  Bangor, Maine?

  Oh no. No indeed.

  Craig Toomy was vaguely aware that most of the people on Flight 29 had disappeared, but he didn't care. They weren't the important thing. They weren't part of what his father had always liked to call THE BIG PICTURE. The meeting at the Pru was part of THE BIG PICTURE.

  This crazy idea of diverting to Bangor, Maine ... whose scheme, exactly, had that been?

  It had been the pilot's idea, of course. Engle's idea. The so-called captain.

  Engle, now... Engle might very well be part of THE BIG PICTURE. He might, in fact, be an AGENT OF THE ENEMY. Craig had suspected this in his heart from the moment when Engle had begun to speak over the intercom, but in this case he hadn't needed to depend on his heart, had he? No indeed. He had been listening to the conversation between the skinny kid and the man in the fire-sale sport-coat. The man's taste in clothes was terrible, but what he had to say made perfect sense to Craig Toomy ... at least, up to a point.

  In that case, the pilot would be one of us, the kid had said.

  Yes and no, the guy in the fire-sale sport-coat had said. In my scenario, the pilot is the pilot. The pilot who just happened to be on board, supposedly deadheading to Boston, the pilot who just happened to be sitting less than thirty feet from the cockpit door.

  Engle, in other words.

  And the other fellow, the one who had twisted Craig's nose, was clearly in on it with him, serving as a kind of sky-marshal to protect Engle from anyone who happened to catch on.

  He hadn't eavesdropped on the conversation between the kid and the man in the fire-sale sport-coat much longer, because around that time the man in the fire-sale sport-coat stopped making sense and began babbling a lot of crazy shit about Denver and Des Moines and Omaha being gone. The idea that three large American cities could simply disappear was absolutely out to lunch ... but that didn't mean everything the old guy had to say was out to lunch.

  It was an experiment, of course. That idea wasn't silly, not a bit. But the old guy's idea that all of them were test subjects was just more crackpot stuff.

  Me, Craig thought. It's me. I'm the test subject.

  All his life Craig had felt himself a test subject in an experiment just like this one. This is a question, gentlemen, of ratio: pressure to success. The right ratio produces some x-factor. What x-factor? That is what our test subject, Mr. Craig Toomy, will show us.

  But then Craig Toomy had done something they hadn't expected, something none of their cats and rats and guinea pigs had ever dared to do: he had told them he was pulling out.

  But you can't do that! You'll explode!

  Will I? Fine.

  And now it had all become clear to him, so clear. These other people were either innocent bystanders or extras who had been hired to give this stupid little drama some badly needed verisimilitude. The whole thing had been rigged with one object in mind: to keep Craig Toomy away from Boston, to keep Craig Toomy from opting out of the experiment.

  But I'll show them, Craig thought. He pulled another sheet from the in-flight magazine and looked at it. It showed a happy man, a man who had obviously never heard of the langoliers, who obviously did not know they were lurking everywhere, behind every bush and tree, in every shadow, just over the horizon. The happy man was driving down a country road behind the wheel of his Avis rental car. The ad said that when you showed your American Pride Frequent Flier Card at the Avis desk, they'd just about give you that rental car, and maybe a game-show hostess to drive it, as well. He began to tear a strip of paper from the side of the glossy ad. The long, slow ripping sound was at the same time excruciating and exquisitely calming.

  I'll show them that when I say I'm getting out, I mean what I say.

  He dropped the strip onto the floor and began on the next one. It was important to rip slowly. It was important that each strip should be as narrow as possible, but you couldn't make them too narrow or they got away from you and petered out before you got to the bottom of the page. Getting each one just right demanded sharp eyes and fearless hands. And I've got them. You better believe it. You just better believe it.

  Rii-ip.

  I might have to kill the pilot.

  His hands stopped halfway down the page. He looked out the window and saw his own long, pallid face superimposed over the darkness.

  I might have to kill the Englishman, too.

  Craig Toomy had never killed anyone in his life. Could he do it? With growing relief, he decided that he could. Not while they were still in the air, of course; the Englishman was very fast, very strong, and up here there were no weapons that were sure enough. But once they landed?

  Yes. If I have to, yes.

  After all, the conference at the Pru was scheduled to last for three days. It seemed now that his late arrival was unavoidable, but at least he would be able to explain: he had been drugged and taken hostage by a government agency. It would stun them. He could see their startled faces as he stood before them, the three hundred bankers from all over the country assembled to discuss bonds and indebtedness, bankers who would instead hear the dirty truth about what the government was up to. My friends, I was abducted by--

  Rii-ip.

  --and was able to escape only when I--

  Rii-ip.

  If I have to, I can kill them both. In fact, I can kill them all.

  Craig Toomy's hands began to move again. He tore off the rest of the strip, dropped it on the floor, and began on the next one. There were a lot of pages in the magazine, there were a lot of strips to each page, and that meant a lot of work lay ahead before the plane landed. But he wasn't worried.

  Craig Toomy was a can-do type of guy.

  5

  Laurel Stevenson didn't go back to sleep but she did slide into a light doze. Her thoughts--which became something close to dreams in this mentally untethered state--turned to why she had really been going to Boston.

  I'm supposed to be starting my first real vacation in ten years, she had said, but that was a lie. It contained a small grain of truth, but she doubted if she had been very believable when she told it; she had not been raised to tell lies, and her technique was not very good. Not that any of the people left on Flight 29 would have cared much either way, she supposed. Not in this situation. The fact that you were going to Boston to meet--and almost certainly sleep with--a man you had never met paled next to the fact that you were heading east in an airplane from which most of the passengers and all of the crew had disappeared.

  Dear Laurel,

  I am so much
looking forward to meeting you. You won't even have to double-check my photo when you step out of the jetway. I'll have so many butterflies in my stomach that all you need to do is look for the guy who's floating somewhere near the ceiling ...

  His name was Darren Crosby.

  She wouldn't need to look at his photograph; that much was true. She had memorized his face, just as she had memorized most of his letters. The question was why. And to that question she had no answer. Not even a clue. It was just another proof of J. R. R. Tolkien's observation: you must be careful each time you step out of your door, because your front walk is really a road, and the road leads ever onward. If you aren't careful, you're apt to find yourself ... well... simply swept away, a stranger in a strange land with no clue as to how you got there.

  Laurel had told everyone where she was going, but she had told no one why she was going or what she was doing. She was a graduate of the University of California with a master's degree in library science. Although she was no model, she was cleanly built and pleasant enough to look at. She had a small circle of good friends, and they would have been flabbergasted by what she was up to: heading off to Boston, planning to stay with a man she knew only through correspondence, a man she had met through the extensive personals column of a magazine called Friends and Lovers.

  She was, in fact, flabbergasted herself.

  Darren Crosby was six-feet-one, weighed one hundred and eighty pounds, and had dark-blue eyes. He preferred Scotch (although not to excess), he had a cat named Stanley, he was a dedicated heterosexual, he was a perfect gentleman (or so he claimed), and he thought Laurel was the most beautiful name he had ever heard. The pictures he had sent showed a man with a pleasant, open, intelligent face. She guessed he was the sort of man who would look sinister if he didn't shave twice a day. And that was really all she knew.

  Laurel had corresponded with half a dozen men over half a dozen years--it was a hobby, she supposed--but she had never expected to take the next step ... this step. She supposed that Darren's wry and self-deprecating sense of humor was part of the attraction, but she was dismally aware that her real reasons were not in him at all, but in herself. And wasn't the real attraction her own inability to understand this strong desire to step out of character? To just fly off into the unknown, hoping for the right kind of lightning to strike?

  What are you doing? she asked herself again.

  The plane ran through some light turbulence and back into smooth air again. Laurel stirred out of her doze and looked around. She saw the young teenaged girl had taken the seat across from her. She was looking out the window.

  "What do you see?" Laurel asked. "Anything?"

  "Well, the sun's up," the girl said, "but that's all."

  "What about the ground?" Laurel didn't want to get up and look for herself. Dinah's head was still resting on her, and Laurel didn't want to wake her.

  "Can't see it. It's all clouds down there." She looked around. Her eyes had cleared and a little color--not much, but a little--had come back into her face. "My name's Bethany Simms. What's yours?"

  "Laurel Stevenson."

  "Do you think we'll be all right?"

  "I think so," Laurel said, and then added reluctantly: "I hope so."

  "I'm scared about what might be under those clouds," Bethany said, "but I was scared anyway. About Boston. My mother all at once decided how it would be a great idea if I spent a couple of weeks with my Aunt Shawna, even though school starts again in ten days. I think the idea was for me to get off the plane, just like Mary's little lamb, and then Aunt Shawna pulls the string on me."

  "What string?"

  "Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to the nearest rehab, and start drying out," Bethany said. She raked her hands through her short dark hair. "Things were already so weird that this seems like just more of the same." She looked Laurel over carefully and then added with perfect seriousness: "This is really happening, isn't it? I mean, I've already pinched myself. Several times. Nothing changed."

  "It's real."

  "It doesn't seem real," Bethany said. "It seems like one of those stupid disaster movies. Airport 1990, something like that. I keep looking around for a couple of old actors like Wilford Brimley and Olivia de Havilland. They're supposed to meet during the shitstorm and fall in love, you know?"

  "I don't think they're on the plane," Laurel said gravely. They glanced into each other's eyes and for a moment they almost laughed together. It could have made them friends if it had happened ... but it didn't. Not quite.

  "What about you, Laurel? Do you have a disaster-movie problem?"

  "I'm afraid not," Laurel replied ... and then she did begin to laugh. Because the thought which shot across her mind in red neon was Oh you liar!

  Bethany put a hand over her mouth and giggled.

  "Jesus," she said after a minute. "I mean, this is the ultimate hairball, you know?"

  Laurel nodded. "I know." She paused and then asked, "Do you need a rehab, Bethany?"

  "I don't know." She turned to look out the window again. Her smile was gone and her voice was morose. "I guess I might. I used to think it was just party-time, but now I don't know. I guess it's out of control. But getting shipped off this way... I feel like a pig in a slaughterhouse chute."

  "I'm sorry," Laurel said, but she was also sorry for herself. The blind girl had already adopted her; she did not need a second adoptee. Now that she was fully awake again she found herself scared--badly scared. She did not want to be behind this kid's dumpster if she was going to offload a big pile of disaster-movie angst. The thought made her grin again; she simply couldn't help it. It was the ultimate hairball. It really was.

  "I'm sorry, too," Bethany said, "but I guess this is the wrong time to worry about it, huh?"

  "I guess maybe it is," Laurel said.

  "The pilot never disappeared in any of those Airport movies, did he?"

  "Not that I remember."

  "It's almost six o'clock. Two and a half hours to go."

  "Yes."

  "If only the world's still there," Bethany said, "that'll be enough for a start." She looked closely at Laurel again. "I don't suppose you've got any grass, do you?"

  "I'm afraid not."

  Bethany shrugged and offered Laurel a tired smile which was oddly winning. "Well," she said, "you're one ahead of me--I'm just afraid."

  6

  Some time later, Brian Engle rechecked his heading, his airspeed, his navigational figures, and his charts. Last of all he checked his wristwatch. It was two minutes past eight.

  "Well," he said to Nick without looking around, "I think it's about that time. Shit or git."

  He reached forward and flicked on the FASTEN SEATBELTS sign. The bell made its low, pleasant chime. Then he flicked the intercom toggle and picked up the mike.

  "Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Captain Engle again. We're currently over the Atlantic Ocean, roughly thirty miles east of the Maine coast, and I'll be commencing our initial descent into the Bangor area very soon. Under ordinary circumstances I wouldn't turn on the seatbelt sign so early, but these circumstances aren't ordinary, and my mother always said prudence is the better part of valor. In that spirit, I want you to make sure your lap-belts are snug and secure. Conditions below us don't look especially threatening, but since I have no radio communication, the weather is going to be something of a surprise package for all of us. I kept hoping the clouds would break, and I did see a few small holes over Vermont, but I'm afraid they've closed up again. I can tell you from my experience as a pilot that the clouds you see below us don't suggest very bad weather to me. I think the weather in Bangor may be overcast, with some light rain. I'm beginning our descent now. Please be calm; my board is green across and all procedures here on the flight deck remain routine."

  Brian had not bothered programming the autopilot for descent; he now began the process himself. He brought the plane around in a long, slow turn, and the seat beneath him canted slightly fo
rward as the 767 began its slow slide down toward the clouds at 4,000 feet.

  "Very comforting, that," Nick said. "You should have been a politician, matey."

  "I doubt if they're feeling very comfortable right now," Brian said. "I know I'm not."

  He was, in fact, more frightened than he had ever been while at the controls of an airplane. The pressure-leak on Flight 7 from Tokyo seemed like a minor glitch in comparison to this situation. His heart was beating slowly and heavily in his chest, like a funeral drum. He swallowed and heard a click in his throat. Flight 29 passed through 30,000 feet, still descending. The white, featureless clouds were closer now. They stretched from horizon to horizon like some strange ballroom floor.

  "I'm scared shitless, mate," Nick Hopewell said in a strange, hoarse voice. "I saw men die in the Falklands, took a bullet in the leg there myself, got the Teflon knee to prove it, and I came within an ace of getting blown up by a truck bomb in Beirut--in '82, that was--but I've never been as scared as I am right now. Part of me would like to grab you and make you take us right back up. Just as far up as this bird will go."

  "It wouldn't do any good," Brian replied. His own voice was no longer steady; he could hear his heartbeat in it, making it jig-jag up and down in minute variations. "Remember what I said before--we can't stay up here forever."

  "I know it. But I'm afraid of what's under those clouds. Or not under them."

  "Well, we'll all find out together."

  "No help for it, is there, mate?"

  "Not a bit."

  The 767 passed through 25,000 feet, still descending.

  7

  All the passengers were in the main cabin; even the bald man, who had stuck stubbornly to his seat in business class for most of the flight, had joined them. And they were all awake, except for the bearded man at the very back of the plane. They could hear him snoring blithely away, and Albert Kaussner felt one moment of bitter jealousy, a wish that he could wake up after they were safely on the ground as the bearded man would most likely do, and say what the bearded man was most likely going to say: Where the hell are we?